Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
„Nietzsche’s Genealogical Psychology: The Problem of Self-Deception“
Robert B. Pippin
Introduction
Robert Pippins paper entitled “Nietzsche’s Genealogical Psychology: The Problem of SelfDeception”, is an attempt to understand Nietzsche’s notion of psychology and what it means
when Nietzsche thought of psychology as first philosophy. Since this inquiry has multiple
dimensions, Pippin focuses on the question of how Nietzsche understood psychology and
what he meant by psychological explanations. A decisive element in order to answer these
questions is the phenomenon of “self-deception”. This phenomenon which is Nietzsche’s
main concern in his mature period is fundamental to understand what Nietzsche means by
human mindedness.
According to Pippin, Nietzsche did not deal with the paradox of self-deception within a
dualistic framework, that is, on the one hand, a psychological area, and on the other hand, a
drive theory. Rather, Nietzsche had a more extended conception of the psychological domain,
so that unconscious motives, desires or ends are to be found within the psychological, and not
in an extra-psychological area of drives or instincts. A further main point of Pippin’s paper is
Nietzsche’s account of self-knowledge. It is only with a correct understanding of selfknowledge that the paradox of self-deception can be explained as a plausible characteristic of
one’s psychology and be applied for a theory of agency.
The first chapter of this paper will give a short summary of Pippin’s paper. The second
chapter will present the most important points made during the discussion and in the third
chapter I will formulate two critical remarks on the topic of the self and self-knowledge. The
fourth chapter will give a conclusion.
I. Summary
After a short introduction, Pippin turns to give some passages from Die fröhliche
Wissenschaft in order to show Nietzsche’s conception of human psychology. Pippin claims
that when Nietzsche contrasts “consciousness” with “instincts”, he thinks of human
psychology as double natured. Furthermore, he suggests that it is this psychological picture
which lies behind many of Nietzsche’s famous claims, e.g. that all philosophy is an
1
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
expression of one’s own psychology or that the Christian religion was not motivated by
consciously held reasons (e.g. revelation), but by ressentiment and hatred of their masters.
It is because of such passages that Nietzsche is seen by many interpreters as a psychological
reductionist. According to this interpretation, Nietzsche thinks that human conduct can be best
explained by reference to basic drives and not by taking up consciously held reasons or
motives. At the end, all human behavior is reducible to one master-drive - “der Wille zur
Macht” – which is omnipresent but unconscious.
In the beginning of the third part, Pippin gives some reasons why he thinks that this
interpretation is not fully adequate. Nietzsche is not merely putting in contrast “instinct” and
“conscious mind”. Nietzsche’s point is more sophisticated. Drives and instincts are not just
unnoticed or beyond conscious control, but hidden, and this concealment of the drives and
instincts is accomplished by us. According to Nietzsche, “real motives […] are often exactly
the opposite of what is avowed, even sincerely avowed, and most problematically, the real
motives are hidden because the agent hides them.”1 Pippin claims that what is at stake for
Nietzsche here is a “general principle”. This “general principle” is expressed in FW §8, where
Nietzsche writes that the unknown qualities of a person “sich wie hinter das Nichts zu
verstecken wissen”. Pippin suggests that Nietzsche was highly interested in the psychological
phenomenon - the “general principle” - of “self-deception”. The point is that Nietzsche was
not satisfied with the traditional accounts since they tried to explain the phenomenon “as
either the determination of conscious thought and choice by non-conscious corporeal drives”
or “as the working of unconscious desires and impulses […]”.2 Therefore, he dismisses the
traditional dualistic approach to capture the phenomenon of self-deceit. What is needed is a
threefold approach to this phenomenon, which can be formulated in three correlating theses:
1. Self-deception is an attempt to escape from another and truer self-understanding. 2. The
other and truer self-understanding is hidden. 3. What is hidden is hidden by us.
Here, Pippin makes clear that these questions not only matter for the phenomenon at issue, but
also for an understanding of “the role of such self-ascriptions in the economy of agency.”3
Therefore, the following pages of his paper deal with the consequences of Nietzsche’s
account of self-deception for a theory of agency.
1
Pippin, p. 6.
Pippin, p. 7.
3
Pippin, p. 10.
2
2
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
In part IV, Pippin takes up an objection against the conventional view ascribed to Nietzsche.
