Nietzsche’s Legacy for Education: Past and Present Values, edited by Michael Peters, James Marshall and Paul Smeyers (Bergin and Garvey, 229 pp.)
The Anglo-American philosophical tradition that once neglected Friedrich Nietzsche has recently discovered him. In fact, more books are published about Nietzsche now than ever before. Nietzsche’s contributions to educational philosophy, however, are still largely ignored. The book under consideration is only the second devoted to Nietzsche’s educational philosophy, the other being David E. Cooper’s Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy (1983). As such, Nietzsche’s Legacy for Education should be welcomed by those interested in philosophy in general and those interested in educational philosophy in particular.
In their introduction, the editors explain their book’s uniqueness:
. . . for the first time it brings together a group of educators who, working from Nietzsche’s texts both in the original German and in English translation, mark out the significance of Nietzsche’s thought for educational theory. It is unique also in that individual chapters firmly link Nietzsche’s oeuvre to contemporary scholarship and particularly to the work of the French poststructuralists.
All of the book’s twelve essays are valuable for different reasons. In “Genealogy as a Method for Education,” F. Ruth Irwin concludes that in Nietzschean-Foucaultian model “education could be available to anyone interested in learning and developing their [sic] Will to Knowledge.” Since education multiplies interpretations of society and the self, it is a means to freedom. The degree of freedom individuals can achieve is determined by the Will to Knowledge, not by a mere Will to Vocational Preparation.
As Juliane Varvaro argues in her chapter “Learning the Grandeur of Life,” both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein view education as a process through which human beings in social settings create meaning in their lives and make sense of things as opposed to conforming with the climate of opinion.
Of course, individuals develop/accept fundamental principles of morality as a result of their “world-building,” and in his chapter “A Critique of R. S. Peters’ Ethics and Education, Peter Fitzsimons argues that, for Peters, “only a democratic form of life is consistent with the fundamental principles of morality.” Schools, therefore, should be democratic institutions in which education is an ethical enterprise. Taking a Nietzschean perspective, the author argues that Peters’ particular interpretation of liberal education as an ethical enterprise based on the giving of reasons does not form the basis of an adequate educational philosophy. Agreeing with Irwin and Narvaro, Fitzsimons concludes that education requires consideration of multiple points of view beyond the restrictive guidelines of reason.
We now come to what I consider the crux of the book: how does Nietzsche define education, is his definition adequate, and under what circumstances can it be transmitted or attained? In “Nietzsche, Education and Democracy,” Scott Johnston accepts Dewey’s concept of education as a social institution synonymous with schooling. Unlike Dewey, however, Johnston views this education as a self-creating, hegemonic structure. Johnston argues through Nietzsche’s perspectivism that truths exist as a matter of individual perspective and are in turn played upon by social and cultural forces. Individuals must create their own truth. Education of this sort is a creative process of autonomous individuals studying divers topics. For Johnston, Nietzsche’s kind of education cannot take place in schools. Nietzsche’s education is a process of self-overcoming, of overcoming the decadent values of mass culture that schools transmit. Education is not the mere dissemination of knowledge from teachers to students. Ultimately, the individual must create not only the self, but also the means by which this ideal self is produced. Johnston quotes Nietzsche: “Educators are needed who have themselves been educated, superior, noble spirits, proved at every moment, proved by words and silence, representing culture which has grown sweet-not the learned louts whom secondary schools and universities today offer our youth as ‘higher we nurses.’” Nietzsche is not concerned with fostering democracy. He is concerned with fostering the Overman. But how?
In “Nietzsche’s Critique of Liberal Education,” Patrick Fitzsimons argues that liberal education, with its basis in reason, produces conformists, not autonomous thinkers. Liberal education, or what passes for it in schools, cannot be counted on to produce self-fulfilled individuals. Real education requires that we forget the past and critically explore the values behind liberal education itself.
