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The Journal of Value Inquiry

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23.07.2015

Playing, Valuing, and Living: Examining Nietzsche’s Playful Response to Nihilism

verfasst von: Aaron Harper

Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry | Ausgabe 2/2016

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Play is usually defined in contrast to the serious tasks of everyday life, as a form of frivolity that offers escape from the real world. Yet Friedrich Nietzsche claims that play is serious work, and he holds that it should not be relegated to the realm of children or limited to trivial matters. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche even claims for play a paradoxical role in human development: “Human maturity: this means rediscovering the seriousness we had towards play when we were children” (BGE 94).¹ While Nietzsche analyzed play throughout his career, in his later writings he exalts play and playfulness as philosophically significant on their own. An attitude of playfulness is connected to the attitudes of affirmation and amor fati, and at times it seems to serve as a therapeutic response to the failures Nietzsche identifies in philosophy, theology, and science. Nietzsche’s appeals to play bear an enigmatic quality familiar to his philosophical work as a whole. At a basic level, it is puzzling that play can be taken seriously at all, let alone that one should be playful while engaged in serious, significant tasks. Nietzsche, however, surprisingly suggests play offers a resolution to the problems he addresses, insisting that “I do not know any other way of handling great tasks than as play” (EH “Clever” 10). …

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I have employed parenthetical citations of Nietzsche’s works using the following abbreviations:

A = The Antichrist, in Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (eds.), The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

BGE = Beyond Good and Evil, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

CW = The Case of Wagner, in Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (eds.), The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

EH = Ecce Homo, in Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (eds.), The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

GM = On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998).

GS = The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

TI = Twilight of the Idols, in Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (eds.), The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

WP = The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967).

Z = Thus Spoke Zarathustra, eds. Adrian Del Caro and Robert Pippin, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

See Simon Blackburn, “Perspectives, Fictions, Errors, Play,” in Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 281–296, pp. 282–283.

Richard Schacht also connects value creation to sport and play. He argues that, for Nietzsche, sport resembles art. Both serve the cultivation and enhancement of humanity by endowing human experience with meaning and value. Sport creates new values and opens up new forms of human excellence. Accordingly, Schacht describes sport as “a cardinal instance of the kind of thing Nietzsche has in mind in speaking of value-creation.” I agree with this conclusion. However, I will argue in favor of a different relationship between sport, play, and value creation, where value creation effectively is a form of play. See Richard Schacht, “Nietzsche and Sport,” International Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1998), 123–130, p. 128.

Blackburn, op. cit., p. 292.

Nadeem J.Z. Hussain, “Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits,” in Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 157–191, p. 161.

Ibid., p. 159.

Ibid., p. 158.

For example, see Hussain, op. cit., pp. 159–165, and Harold Langsam, “How to Combat Nihilism: Reflections on Nietzsche’s Critique of Morality,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1997), 235–253.

Further, as Robert Pippin points out, treating nihilism as a failure of knowledge makes it difficult to appreciate the imagery of death, decay, and illness Nietzsche associates with it. See Robert Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 54.

See Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 25–28.

Ken Gemes directs us to an important clarification. Gemes fears that Reginster’s account is too cognitive, noting that nihilism, and its associated despair, should be thought of as affective rather than cognitive disorders. I think the best interpretation of Nietzsche’s nihilism includes both components. Despair can be related to something cognitive, but deep down it is affective despair that best characterizes nihilism. See Ken Gemes, “Nihilism and the Affirmation of Life: A Review and Dialogue with Bernard Reginster,” European Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008), 459–466.

Much of Reginster’s argument concerning nihilism comes from the passages collected at the beginning of The Will to Power. Yet in WP 1, before Nietzsche considers meaninglessness, he connects the “end of Christianity” to the point where nihilism “stands at the door.” See also n. 18.

The view of the Greeks’ response to suffering present in Nietzsche’s middle and later writings clearly differs from the picture we find in The Birth of Tragedy. Tragedy served as his “point of departure” (TI “Ancients” 5). Later he came to hold a much different view of the role of suffering and the problems it causes for human existence. My focus will be on this later view.

I have modified the second passage, which Clark and Swensen have as “great disgust at the sight of man!” The German text reads “gegen den großen Ekel am Menschen!”

Pippin calls this condition the “failure of desire” marked by the loss of any possible erotic attachment. See Pippin, op. cit., pp. 54–57.

More generally, Nietzsche believes religion has been the primary strategy taken to reconcile a purposeful life with suffering. In A 15 he writes, “To suffer from reality means that you are a piece of reality that has gone wrong…The preponderance of feelings of displeasure over feelings of pleasure is the cause of that fictitious morality and religion.”

In his notebooks Nietzsche comments that “it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is rooted” (WP 1). This is not to say that all nihilism is somehow dependent on Christianity, only that it has served an important role in creating the need for purpose, and the Christian machinery or “edifice” that has been built up cannot be easily removed (GS 358). Along the same line, Schacht argues that nihilism is an insight particularly concerning the untenability of the Christian interpretation of existence. See Richard Schacht, Nietzsche (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 345. The disorientation of nihilism, in principle, could result from the untenability of any dominant interpretation, not just Christianity. But the crisis that Nietzsche thinks we currently face has been brought about by the development and ultimate failure of Christianity. The problem is particularly acute because Christianity precludes many possible alternatives.

For example, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly characterize Nietzsche’s view as one of joy at the freedom nihilism brings, allowing the individual to create through force of will and essentially become a god herself. See Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining (New York: Free Press, 2011).

