If you’re a Nietzsche scholar and you haven’t heard of Mark Alfano’s book, you’re not paying attention. Published in 2019, Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology has already been reviewed by leading Nietzsche scholars in numerous venues (including Notre Dame Philosophical Review, Ethics, and Nietzsche-Studien), dissected in a book symposium published in this very journal (Journal of Nietzsche Studies 51.2 [2020]: 241–72), and featured on a popular philosophy blog’s book review forum (with comments from the author). Its broad influence is already evidenced by the extensive scholarly debate it has provoked and the predominantly positive evaluations it has received, and its impact is particularly noteworthy because of its contribution to the literature on Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology, a topic en vogue in contemporary Nietzsche studies.In this book, Alfano employs a digital humanities approach that aims to identify topics of special significance to Nietzsche’s thought by examining the frequency with which certain concepts occur in his published works, changes in how often these concepts occur, and the frequency of Nietzsche’s association of these concepts. He then uses this identification of “core constructs” in Nietzsche’s thought to guide his project (14). After offering a concise introduction to themes in the book (chapter 1), he spends a full chapter meticulously describing this method (chapter 2), which he notes should be implemented only by someone with deep familiarity with both the primary texts and “prominent and promising interpretations and suggestions already in the literature,” guided by “good intuitions about which constructs are associated in which ways” and consultation with other scholars (14). As someone unfamiliar with the digital humanities, I found his description of the method particularly helpful. After the most prevalent construct, “life,” Alfano’s analysis reveals that moral psychological terms including “value,” “emotion,” “virtue,” and a host of discrete emotion- or virtue-terms dominate Nietzsche’s corpus. From this analysis, he builds the virtue-theoretic reading of Nietzsche around which the book is organized.To my mind, Alfano’s approach has clear benefits. First, it points scholars in the direction of topics in Nietzsche’s work (including life, virtue, emotion, and health) that Alfano convincingly argues are central but undertreated in the secondary literature. Additionally, it helps scholars resist “interpretive malpractice” (13), a not-uncommon occurrence that ensues when interpreters of Nietzsche attempt to build comprehensive interpretations around a small selection of passages. This methodology also has fairly obvious shortcomings. For one, it risks not being sufficiently attentive to the context in which constructs are used. For another, its correlation of the frequency and association of concepts with significance for Nietzsche is potentially misleading, as there might be other, better indicators of significance. As one example, Alfano argues that the significance of the will to power is greatly exaggerated in the secondary literature. If significance corresponds to frequency and association, that would seem to be case. But it’s possible that other factors—such as a concept’s explanatory power—might correlate better with significance than Alfano’s criteria. Though Nietzsche might mention the “will to power” less frequently than “laughter,” for example, the former concept might have substantial explanatory power, and thus it might be especially significant both for Nietzsche himself and for his interpreters. And indeed, this seems to be the case. The will to power helps us make sense of key ideas in Nietzsche, including concepts like “life” that Alfano’s methodology suggests are central. Indeed, Nietzsche identifies life with the “will to power” (Z II: “Self-Overcoming”; GS 349; BGE 13, 259; GM II:12, III:17; A 6). Additionally—and this is especially important for work in Nietzsche’s moral psychology—Nietzsche persistently employs the “will to power” (along with the pursuit of “power” more generally) to explain features of individuals’ psychological lives (including their motivations and evaluations) (BGE 259; GM II:18; A 17; CW “Epilogue”); their actions, including their creations (GM III: 14, 15, 18; EH P:4, “Books: BT” 4; TI “Skirmishes” 11, “Ancients” 3); and their development (GM II:12; A 17). In a nutshell, one can argue that since Nietzsche intends for the “will to power” to explain so much, this concept has special significance for understanding his thought—which we miss if we correlate significance just to frequency and association. I will have more to say about the significance of power a bit later. For now, suffice it to say that despite its shortcomings, the method employed by Alfano is an exceptionally useful tool, one scholars would do well to implement as they construct interpretations of Nietzsche.After Alfano’s introduction (chapter 1) and a detailed description of the methodology he employs (chapter 2), he begins his interpretation in earnest, analyzing the key constructs of “drive,” “instinct,” and “type” (chapter 3). After first following Paul Katsafanas (The Nietzschean Self [New York: Oxford University Press, 2016]) in claiming that Nietzschean drives are act-directed rather than outcome-directed (85), he advances the novel claim that Nietzsche’s use of “instincts” refers only to innate drives. Then, inspired by Brian Leiter’s theory of Nietzschean types (Nietzsche on Morality [London: Routledge, 2002]) but keen to reject Leiter’s characterization of types in Nietzsche as fixed, Alfano goes on to characterize a type as the stable but mutable complex of drives an individual “embodies and could come to embody” (85, emphasis mine). The debt to Leiter in this characterization is obvious, but Alfano’s emphasis on the mutability of individuals as particular types is a welcome corrective to potential oversimplifications of Nietzsche’s type-talk. One particularly impressive section is Alfano’s careful and instructive analysis of social prohibitions as triggers of drive displacement. His argument that Nietzsche thinks suppressed drives tend to acquire the self as their new object because “we are always with ourselves” (66)—and thus a constant if unwitting target for the expression of our own drives—is also intriguing, if a bit underdeveloped.Alfano goes on to argue that Nietzsche endorses a virtue theoretic view centered around a “type-relative unity of virtue thesis” (chapter 4) according to which “what’s good for someone is to fulfill their type” (100). According to Alfano, a Nietzschean virtue is a “well-calibrated drive” (85), where a drive’s being well-calibrated requires that (1) it be “consistent with or supportive of what Nietzsche calls life and health” (86); (2) it must “not systematically or reliably induce negative self-directed emotions . . . that respond to fixed or essential aspects of the self” (86); and (3) it must “not systematically or reliably induce reactions from the agent’s community that are liable to be internalized as negative self-directed emotions that respond to fixed or essential aspects of the self” (86). Finally, Alfano identifies Nietzsche’s view as an “emotionally rich exemplarism” (112) in which Nietzsche attempts to inspire emulation of positive exemplars and discourage emulation of negative exemplars via the production of positive and negative emotions respectively in his readers. Alfano’s analysis here is thought-provoking with a clear payoff: it neatly explains what appear to be mere ad hominem attacks in Nietzsche’s work as his attempts to discourage emulation by inspiring contempt and disgust on the behalf of his reader (113).After fleshing out Nietzsche’s exemplarist virtue theory, Alfano describes the social construction of virtue and character in Nietzsche (chapter 5), arguing that the reception of an individual’s drives by her community—specifically, the “valence and content of the labels applied to an agent, together with a power relation between the labeler and labeled” (116)—shapes her by shaping how her drives “develop and express themselves” (116). More specifically, individuals tend to become what they are called, though one’s type constrains what one can become. This effect is due to a “psychological slavishness” (120) on the behalf of most modern individuals—a tendency to “think, feel, and act as expected” motivated by “social fear” (122). (For more on social fear, see Rebecca Bamford, “Mood and Aphorism in Nietzsche’s Campaign Against Morality,” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 25 [2014]: 55–76.) Although Alfano separates this psychological slavishness from “political slavishness” (which he characterizes as involving the subordination of one’s will by another), he correctly indicates that Nietzsche is keenly interested in the interactions between these two forms of slavishness. Given this acknowledgment, I would have expected to hear more about just how these forms of slavishness interact. In addition to slavish forms of character construction, Alfano acknowledges the existence of reflexive, “masterly” forms of self-construction in Nietzsche that involve becoming what one calls oneself. But he is quick to point out social constraints on this process, including the requirement of the uptake of reflexive labels by one’s community. In this chapter, Alfano offers an excellent treatment of an underthematized but critically important topic in Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology and Nietzsche studies more generally: the role of the social in shaping the self. The interpretations on offer here—including an exceptionally illuminating account of the creation of new values through the coining of eponymous trait terms (126)—are some of the most innovative and compelling in the book.In chapters 6 through 10, Alfano examines what he takes to be the five “core” virtues of the Nietzschean type: curiosity, (intellectual) courage, pathos of distance, sense of humor, and solitude. Alfano’s analysis of each of these drives and his argument for their status as virtues is excellent, but his treatment of the pathos of distance and the corresponding emotions of contempt and disgust stands out, especially for its description of the transformative value of self-contempt and self-disgust. Finally, chapter 11 includes an analysis of conscience as a means by which the core Nietzschean virtues are united, which provocatively and convincingly argues that bad conscience can play a positive role in self-transformation so long as it is “directed or aimed at aspects of the self that are not fixed” (282–83).As should by now be clear, I