In this article I examine the metaphysical foundations of Guido de Ruggiero’s liberalism and ask what these can tell us about his changing view of Giovanni Gentile's actualism, which was such an influence on de Ruggiero before the First World War. I argue that de Ruggiero’s ‘actualism’ was never the same as Gentile’s, but was drawn from the same intellectual sources; that the actualist conception of free and self-conscious agency runs through both versions of the doctrine, though interpreted in (...) different ways; and finally that the contrasts between de Ruggiero’s and Gentile’s political allegiances result from something other than their differing interpretations of actualism, which serves, in the end, not so much as a theory as a set of basic principles, images and ideals that each philosopher tried to modify and match to the political circumstances in which he found himself. (shrink)

The free spirit is central to Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Each of them sees it as linked to the recognition of necessity. They also see freedom in relation to the Totality: God or nature for Spinoza, absolute spirit for Hegel, and for Nietzsche the will to power operating within the eternal recurrence of the same. For all three—especially for Nietzsche who might seem to hold the opposite—the free condition is won through strenuous self-discipline. Further, all three (...) deal with the notion of Being. For Spinoza, the notion of Being as the starting-point is equivalent to substance; for Hegel, Being is empty reference to Totality that affords primordial distance for individual human beings; for Nietzsche, Being is irrelevant emptiness. But it is only Hegel who establishes a ground for individual self-determinationthrough the emptiness of the human reference toward Totality. (shrink)

The free spirit is central to Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Each of them sees it as linked to the recognition of necessity. They also see freedom in relation to the Totality: God or nature for Spinoza, absolute spirit for Hegel, and for Nietzsche the will to power operating within the eternal recurrence of the same. For all three—especially for Nietzsche who might seem to hold the opposite—the free condition is won through strenuous self-discipline. Further, all three (...) deal with the notion of Being. For Spinoza, the notion of Being as the starting-point is equivalent to substance; for Hegel, Being is empty reference to Totality that affords primordial distance for individual human beings; for Nietzsche, Being is irrelevant emptiness. But it is only Hegel who establishes a ground for individual self-determinationthrough the emptiness of the human reference toward Totality. (shrink)

This paper explores Nietzsche's account of the free spirit's genesis, as primarily given in the 1886 prefaces written for the works of his ?free spirit trilogy?. In particular, it will focus on how what will be argued is the free spirit's distinguishing capacity for radical questioning is created out of the process described there. That is, it will examine how what Nietzsche calls, ?the experience of sickness?, in enabling the free spirit's liberation, (...) helps forge a mode of philosophical awareness which is not otherwise attainable. However, the second half of this paper goes on to explore how the success of this process is endangered by a certain psychological tendency to which free spirits are susceptible. In other words, the free spirit's chance of enduring those painful depths of sickness necessary for liberation is threatened by the appeal of ?romantic pessimism?; a perspective which offers consolation by idealizing the sufferer's state. As such, then, in our final section, we will examine Nietzsche's efforts to combat this phenomenon. In particular, we will look at his advocacy of a specific kind of asceticism for this purpose, and with it his attempt to show how a true liberation of the spirit can be achieved. (shrink)

Most studies on Nietzsche seldom associate him with the dialectic method. We readily think of Socrates, Hegel, and Marx when we hear of dialectic, but very rarely, if at all, of Nietzsche. To date, very few studies on Nietzsche have claimed that one of the German philosopher's underpinning philosophical methodologies in his literary oeuvre is the dialectic. This paper thus intends to show that Nietzsche has been employing the dialectic throughout his writings, especially in his treatment of the "free (...) spirits"-a recurring subject in his different compositions. To do this, I will first revisit the meaning of dialectic in Socrates, Hegel, and Marx and subsequently argue that in Nietzsche, a type of dialectic akin to Hegel's permeates his writings. In the next parts of this paper, I will discuss in-depth how for Nietzsche, the incarnation of the free spirits involves not just one, but a continuum of triple dialectic. I will argue that to become a free spirit, one must constantly apply the dialectics of (1) criticality and openness, (2) unlearning and relearning, and (3) overcoming and becoming. These dialectics, in my view, are the necessary conditions for any individual to be truly free. In this paper, I will importantly highlight that these dialectics run through Nietzsche's works starting from the early up to the final period of his literary productivity. (shrink)

"Human, All Too Human" and the problem of culture -- "Daybreak" and the campaign against morality -- "The Gay Science" and the incorporation of knowledge -- The later works: beyond the free spirit.

