nietzche, kant, frisbee, friendship

The Gay Science
by Friedrich Nioetzsche
translated by Josefine Nauckhoff
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2001

Section 279
"Star Friendship. -- We were friends and have become estranged. But that was right, and we do not want to hide and obscure it from ourselves as if we had to be ashamed of it. We are two ships, each of which has its own goal and course; we may cross and have a feast together, as we did -- and then the good ships lay so quietly in one harbour and in one sun that it may have seemed as if they had already completed their course and had the same goal. But then the almighty force of our projects drove us apart once again, into different seas and sunny zones, and maybe we will never meet again -- or maybe we will, but will not recognize each other: the different seas and suns have changed us! That we had to become estranged is the law above us; through it we should come to have more respect for each other -- and the thought of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and stellar orbit in which our different ways and goals may be included as small stretches -- let us rise to this thought! But our life is too short and our vision too meagre for us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. -- Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we must be earth enemies."

That's it for the Nietzsche. As for the Kant: one way of putting the main point of Kant's ethics is that it is an answer to the question, "How can there be relationships between people beyond those of mere power?" (Or, why must there be such relationships?) In other words, how is it possible to treat another person as more than a mere means to my own ends, and instead as an end in themselves? Roughly, the answer is that we each do the same thing. In canonical Kantian ethics, this same thing is "obey the moral law." (There's also a big strain in Kant's ethics concerning the possibility of autonomy, but I won't go there). Indeed, the thought is that the requirement that we each do the same thing (plus certain claims about universalizability) actually gets us to "do the right thing," and all that we ordinarily understand by that (more or less).

The Nietzsche I quoted presents a serious internal challenge to this view, as far as I can tell. Consider the example of ultimate frisbee. When I play Ultimate, if I'm really playing the game, I aim to do my absolute best to win. All my actions tend towards that aim. Now, in a good game, my opponents are doing the same thing: all their actions tend towards their winning the game. The important bit is that I want them to try their damnedest to beat me. I don't want them to screw up, or to suck, or to throw the game - that would just be a waste of time. In a similar way, Nietzsche presents a kind of friendship in which it certainly apears that the friends are striving, perhaps with all their might, against one another - and yet they're doing the same thing, and they both want all this. (Nietzsche's position is actually much more radical than the one I'm propounding, since he thinks that we don't need to know the "stellar orbit" along which we both pass).

In other words, maybe I can, to an extent, both strive against another and want them to strive back. This would take a lot of the bite out of Kantian ethics - things we normally think of as crimes, as unethical, might very well be allowed.