Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 51, No.

2, 2017

Levelling and Misarchism: A Nietzschean

Perspective on the Future of Democratic
Educational Institutions

TADEJ PIRC

In his early lectures, published as On the Future of Our

Educational Institutions, Nietzsche attempts to expose
contemporary education as overly extensive and being
weakened, and as such, failing to turn pupils and students into
men of culture. The aim of my paper is to present a
comprehensive consideration of the present condition of
democratic educational institutions through Nietzsche’s
clairvoyantly pessimistic assessment. I enter the discussion
through two Nietzschean concepts, levelling and misarchism,
which, although not found in the mentioned text explicitly,
resonate throughout Nietzsche’s 1872 lectures and were to
become increasingly important with each subsequent
publication. Regardless of the common trend in the so-called
Nietzsche studies to analytically strive for and determine the
true or the correct interpretation of his works, ideas and
concepts, my paper presupposes the inevitable evasiveness of
his philosophy, and focuses rather on the very insight of his
that can be of great use in seeking answers to the crucial
question of the present democratic society: what can be
expected of our educational institutions?

INTRODUCTION
In a meta-interpretation of Nietzsche’s thoughts on education and pedagogy
Eliyahu Rosenow (2000, p. 682) meaningfully concludes:
One of the marks of Nietzsche’s writings is that they purposely evoke
different and even clashing interpretations. It is therefore not surprising
that his interpreters dwell especially on Nietzsche’s style and on the
way he should be read.
Nevertheless, the interpretation war, ideological in its core, roughly resem-
bling Nietzsche’s own concept of Geisterkrieg (Drochon, 2010, pp. 66–70),
still goes on with many debates and various accounts being published in
the leading philosophical and historical journals on education. Some are


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492 T. Pirc

addressing Nietzsche’s views on self-surpassing and self-reformulation (e.g.

Bingham, 2001; Fennell, 2005; Jonas, 2009), some are discussing his views
on and his own perspectivism (e.g. Jonas and Nakazawa, 2008), while others
are still trying to win a battle fought between the democratic Nietzsche and
the aristocratic or anti-democratic, elitist Nietzsche (e.g. Sassone, 1996),
the opposition sometimes expressed as interaction between the Apollonian
and Dionysian (Joosten, 2013). Especially interesting are various Anglo-
American attempts at educational interpretations of Nietzsche in which
Nietzsche appears ‘as a prototypical educator who can smoothly be adopted
by progressive education’ (Rosenow, 2000, p. 678). However, in a manner
of comprehensive and holistic philosophy ‘each one of these people is right
in arguing against the other, no one of them is right when taken by him-
self’ (Jaspers, 1997, p. 5). Whatever one makes of these contributions, it
is clearly evident that the priority is given to interpretations of Nietzsche,
rather than interpretations made by Nietzsche.
Here, I will try and bring forth the latter approach, which is—despite
Nietzsche’s primary profession—methodologically much closer to his own
supra-historical genealogy, than the philological style of current interpreters
stemming mostly from the analytical tradition within philosophy. Specifi-
cally this means I will focus on concepts as ideological rather than theoretical
constructs and mechanisms, and attempt to consider the present condition
of educational institutions through Nietzsche’s clairvoyantly pessimistic as-
sessment that the ever expanding public educational institutions, that is to
say, the increasingly accessible education to the masses, and the weakening
of these very same institutions under the pressure of the State (one could
read this also as ‘ideology’, ‘culture’ etc.) are bringing an end not only to
these educational institutions, but to the culture itself—once noble, now not
any more, as Nietzsche claims throughout all of his writings.
In this sense, the democratisation of public educational institutions and
non-selective public education systems did our Western societies not only
good, but harm as well. Much needed equity in education—in terms of
socio-economic, racial and gender equity—has been steadily increasing
during the last 150 years (OECD, 2015), although some educator equity
gaps remain firmly present (OECD, 2012). Whereas the other important
feature, excellence, has been left behind and still lacks much needed atten-
tion from policy-makers, the general public and educators as well. To be
fair, during the last decade or two, several initiatives promoting excellence
have emerged, for example, the Excellent Science pillar of the EU’s Horizon
2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Clusters of Ex-
cellence in Germany, the Academy of Finland’s Centres of Excellence etc.,
and even more private, industry-oriented endeavours. However, the former,
as public initiatives serve the interest of the majority and are thus forced to
encourage projects of highest utility and general agreeability, while private
and corporate actions seek market-oriented developments that could most
easily generate new and striking products. This kind of useful excellence
has no use for the extra-ordinary, surpassing the quotidian normality. If
anything, under the pressure of populist agreeability—that is democracy in
its non-idealised core—it gives way to an idea Nietzsche finds dangerous

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and a threat to the future of the humankind: Expulsion of the genius in the
name of equality.
In the present paper, I comprehend education mainly in its political outlet,
especially if understood as the engine of the secondary socialisation and the
central mechanism for the reproduction of culture, as the functionalist view
of education stresses (Durkheim, 1956), and will argue for a Nietzschean
opposition to the view that encourages the strengthening of the sense of duty
and responsibility towards one’s own community and society in general.
This last is most successfully implemented when the State takes over the
reproduction of culture, or ideology, that is to say, the reproduction of the
most common and general value system. Nietzsche is very clear on this
issue, in his opinion, ‘the most general form of culture is simply barbarism’
(1909, p. 38). As I intend to explicate, this socially-oriented, or, morally-
oriented education corresponds most agreeably to the democratic socio-
political system, for it manages sufficiently to maintain the status quo in
social development, which is, in my view, measurable only in terms of the
prospects for the future.
A long history of the concept of paideia suggests the importance of rearing
and educating, which should be done properly in order to cultivate the ideal
community member. Although my explication relies almost exclusively on
the European point of view, it is in no way relatable merely to European
public educational institutions, or the institutions of the member countries
of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),
of which research and studies’ findings I mostly rely on in this text. After
all, education, or cultivation in its institutionalised sense, is of a universal
scope, has common roots and faces similar issues all around the world,
especially in the so-called global era.
Despite the fact that nowadays both children and teachers of the world
find themselves in extremely different conditions of learning and teaching,
mainly depending on their geographical location, the main aims of education
nonetheless remain the same, wherever we may look. On the one hand, the
universal aim of all educational institutions is to educate, more precisely,
cultivate children into functional and self-reliant individuals who willingly
abide by the social and legal norms (socialisation), while on the other
hand, educational institutions follow the aim of seeking and encouraging
individual excellence, which is the primary aim of the liberal theory of
education (Dewey, 1930). However, as I intend to show, this is merely a
supposed excellence, especially in the educational institutions established
by the democratic societies, wherein mediocrity rules.
The relevance of Nietzsche’s contribution on education and educational
institutions could legitimately be questioned, since the 19th century matter
of his critique seems distant and irrelevant in this time of information
technology, online learning and artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, and
taking its current social and political status into consideration, education
still is—institutions of its implementation included—one of the key pillars
of democratic society. In this vein, Nietzsche’s critique today amounts to
even more than it did 150 years ago, when modern democracy had only made
its first steps, and when educational institutions still carried heavy burdens