This is a ‘study of Liberal Humanism in the novels of George Eliot, Henry James, E M Forster, Virginia Woolf and Angus Wilson’. The ‘free spirit’ is the person who, ‘freed’ of traditional or customary morality, has to learn an empirical or consequential morality in relations with other people and reconcile this with self-fulfilment as a new and conscious ideal. Such a spirit typifies the offspring of J S Mill and the liberal middle-class culture of the late (...) nineteenth century with its reliance on historical progress, the power of reason, tolerance and individual freedom. The dilemma of the contemporary liberal is summarised in an introductory chapter which does not however attempt any analysis more radical than the usual one. When the international conflicts of the twentieth century undermined its confidence liberalism lost its creative energy in the fields of political action and social reform, yet many middle-class people of liberal bent still retain in their private lives amidst an alien society a liberal-humanist morality of personal relationships worked out according to the motives and foreseen consequences of their actions. Certain characters and themes handled by the above line of novelists show their awareness of this liberal programme and its complications. (shrink)

This is a stimulating but maddening book, for the author opens the gate on several fascinating avenues of thought but does not give himself time to explore them for any great distance. It could have been a much more important book of its kind for it is the seminal kind badly needed in Christian circles at the moment. It attempts to build bridges between certain areas of life and thought recently discovered to be virtually sealed off from each other—notably between (...) liturgical cultus, secular culture and modern industrial society. From ‘an explicitly Catholic angle’ but in very fresh terms it links together the liturgical movement, Scriptural studies and the Church’s social teaching and suggests new perspectives so that these may open up freely to one another. (shrink)

Introduction: becoming a philosopher -- Traveling South -- A stateless man's passport -- Night train through Mont Cenis -- The camels of Pisa -- Naples: first revelation of the South -- "The school of educators" at the Villa Rubinacci -- Richard Wagner in Sorrento -- The monastery of free spirits -- Dreaming of the dead -- Walks on the land of the sirens -- The carnival of Naples -- Mithras at Capri -- Sorrentiner papiere -- Rée-alism and the chemical (...) combinations of atoms -- The logic of dreams -- An epicurean in Sorrento -- Sacred music on an African background -- The sun of knowledge and the ground of things -- The blessed isles -- The bells of Genoa and Nietzschean epiphanies -- Epiphanies -- The value of human things -- Crossed geneses -- The azure bell of innocence -- Zarathustra's night song -- Epilogue to the bell -- Torna a Surriento. (shrink)

Paul Franco’s book, "Nietzsche’s Enlightenment: The Free-Spirit Trilogy of the Middle Period," offers a close study of Nietzsche's middle period works, revealing a Nietzsche attentive to the concerns that motivated the European Enlightenment that Franco references in his title. Franco aims to show that a concern with science, reason, and truth remains important to Nietzsche in his post-Gay Science works. That is, although Nietzsche is most at home in the Enlightenment tradition during his middle period, he never abandoned (...) this aspect of his thought for a wholesale rejection of science, human reason, and the possibility of truth, as some readers of Nietzsche suggest. Franco suggests that the free spirit ideal that animates the middle period remains a vital element of Nietzsche’s thought throughout his mature work, marking the ideals expounded there. (shrink)

The Collective Imagination explores the social foundations of the human imagination. A comprehensive audit of the creativity claims of the post-modern age - that finds them badly wanting and looks to the future - this book will appeal to sociologists and philosophers concerned with cultural theory, cultural and media studies and aesthetics.