In “Subjectivism and Beyond: On the Embeddedness of the Nietzschean Individual,” Stefan Ramaekers offers that I believe to be a correct reading of Nietzsche consistent with his writings and his temperament. Ramaekers offers evidence, acknowledged but largely ignored by Johnston, that Nietzsche insists on discipline and obedience during one’s formative education. For Ramaekers’ Nietzsche, “every culture needs individuals who consciously commit themselves to that culture’s values, (re)valuates them and thus revitalizes them and thus revitalizes them. The true individual speaks where the herd fails to speak; she eases the tightness of the chains with which the herd in enchained.” Certain individuals must undergo the discipline allowing them to stand on the steps of the scientists, critics, dogmatists, and moralists of the past, and to use what they have given us as a scaffold and foundation for the creation of new values and meanings. Thus, one begins by understanding the cultural context in which one lives. This is called embeddedness. Self-overcoming can occur only as a result of an initial embeddedness. In our case, we must understand the Western tradition and its ways of knowing. We must discipline ourselves to master this tradition, (re)valuate it and offer alternative meanings. Since meanings are matters of individual perspective, meanings are neither true nor false beyond the individual adopting them.
It would appear that a consistent reading of Nietzsche’s educational philosophy requires that people with a Will to Knowledge be disciplined in the liberal studies that Fitzsimons’ claims Nietzsche rejects. Not all people will have the intellectual curiosity and mental ability to attain the level of embeddedness necessary for self-overcoming. Those who do, however, must pursue a kind of “higher education” characterized by individual autonomy. This individual autonomy is not possible for most youngsters of school age; therefore, the best that schools can do is satisfy the individual’s Will to Knowledge in the most rigorous way possible. Those lacking sufficient natural ability and/or a Will to Knowledge consign themselves to herd mentality and conformity. But how shall our prospective Overmen pursue this higher education?
In “Nietzsche and the Limits of Academic Life,” Peter Roberts suggests that our universities are inhospitable places for autonomous thinkers, arguing “that in a world characterized by frenetic activity (both within and outside the academy) neither scholars nor philosophers are likely to flourish. Serious reading and reflection are discouraged in a culture of consumerism, and in bureaucratic and marketized universities few individuals have the time, space and material resources necessary for creative, critical intellectual work.” Today, “Subservience, industriousness, moderation, the desire for honor and recognition, insecurity born of an inner distrust, a lack of independence and a tendency to conformity are some of the distinguishing characteristics of scholarly beings.”
Roberts and Ramaekers agree that individuals must attain an initial embeddedness, followed by individual autonomy. But can such autonomy exist in today’s academy? For Roberts’ Nietzsche, “those who uphold the ideal of greatness are lonely, concealed and deviant, with an abundance of will and a mastery over their own virtues.” Such people will be at odds with today’s consumer-oriented academy where serious reading has given way to light entertainment and where the accumulation of credits passes for knowledge and understanding. Nietzsche calls for philosophers, but the academy fosters careerists. Roberts lays out Nietzsche’s view of the real philosophers and explores an abundance of characteristics that make their growth in the modern academy nearly impossible. He concludes that “Those aspiring to greatness must do so outside of today’s anti-intellectual institutions of ‘higher education’,” somewhat as Nietzsche did in his own day.
In the light of today’s beleaguered common schools and the decline of colleges and universities as places of higher learning, Nietzsche reminds us that while everyone may be schooled, not everyone can be educated. Ultimately, no one can educate another individual. Nietzsche’s most valuable educational legacy is his warning that society cannot foster educated individuals through coercive mass schooling. We cannot accomplish what we say we want by doing what we are doing. Coercing the unable and unwilling does not produce generally educated people, let alone Overmen. On the other hand, child-centered progressivism fails to instill the foundational discipline and embeddedness necessary for human advancement. The issue at hand is whether we should continue trying to accomplish the impossible or abandon our present road to mediocrity and conformity. Since the herd is in charge of both public schools and most colleges and universities, real education must occur outside institutions if it is to occur at all. Initially, it must be demanding, not merely entertaining. Later, if an individual’s Will to Knowledge is strong, it might perhaps evolve into a process of self-overcoming in the spirit of Nietzsche’s personal quest.
© Radical Pedagogy