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of pre-democratic ideals of social (natural) hierarchies of economic status,

gender, race, confession, personal preferences etc. Along with the general
social landscape, public educational institutions democratised too. While
this process brought about several indisputable benefits, especially to the
worst off, it generated some, in my view, potentially problematic, yet highly
democratic socio-psychological mechanisms.
I will delve deeper into these mechanisms, as focal issues of our ed-
ucational institutions, through two of Nietzsche’s, hence self-evidently
controversial concepts: Nivellierung and Misarchismus. The first, roughly
translated as ‘levelling’, is not frequently used by Nietzsche himself—it
is much more common in Kierkegaard’s texts (Miles, 2013, Ch. 6, note
2)—however, it is present either in absentia in aphorisms and through
metaphors, or expressed with the term Ausgleichung (‘balancing’), particu-
larly in On the Genealogy of Morality (2007, I, 12; I, 16) and Beyond Good
and Evil (2002, §242). English translations usually do not differentiate be-
tween these two terms, which is most probably unproblematic, for both
express the same idea. Precisely this is the idea by Nietzsche I intend to
apply to the contemporary educational institutions and connect to the rather
Kierkegaardean concept of horizontal communication, which is reflected in
a rise of the journalist clique and its popular services in the second half
of the 19th century, and grew increasingly influential throughout the pre-
vious century. Journalism is a point of unrestrained critique by Nietzsche,
for ‘it is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and be-
come one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join hands’
(1909, p. 41).
In addition to the discussion on levelling, I will look at the other fo-
cal concept I highlighted above: Misarchismus (most often translated as
misarchism). Although not mentioned in the text I propose as the topi-
cal basis of this paper, yet extremely present throughout it, it is the idea
which has to be analysed through democracy and the democratic conduct
of the public and private life, especially the educational system. More-
over, as I will claim, democratic striving for elite-less and leaderless social
organisation—misarchism, in a word—is the fundamental principle of lev-
elling, the approach to life and politics characteristic of ‘the last man who
maketh everything small’ (Nietzsche, 1917, p. 11).
These concepts bear an echo of a more general idea which can be gathered
from the works by Nietzsche, and the foundations of which are discernible
already in the not particularly famous, nor frequently read text On the
Future of Our Educational Institutions, a collection of five lectures delivered
between 16 January and 23 March 1872 at the University of Basel, where
Nietzsche, at the time only 27 years old, held a chair of philology for the
fourth year. My aim is thus twofold: First, to shed some light on a text which
has not been given the attention it deserves. After all, this is Nietzsche’s
main text on education, and, thoroughly read, it offers a gateway into all that
Nietzsche turned out to be in the following two decades. However, it does so
in a youthful, even jovial way, far removed from the ressentiment he himself
unknowingly surrendered to after Zarathustra. And second, it opens up a
discussion on the cultivation of human potentials. Furthermore, it stresses

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the fundamental question—profoundly existential in its essence—regarding

the future: Will we be able to secure it for ourselves?
The task here is to not succumb to the lures of the comfort of a spe-
cialist discourse dwelling on the correct interpretation, but rather to give a
comprehensive account of the future of our democratic public educational
institutions which seem to be, conversely, slipping deeper and deeper into
specialisation, herd virtues and mediocrity.

DEMOCRATIC INCLINATION TO LEVELLING AND MISARCHISM

In this chapter, I emphasise herd virtues as a necessary predisposition, and,
concurrently, a reproductive outcome of the democratic social structure in
which, as a result of the levelling, misarchistic exclusion of the exception
occurs.
These most basic and banal concepts to us, the moderns—democracy and
education—are vastly interrelated and interdependent. Nietzsche’s ‘tragic
realism’ (Kirkland, 2010), that is to say, his intuition that figures of great
political ambition, tyrants even, are necessary ‘because of the human possi-
bilities they represent, not the effects they bring’ (Kirkland, 2010, p. 57), is
a manifestation of Nietzsche’s highly negative assessment of the expanding
educational system which walks hand in hand with the democratisation and
subsequent general liberalisation. Concisely put, the expansion of the edu-
cational system—mainly as a result of universal compulsory education in
general, and comprehensive education in particular—generates constantly
increasing demand for teachers; these undergo almost no selection, which
results in the mediocrity of teachers and the consequential mediocrity of
students. This is a democratic and a misarchistic approach to levelling; at
first, imposing the right values (herd virtues) in educational institutions,
which is the process that leads to the construction of the horizontal commu-
nication of the mass (a general social structure) with, ultimately, no regard
and no attention for anything higher.
An elitist reading of Nietzsche would go even further to claim that the
restoration of natural hierarchies in social relations is necessary and it has
to be most vigorously enforced during the period of secondary socialisation
when an individual becomes aware of her or his place in society. The early
20th century produced more than a few authors who interpreted Nietzsche
in this vein, one of them Oswald Spengler who envisioned a vertically struc-
tured society in which the leader is given all powers and means necessary
to lead those who were born to be led. Any other kind of society is doomed
to extinction (Spengler, 1962). However, Nietzsche’s interest does not lie
strictly in natural hierarchies and the society led by its elite. Indeed, often
he sings praises and odes to ‘the master morality’ or ‘the Übermensch’, and
diminishes the worth of any kind of ‘chandala morality’, but nevertheless
he seems to be much more interested in the future of the humankind com-
prised of all who want to live in it, of all individuals who pose the will
to do something, anything that is not resentful or idolatrous. In this sense,
even by arguing for the necessary existence of the elite, Nietzsche’s intent