According to this traditional view, Nietzsche proposes that human conduct is causally
determined by somatic forces, which are “outside the psychological”. But given this picture of
causal determination by drives of which one is unaware, Pippin describes the following
problem: “[…] if, in effect, I am rebelling and do not know that I am rebelling, it is hard to
see how I could experience any psychological satisfaction from rebelling.” 4 Instead, for
Pippin the following view is more adequate for Nietzsche: “Drives have intentional content
[…] and that means that if they are to explain behavior they cannot determine the
psychological from ‘outside the psychological’, as extra-psychological phenomena.”5
Nietzsche is not proposing an extra-psychological drive theory, but offers a more complex
theory of psychological explanations. Although he goes beyond what the agent would
consciously avow, he still remains “inside” the psychological explicable. At this point, Pippin
turns to explicate Freud’s notion of the unconscious, which he considers to be in line with
Nietzsche’s account. However, as it is the case for Nietzsche, there are two possible
interpretations of Freud. The first account considers the Freudian notion of the
unconsciousness to be a “dramatic extension of the domain of the psychological.”6 That is,
acts – although ‘guided’ by unconscious reasons or motives – remain psychologically
explicable, since the psychological domain includes also unconscious motives, ends and
desires. The second account thinks of the unconscious as a kind of “second mind”. The drives
are seen as brute, non-intentional forces affecting the conscious mind. They do not attempt
anything and are not motivated. Actions are then explained in terms of “being seized by a
material force”, “something has taken hold on me” or “something is happening to me”. The
“second mind” influences and directs the agent from “outside” the psychological. Pippin
claims that Nietzsche is much closer to the former conception of the Freudian
unconsciousness than to the latter.
In part V, Pippin considers a possible objection against the concept of self-deception which
was brought forward by Rüdiger Bittner. Bittner suggests that we would do best to give up the
notion of self-deception, since it is not possible to explain how it can happen that someone
produces a false story, knowing that it is a false story. However, Pippin argues that Bittner
seems to operate with a somewhat facile concept of self-knowledge. For Bittner, there seems
4
Pippin, p. 5-6.
Pippin, p. 6.
6
Pippin, p. 13.
5
3
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
to be a clear disjunction between knowing one’s own mind and not knowing it. Therefore, in
part V, Pippin works out Nietzsche’s conception of self-knowledge. The central issue of
Nietzsche’s conception of self-knowledge - which can be found e.g. in FW §13 - “concerns
the complexities of interpretation, interpreting the motives one ascribes to oneself and to
others, and the meaning of the deed itself.”7 Pippin claims that Nietzsche renounces selfknowledge as introspectable or observational. Since self-knowledge for Nietzsche is the result
of interpretation, any claims about oneself become provisional and contestable. As a
consequence, the problem of self-deceit becomes more tractable. By taking up the Prologue
and the paragraphs 127 and 151 from FW, Pippin claims that, although instincts and drives
appear in Nietzsche often as brute natural forces, it is remarkable “how far he goes in denying
the immediacy of even any such supposedly immediate inner experience.”8
In part VI, Pippin takes up the notion of self-deception and its consequences for a theory of
agency. The paradox of self-deception reveals a picture which Nietzsche rejects. According to
this picture, one has, on the one hand, real and determinate motives and intentions which
causally influence bodily actions. On the other hand, there are fictional motives and intentions
which are made up by a subject who believes that these motives are the causally effecting
ones. According to Pippin, Nietzsche proposes another account, which can be summarized as
follows: “In telegraphic form: self-knowledge is not observational, but interpretative […];
action explanation is not causal and motives cannot be understood as fixed, datable mental
items, but self-ascribing a motive is more like provisionally trying out an interpretation.”9
Given this conception of self-knowledge, self-deception does no more appear to be so
paradoxical, since it is not perceived as an active looking away from some real, determinate,
causally effective motives, but as replacing an unpleasant interpretation of one’s actions with
a more pleasant, plausible interpretation.
At the end of his paper Pippin points out two elements in order to mark the difference
between, on the one hand, some self-serving interpretation, and on the other hand, practical
self-knowledge. First, the inaccuracy of self-ascriptions can be confirmed by what occurs in
the future, that is, what the agent does or does not do. In this way, the truth conditions for selfinterpretation are projected into the future. The second criterion for self-knowledge, which is
mentioned by Pippin, is the concept of “consistency”, that is, “[…] in practical knowledge
7
Pippin, p. 18.
Pippin, p. 19.
9
Pippin, p. 21.
8
4
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
what bears out and so confirms some self-interpretation turns on such issues as consistency
with what one actually does and how else interprets one’s own and other’s motives.”
