Nietzsches Free Spirits and the Beauty of Illusion

Eric Campbell
Abstract: Nadeem Hussain argues that Nietzsches rejection of intrinsic values
led him to reject the existence of values generally, but that he wanted his free
spirits to pretend to believe in (intrinsic) values as a way to avoid practical
nihilism. I examine Hussains textual evidence and find it unsupportive of and
sometimes even hostile to his fictionalist interpretation. I argue that this interpretation ignores what Nietzsche regarded as the value of the knowledge that
nothing has intrinsic value, which is to allow his free spirits to go beyond the kind
of phenomenology that Hussain claims Nietzsche wanted to preserve for them.
Recognizing this central aspect of Nietzsches project adds support to the much
more natural subjectivist realist interpretation that Hussain rejects en route to
his fictionalist interpretation. Finally, I sketch a better-supported interpretation
of Nietzsches use of pretense in valuation.
Keywords: nihilism, fictionalism, subjectivism, error theory, free spirits, artists

ne of the most important questions in Nietzsche interpretation concerns

his views about values and valuation. (In)famously, he seems to deny that
values exist and yet clearly makes evaluations, which for most readers are the
most interesting or disturbing aspects of his philosophy. It is fairly clear that
Nietzsche rejects belief in intrinsic values, understood as values that are not
relative to any perspective, desire, drive, attitude, will, goal, and so on. If we
recognize this sense in which Nietzsche denied the existence of value, then there
is an obvious interpretive move: Nietzsche denied the existence of intrinsic value
but believed in (real) relational values, that is, values related to one or more of
these motivated perspectives, as I shall call them.
I think the obvious move is the correct move. However, Nadeem Hussain
argues that Nietzsche cannot hold the relational view, which he calls subjective
realism.1 Hussain sees Nietzsche as having too fundamental an objection to
evaluation as such to think that value claims could be true as they would often
be if subjectivist realism were correct. Instead, he argues that Nietzsche was an
error theorist about valuation. But rather than counseling his free spirits to live
a life devoid of valuing, Nietzsche recommended they engage in a fictionalist
simulacrum of valuing2 as a way out of the practical nihilism that threatens

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upon ones coming to recognize that nothing has (intrinsic) value. Call this
recommendation of how to pretend to value normative (value) fictionalism.
In my view, this fictionalist interpretation of Nietzsche is deeply flawed.
Its fundamental mistake lies in a failure to recognize a higher goal underlying
Nietzsches call to truthfulness, especially truthfulness about our valuations.
Restricting myself almost entirely to the passages that Hussain marshals in
support of his fictionalist interpretation, I maintain that for Nietzsche, the value
of the knowledge that there are no intrinsic values is meant to allow his free
spirits to go beyond the sort of phenomenology that Hussain argues he wanted
to preserve for them. I sketch an alternative, better-supported interpretation of
Nietzsches use of fiction that meshes easily with my other interpretive claims.

Hussains Argument
Hussain argues for two related claims. First, there is an interpretive puzzle
as to how Nietzsches free spirits are supposed to reevaluate and create new
values. Second, the solution to this puzzle is that the free spirits are supposed to
undertake a fictionalist simulacrum of valuing. The puzzle arises from four
interpretive constraints:
1. A central task of Nietzsches free spirits is the creation and re-creation of values.
2. Nietzsches free spirit conceives reality as it is.
3. Nietzsches nihilism:3 Nietzsche claims that nothing has value in itself and
therefore all claims of the form X is valuable are false.
4. There is a close connection drawn in Nietzsches works between art, the avoidance
of practical nihilism, and the creation of new values.4