Many interpreters believe that Nietzsche’s proposal is to recognize that suffering requires no unique response. For instance, Arthur Danto argues that the meaninglessness of suffering is Nietzsche’s key teaching. On Danto’s reading, we ought to recognize that life is meaningless and treat this as a liberating revelation. However, if we accept this interpretation, ignoring suffering fails to resolve the problem, since there remains no particular purpose. See Arthur C. Danto, “Some Remarks on The Genealogy of Morals,” in Richard Schacht (ed.), Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 35–48.

Similarly, Schacht argues that the values created through sport and play “exemplify the only kind of ‘real values’ there are; for while they are not written into the very nature of things, no other values are either.” Schacht, op. cit. (1998), p. 129.

Many have defended voluntariness as the defining feature of play. For instance, Huizinga describes play as “first and foremost…a voluntary activity.” Forced play is, in his view, at best an imitation. Roger Caillois contends that play is free, meaning it is not obligatory. Obligatory play would undermine play’s role as diversion. And Klaus Meier defines play as an autotelic activity, which is “an activity voluntarily pursued for predominantly intrinsic reasons.” See Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), p. 7; Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), p. 9; Klaus Meier, “Triad Trickery: Playing with Sports and Games,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1988), 11–30, p. 25.

Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005), p. 37.

Suits claims that games would be the primary activity in a utopian society. If societies were organized such that people did not need to engage in undesirable activities for means of survival, they would only perform activities that are unnecessary but valued intrinsically, resulting in a life filled only with play. See ibid., pp. 149–156.

See Kenneth Schmitz, “Sport and Play: Suspension of the Ordinary,” in Ellen W. Gerber and William J. Morgan (eds.), Sport and the Body: A Philosophical Symposium. 2^nd Edition (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1979), 22–29, pp. 23–24.

Suits, op. cit., pp. 54–55.

Randolph Feezell, Sport, Play & Ethical Reflection (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 22.

David Roochnik provides a parallel to Nietzsche’s view, arguing that play involves a full commitment he calls immersion. Nietzsche qualifies immersion by adding to it the importance of identification and the creation of new values. See David Roochnik, “Play and Sport,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1975), 36–44.

See Feezell, op. cit., pp. 56–57.

Lawrence Hatab argues that the possibility of taking play too seriously affirms the distinction between play and the real world. I hold, in contrast, that Nietzsche undermines this very distinction. See Lawrence Hatab, “The Drama of Agonistic Embodiment: Nietzschean Reflections on the Meaning of Sports,” International Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1998), 97–107.

Nietzsche appears to have two different uses of the free spirit. On the one hand, it functions as an ideal along with his “higher men” and “philosophers of the future.” He occasionally refers to himself and his readers as free spirits (BGE 227, 230). On the other hand, he expresses reservations about the free spirit, as when he describes free spirits as “levelers” (BGE 44). Here I focus on the free spirit as Nietzsche’s ideal, setting aside concerns about the problematic kind of free spirit he describes.

Tamar Schapiro, “What is a Child?,” Ethics, Vol. 109, No. 4 (1999), 715–738, pp. 732–733.

See Z III: “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2, BGE 42, and BGE 205.

See Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 128–130.

A number of essays that reexamine Nietzsche’s individualism in relation to his work on the community are collected in a recent volume. See Individual and Community in Nietzsche’s Philosophy, ed. Julian Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Many have argued that play’s existence outside the ordinary or real world is one of its basic features. Included among these are Johan Huizinga in his seminal work Homo Ludens: “Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. It is rather stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all its own.” Huizinga, op. cit., p. 8.

Hussain, op. cit., p. 170.

See Michael Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 14 (1976), 453–466.

Some of the pressing issues in defining relevant forms of fictionalism are elucidated in a debate between David Lewis and Simon Blackburn regarding whether Blackburn’s quasi-realism amounts to a form of fictionalism. Nietzsche’s view arguably has a number of affinities with quasi-realism. Important considerations include the nature of the “as if” or make believe attitude required by fictionalism and the role of assertion in the view. See David Lewis, “Quasi-Realism is Fictionalism” in Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 314–321, and Simon Blackburn, “Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism,” in Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 322–338.

Blackburn provides a framework to help contextualize Nietzsche’s fictionalist commitments. “Practically conservative” fictionalism allows, which everyday practice to remain the same. “Practically revisionary” fictionalism alters everyday practice. Nietzsche’s view, as I have sketched it, falls somewhere in between, but closer to the revisionary model. It is a conservative because most significant changes will occur in the content of values, not the activities of valuing and play. Still, Nietzsche’s view should have implications for how we understand ourselves, our commitments, and our means our persuasion. Moreover, rejecting the traditional view of objectivity will undercut some everyday beliefs and practices. See Blackburn, op. cit. (2007), pp. 287–291.

This paper has greatly benefitted from detailed comments at many points, especially those offered by Mark Migotti, Krista Thomason, Eric Schaaf, John Hacker-Wright, and an anonymous reviewer. William Schroeder provided valuable discussion and feedback on nascent forms of the arguments contained in this paper. I am also grateful to audiences at the 2012 Eastern APA session for the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport and the 2013 Rockford College Sports Studies Symposium for their many helpful questions and comments on earlier versions of this project.

Titel: Playing, Valuing, and Living: Examining Nietzsche’s Playful Response to Nihilism
verfasst von: Aaron Harper
Publikationsdatum: 23.07.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: The Journal of Value Inquiry / Ausgabe 2/2016
Print ISSN: 0022-5363
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0492
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9508-7

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