2. Discussion
2.1. Relationship between psychology and genealogy, physiology, sociology
One point made during the discussion dealt with the question of how we are to think of the
relationship between psychology and other approaches/sciences such as genealogy,
physiology or sociology.
Concerning the relationship between psychology and genealogy, Pippin made clear that he
understands Nietzsche’s genealogical work as historical psychology. For Nietzsche,
psychology is not a science in the sense that it describes objectively a certain kind of behavior
from the third person point of view, but it is based on the first person point of view and is
rather interpretative than observational. Accordingly, these elements are decisive for
Nietzsche’s genealogical method. Moreover, psychology, as well as genealogy, do not only
try to understand the hidden and ‘real’ motives within a certain set of actions, but try to
understand the reasons why these motives have been hidden.
Pippin did not answer explicitly the question regarding the relation of psychology to
physiology and sociology. However, regarding physiology, Pippin’s paper gives some hints.
It seems that Pippin – although he stresses the primacy of psychological explanations in
Nietzsche – does not deny completely a drive theory in Nietzsche or a kind of naturalistic
account. That is, physiology can still be applied in this area. But what Pippin seems to claim
is that “despite the fact that we are so used to the notion that Nietzsche has some sort of
‘drive’ theory or that he is offering a ‘naturalistic’ account of human conduct […], we can at
least see how far he is from such a model of psychic dynamics.”10 And in another passage he
writes: “It is of course true that Nietzsche often appeals to ‘instincts’ or ‘drives’ as if he were
appealing to brute natural forces. But it is also extraordinary how far he goes in denying the
immediacy of even any such supposedly immediate inner experience.”11
Regarding sociology, the critical remark can be formulated as follows. Since Pippin is
thinking of self-deception in terms of “self-serving” and “self-aggrandizing” interpretations,
the underlying element of this happening is the will to power. However, Nietzsche thinks of
power always as a relationship between different parts of a system. That is, if one is to
10
11
Pippin, p. 17.
Pippin, p. 19.
5
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
describe and to explain the phenomenon of self-deception psychologically, a sociological
account cannot be dismissed, precisely because of the understanding of power as a relation.
The point is that within the concept of self-conception the other is always involved as the
other part of the power-relation and cannot be left aside.
2.2. The problem of forgetting
Which role does Nietzsche’s notion of “Vergessen” as a vis activa play within the concept of
self-deception? It seems that this notion can perfectly be described in terms of the dualistic
conception of the psychological, which Pippin claims to be something that Nietzsche is
sceptical about. According to the dualistic picture, “Vergessen” is described as an active but
unconscious force regulating the consciously held believes. However, Pippin pointed out that
Nietzsche’s notion of forgetting would come down to the same problematic like selfdeception. If one describes “Vergessen” as kind of force “outside” the psychological, it is
hard to see how “Vergessen” could ever be described by Nietzsche as something with a
specific purpose. The point is that “Vergessen” cannot belong to the domain of brute and
irrational drives, since “Vergessen”, as Nietzsche understands it, is intentional. Nietzsche does
not claim that forgetting is arbitrary and completely accidental, but rather directed and with a
specific purpose. “Vergessen” has to be an intentional drive, that is, within the psychological,
since otherwise it could not be explained how one can get psychological satisfaction from it
and gain a “Form der starken Gesundheit”.
2.3. Nietzsche’s conception of the self and the subject
The main critique on Pippin’s paper was that he does not work out Nietzsche’s conception of
the self. Indeed, it is hard to see how we can talk of self-deception, self-knowledge and selfinterpretation without explaining how we understand the self to which these concepts are
referring.
However, during the discussion Pippin made some general remarks about how he would
describe Nietzsche’s conception of the self. Therefore, I will first summarize his view on this
issue and then work out some critical remarks.
Pippin formulated the following guiding lines for an understanding of Nietzsche’s conception
of the self.
6
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
1) Nietzsche does not try to explain human conduct mechanically. That is, Nietzsche
does not think that man is the product of bio-physiological forces. The subject is not
for Nietzsche a mere epiphenomenon.
2) Nietzsche is not at all willing to give up concepts like agent or subject. Rather, he tries
to reformulate them. His critique mainly turns against these concepts insofar as they
are constituted by Christian morality.
3) The self, for Nietzsche, is not an object. Therefore, there is no way of having access to
oneself through introspection.
