Experimentalism as a Way of Life in Book IV of The Gay Science

This chapter deals with one of Nietzsche’s answers to the question of the good life: with the ethos of (becoming what one is through) experimentalism (GS 324), which involves trying out different practices of self-formation and even entire ways of life with the goal of seeking such conditions of everyday existence and conduct of life as are most conducive to one’s active and productive happiness. Book IV of The Gay Science, the original conclusion of Nietzsche’s “free spirit” trilogy, is a prime locus of this conception of the free-spirited life as experimental self-formation. By interpreting key aphorisms from it, the notion of experimentalism will be elucidated on three levels: as (1) a justification of our existence that does not depend on any higher authority, and thus an emancipation from the Christian God; (2) a way of seeking a morality or a plan for life that suits our nature or character; and (3) experimenting with the conditions in which we live and work on a daily basis, in the most immediate and practical sense. I conclude by highlighting the kinship between this experimentalism and the practices of Plato’s Socrates, as interpreted by Jacob Klein.