Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading by Matthew Meyer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading by Matthew Meyer Dale A. Wilkerson MEYER, Matthew. Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Works: A Dialectical Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xi + 286 pp. Cloth, $99.00 Ever since Georg Brandes’ 1888 lectures on Nietzsche in Copenhagen, the problem of navigating the meandering course of Nietzsche’s full body of work has perplexed students and commentators alike. Regarding questions concerning the best hermeneutic approach to understanding the whole of Nietzsche’s output, Matthew Meyer offers a novel solution: Readers should begin with the five “free spirit works” of the middle period (1878–1884) and interpret them as a “consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman” that ventures out from the rudiments of Nietzsche’s most famous early publication, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), and finds its way back to them in the texts of his final period (1885–1888). As a “consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman” (this exact phrase is found no less than ten times in the first two chapters of Meyer’s study), the free spirit is tasked with choosing “between truth-seeking and science, on the one hand, and art and life-affirmation on the other.” In the end, according to Meyer, science and truth-seeking asceticism yield to tragedy and the parodic intentions of Nietzsche’s last works. Although unconventional, Meyer’s thesis is supported by careful readings of the relevant texts, clear and concise writing, and a straightforward architectonic structure. The analysis is divided into three main parts, preceded by a lengthy introduction that attempts to clarify “what it means for the free spirit works to be (1) best understood as a (2) consciously constructed (3) dialectical (4) Bildungsroman.” As a Bildungsroman, Meyer intends only to claim that the works form a “narrative of self-education.” As a “dialectical” narrative, Meyer draws comparisons to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment in order to elaborate the nature of the free spirit’s “self-overcoming.” (Meyer seems to prefer Nietzsche’s rare use of the German, [End Page 634] Selbstaufhebung, over his more frequent references to Selbstüberwindung, no doubt in order to lend rhetorical aid to the “dialectical” reading.) Although Meyer admits that there is no direct evidence supporting his claim that a dialectical Bildungsroman was consciously constructed by Nietzsche at the outset of the free spirit project, he also notes that no evidence exists to falsify his argument. Most significantly, according to Meyer, it can be shown that the free spirit works are “best understood” in such a manner, and a brief review of other approaches to Nietzsche’s corpus begins to demonstrate as much. In a sense, the study is designed to build out the case for the “best understood” claim. Each of the three main parts of Meyer’s analysis is made distinct with the aid of imagery found in the beginning of “Zarathustra’s Discourses” that tracks the “three metamorphoses of the spirit.” Part 1, “The Ascetic Camel,” argues that Human, All-Too Human’s chapters are arranged in a way that exhibits a “dialectical flow” aiming to tackle the “problem of opposites” in nature with the “will to truth” carried out in “historical philosophy.” The dialectical wheel of this project is propelled by Nietzsche’s intention to “overcome metaphysics” while courageously facing up to the problem of nihilism (or what Meyer calls “factual pessimism”). As the ascetic-camel, Nietzsche shuns art for these purposes because of its metaphysical commitments heretofore. Nevertheless Nietzsche has only brought the truth-seeking project of Human to an imperfect conclusion when he affirms the free spirit’s need to abstain from convictions in the pursuit of knowledge. Meyer argues that Nietzsche then seeks respite from the project’s early contradictions by turning away from the task of overcoming metaphysics and inwardly toward “the closest things.” Thus, Nietzsche’s Assorted Opinions and Aphorisms and The Wanderer seem less committed to the “will to truth” than does Human, favoring instead an Epicurean-inspired philosophy of life. This inward turn, however, only exacerbated the historical problems of metaphysics and nihilism, now understood to be responsible for the evolution of a dysfunctional spirit. Having discovered that mere...