found many of the interpretations Alfano advances in his book exciting, novel, and compelling; the book as a whole is certainly deserving of its broadly positive reception. But there are certain elements of his account about which I have questions. First, I do not find the textual evidence offered in chapter 3 for Alfano’s claim that “instincts” are innate drives on Nietzsche’s view especially convincing. The text cited certainly demonstrates that certain drives are innate, while others are “implanted” by oneself (HL 3) or one’s culture, and that these drives contend with one another. It also shows that Nietzsche’s references to instincts often show up alongside references to “biological structures and mechanisms” (70) such as breeding. But it does not conclusively demonstrate that instincts are innate drives. Nietzsche’s call to “implant” a “new instinct” is especially telling against this interpretation (HL 3). Since this claim is perhaps the most original Alfano makes with respect to Nietzschean drives and instincts, I would have expected to see—and would have liked to see—a more robust and conclusive defense of this claim. Still, it’s not obvious that much of Alfano’s account hangs on this—which is part of the reason why I find his inclusion of the claim, underdeveloped as it is, surprising.Other questions I have from chapter 3 concern Alfano’s account of the mutability of drives (especially their shaping by one’s sociocultural context) and the relative fixity of types. First, how fixed are Nietzschean types? Alfano claims that “every element of one’s type is [not] immutable” (84) but that “a person’s type limits the kind of person she can become” (84). These limits, however, are not clearly delineated, and even Alfano himself acknowledges that major changes in personality can happen (for example, he notes that people often change due to what they are called [116, 121–22]). Here, I have in mind Nietzsche’s claim that it is possible through critical history to “cultivate a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that the first nature atrophies” (HL 3). Wouldn’t this be a change in type? The extent of type-constraints on individual development is especially difficult to parse in light of the fact that, as Alfano acknowledges, Nietzschean drives can be not only extinguished and suppressed, but also acquired. In GS 21, for example, Nietzsche remarks that “way[s] of thinking and behaving” can “become habit, drive and passion” and “rule” in an individual, and that this happens through “education” within a given sociocultural milieu. Alfano argues that there are certain sets of drives actually “within a person’s reach” (85) and others out of reach—but again, if we can acquire drives in part as a function of our social environment, couldn’t changing that environment profoundly transform us by offering us new drives to acquire?In chapter 4, I wondered about some of Alfano’s constraints on Nietzschean virtues. First, Alfano claims that if a drive “systematically or reliably provokes emotional condemnation from that agent’s community for [itself]” (or other immutable, essential aspects of the agent), it cannot be a virtue. But it seems counterintuitive that the disapproval of certain of an agent’s drives by her community, along with the agent’s liability to internalize that disapproval, would be sufficient to disqualify that drive from being a Nietzschean virtue. After all, Nietzsche celebrates and even identifies with those who are “untimely” (SE 2; AOM P:1; TI “Skirmishes”; CW “Second Postscript”), those “homeless” in their community (GS 377); he characterizes great individuals as those who “[contend] against those aspects of their age that prevent them from being great” rather than passively submitting to their age and community’s assessments (SE 3). In addition, he is persistently and explicitly critical of societies (especially ascetic Christian-moral society) for condemning and stifling agents’ drives (BGE 203; GM I; GM III:11–22; EH “Books: CW” 2), seemingly aiming to overturn “habitual evaluations and valued habits” (HH P:1) rather than judge goods according to these. Now, it does not seem especially controversial that actually internalizing community disapproval with respect to a particular drive would disqualify that drive from counting as a virtue—the constraint, narrowed down in this way, is illuminating and useful. But the mere fact that an individual possesses or expresses a drive that is likely to meet with community disapproval “liable to be internalized” (86) would not seem to disqualify it from being a Nietzschean virtue.In support of this requirement for the “external integration” of virtue, Alfano employs Nietzsche’s example of the criminal, an individual “made sick” when his “virtues are banned by society” and his “most lively drives [become entangled] with depressing emotions” (TI “Skirmishes” 45). But Nietzsche does not seem to be critiquing the criminal for failing to achieve external integration here. Indeed, although the criminal’s “instincts” in fact reliably induce disapproval liable to be internalized, Nietzsche persists in calling them virtues. Instead, I argue that in Nietzsche’s criminal we find a concrete explanation of how internalizing disapproval of one’s society can lead to individual sickness and disempowerment. The criminal is unable to express his