From (2) and (3), a free spirit does not believe (or conceive) reality to be such
that there are things in reality, or nature, with value in themselves. From the
same premises, a free spirit thinks that all claims of the form X is valuable
are false. Hussain is aware that (3) involves ascribing to Nietzsche a sweeping
error theory about value.5 Therefore he addresses a subjectivist realist interpretation of passages in which Nietzsche claims that nothing has value in itself.
AsHussain describes it, subjectivist realism claims that sentences of the form
Xis valuable can be true, but in virtue of the object . . . standing in certain
relations to agents. . . for example, our having certain attitudes toward the thing.6
Against this seemingly plausible understanding of how value judgments could
be true, Hussain notes that Nietzsche sometimes appears to raise problems for
evaluation in general.7 Hussain argues that what Nietzsche thinks is wrong with
evaluative judgments as such is that they necessarily involve thinking that things

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92 Eric Campbell

have value in themselves. And since nothing does have value in itself, that makes
Nietzsche an error theorist. Further, all free spirits must be error theorists as well,
and regard all evaluative judgments as false. However, free spirits are supposed to
be engaged in (re)valuation and creation of value. That generates an interpretive
puzzle about how Nietzsche thought his free spirits were supposed to engage in
such revaluation and creation of value. This brings us to the final interpretive constraint, insisting upon the connection between art, the creation of new values, and
the avoidance of practical nihilism. Hussains proposal is that Nietzsche wanted
his free spirits to engage in a simulacrum of valuing or make-believe that there
are values, while knowing that there are not.8
By Hussains own lights, a central feature of his interpretive strategy is that
Nietzsche [is] making a phenomenological claim about the practice of valuing
in which he finds his contemporaries engaged.9 The claim is that Nietzsches
contemporaries experience objects as having value in themselves. Moreover, the
phenomenology that comes with perceiving things as having value in themselves
will have to be saved in order for the free spirits to retain the appropriate intensity
of emotion and motivation.10 To quote Hussain again, The pretense must succeed
in providing me with a sense that my life has a goal and purpose.11 According to
Hussain, the only way to succeed in that is to keep (what I will call) an intrinsicist
phenomenology of evaluation, and the way Nietzsche recommended his free spirits
achieve that phenomenology without violating (2) is to engage in the creation of
honest illusions, or fictions that the free spirits know are fictions.

Beautiful Illusions or Illusions of Beauty?

Hussain cites several passages in which Nietzsche describes art as having a good
conscience in its will to deception. According to Hussain, Nietzsche thinks art
functions to prevent the drive to knowledge from destroying the evaluative
illusion.12 He provides the following example of how art can generate illusions
even though we know they are illusions: a painting using a certain technique to
display a water jug seems out of focus when seen up close, but when we step
back, the water jug appears again. We can see the water jug while knowing
that it is an illusion.13 But is this an evaluative illusion? Suppose that seen from
the proper distance the painting strikes one as beautiful, and seen from up close
it does not. It seems that the illusion is not itself evaluative, but that the illusion
is evaluated as beautiful.
I think missing this crucial distinction is a primary source of Hussains misinterpretation of the role of art for free spirits. For if we ask the question, Why
back up rather than stand close?, the answer will be something like, In order
to appreciate (or experience) the beauty of the painting. This suggests a value
(aesthetic experience) in the service of which one backs up to the proper distance.
This is in fact the role of artists, to generate and appreciate beauty, as a value in

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itself or as a means to some higher goal. So the evaluation of the painting as

beautiful need not involve any illusion.
The obvious retort for Hussain here is to say that the example of the painting
was not meant to be an example of an evaluative illusion, but only an example
of how art can accomplish a general task, namely, generating effective illusions
despite knowing their illusoriness. The task for free spirits, then, would be to take
this ability and extend it from the realm of art to life more generally, including
and especially the creation of their own evaluative illusions. This appears to be
precisely the move Hussain wants to make, drawing upon GS 299 to argue that
it is necessary to be artists rather than merely appreciators of art.14 In GS 299,
Nietzsche asks the question, How can we make things beautiful, attractive and
desirable for us when they are not? And I rather think that in themselves they
never are.15 The problem for Nietzsche, I think Hussain and I would agree, is
that things are not valuable in themselves, but people nevertheless conceive of
and experience them as if they were. Where we disagree is that Hussain thinks
that Nietzsche wants to find a way to hang on to that type of experience, while
I think that moving beyond that experience is essential to Nietzsches project.
With these two rival interpretations in mind, let us further examine the passage
on which Hussain relies to provide Nietzsches answer to how we can learn to make
things beautiful, attractive, and desirable to us when in themselves they are not:
Here we could learn [. . .] from artists who are really continually trying to bring
off such inventions and feats. Moving away from things until there is a good deal
that one no longer sees and there is much that our eye has to add [. . .] seeing things
so that they partially conceal each other and grant us only [. . .] perspective, or
looking at them through tinted glass or in the light of the sunset; or giving them
a surface and skin that is not fully transparentall this we should learn from
artists while being wiser than they are in other matters. For with them this subtle
power usually comes to an end where art ends and life begins, but we want to be
the poets of our life [. . .]. (GS 299, emphasis added)