Full-length studies of individual books of Nietzsche have been lacking until now both because of the immaturity of the field and because Nietzsche's style itself seems to contraindicate them. Close reading, however, reveals a great deal of literary and philosophical unity. This holds good even of Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche's longest and most unwieldy work. The book represents Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer and Wagner, as well as the birth of Nietzsche as we know him in the later works. The book's embrace (...) of science as conducive to culture follows the early works' vilification of science as anathema to culture. This reassessment is possible because science is now seen as a method and a discipline rather than an insatiable drive for knowledge, and culture is now a broad set of symbols and activities rather than a narrowly focussed "unity of artistic style." Both changes were motivated by Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner. Part of the help science provides culture is its release from restrictive metaphysical beliefs. Nietzsche battles metaphysics, principally that of Schopenhauer, by means of scientific arguments meant both to provide alternative explanations of phenomena and to expose the origin of countervailing metaphysical beliefs. However, even when combined in a two-pronged attack, these arguments still fall short of their goal of refuting metaphysics. The scientific world-view may nonetheless aid the development of "free spirits," whose unalloyed devotion to knowledge makes them science's paragons. The free spirits are the prototypes for the later works' strong individuals, yet here they are viewed as crucial elements in the cultural development of general society. Nietzsche seeks both to create them and to encourage their devotion to the needs of culture. Part of his effort to do this is the deployment of a terse, elliptical style which will involve the reader more thoroughly than can be done by means of argument alone. Study of the book's structure reveals that its core, Parts 1, 5, and 9, outlines the relation between science, culture, and free spirits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nadeem Hussain argues that Nietzsche's 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 values as a way to avoid practical nihilism. I examine Hussain's 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 Nietzsche's 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 Nietzsche's use of pretense in valuation. (shrink)

A major collection of essays by a panel of leading Nietzsche scholars exploring Nietzsche's philosophy of the free spirit.

This English translation—the first since 1909—restores Human, All Too Human to its proper central position in the Nietzsche canon. First published in 1878, the book marks the philosophical coming of age of Friedrich Nietzsche. In it he rejects the romanticism of his early work, influenced by Wagner and Schopenhauer, and looks to enlightened reason and science. The "Free Spirit" enters, untrammeled by all accepted conventions, a precursor of Zarathustra. The result is 638 stunning aphorisms about everything under and (...) above the sun. (shrink)

This article examines Nietzsche's engagement with Stoic philosophical therapy in the free spirit trilogy. I suggest that Nietzsche first turned to Stoicism in the late 1870s in his attempt to develop a philosophical therapy that might treat the injuries human beings suffer through fate or chance without recourse to the metaphysical theodicies discredited by Enlightenment skepticism and positivism. I argue that in HH and D Nietzsche adopts a conventional form of Stoic therapy. The article then shows how Nietzsche (...) came to take a critical stance against Stoic therapy on the grounds that it entails a radical extirpation of the value judgments that underpin the emotions. For this reason, I claim that in GS he attempts to develop a rival philosophical therapy, one that aims to enable human beings to unconditionally affirm fate but without this affirmation entailing, as it does for the Stoics, the dissolution of all emotional valuations. However, despite Nietzsche's belief that he had fundamentally broken with Stoicism, I argue, first, that Nietzsche's therapy in GS is deeply indebted to a "cosmic" model of Stoicism, which consists in the loving consent to the events that happen to us, and second, that he gives us no reasonable account of how it is possible to unconditionally affirm fate without adopting some form of Stoic indifference or apatheia. (shrink)