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appears anti-nihilist, hopeful even. His main concern is thus not the status
of the elite, but the motivations of the mass.
It follows from Nietzsche’s sceptical view of democracy (Siemens, 2009)
that in a democratic society, the average majority tends to indulge in mass
conformity, rather than the independent thought which it promotes. This
would seem to be a paradoxical statement. However, not only Nietzsche, but
Tocqueville too supposes that true human greatness or excellence is possible
only in one form of social organisation or regime. Needless to say, in their
opinion this certainly is not democracy. Empirically this became evident
after the 1830 Revolution in France when the ‘universal shrinkage’ set in,
manifesting in a middle-class spirit prone to order and utility, ‘moderate
in all things except a taste for well-being, and mediocre; a spirit that by
itself never produces anything but a government without either virtues or
greatness’ (Tocqueville, 1987, p. 5).
There are many similarities between Nietzsche’s analysis of the ills of
democratic society and Tocqueville’s. ‘This is especially true of Nietzsche’s
early writings, which are pervaded by a Tocquevillean concern with the
individualism, materialism, and restlessness of modern life and the obstacles
they form to individual and cultural greatness’ (Franco, 2014, p. 244). One
of these early writings are the Basel lectures, which start with a preliminary
remark that serves also as the central thesis of his explication:

Two seemingly antagonistic forces, equally deleterious in their actions

and ultimately combining to produce their results, are at present ruling
over our educational institutions, although these were based originally
upon very different principles. These forces are: a striving to achieve
the greatest possible extension of education on the one hand, and a
tendency to minimise and to weaken it on the other (Nietzsche, 1909,
p. 12).

The confusion is thus twofold: firstly, what is the gain, then, of ever ex-
panding educational institutions and seemingly well-intentioned universal
education, and, secondly, what would be the purpose of weak and ob-
scure public educational institutions? His idea is fairly simple and sounds
rather Neo-Marxist: ‘The first-named would fain spread learning among the
greatest possible number of people, the second would compel education to
renounce its highest and most independent claims in order to subordinate
itself to the service of the State’ (Nietzsche, 1909, pp. 12–13).
The first traits of the malevolent use of culture are starting to appear
here. The democratisation and liberalisation bring about Nietzsche’s much
despised egalitarianism, which tends to transform vertical communication
into horizontal communication. This anti-verticalism, as Peter Sloterdijk
(2000) calls what Nietzsche and Kierkegaard regarded as levelling, results
in ‘the sad plight of the public school of today: the narrowest views remain
in a certain measure right, because no one seems able to reach or, at least, to
indicate the spot where all these views culminate in error’ (Nietzsche, 1909,
p. 68). This sort of levelling is what makes everyone more similar to each
other, more equal, and the average man—the mediocre man—becomes

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the norm of culture, regardless of the nature of truth this mediocre man
possesses. This is the moment of cultural reproduction, in this case, purely
ideologically exercised, and there is little one can do. ‘Man, that is to say,
lives in a world that others have created and so is caught up in this socially
constructed framework’ (Aspers, 2007, p. 493).
A framework, or a set of values is pre-set, already there when one enters
the post-natal phase of life, and as soon as the first interaction occurs, the
ideological material starts to inscribe, or even ‘tattoo’ (Sloterdijk, 1988b)
itself into the cognitive apparatus of one’s psyche, thus forming and shaping
the value spectrum of one’s individual, social and historical identity. The
democratic social framework is working in the same manner; it would be
naivety to claim otherwise, and a critical overkill to assert it is planned.
Democracy, just as any other political/ideological/value system, claims
the Truth and is striving for the moral hegemony. Hence, I agree with
Siemens that “democracy”, then, refers primarily to a set of values or
ideals—increasingly identified as one of a network of mere “modern ideas”
in Nietzsche’s later writings—but also to a disposition, attitude, or type that
flourishes and dominates under those values’ (2009, p. 21). The democratic
set of values is elegantly serving the system, i.e. democracy, and adding to
the reproduction of the Enlightenment ideals, which are, frankly put, quite
agreeable when considered by themselves. Freedom and equality for all are
highly honourable benefits, or luxuries of the Western democratic world.
It certainly must not be overlooked that our chance to even discuss the
issues of too much democracy in public educational institutions is one of
the positive results of the very struggle for social and legal justice for all.
However, the ideal of equality turned out to be exercised too rigorously,
overshadowing individual freedom, and one soon stumbles upon two rea-
sons ‘for Nietzsche’s lack of confidence in democracy: the tyranny of the
people and its promotion of uniformity, not pluralism’ (Siemens, 2009,
p. 25). Nietzsche himself stressed that ‘nowadays the democracy of ideas
rules in every brain—there the multitude collectively is lord. A single idea
that tried to be lord is now called . . . “a fixed idea”. This is our method
of murdering tyrants—we hint at the madhouse’ (Nietzsche, 1913, §230).
This democratic inclination towards collectivism is what makes Nietzsche
suspicious of the egalitarian striving of the democratic system, for it ul-
timately leads to the ‘systematic exclusion of difference’ (Siemens, 2009,
p. 26).
Democracy somehow naturally accentuates the ideal of a unanimous
collective. While the concept of democracy as a socio-political sys-
tem strives towards plurality, in which individuals are allowed—and
even encouraged—to follow their own private ideals, beliefs and values,
the reality of democracy is constantly proving to be quite the opposite: the
majority, or the mass subject tends to usurp both, the public sphere and the
political sphere. The process of a democratic election of the leading politi-
cal programme for the future concurrently becomes a democratic selection,
in which marginal social groups and (exceptional) individuals are being
excluded. When Nietzsche says ‘the tyranny of the people’ he means the
majority, the general public which is entirely legitimately forming around