Hussain moves directly from this quotation to the conclusion that art provides
a source for techniques that, suitably refined, could help us succeed in regarding things as valuable outside the domain of art proper.16 I think Hussain is
on exactly the right track in understanding Nietzsche as wanting his free spirits
to move outside the domain of art proper, and therefore an understanding of
what Nietzsche thought that artists were doing within that domain is crucial
to understanding how he wanted his free spirits to operate outside it. Now, if
we accept the above interpretation that artists within the domain of art proper
create beautiful illusions, rather than the illusion that things are beautiful, then
for Hussain the move outside the domain of art proper is a move from creating
beautiful illusions to creating the illusion that things are beautiful or valuable.
That must be the suitable refinement we are to make on Hussains reading.
The alternative is to insist that what the artists are doing within the domain of
art proper is creating the illusion that things are beautiful in themselves while

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94 Eric Campbell

knowing that they are not. Then the free spirits are to expand this, rather than
the former, talent into everyday matters.
Aside from what I take to be the deep implausibility of the latter interpretation of what artists do, there are good textual reasons for thinking that Nietzsche
would have preferred the former interpretation. In fact, one need look no further
than the last lines of GS 299 itself, where Nietzsche impugns the wisdom of artists, suggesting that their power is confined to their art. If we take on the latter
interpretation, in which artists create the illusion that objects are beautiful in
themselves, while knowing that they are not, then we are attributing a wisdom
to artists that Nietzsche seems to think is reserved for himself alone, or at least
only the very few and very wise (in this matter at least).
On the contrary, if we take the honesty of artists illusions to consist in
valuing the beautiful over the true, and thereby directing their efforts toward the
creation of beautiful illusions, with the good will to self-deception that arises
from acting in accordance with ones values (as opposed to telling oneself that
one values truth above all, then proceeding to deceive oneself systematically),
then we see their activities as simply the creation of illusions that are beautiful. Their honesty resides in the fact that they do not tell themselves that their
beautiful illusions are real or true; they have no psychological need of this sort
of deception, since their values are differently ranked.
I take it that this latter interpretation of what artists do is far more plausible
in its own right, and so if we had no evidence in either direction, we ought to
ascribe it to Nietzsche out of charity. But we do have good textual reasons for
ascribing it to him, and none that I can see for ascribing the alternative. If this
interpretation is correct, then it seems Hussain should make a case that the
suitable refinement recommended for the free spirits is to move from making
beautiful illusions to generating the illusion that things are beautiful or valuable in themselves. There are no textual sources or arguments provided, nor am
Iaware of any, that would legitimate the idea that this is what Nietzsche had in
mind when talking about moving from art to life.
Nevertheless, if Hussain is correct that Nietzsche thinks that an intrinsicist
phenomenology will have to be saved, then perhaps he would be attracted to
a kind of fictionalism. But what evidence is there for this interpretive claim?
Here Hussain footnotes (but does not quote either of) two sources, GS 301 and
TI Skirmishes 24. These passages are cited in support of the claim that art can
show us how we can recreate the desired phenomenology more honestly.17
Icannot see how either passage supports this idea. Begin with GS 301. To me,
the passage seems to be saying that if we (the Contemplatives) could keep in
mind the fact that it is we who create values, and not always forget it immediately,
we would be prouder, would be happier, and would better recognize our greatest power. Art is relevant because as a matter of fact we the contemplatives
are the poets of our lives and create values for ourselves as well as the actors

