The doctrine of self-overcoming

This chapter focuses on Nietzsche’s doctrine of self-overcoming, the idea that has gained by far the most attention from philosophers of education in Nietzsche’s corpus. After reviewing some of the central voices in this debate, the chapter takes on what has become the standard conception of self-overcoming in the literature – namely, self-overcoming as a process of continual self-creation and self-re-creation, in which the individual ceaselessly chooses to formulate radically new, authentic values by which to live (Bingham, 2001; Aviram, 1991; Rosenow, 1989). We demonstrate that this conception of self-overcoming overlooks the many passages in Nietzsche’s oeuvre in which he describes self-overcoming, not as self-creation, but as a form of self-mastery. For Nietzsche, self-overcoming refers to the familiar goal of submitting one’s internal drives and impulses to a rational self-order, yet Nietzsche modernizes this Platonic idea in his understanding of rationality as, at root, an embodied practice. Embodied rational self-ordering occurs when individuals carefully consider what makes their lives the most flourishing and powerful and overcome the tendencies within them that undermine this flourishing. As a result, Nietzsche’s doctrine of self-overcoming advances a form of “gift-giving egoism,” which rejects solipsistic emotivism and self-sacrifice even while it promotes the ethical primacy of the individual.