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a few central ideas, ideals and values, which constitute core ethos, how-
ever, its forceful—one might say democratic—promotion of unity, while it
might be legal, is not legitimate at all. A Tocquevillean idea of the demo-
cratic citizen is that they are naturally attracted to general ideas, for when
they take a look around themselves, they see mostly human beings looking
like themselves, “semblables” (Franco, 2014, p. 445). Consequently,

. . . the herd doctrine grows out of society. Once this unit of evaluation
is created, the herd morality will rule: the morality that is good for the
“commune” or herd will dominate . . . One consequence of all this is
that the average man becomes the norm (Aspers, 2007, p. 488).

Averageness is then considered as normality and as a measure of necessary

decency.
If belief is needed to sustain monarchic and aristocratic socio-political
systems—the first with the belief in one supreme and (almost) god-like
being, and the second with the belief that the elite’s power equals its ability—
democracy actually represents unbelief (Nietzsche, 1980, Vol. 11, p. 26) in
super-beings and the legitimacy of hegemony of the elite. Indeed, the elite
does not necessarily entail excellence. However, the process of systematic
exclusion of potential excellence, run by collective ressentiment (Stockdale,
2013), means that anything different and out of the norm, anything that
could or does dominate, is despised, fought against and pushed out. The
feature I am trying to emphasise here, is ‘the democratic idiosyncrasy of
being against everything that dominates and wants to dominate, the modern
misarchism (to coin a bad word for a bad thing)’ (Nietzsche, 2007, p. 52).
Where unity is a virtue, and where the commune rules over the individual,
democracy reaches its highest, noblest form, and, simultaneously, its lowest,
most cynical form, for unanimity easily turns into uniformity. On the one
hand, the social unity serves as the guarantor of peaceful conduct, whereas
the marginal spheres of the social structure, on the other hand, are being
pushed even more to the margin, with some ultimately being aggressively
cut off. One might find the latter statement hasty and excessive, however,
there are plenty of historical cases, and also those that are still very much
present, which are clearly showing the motley spectre of interpretations
of democracy (e.g. a vast majority of newly independent states during
the post-colonial era, many post-Soviet Eastern-European states during the
transition period, quite a few Central-Asian states, etc., all having very
flexible ideas of what democracy as a socio-political structure means and
(whom it) represents).
Nevertheless, it is my intention to highlight the most banal democratic
societies, the so-called full and flawed democracies (Democracy Index
2015), in which the most frequently used weapon is neither a handgun
nor a knife, but ressentiment. Nietzsche warns that ‘under the sign of
misarchism, the exclusion of difference is radicalised into the motivat-
ing hatred behind democratic values’ (Siemens, 2009, p. 29). Misarchism
is therefore the essential motivation and the manifestation of democratic
values at the same time. These are the values of freedom and equality—

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liberal egalitarianism—which lead to the very fact Nietzsche discerned,

that ‘in reality, “equality for all” is equivalent to a “making equal of
all”; also “Ausgleichung”’ (Siemens, 2009, p. 26). The latter term, known
also as Nivellierung, or levelling, is thus fundamentally connected with
the misarchistic features burdening the democratic ideal. Furthermore, in
Nietzsche’s mature period, ‘the democratic values of equality and liberty
are referred successively to unbelief, rejection, hostility, and finally a ha-
tred of authority and rule, as their underlying motivation and meaning’
(Siemens, 2009, p. 29). To put it concisely, according to Nietzsche, there is
a direct causal link stemming all the way from the democratic tendencies
to the selective exclusion of anything and anyone exceptional, or extraor-
dinary, and, ultimately, to the hateful resentment of anything higher, be
it culture or government. ‘In this vein, the ideal of Gleichheit für Alle is
identified by him with the actual Gleichmaching Aller, a process of equal-
ization or levelling that serves the interest of that form of life that thrives
and comes to dominate the rule of democratic values: the “herd being”’
(Siemens, 2009, p. 32).
The society’s negative sentiments towards the higher are, according to
Nietzsche, strongly present in the educational institutions as well. ‘The
same “democratic instincts”, the same “plebeian hostility towards every-
thing privileged and autocratic” can be recognised in the democratisation
of education and the denial that “all higher education belongs to the excep-
tions alone”’ (Tongeren, 2007, p. 9). On top of that, Nietzsche vehemently
argues that ‘every enhancement so far in the type “man” has been the work
of an aristocratic society’ (Nietzsche, 2002, p. 151), whereas present educa-
tional institutions strive towards educating ‘a useful, industrious, abundantly
serviceable, and able herd animal man’, furthermore, ‘Europe’s democra-
tization amounts to the creation of a type prepared for slavery’ (Nietzsche,
2002, p. 134).
But, why does this even matter? If the egomaniac, one of the likes of
Nietzsche, analytically and descriptively unties the mystery of the despised
genius, what is in it for him that he resorted to such an enthusiastic and
vigorous fight against the windmills of liberal democracy? Meaningful
significance could be discerned from the conclusion of the above quoted
passage, stating that “the democratization of Europe is at the same time an
involuntary exercise in the breeding of tyrants—understanding that word in
every sense, including the most spiritual” (Nietzsche, 2002, p. 134). All in
all, Nietzsche could be speaking of himself.
Nevertheless, Siemens (2009, p. 30) is of opinion that,

. . . at stake for Nietzsche is not a few individuals but, in fact, the

future of humankind, a concern that has its sources in a positive eth-
ical impulse . . . that is, his perfectionist demand that we overcome
ourselves as we are . . . Exceptional or singular individuals figure not
as the exclusive beneficiaries but as the great experimenters.