Between 1878 and 1882, Nietzsche published what he called 'the free spirit works': Human, All Too Human; Assorted Opinions and Maxims; The Wanderer and His Shadow; Daybreak; and The Gay Science. Often approached as a mere assemblage of loosely connected aphorisms, these works are here reinterpreted as a coherent narrative of the steps Nietzsche takes in educating himself toward freedom that that executes a dialectic between scientific truth-seeking and artistic life-affirmation. Matthew Meyer's new reading of these works not (...) only provides a more convincing explanation of their content but also makes better sense of the relationship between them and Nietzsche's larger oeuvre. His argument shows how these texts can and should be read as a unified project even while they present multiple, in some cases conflicting, images of the free spirit. The book will appeal to anyone who is interested in Nietzsche's philosophy and especially to those puzzled about how to understand the peculiarities of the free spirit works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche's Free SpiritAmy MullinOn the back cover of the original 1882 edition of The Gay Science, Nietzsche tells us that this book represents "the conclusion of a series of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche whose common goal is to erect a new image and ideal of the free spirit."1 He furthermore tells us that to this series belong: Human, all too Human (1878), The Wanderer and His (...) Shadow (1880), Daybreak (1881), and The Gay Science (1882, Books 1-4).2 Nietzsche's interest in the topics of fate and freedom dates back to some of his earliest writings, those written in the spring of 1862 and recently translated by George Stack as "Fate and History" and "Freedom of Will and Fate."3 Furthermore, Nietzsche's writings after 1882 remain dedicated, unto the last, to the importance of this new ideal of the free spirit. Thus, for instance, Part Two of Beyond Good and Evil (1886) is entitled "The Free Spirit," and in the autumn of 1888, in plans for his never written Revaluation of All Values, Book 2 was to be entitled "The Free Spirit. Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement."4Yet little attention has been paid to interpreting Nietzsche's corpus, particularly [End Page 383] the works from his middle period, as characterized by a common goal, that of erecting a new image and ideal of the free spirit.5 Furthermore, too often little distinction is made between what Nietzsche admired in the past, nobility or the master, what he admires in the present, the free spirit, and what he hopes to come in the future, philosophers of the future and the Übermensch. The philosophers of the future will be very free spirits, but they will not be merely free spirits. Nietzsche tells us that he and his fellow free spirits are merely the "heralds and precursors" of the philosophers of the future.6 This suggests that we cannot simply equate, as Alexander Nehamas does, the free spirit and the "philosopher of the future,"7 and we should not speak interchangeably of masters or nobles, free spirits, philosophers of the future, and Übermenschen.8In a related error, free spirits are said to possess all the traits Nietzsche praises. Ruth Abbey, for instance, characterizes the values constitutive of free spirithood as "autonomy in thought and action, intellectual strength and daring, desire and ability to pursue the truth, capacity for cruelty and the skills of dialogue."9 While it is true that Nietzsche does suggest that the dialogue is the perfect conversation,10 he nowhere associates skills in dialogue with a free spirit. Instead, the free spirit is strongly associated with isolation, which would tend to preclude conversation, skilful or otherwise.We need to give an account of the free spirit which distinguishes it from Nietzsche's other ideals, while also connecting the new ideal of a free spirit to other aspects of Nietzsche's thought, most particularly his condemnation of [End Page 384] universalistic moralities, and his account of the possibility of controlling one's interpretations of the world in order to carry on experiments in knowledge. It is only once we have become clear about what a free spirit is like that we can evaluate Nietzsche's claim to have constructed a new ideal, and begin to consider whether this ideal has any appeal for us today, and why.In order to understand what a free spirit is and is not, we need (1) to distinguish between so-called free spirits and Nietzsche's new ideal of a free spirit, and (2) to appreciate the radical distinction between freedom of spirit and freedom of will.11 We will then be in a position (3) to see that, far from being opposed to necessity, free spirits are a product of it. We will then need (4) to look at the details of Nietzsche's account of the free spirit. Do free spirits share characteristic traits? Since free spirits all begin as fettered spirits, we will need to see what trajectory Nietzsche sees free spirits taking from fetters to freedom. Here it will be important to recognize that Nietzsche speaks of several stages of free... (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Morals contains the puzzling claim that the will to truth is the last expression of the ascetic ideal. Part I of this essay argues that Nietzsche’s claim is that our will to truth functions as a tool allowing us to take a passive stance to the world, leading us to repress and split off part of our nature. Part II deals with Nietzsche’s account of the sovereign individual and his related, novel, account of free will. (...) Both these accounts hinge on the notion of the self as an integrated whole. In contrasting the integrated sovereign individual, who has genuine free will, and we splintered moderns, Nietzsche aims to unsettle us with uncanny suggestion that we have no genuine selves. Part III shows that the invocation of the uncanny is a central strategy Nietzsche uses to bring home his disturbing message that we are strangers to ourselves. (shrink)

