The Disciplined Schooling of the Free Spirit: Educational Theory in Nietzsche’s Middle Period

Abstract

In his article, “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as Educator,” Haim Gordon argues that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra demonstrates Nietzsche’s views on education. Gordon claims that a Nietzchean educator would have an approach that is “extremely antidogmatic and anti-catechistic.” David Cooper criticizes Gordon’s view in “On Reading Nietzsche on Education,” where he claims, among other things, that Gordon ought not to draw Nietzsche’s views on education from Thus Spoke Zarathustra alone. Cooper points out that Nietzsche directly confronts the issue of education in three works, Schopenhaur as Educator, The Use and Abuse of History for Life, and the series of lectures, “On the Future of our Educational Institutions.” Furthermore, Cooper’s book Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy, provides a devastating criticism of Gordon’s contention, a criticism which is directly relevant for this paper. Contrary to the anti-dogmatic educator which Gordon finds in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cooper notes that, “Nietzsche leaves us in no doubt that the ‘free spirits’ to emerge from a true education will have been submitted to a thoroughly disciplined schooling.”