The wanton is an agential Oakland: there's no there there

To breed an animal that is permitted to promise—isn't this precisely the paradoxical task nature has set for itself with regard to man? isn't this the true problem of man? ...

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this hasn't come up before, because interest in wantons (in the Frankfurtian sense, of course, and not in the actually more interesting Goreyan long-drawn hoarse erotic sighs sense) seems to concentrate on the supposed lack of any agential authority they enjoy, and not on the fact that they would be extremely frustrating to deal with, but then again, it also wouldn't be that surprising if it has, since (for example) Korsgaard's apparently wanton Jeremy, the example of whom recurs in at least three places (though, to be honest, I continue not to see exactly what's wrong with him on her narration) supposedly partakes of the inability effectively to commit himself described below, and Frankfurt's occasional fairly moralizing remark to the effect that ambivalence is an enemy of truth, since the ambivalence of the ambivalent person "stands in the way of there being a certain truth about him at all" could be developed in this direction; at any rate, I certainly haven't checked in the at least two months since the following occurred to me if anyone's made the claim before, even though I have occasionally tossed around the thought of doing exactly that and maybe even seeing if it can't be made more thorough and generally interesting and whatnot—basically it concerns promising and ensuring one's own future actions.

In order to have this kind of command over the future in advance, man must first have learned to separate the necessary from the accidental occurrence, to think causally, to see and anticipate what is distant as if it were present, to fix with certainty what is end, what is means thereto, in general to be able to reckon, to calculate,—for this, man himself must first of all have become calculable, regular, necessary, in his own image of himself as well, in order to be able to vouch for himself as future, as one who promises does!

Any given wanton's whims may in fact lead him to do precisely what wants doing in any stretch of time; he may be moved at one point to make a promise and at a later point to perform the action which fulfills the promise.  But he was never permitted to promise; he couldn't really vouch for himself.  This is true also true of the wanton from principle who, like Emerson, writes on the lintels of his door-post "whim".  Nietzsche is describing a sort of wanton.

Comments

[Amber]

I feel such a tiny, pathetic surge of victory when I manage to puzzle through one of your posts.

[Belle Lettre]

And I benefit from her elucidation and so feel, if not victory, then commity and celebration, like the weak and helpless greeting the valiant upon their homecoming from the intellectual battleground.

[Amber]

I stride down the lane, carrying my shield, as Belle the Spartan Maid races to meet me, her bare thighs flashing in the sun.

[hijk]

6.luxuriant, as vegetation