There was a time in the not too distant past when one would be obliged to begin a review like this with a comment about the relative neglect of Nietzsche’s middle works, HH, D, and GS. That time now seems to be well behind us. In recent years, there has been a spate of scholarly books devoted to these works, including Ruth Abbey’s Nietzsche’s Middle Period, Michael Ure’s Nietzsche’s Therapy: Self-Cultivation in the Middle Works, Jonathan Cohen’s Science, Culture, and (...) class='Hi'>Free Spirits: A Study of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, Monika Langer’s Nietzsche’s Gay Science (New York: Palgrave... (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to create a coherent theistic model of a solution to the problem of evil. To this end, it is shown that the differences in Kierkegaard’s and Plantinga’s accounts of the problem of evil can be reconciled if looked at from a broader theistic perspective. This requires, on the one hand, that Plantinga’s immanent and logical vision be extended to include Kierkegaard’s spiritual and existential view of evil, and, on the other hand, that a correction (...) be made to Kierkegaard’s view thereof, as a result of the way in which Plantinga presents the relationship between good and moral evil in the world. Consequently, in Plantinga’s Free Will Defense the existence of God is consistent with the existence of evil, not because God has a reason to permit evil in the world, but because evil as a real element of the temporal world does not come from God. In Kierkegaard’s Free Spirit Offense, in turn, the interpretative model applied demonstrates that the existence of moral good must be independent of the existence of spiritual evil, for otherwise the moral evil of immanence would not be able to be forgiven by the spiritual good of transcendence. (shrink)

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his “revaluation (...) of all values”, and lays out three “design-requirements” that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III–IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values. (shrink)

There is a widespread, popular view—and one I basically endorse—that Nietzsche is, in one sense of the word, a nihilist. As Arthur Danto put it some time ago, according to Nietzsche, “there is nothing in [the world] which might sensibly be supposed to have value.” As interpreters of Nietzsche, though, we cannot simply stop here. Nietzsche's higher men, Übermenschen, “genuine philosophers”, free spirits—the types Nietzsche wants to bring forth from the human, all-too-human herds he sees around him with the (...) fish hooks, as he says, of his books—seem to engage in what looks like valuing. These free spirits are supposed to revalue the old values—revaluing, as is clear from the texts, is not simply to remove the old values from circulation (Nietzsche uses “umwerten” and not “entwerten”)—and they are supposed to create new values. And, of course, Nietzsche himself, free spirit that he is, takes on the task of revaluing all values and seems to assert many a strident evaluation. So we need to say more here. What are Nietzsche and his free spirits up to when they engage in what looks, for all the world, like a practice of valuing? What is the practice of valuing Nietzsche is recommending for his free spirits? I argue for two claims: (i) First, we end up facing an interpretive puzzle when we attempt to explain how Nietzsche's free spirits are supposed to engage in a practice of valuing. (ii) Second, we can solve the interpretive puzzle by taking Nietzsche's free spirits to be engaged in a fictionalist simulacrum of valuing. (shrink)

But of all evil results due to the last contest with France the most deplorable peihaps is that widespread and even universal error of public opinion and of all who think publicly that German culture was also victorious in the struggle and that it should now therefore be decked with garlands as a fit recognition of such extraordinary events and successes.