This seemingly extremely pessimistic, or nihilistic comprehension of

the modern democratic and—presumably—egalitarian society, with its

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educational institutions, ultimately, in its most metaphysical core, has

proven itself fairly optimistic and full of hope. It is not history that a
philosopher must be occupied with; it is quite the opposite that bears impor-
tance and calls for enthusiastic energeia. Jaspers found that ‘occasionally
Nietzsche completely rejects history’ and puts all his zeal into the future.
That is to say, ‘the science of history then becomes superfluous. “In its place
must step the science that deals with the future”’ (Jaspers, 1997, p. 239),
which could be understood both in an ethical as well as in a political sense.
‘Nietzsche’s revaluation project is both an ethical and a political project:
ethical in the sense of applying a certain reeducative regime on oneself, and
political in the sense of desiring to apply this program to the rest of society’
(Drochon, 2010, 75). Nietzsche, thus, supposedly strives towards a general,
that is to say political (cultural) and ethical (educational) renewal, towards
the self-surpassing ideal of the Übermensch, however, not for the sake of
the elite, but for the sake of the humankind. In this regard, it does not suffice
to label him as an egomaniac, it would be more accurate to pronounce him
a megalomaniac. A megalomaniac of the utopian kind.

THE FUTURE OF OUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

On the Future of Our Educational Institutions is comprised of a series of
lectures Nietzsche held in 1872 at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The form and the style of the lectures are neither conventional, nor partic-
ularly characteristic of Nietzsche, for the most part of five lectures is taken
up by a conversation between two philosophers—a master and his younger
colleague—who Nietzsche supposedly overheard as a student on a trip to
Rolandseck, a place just outside Bonn in Germany, where, at the time, he
was studying theology and classical philology.
It is quite safe to argue that this is an apocryphal text. However, it is
a mere speculation of mine, that it is apocryphal for pragmatic reasons,
namely, that because Nietzsche stresses fairly controversial theses regard-
ing the increasingly expanding education, its simultaneous attrition and the
State apparatus, it was safer for him to distance himself from the potentially
problematic ideas expressed in these lectures. As he put it, it was his ‘harm-
less experience’, whereas the conversation between the two gentlemen, he
had witnessed, was ‘less harmless’ (1909, p. 17). It could be that he used
an old, well-spoken philosopher as his mouthpiece, in order to hide some
of his self-declared genius and his own extraordinariness. However, there
are more similarities between him and Plato on the one hand, and the old
philosopher and Socrates on the other. The latter constantly lies in wait for
a glimpse of excellence and encourages anybody who is willing to listen to
examine their own existence; just as the old master in Nietzsche’s text on
education constantly bickers with and criticises his younger colleague and
even younger eavesdroppers, Nietzsche and his friend.
Nevertheless, his fears that education, as it has been practiced for the
last two centuries, has so far been ‘essentially a means of ruining the
exception’ (Nietzsche, 1980, Vol. 12, p. 9) are actually his own fears, based
on an idea that easily fits Nietzsche’s general philosophical, or specifically

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socio-psychological outlook regarding human potentials. However useful

to the society an exception could be, it would never succeed in fulfilling the
expectations and the needs of the masses without the ressentiment of the
masses awakening. Therefore, the democratic education, intersected by
the utilitarian ideology, rejects the exception, the genius, and stimulates the
masses to strive to aspire great knowledge by itself. In this manner, the
prevailing call echoing throughout the classrooms of today sounds nobly:

As much knowledge and education as possible; therefore the greatest

possible supply and demand—hence as much happiness as possible:—
that is the formula. In this case utility is made the object and goal of
education—utility in the sense of gain—the greatest possible pecu-
niary gain (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 36).

The utilitarian conception of education shatters the fundamental axiom of

culture, or ‘the whole secret of culture—namely, that an innumerable host
of men struggle to achieve it and work hard to that end, ostensibly in their
own interests, whereas at bottom it is only in order that it may be possible
for the few to attain to it’ (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 34). Although I intend to
consider Nietzsche’s critique with utmost seriousness, it is perfectly legiti-
mate to stop and put these claims into question, for at least some positive
effects of universal non-selective education can be discerned. It is quite ob-
vious that from a utilitarian point of view, increasingly expanding education
actually brought about less misery and partial freedom from uncertainty,
if not more happiness. At least to the majority, or the average man. How-
ever, it is exactly this reasoning that Nietzsche—in a quite Socratic manner
(Plato, 2009, 355b-357e)—finds mistakenly hopeful, especially when the
general level of cultural attainment is measured not by society’s best men
and women, but by its average, most decent individuals. That is to say, ‘the
rights of genius are being democratised in order that people may be relieved
of the labour of acquiring culture, and their need of it’ (Nietzsche, 1909,
p. 34), while public educational institutions play the leading role in ex-
pulsion of the exceptional individual, whose ‘individuality is reproved and
rejected by the teacher in favour of an unoriginal decent average’ (Nietzsche,
1909, p. 53).
Nietzsche’s stance on teachers as those who perpetuate and reproduce the
trend towards de-sophistication of culture—hence, the trend leading back-
wards from civilisation to barbarism—is quite obvious and easily assumed.
After all, ‘teachers initiate their students into what they consider to be the
truths of a professional discipline and they do it in an authoritative way’
(Joosten, 2013, p. 560). At this juncture, it is crucial to grasp the implica-
tions of the most elementary and banal, yet far-reaching and undisputable
thesis: ‘Educators are necessary who are themselves educated’ (Nietzsche,
1899, TI, Germans: 5[159]).
Educators, or teachers are those who are in possession of truth, even if
this is so for merely a few hours per day in the confines of the classroom.
Nevertheless, truth is, in a word, a plain example of will to power, whereas
‘Nietzsche views rulers as egoists, who try to increase their power by

