From Liberation to Self-Creation: Toward a Nietzschean Theory of Transformative Learning

Friedrich Nietzsche’s three stages in the development of free spirits—great separation, wandering, and self-creation—expand current understandings of transformative learning. Nietzsche, for example, explores the development of philosophers, artists, and visionaries in a way that parallels the idea of seismic transformation in contemporary literature and provides insights into the existentially precarious experiences that can accompany such deep transformation. Nietzsche’s thought also builds on the notion that identity should be considered the unit of transformation in transformative learning by exploring repeated identity crises as a method of intellectual and spiritual growth. Finally, Nietzsche argues that free spirits should harness the dream imagination in a waking state to engage symbolic images of the unconscious, which he views as a source of creative inspiration and an essential component of the process of self-creation.