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(as opposed to contemplatives) of mankind. We bestow value as a present in

value-less natureBut precisely this knowledge we lack, and when we occasionally catch it for a fleeting moment, we always forget it again immediately;
we fail to recognize our best power [. . .] (emphasis added). There is nothing
here suggesting that we ought to or must save an intrinsicist phenomenology;
rather, the advice seems to be that we should recognize (and remember) the
lack of intrinsic value in nature so that we might be prouder and happier in the
recognition and use of our best power.
The other passage, TI Skirmishes 24, seems to fare no better, and in fact
it fares worse for Hussains case, for there Nietzsche says that art strengthens
or weakens certain valuations. It praises, glorifies, selects, and highlights.18 In
fact, the passage is a rejection of art for arts sake. Nietzsche claims that the
artists basic instinct is directed toward the meaning of art, which is life.
It is unclear how selectively praising and highlighting helps show us how to
create the phenomenology that value is intrinsic to objects. Rather, it suggests
that artists generate illusions that are in the service of their life, which either
is itself a value, or stands in for some other(s); in either case, I can see no reason
to believe Nietzsche thought of them as fictions. And again, I can see nothing
in this passage that would support the idea that an intrinsicist phenomenology
should or must be retained.
Finally, Hussain brings us to what I take to be one of the most important passages for an understanding of Nietzsches primary concerns. It is On the Three
Metamorphoses from part I of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I think it is also one of
the most telling passages against the idea that Nietzsches free spirits need to
retain an intrinsicist phenomenology. Hussain employs it to make a connection
between play and art, highlighting the importance of illusion in both. I reproduce
his excerpts here:
My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? [. . .]
To create new valuesthat even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom
for oneself for new creationthat is within the power of the lion. [. . .] To assume
the right to new valuesthat is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit
that would bear much. (Z I: On the Three Metamorphoses)

And then:
But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why
must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred
Yes. For the game of creation, a sacred Yes is needed: the spirit now wills
his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.
(Z I:On the Three Metamorphoses)19

For Hussain, the lesson here is that the child . . . is capable of forgetting not
just old schemes of valuations, but . . . in a manner similar to the artist, can

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96 Eric Campbell

engage in the forgetfulness of imaginative play and thus create a new game
of valuing. The child wills his own will by picking a new evaluational game
rather than allowing his own will to be guided by an externally given scheme
of evaluations.20
This reading, however, ignores the role of the lion. I think it is a crucial message of this aphorism that the spirit, in order to create new values, must move
away from a conception and phenomenology of intrinsic, external value. That is
the role of the lion. It is crucial that the lion does not create values. What the lion
does is create freedom for new creation. The way he does this is by transforming
Thou shalt into I will. The dragon and its thou shalt are the lions last
master and last god. Thou shalt lies in his way, sparkling like gold. [. . .]
He once loved thou shalt as most sacred. Itake it that this transformation is
highly phenomenological. It is the phenomenological difference between I must
not (it is my duty not to) betray my friend and I will not betray my friend. The
first summons an experience of a value that stands outside my desires or will
commanding nonbetrayal, while the second suggests an experience of a value
that is mine; it is I who command or will nonbetrayal. There is no suggestion
that the lion rejects values any more than he creates them. So it is not the task of
the lion to reject the [v]alues, thousands of years old, but rather to no longer
call [them] lord and god. The lion acts in accordance with the traditional values,
but he experiences himself as willing those values. He conquers his freedom
by experiencing the value of those values as arising from his own will. If one
experiences the authority of ones values as coming from within, then one
will have assume[d] the right to new values[which] is the most terrifying
assumption (emphasis added).
On my reading, it is very much the change from an intrinsicist phenomenology to a subjectivist or relationalist phenomenology brought about by the lion
that makes the childs creation possible. I therefore find it highly unlikely that
Nietzsche meant for the child to fall back on a discarded phenomenology after
creating his new values.