The Collective Imagination explicates the media of social creativity and explains how the imagination has shaped historically significant social institutions. It focuses on the media of wit, paradox, and metaphor, and develops a distinctive and original interpretation of the imagination’s appositional quality. Murphy’s conception of the collective imagination is compared with that of Cornelius Castoriadis. The discussion suggests that Murphy’s claims are likely to be disputed, particularly because they diverge from the common equation of contemporary creativity with social progress. Murphy (...) draws attention to a kind of conservative disposition that is necessary for imagination to have substantial social efficacy. Murphy claims that the creativity of the collective imagination has to a large extent been eclipsed by fantasy and kitsch. The deleterious effects of fantasy’s denial of reality are explored in relation to four domains of collective creativity: art, society, economy and politics. It is argued that the ramifications of Murphy’s profound interpretation of the imagination may be developed in ways that differ from some of his conclusions. (shrink)

Far from being neutral, Spain, today as in the past, is truly international-minded, one with America and all the free nations of the world.

Book synopsis: The principal aim of this volume is to elucidate what freedom, sovereignty, and autonomy mean for Nietzsche and what philosophical resources he gives us to re-think these crucial concepts. A related aim is to examine how Nietzsche connects these concepts to his thoughts about life-affirmation, self-love, promise-making, agency, the 'will to nothingness', and the 'eternal recurrence', as well as to his search for a 'genealogical' understanding of morality. These twelve essays by leading Nietzsche scholars ask such key questions (...) as: Can we reconcile his rejection of free will with his positive invocations of the notion of free will? How does Nietzsche's celebration of freedom and free spirits sit with his claim that we all have an unchangeable fate? What is the relation between his concepts of freedom and self-overcoming? The depth in which these and related issues are explored gives this volume its value, not only to those interested in Nietzsche, but to all who are concerned with the free will debate, ethics, theory of action, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation with a new introduction by (...) Richard Schacht. In this wide-ranging work Nietzsche first employed his celebrated aphoristic style, so perfectly suited to his iconoclastic, penetrating and multi-faceted thought. Many themes of his later work make their initial appearance here, expressed with unforgettable liveliness and subtlety. Human, All Too Human well deserves its subtitle 'A Book for Free Spirits', and its original dedication to Voltaire, whose project of radical enlightenment here found a new champion. (shrink)

This study explores the phrase ‘sealed with the Holy Spirit’ of Ephesians 1:13 as a metaphor, which relates the status of the recipients with the seal. Past studies view that the metaphor teaches about covenant or unity in God’s protection, assurance, and ownership. This study hypothesises that the author uses metaphor to address the recipients who have a deeper sentiment with a seal meaning they are both Jewish and Gentile Christians but especially those who are slaves. The study combines (...) the Ephesians’ background, lexical, and exegetical analyses with the cognitive-linguistic metaphor exploration. The result shows that the metaphor ‘seal’ is closely related to the personal experience of the Gentile Christians especially the slaves more than to others as it teaches that the endowment with the Spirit makes them worthy and united in the same identity as God’s chosen people. Contribution: This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing challenges that Indonesian Christians face in manifesting their unity because of their diverse cultural or historical backgrounds as part of a formerly colonialised nation especially those who are underprivileged and live in rural areas. By recognising that God has redeemed, endowed them with the Holy Spirit, and united with each other, they are free from various status bondages, especially as a minority group among the largest Muslim population in the world. (shrink)

Recent years have seen increased interest in Friedrich Nietzsche's middle period works, as scholars have turned to Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, and The Gay Science in exploring Nietzsche's turn toward naturalism and the roots of his mature criticisms of morality. Entering that conversation, Matthew Meyer offers an ambitious challenge to how we read these texts. Often viewed as a series of disconnected intellectual experiments that evince Nietzsche's rapid, not always linear, development over the period of their publication, the middle (...) period works are, Meyer argues, instead best understood as a consciously constructed dialectical Bildungsroman or narrative of self-education. That is, without having every detail... (shrink)