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502 T. Pirc

shaping others, by imposing rules and values’ (Aspers, 2007, p. 484). He

has a name for those who claim they mediate between man and God (in
whichever form), that they have control over the course of nature, and that
they are the ones who know and only they know the truth: these are the
priests. ‘The priests, in other words, can impose “thou shalt” on mankind’
(Aspers, 2007, p. 485). Indeed, priests have a long history as educators,
but there is something similar in preaching the truth, God’s word, from the
pulpit, and lecturing the truth, the knowledge, from the lectern. School as
the most influential factor and a place of reproduction of society and social
norms, or secondary socialisation, has a tremendous impact on the formation
of students’ identities, value systems and consequential behaviours (Berger
and Luckmann, 1966). Furthermore, the knowledge students receive in
order to use it in real life outside the classroom, is in its most vital part—
the normative part—dependent on teacher’s particular world-view and her
or his specific value system. Therefore, the influence of teacher’s own
ideological predispositions is inevitable. ‘One speaking mouth, with many
ears, and half as many writing hands—there you have to all appearances,
the external academical apparatus; the university engine of culture set in
motion’ (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 126).
One of the widely accepted values, appreciated and admired by virtually
every teacher, is the inherent worth of universal education and increasingly
expanding accessibility of education on all levels. As an ideal in line with
the Enlightenment project, this worth cannot be overlooked. Conversely,
the non-selective and equitable public education is indeed at the very core
of the modern democracies, however, Nietzsche (1909, p. 72) warns, ‘just
think of the innumerable crowd of teachers, who, in all good faith, have
assimilated the system of education which has prevailed up to the present,
that they may cheerfully and without over-much deliberation carry it further
on’. The idea of the educated average man is so deeply embedded into the
Western ethos, that Nietzsche’s disdain sounds childishly defiant, but just
think of the future of our educational institutions, when the ever increasing
demand for teachers—in case this has not happened already—will exceed
the supply naturally available in a given world-historical moment.

Such a large number of higher educational establishments are now

to be found everywhere that far more teachers will continue to be
required for them than the nature of even a highly-gifted people can
produce; and thus an inordinate stream of undesirables flows into these
institutions, who, however, by their preponderating numbers and their
instinct of “similis simile gaudet” gradually come to determine the
nature of these institutions (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 72).

What assessment are we able to give 150 years after these words were
uttered? Although the results of the OECD’s Programme for International
Student Assessment, or simply PISA (OECD, 2014) show a steady general
increase in the competencies of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and
science in 65 most developed countries and economies of the world, this
does not necessarily mean that the level of excellence has risen or its scope

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 Levelling and Misarchism 503

has broadened. The PISA 2012 results show merely that public educational
institutions are getting increasingly better at teaching students what they are
supposed to be taught. To this date, no serious research has been designed to
comprehensively study, or measure excellence in educational institutions,
which means that there still exists no better measure than the historical per-
spective. The years that have passed since Nietzsche’s lectures have shown
tremendous improvements in the democratic system of education—from the
basics such as equity and accessibility to the most refined and structurally
engineered as utility and specialisation. Nevertheless, and despite the results
of the above-mentioned research, the quality of public education still does
not meet the expectations of the 21st century. Even more importantly, it
does not meet the needs of the future centuries that are to come.
My claim, grounded on Nietzsche’s 19th century critique, is that the pub-
lic education system must restructure itself and start educating in a Socratic
manner: To seek aptitude and cultivate it into excellence. Nietzsche’s work
thus serves as a cornerstone of, first, problem identification in democrati-
cally structured public educational institutions and, second, the critique of
the approach to teaching that favours blending-in over excelling and sur-
passing the pre-set expectations, while Socrates’ manner could represent
a valuable resource on both levels, the systematic, or structural level of
the policy-making body, and the most operative level of education, that
is, the teacher–student relationship. This last ought to be, first, envisioned,
and then practiced in a way most attentively directed at the student, her or
his particularities and traits of autonomous, personally shaped preferences,
aspirations and ideas. The teacher’s job, therefore, is to encourage each par-
ticular student just as Socrates encouraged all he conversed with, regardless
of their seemingly limited power of rational deliberation or lack of charac-
ter. The idea is in detecting basic threads of individuality and then building
on these threads a character potentially stretching beyond the ordinary, the
mediocre.
However,

It is precisely the best teachers—those who, generally speaking, judged

by a high standard, are worthy of this honourable name—who are now
perhaps the least fitted, in view of the present standing of our public
schools, for the education of these unselected youths, huddled together
in a confused heap; but who must rather, to a certain extent, keep hidden
from them the best they could give: and, on the other hand, by far the
larger number of these teachers feel themselves quite at home in these
institutions, as their moderate abilities stand in a kind of harmonious
relationship to the dullness of their pupils. It is from this majority that
we hear the ever-resounding call for the establishment of new public
schools and higher educational institutions (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 73).

Democracy as a mechanism of social and political conduct is taking ad-

vantage of the very same propaganda and self-reproduction means as any
other state form. Speaking formally, it does not matter which values and
principles this state form represents, it is always making use of the same