aggressive drives outwardly; the resulting internalization makes him ill, leads to “physiological degeneration.” But having instincts that are condemned and being likely to internalize this condemnation because of social fear need not result in the criminal type. Indeed, Nietzsche himself says here that “there are cases where such a person proves to be stronger than the society” (TI “Skirmishes” 45)—and one imagines that the socially condemned instincts possessed by such a person can still count as Nietzschean virtues.Let me move on to “life” and “health” as external constraints on Nietzschean virtue (93). According to Alfano, if a drive undermines life or health, it cannot be a virtue. This seems right! With respect to these “thick constructs” (93), however, Alfano’s account remains too thin. Since assessing whether or not traits are virtues requires us to judge whether those traits undermine or support life and health, we need an understanding of what “life” and “health” constitute to flesh out a robust account of Nietzschean virtue. Alfano never offers a detailed analysis of these concepts; given the centrality of these criteria to his account (and “life” as the most frequently occurring, and ostensibly most important, construct in Nietzsche’s corpus), this is regrettable.Here, Alfano’s exclusion of the will to power as a key construct in Nietzsche (as well as his relatively scarce treatment of power-seeking as a key motivational force in agents’ lives) becomes striking. This is especially so in the case of getting clear on “life,” since Nietzsche frequently describes “life” as “will to power” (Z II: “Self-Overcoming”; GS 349; BGE 13, 259; GM II:12; III:17; A 6) and many Nietzsche scholars have argued that the will to power is intricately tied up with the notion of life in Nietzsche. (See, e.g., Kaitlyn Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020]; Ian Dunkle, “Moral Physiology and Vivisection of the Soul: Why Does Nietzsche Critique the Life Sciences?,” Inquiry 61.1 [2018]: 62–81; John Richardson, Nietzsche’s Values [New York: Oxford University Press, 2020]; Tom Stern, Nietzsche’s Ethics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019].) But the omission of the will to power is also striking at this point because Alfano is establishing criteria for Nietzschean virtues. Since Nietzsche claims that “what is good” is “[e]verything that enhances people’s feeling of power, will to power, power itself” (A 2)—and even seems to identify power with (“moraline-free”) virtue in this same section—it seems that power (that is, on my view, growth and development in one’s form of life) should at least be considered as a candidate criterion for what makes a drive virtuous.One final point with respect to the account of individuals “becoming what they are called” from chapter 5: Alfano’s account of how people change through social labeling claims basically that individuals “fake it ’til they make it.” Individuals are labeled, take those labels to heart, and act in accordance with those labels until such actions become habit. By habitually acting like the person their community says they are, individuals become the person their community says they are. While I found this analysis exceptionally generative overall, I have one worry. There are plenty of places in Nietzsche where we find that an individual’s being persistently designated lowly and lacking by her society degrades and disempowers the individual so designated. But what about positive labels? Can you “fake it ’til you make it” to Nietzschean nobility? Does Nietzsche think societies can ennoble individuals by labeling them great? Think of commonplace gripes about alleged “participation trophy” culture. In such a culture, everyone is celebrated; everyone is good (or, at least, good enough). Would Nietzsche really think that such a culture—in which all are labeled “great”—is likely to create great individuals? I sincerely doubt it. In fact, such a culture seems much more likely to create those “last men” Nietzsche laments. Though I can imagine cases in which being designated great provokes second-order affects that stimulate one’s drive-life such that one becomes strong, empowered, and noble, this would seem to be the exception in Nietzsche rather than the rule. Indeed, Nietzsche often seems to think that being labeled “bad,” suffering as a result of this (and other things), and overcoming that suffering is what creates genuine greatness. In short, while it’s clear that believing I am lowly can make me lowly on Nietzsche’s view, it’s less clear that believing I am great can make me great. But it’s not clear that Alfano’s account—that “pretending to be what one is designated” leads one to “become what one is designated” (121–22)—allows us to distinguish between these two quite intuitively different cases.All in all, however, Alfano’s book is a significant contribution to the field of Nietzsche studies, especially to scholarly work in Nietzsche’s moral psychology. Alfano makes a strong case for his virtue theoretic reading, his novel method brings scholarly attention to underappreciated themes in Nietzsche (especially with respect to community and affectivity), and his explanation of key concepts in Nietzsche’s moral psychology is exceptionally clear. His book is well worth the reading.
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