Nietzsches Fiction
I agree with Hussain that art and fiction play a role in combating practical
nihilism for Nietzsche, and I think that that role does involve coloring the
world. However, I think this function for art is in the service of some real, nonfictional value(s). For support and an example of how I think this works, let us
consult the preface of Human, All Too Human, where after more than sixyears,
Nietzsche looks back on the work he subtitled A Book for Free Spirits. In the
first aphorism, we find Nietzsche speaking very explicitly about the role of art
and fiction in his philosophy and life.

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In HH P:1, Nietzsche writes that he had artificially to enforce, falsify and

invent a suitable fiction for [himself] (and what else have poets ever done?
and to what end does art exist in the world at all?). This might appear to help
Hussains cause at first glance, until we see why Nietzsche did this; it was because
he needed [. . .] the belief that [he] was [. . .] not alone in seeing as [he] did. He
lists examples of his having employed a certain amount of art, a certain amount
of false-coinage. These include not having opened his eyes to Schopenhauers
blind will to morality, not having realized the nature of Wagners incurable
romanticism, as well as his own motivated opinions about the Greeks and
Germans. These bits of false coinage appear to be not the creation of fictional
values but rather the creation of a fiction that supports values already in
place, namely a certain kind of truthfulness. Nietzsche require[d] this selfdeception, and perhaps much more, as a higher safeguarding of the ability to
pursue his sort of truthfulness. This notion of a higher goal in the service of
which fictions are to be employed appears in HH P:6 as well. Nietzsche calls
upon his free spirits to get control over [. . .] and learn how to display [their
For and Against] in accordance with [their] higher goal. We have no reason to
think this higher goal is itself fictional.

Conclusion
Hussains fictionalist proposal goes fundamentally wrong in its failure to r ecognize
a higher goal underlying Nietzsches call to truthfulness. On Hussains interpretation, one has the impression that Nietzsche wants his free spirits to conceive reality
as it is as a free-floating injunction or fundamental (intrinsic?) value. This is not
at all a Nietzschean attitude. As we can see in GS 301, Nietzsche wants his free
spirits to know the nature of their valuations because it is [their] best power. On
my view, Nietzsche did not view the injunction to conceive reality accurately as
an independent criterion that must then be squared with both theoretical nihilism
and the value of creating new valuations. Rather, understanding and internalizing
the nature of valuation is valuable for free spirits (at least in large part) because of
the role it plays in creating the freedom for new valuations, which in turn requires
a different way of experiencing ones life: It goes without saying that I do not
denyunless I am a foolthat many actions called immoral ought to be avoided
and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouragedbut I
think the one should be encouraged and the other avoided for reasons other than
hitherto. We have to learn to think differentlyin order at last, perhaps very late
on, to attain even more: to feel differently (D 103).
Georgetown University
ec948@georgetown.edu

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98 Eric Campbell

Notes
1. Nadeem J. Z. Hussain, Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsches Free Spirits, in
Nietzsche and Morality, ed. Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 15791.
2. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 158.
3. I agree that Nietzsche rejected intrinsic values and am happy to call this Nietzsches
(theoretical) nihilism. However, Hussain includes the dissociable and far more controversial
error-theoretic interpretation under the heading of Nietzsches nihilism in a way that I find
potentiallymisleading.
4. Quoted from Hussain, Honest Illusion, 158, 159, 164.
5. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 159.
6. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 161.
7. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 162.
8. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 170.
9. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 172.
10. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 17374.
11. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 174.
12. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 171, emphasis added.
13. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 169.
14. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 17172.
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage,
1974). Other translations employed in this article: Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist,
trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin, 1968).
16. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 172.
17. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 173, emphasis added.
18. [W]hat does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it
not highlight?
19. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 173; this excerpt is his own translation.
20. Hussain, Honest Illusion, 174.

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