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504 T. Pirc

state apparatuses in order to accumulate more followers, to construct social

cohesion and to exclude those who are not succumbing to the official ide-
ology of the state (Althusser, 1971). In this sense, freedom and equality too
are mere ideological constructs (Žižek, 1989). It would be naı̈ve to reject
this reasoning as too Marxist, for ideology cannot be exempt from any form
of social organisation, since it is its fundamental precondition. That is why
Nietzsche’s argument that the State itself is the focal objective of education
seems plausible. Although, a democratic state ought to ensure freedom in all
spheres of life—be it personal, religious, political and academic as well—it
nevertheless has some power with which it strives towards reproducing its
own ideological substance. Therefore,
. . . behind both of them [the teacher and the student], at a modest
distance, stands the State, with all the intentness of a supervisor, to
remind the professors and students from time to time that it is the aim,
the goal, the be-all and end-all, of this curious speaking and hearing
procedure (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 126).
Nietzsche is, in this regard, quite strongly convinced of the state’s entice-
ments and deceits. The misarchistic resentment of ‘the true German spirit’
is too strong for the few great individuals to be able to resist and to con-
trol it, and it is the same sentiment of envy that drives these great women
and men of culture into self-exile, and ‘the many may in this way endeav-
our to escape the rigid and strict discipline of the few great leaders, so
that the masses may be persuaded that they can easily find the path for
themselves—following the guiding star of the State!’ (Nietzsche, 1909,
p. 89).
Moreover, when this political aspect is combined with the earlier men-
tioned ethical aspect, that is to say psycho-social aspect of the general
liberalisation—usually associated with the public sphere controlled by the
democratic state apparatuses—it can be concluded, that there is nothing
liberal, nor liberating in these so-called liberal institutions, which,
. . . immediately cease to be liberal, so soon as they are attained; af-
terwards, there are no more mischievous or more radical enemies of
freedom than liberal institutions. One knows well enough what they
accomplish: they undermine the will to power, they are the levelling
of mountain and valley exalted into morality, they make people small,
cowardly, and voluptuous—with them the herding animal always tri-
umphs (Nietzsche, 1899, TI, Skirmishes: 38[202]).
Nietzsche himself put this reasoning concisely: ‘Liberalism: that is in-
creased herding-animality’ (Nietzsche, 1899, TI, Skirmishes: 38[202]). Or
mediocrity, if I use somewhat less of a naturalist term.
The latter results in what Sloterdijk sees as the peak of ressentiment;
specifically it means that the vertical communication in contemporary cul-
ture is substituted with horizontal communication. Resentment, as under-
stood in the present text (ressentiment), is a generalised kind of a resentful,
envious feeling which ‘seeks to identify someone or something, a target,

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 Levelling and Misarchism 505

however imprecise, responsible for the feelings of contempt which the mass
subject feels’ (Halsall, 2005, p. 174). Resentment, therefore, does not aim
at anything specific, neither through politics nor any other medium, but
it manifests as a symbolic, or an imaginary revenge to everything higher.
Resentment strives towards revaluation of all values, perhaps even the abo-
lition of the valuation itself. ‘Imaginary or symbolic revenge . . . may take
the place of actual retaliation. Such revenge may underline a transforma-
tion of values, a substitution of new, attainable values for those which may
appear unattainable’ (Melzer and Musolf, 2002, p. 248).
Here, the sanity and the integral interconnection of Nietzsche’s main
concepts—will to power, revaluation of all values, eternal recurrence,
Übermensch—is evident, especially when looked at through a revolutionary
practice: the ideals set by high culture, unattainable to the majority of the
average, are on the wave of resentful revolt replaced by somewhat more
acceptable ideals. However, it soon happens that in this situation as well,
someone has to step from the shadows of normality and averageness and
take over the reins. The initiative which proclaims the leader, produces anew
the ever recurring opposition between mass (lower) and elite (high) culture.
The Übermensch is born! And with him the value system which will soon
become an object of rancour, envy and resentment of the cynical masses,
‘today’s silent majorities’ (Van Tuinen, 2011), who tell themselves: ‘We
weak people are just weak; it is good to do nothing for which we are not
strong enough’ (Nietzsche, 2007, p. 27).
The substitution of vertical with horizontal communication, or what
Sloterdijk calls ‘anti-verticalism’ (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 57), is indeed a no-
tion expressing the same concept as Nietzsche’s levelling. It simply means,
that the emphasis is not on the mass subject perceiving cultural differences
as something positive or even as a motivating factor for aspiring to the
things higher, but quite the opposite: the mass subject strives for bringing
everything down, to its own level, for this softens the pain caused by dif-
ferentiation. ‘Although the mass subject to be enlightened is supposed to
see both ‘a gain and a pain’ in the process of enlightenment, the feeling of
ressentiment sees only the pain, and wishes to anaesthetize it’ (Halsall, 2005,
p. 175). The connection of resentment’s strive for an easy target and the typ-
ical features of cynical ‘enlightened false consciousness’ (Sloterdijk, 1988a,
p. 5) ultimately leads to revaluation of all values in the modern society, and,
once again, to the replacement of vertical by horizontal communication.

The aim of developing the masses as subject reaches a critical stage

as soon as we utter the rule that all distinctions should be made by the
masses themselves. It is self-evident that the masses will not make or
uphold distinctions that will work to their own detriment. The masses,
as soon as they have the power to do so, always, without inhibitions,
make distinctions in their own favour (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 85).

In the contemporary society of information technology—the roots of

which are to be found in the beginnings of the printed mass media—
the media has a crucial role in ‘developing and channelling ressentiment’

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506 T. Pirc

(Halsall, 2005, p. 175), the critique of which was explicated even more
by Kierkegaard and Heidegger than by Nietzsche; especially regarding the
anonymity provided by the mass way of life and a function of media as key
heralds of the public. ‘Today’s silent majorities’ release their ire mainly
through the media, which in the 21st century amounts to much more than
they had in the times of the threesome I mentioned. Journalism has—as
many other derivatives of the political life—passed through the phase of
demystification and degenerated into superficial, vain and, in particular,
populist (market-oriented) yellow press.
And so we come back to education and Nietzsche, who argued that,

. . . it is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and

become one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join
hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and
he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education,
must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which
cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all
sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as newspaper is, as a rule. In
the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present culminate,
just as the journalist, the servant of the moment, has stepped into the
place of the genius, of the leader for all time, of the deliverer from the
tyranny of the moment (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 41).