4) A more positive account of Nietzsche’s conception of the self would have to take into
consideration what it means to project oneself into the future. The self is something
like a picture that one has of oneself. In other words, it is a commitment to what one
wants to become, rather than something that is given beforehand.
5) Self-ascriptions are a constitutive element for the conception of the self. Selfascriptions have to be seen as dynamic, not punctual and a kind of self-engagement.
That is, I am what I ascribed to myself before.
Although these points were rather sketched than fully worked out, one can see in which
direction Pippin intends to go. In the discussion several suggestions and objections to Pippin’s
remarks were made.
First, it seems that Pippin does not justice to the many passages in Nietzsche where he
perceives the self as a plurality and not as a stable unity. However, Pippin made clear that he
is not convinced that Nietzsche in these passages is really suggesting a conception of the self,
according to which one would be an ever new subject, without unity or continuity. Instead,
Pippin suggested that one has to think the plurality of the self in line with the plurality of
possible self-interpretations.
Second, Pippin has to explain why one should follow the picture of oneself that one projected
into the future. Pippin did not work out this point in detail, but he suggested that a possible
account for this question would have to take up Nietzsche’s notion of “Redlichkeit”.
Third, it is still not clear what is actually making the self-ascriptions or the selfinterpretations, which are taken to play a decisive role for an understanding of the self. It
seems that in order to answer this question, one would have to take into account Nietzsche’s
notion of the “Leib”.
7
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
3. Critical points
I would like to bring forward two critical remarks on Pippin’s understanding of Nietzsche’s
conception of self and self-knowledge. The first point deals with the question of whether it is
possible to integrate Nietzsche’s notion of a “Granit von geistigem Fatum”12 in Pippin’s
conception of the self as a dynamic process of projecting oneself into the future, or not. The
second point deals with self-knowledge. According to Pippin, Nietzsche does not think that
one can gain self-knowledge through introspection or observation. However, I would like to
show that Nietzsche does in some way think of self-knowledge in terms of an observational
model.
3.1. Nietzsche’s notion of the “Granit von geistigem Fatum”
Pippin points out that Nietzsche did not perceive the self as something given, as an object or
as an “ego”. Although this seems to be correct insofar as Nietzsche clearly criticizes and
abandons such traditional conceptions of the self, in his works he does talk about something
stable deep down in us, e.g. “einen Granit von geistigem Fatum”. I think that one has to take
this notion seriously and has to answer the question of which role this predestined and
unchangeable element plays within Nietzsche’s conception of the self and self-knowledge. It
seems to me that this poses some questions for Pippin’s account.
First, how can we solve the tension between, on the one hand, an understanding of the self as
the result of commitments to one’s own dynamic self-ascriptions, and, on the other hand, the
self as determined through something deep down in us?
Second, does the notion of a predestined and unchangeable element give any criteria for selfknowledge, additional to e.g. consistency, which is mentioned by Pippin?
Third, in the way that Pippin presents self-interpretation or self-ascriptions, it seems that one
is free to choose one possible interpretation/ascription or another one. However, since
Nietzsche makes clear that there is “etwas Unbelehrbares […] von vorherbestimmter
12
KSA 5, 170.
8
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
Entscheidung und Antwort” and an „unwandelbares ‚das bin ich‘“13, it seems that this kind of
freedom is fundamentally restricted.
3.2. Self-knowledge in terms of an observational model
In his paper Pippin writes that Nietzsche rejects any introspectable or observational
conception of self-knowledge.14 However, I do not think that one can take both together.
Although Nietzsche does not think that one can gain self-knowledge through introspection, he
does think of self-knowledge in terms of an observational model. I would like to bring
forward this claim in three steps.
1) One has to keep in mind that Nietzsche his highly sceptical about the possibility of having
self-knowledge. Pippin also makes this point when he writes that any report of selfknowledge is “necessarily provisional and contestable.”15 Pippin comes to this conclusion by
pointing out that, for Nietzsche, introspection and observation are insufficient methods in
order to gain self-knowledge: “Like many earlier (Hegel) and later (Sartre, Wittgenstein,
Heidegger) anti-Cartesians, Nietzsche does not think that self-knowledge is ever directly
observational or introspectable, and this makes any claim for such knowledge necessarily
provisional and contestable.”16 Here, I would like to make two points. First, Pippin is right
when he stresses the fact that self-knowledge is never directly observational and this is not
what I want to claim by saying that Nietzsche has an account of self-knowledge as
observation. Second - and this is important - it is not so much because of Nietzsche’s critique
on self-observation or introspection that self-knowledge becomes provisional and contestable.
