Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
Nietzsche and Objectivism

Unit One: January 31 - February 20

William Dale's Comment on
Diana Mertz Hsieh's "Birds of Prey"
Freedom of the Will and the Value of Genealogy
In Friedrich Nietzsche's
Geneology of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 10:45 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar: Focus [WD Comment on DMH Pt. 1 Review]

[From: William Dale]

Focus [Comment on Diana Hsieh's Part One Review Essay]

My thanks to Diana for an excellent, clear discussion of Nietzsche. I
enjoyed her concise contrast of Nietzsche's philosophical method to the
Objectivist approach. I focus my limited comments here on Diana's
discussion of the comparison of Nietzsche's and Rand's conception of freedom
of the will. In particular, I center my comments on Rand's conception of
free will as the human ability to *focus* consciousness, and that this is
the precise meaning of her claim that it is the "choice to think or not." I
don't think this distinction is given enough attention in discussions about
this crucial issue.

The mistake Nietzsche makes is a conceptual one. As Diana points out,
Nietzsche's contrast object for his concept of "freewill" is a sui generis
ability to create something out of nothing. He is thinking of freewill as
if it were a detached, supernatural ability to will something to happen out
of nothing, existentialist-style. Diana perceptively critiques Nietzsche's
intrinsicist error of using as his contrast a Kantian Will which is free
from earthy existence. This leaves Nietzsche with a conception of freewill
to possibly defend that must literally be a "creative force" in order to
have efficacy in the world; it is shouldered with the responsibility of
generation something out of nothing, a responsibility nothing can support.
He rightly rejects such a conception, but is left defending a
contradiction--Masters who are acting against their "nature," but who can't
act against their nature.

In contrast, Rand carefully ties our capacity to focus to our existence as
actual beings in the world. She describes a unique, emergent ability to
self-consciously direct attention as separating human consciousness from
other types. In her words, "...the choice 'to think or not' is the choice
'to focus or not.'" (TOE, VoS, p 20.) Interestingly, this is a much more
limited ability than is usually attributed to defenders of freedom of the
will; Peikoff describes focus as "the precondition of thought." (Lexicon,
p.168). This "precondition" simply, but elegantly, points to the capacity
of adult human beings, to a greater or lesser extent, to grab the causal
reins and direct consciousness. Thus, this aspect of human nature is nicely
tied to the causal efficacy of human freedom.

As Diana also notes, the Objectivist account permits a better account of
facts Nietzsche would like to explain with the "helmsman" metaphor. By
isolating acts of focus from other acts of consciousness, one properly
permits classification of interactions between various aspects
consciousness. For example, since one can only self-consciously focus on a
limited number of facts at any one time, other facts not currently in focus
may be acting simultaneously to influence consciousness. Sub-conscious
factors may well affect one while one is focuses elsewhere; however, one
retains the ability to direct attention to those factors, reconsider them,
and change their affect. This account permits a "helmsman" capacity for
free will, while also maintaining it's identity as causally efficacious.
For an elaboration of such interactions, I suggest people get copies of Will
Wilkinson's paper on the psycho-epistemology he presented at the Summer
Seminar a couple of years back. (If that's OK with Will, of course. I
apologize for not having the exact reference at hand; my work area is buried
under medicine things at the moment!).

I will end with a one difficult issue regarding human development. Ken
Livingston points out in his discussions of child-rearing that one of the
primary challenges is the development of a child's moral capacity. Unless I
'm misinterpreting, a child begins life with only two broad categories of
influences--environmental and genetic, but over time _may_ also come to be
able to direct attention, i.e. to have free will. However, if a child is
raised in the wild by a pack of wolves (the Wild Boy of Avarone), he may not
develop the capacity for focusing. Rand herself describes, in her
"Comprachico's" article, the crippling of children by the education system
as a similar destruction of a person's capacity to think. So, it seems to
me that free will is a capacity, not a given, for adults. It also seems
that we might describe people as having a greater or lesser ability to
exercise the capacity depending on influences outside their control.

Just trying to stick a gnat in the pharmaceutical...

William Dale


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Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
cybersem@objectivistcenter.org

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