All cultural and political discourse is reduced to the lowest common denom-
inator, for ‘levelling always corresponds to the common factor in terms of
which all are made equal’ (Kierkegaard, 2001, p. 80). In this kind of state of
affairs, where the first and foremost concern of our (certainly democratic)
educational institutions is ‘education of the people’ (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 74),
the exemption and consequential absence of the genius means the lack of
ideas necessarily needed for the viable future of humankind. ‘The education
of the masses cannot, therefore, be our aim; but rather the education of a
few picked men for great and lasting works’ (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 75), for
procreation of better women and men is the task of the future.
However, there seems to be a way of educational practice that could
potentially secure both key aims of our Western public educational institu-
tions of the 21st century, equity and excellence. Despite some disputable
theoretical predispositions, mainly the natural segregation into classes and
consequential lack of ‘perception of the uniqueness of individuals’ (Dewey,
1930, p. 104), it was Plato who managed to think both of these notions to-
gether. In his perfect state, educational institutions discover aptitude and
particular talents that could be useful to others, to the society as a whole,
and cultivate them into virtues. According to this scenario, individuals do
what they are most suitable for—from the most ordinary labourers doing
most simple jobs, to the most bright and intellectually capable thinkers who
are as close to the truth as possible: philosophers.
Although the basics of the public education system (infrastructure, ac-
cessibility, equity), are to be ensured by the state, the crucial role ought to
be assigned to teachers, the educators, who have to have a highly developed

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 Levelling and Misarchism 507

sense, or aptitude, first for detection of aptitudes, talents and possibly (in
my ideal educational institution) extraordinariness in others, in all of their
students, and second, for encouragement, development and excellence of
these particular talents in each individual student. In a sense, this is an idea
rooted in the Socratic ideal of the good life, but above all, Socrates’ own
educative practice of observation, critique, challenge and encouragement,
which seems to be reflected in the oftentimes brusque, but nonetheless
insightful thoughts of Nietzsche.

CONCLUSION
Cultivation in its institutionalised form is what is usually meant by educa-
tion. It was my intention to study and reflect on what Nietzsche has to say
about the cultivation of the mediocre man, and the prospects of a democratic
society, in which the education system—or social organisation as a whole—
runs on ‘herd virtues’ (Nietzsche, 1980, Vol. 12, p. 357, §901) promoting
misarchistic ressentiment towards the genius and an inclination towards
levelling of the social structures, wherein excellence frequently gets sub-
stituted for equality. The educational environment of the present proposes
to make every man unfree as though he or she is to become a repetition,
which means then, that education, in its very core, is the means for ruining
the exception in favour of the norm, or the average. It is Nietzsche’s main
restraint—regarding the possible positive effects of the present educational
institutions on the future of the humankind—that this process of levelling
in education is basically intended to adapt the new being to prevailing
mores and habits (Jaspers, 1997, p. 279), and, thus, used by the state as an
ideological instrument, consequently limiting the freedom of individuals.
Nietzsche argues, that ‘all culture begins with the very opposite’ of what
is usually deemed liberal in a democratic society, namely, ‘with obedi-
ence, with subordination, with discipline, with subjection’ (Nietzsche, 1909,
p. 140). Despite the natural principle which maintains hierarchical relations
as self-evident, it is precisely ‘this eternal hierarchy, towards which all
things naturally tend, [which] is always threatened by that pseudo-culture
which now sits on the throne of the present’, furthermore, ‘it endeavours
either to bring the leaders down to the level of its own servitude or else to
cast them out altogether’ (Nietzsche, 1909, p. 140).
It was precisely this tendency of our educational institutions towards the
expulsion of the genius, the exception, I wanted to emphasise, for,
. . . without this sheltering home, the genius will not, generally speak-
ing, be able to rise to the height of his eternal flight, but will at an early
moment, like a stranger weather-driven upon a bleak, snow-covered
desert, slink away from the inhospitable land (Nietzsche, 1909,
pp. 76–77).
Once more, I will draw on Plato’s argument explicated in Protagoras
(2009, 355b-357e), which, simply put, stresses the importance of the mea-
surement and the perspective, and warns of making unknowledgeable
decisions regarding which route to take: The easy way, or the highway.

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508 T. Pirc

To the majority of the unknowledgeable, it surely seems that the levelled,

egalitarian society, attainable now, is a better gain, than an educated, cul-
tured one, realised gradually on the wave of excellence and ingeniousness
possessed by the few extraordinary individuals. Nevertheless, Nietzsche
sees this issue rather black and white, and in this manner he predicts, the
future of our educational institutions is dependent on two contrary move-
ments indicating two possible looks of the future of humankind: ‘The one
movement is absolute: the levelling of humanity . . . The other movement:
my movement: is opposite, the intensification of all oppositions and clefts,
removal of equality, the creativity of over-powerful. The first movement
produces the last man. My movement produces the overman’ (Nietzsche,
1980, Vol. 10, p. 244). These words may sound harsh. Moreover, these
kinds of words were used and abused too often to simply say: The over-
man, the Übermesch is the answer to the stagnating social development in
the global sense. It would be irresponsible to claim so, since the outcome
of such an assertion is already known in advance. The 20th century has
witnessed the future in which the overman is given the right to subjugate
and subordinate according to the law of segregation based on supposedly
natural hierarchies.
The intention of this paper lies elsewhere. Indeed, the intention is quite
the opposite of the elitist reading of Nietzsche. His questioning of the
democratic social organisation with its prevailing egalitarian outlook (value
system) does not mean opposition to democracy per se, nor opposition to
equity or equal rights of all citizens. It is not even concerned with these
kinds of political issues of the present (or even the past), rather it deals with
the issue of the future, that is, the alarming state of humankind and its very
questionable capacity to preserve itself in the centuries to come.1

Correspondence: Dr Tadej Pirc, University of Graz, Institute of Philosophy,

Heinrichstrasse 26, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Email: tadejpirc1@gmail.com

NOTE
1. This article was supported in part by the Erasmus Mundus grant (Sunbeam) at the University of
Sarajevo and in part by the Province of Styria grant (Go Styria) at the University of Graz.

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