Rather, it is because of the constitution of the self that self-knowledge can never be fully
achieved.
The point is that because of the very constitution of the self as a “dunkle und verhüllte
Sache”, self-knowledge is provisional and contestable and there is no way of having direct
access to oneself. However, this is not to say that self-knowledge can only be a result of selfinterpretation.
2) By reading together the following two passages, I would like to show that Nietzsche
thought of observation as a method to gain some sort of self-knowledge. In the third Untimely
13
KSA 5, 170.
Pippin, p. 18; 20; 21.
15
Pippin, p. 18.
16
Pippin, p. 18.
14
9
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
Meditation Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Nietzsche criticizes introspection as a “quälerisches
gefährliches Beginnen” and then goes on: “Und überdies: wozu wäre es nöthig, wenn doch
alles Zeugnis von unserm Wesen ablegt, unsre Freund- und Feindschaften, unser Blick und
Händedruck, unser Gedächtniss und das, was wir vergessen, unsre Bücher und die Züge
unsrer Feder.”17 And in Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft 335 – a paragraph also quoted by Pippin
– Nietzsche writes:
“Wie viele Menschen verstehen denn zu beobachten! Und unter den wenigen, die es
verstehen, - wie viele beobachten sich selber! ‚Jeder ist sich selber der Fernste‘ – das wissen
alle Nierenprüfer, zu ihrem Unbehagen; und der Spruch ‚erkenne dich selbst!‘ ist, im Munde
eines Gottes und zu Menschen geredet, beinahe eine Bosheit. Dass es aber so verzweifelt mit
der Selbstbeobachtung steht, […]“18
This last quotation shows again Nietzsche’s scepticism about the possibility of having access
to the self. Nevertheless, the quote from SE suggests that there is at least an ‘indirect’ access.
The self can be found in all our expressions, since “alles Zeugniss von unserm Wesen
ablegt.”19 Moreover, what the quotation from FW suggests is that, in order to find the self,
one has to look at what is expressed. The point is: there is no direct access to the self. But,
since everything is an expression of our self, one can have indirect access by observing and
looking at these expressions. This is what I think Nietzsche means with “Selbstbeobachtung”.
3) However, one could object that what is presented here as self-observation is at the end
nothing else than the kind of self-interpretation described by Pippin. I would tend to agree
with this point, but I would not see it as an objection. I do not claim that one can gain secure
knowledge about oneself through observation. Self-knowledge remains provisional and
contestable. Moreover, I think that Pippin’s conception of self-knowledge as the result of selfinterpretation is not necessarily in contradiction with what I have just presented. Rather, the
critique was directed against two other claims. First, Pippin does not distinguish between
introspection and observation. I hope to have shown that Nietzsche does distinguish between
these two. Second, Pippin claims that, since direct observation or introspection is not possible,
self-knowledge is the result of interpretation. However, I do not think this is necessarily the
case. Provisional and contestable self-knowledge can also be the result of self-observation, as
I have described it, and needn’t be– at least in a first instance – a form of self-interpretation.
17
KSA 1, 340.
KSA 3, 560.
19
KSA 1, 340.
18
10
Nietzsche-Seminar
Reflective Report, 17.04.2009
Florian Häubi 0844675
4. Conclusions
Robert Pippin’s paper is an attempt to work out what Nietzsche meant with psychological
explanations. By focusing on the phenomenon of self-deception he presents Nietzsche’s
picture of the psychological and tries to re-evaluate Nietzsche’s drive theory. As a
consequence, the domain of the psychological is extended and Nietzsche’s understanding of
psychological explanations becomes more complex. Pippin aims at reading Nietzsche in a
more subtle manner and not as a radical who wants to get rid of concepts such as subject or
agent. In particular, Pippin seems to be interested in keeping a theory of agency that includes
a kind of responsibility. However, one might question if Nietzsche was not more radical in
some points than Pippin presents it. In fact, there are explicit and radical passages in
Nietzsche which seem to be hardly compatible with Pippin’s theory. At this point then, Pippin
argues with the following polemical question: either we take what Nietzsche writes in this
passage in its radical way and then we have to take its deflationary consequences, or we
present a more sophisticated, alternative picture and try to integrate this passage through a less
radical reading.
Although I tend to agree with Pippin’s general approach, I am not sure whether this argument
is legitimate and if it can convince interpreters who are willing to read Nietzsche in the most
radical way.
11