The Blind Spot of the Sovereign Individual: Nietzsche and Derrida on the Limits of Self-Mastery

Triple Self-Portrait. Norman Rockwell 1960. Source: Wikipedia

Thesis

Although Nietzsche's sovereign individual appears to embody self-mastery and responsibility, Derrida's analysis of blindness in Memoirs of the Blind reveals a structural limitation already operating within Nietzsche's account. Just as the self-portraitist cannot fully see himself while drawing, the promising subject cannot fully know the future self who must fulfill the promise. In both texts, selfhood emerges not from pure presence but from a relation to absence, interruption, and temporal distance.

Introduction

At first glance, Nietzsche's sovereign individual and Derrida's self-portraitist seem to inhabit entirely different philosophical worlds. One belongs to a genealogy of morality, responsibility, and promise; the other emerges from a meditation on drawing, vision, and memory. Yet both figures confront a surprisingly similar problem: the impossibility of complete self-presence.

In the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche famously defines the human being as "the animal with the prerogative to promise" (Nietzsche, 2006, II:1). The ability to promise appears to require a remarkable degree of self-mastery: one must remain faithful to a future commitment despite changing circumstances and shifting desires. In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida examines the self-portrait and arrives at a similarly paradoxical conclusion. The artist who attempts to represent himself cannot continuously see himself while drawing. At a decisive moment, sight gives way to memory.

Although these texts address different questions, they converge on a shared insight. The subject who promises and the subject who draws himself both depend upon a gap that prevents complete coincidence with themselves. Rather than being grounded in pure presence, selfhood emerges through mediation, distance, and delay.

The Paradox of the Promising Animal 

Nietzsche introduces the second essay with a striking question:

"To breed an animal with the prerogative to promise—is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind?" (Nietzsche, 2006, II:1).

The paradox arises because promising requires continuity across time. To make a promise is to bind a future action to a present declaration. Yet human beings are not naturally stable creatures. They forget, change their minds, and respond to new circumstances. Between the moment of saying "I will" and the moment of acting lies an unpredictable interval.

For Nietzsche, memory emerges as a response to this problem. Human beings develop what he calls a "counter-device" capable of suspending forgetfulness long enough to preserve commitments. The promise therefore depends upon a difficult achievement: maintaining continuity across temporal distance.

At the culmination of this process stands the sovereign individual, a figure endowed with an "enduring will" and capable of answering for his future. Yet Nietzsche's account already raises a question that points beyond itself. How can anyone fully know the future self who must eventually keep the promise? The very act of promising presupposes a relation to a self that has not yet arrived.

Drawing What One Cannot See

A comparable difficulty appears in Derrida's analysis of self-portraiture. Discussing the act of drawing, Derrida writes:

"Every drawing of the blind would be a drawing of the invisible" (Derrida, 1993, p. 48).

The self-portraitist repeatedly turns away from the mirror toward the canvas. The artist first studies a reflection in order to capture a configuration of visible features. Yet the moment the gaze leaves the mirror, direct visual access disappears. What was seen must now be retained, reconstructed, and translated through memory.

During this interval, vision gives way to recollection, anticipation, and imagination. The image emerges from what is no longer present to sight. Derrida identifies this interruption with the Augenblick—the blink of the eye. The blink appears insignificant, yet it reveals something fundamental about perception itself. Seeing is never pure immediacy. What appears before us is already shaped by what has withdrawn from view.

The self-portrait therefore exposes a limit within self-knowledge. One cannot simultaneously occupy the position of observer and observed without mediation. The self appears only through a process marked by absence, delay, and repetition.

The Sovereign Individual and the Self-Portraitist

At first sight, Nietzsche's sovereign individual and Derrida's self-portraitist seem to represent forms of mastery. One possesses an enduring will; the other seeks to capture himself in an image. Both appear to embody autonomy and self-possession.

Yet both projects encounter a similar obstacle.

The self-portraitist cannot fully see himself while drawing. Likewise, the promising subject cannot fully know the future self who must keep the promise. Between declaration and fulfillment lies a span of time during which desires, circumstances, and priorities may change. The self that promises and the self that eventually acts are never entirely identical.

This parallel reveals a deeper affinity between the two figures. The self-portrait and the promise are both attempts at self-relation. Each seeks to establish continuity across a distance that cannot be abolished. The subject strives for unity with itself, yet encounters a gap that remains irreducible.

What initially appears as mastery therefore conceals a more fragile structure. Self-possession depends upon a relation to what escapes possession.

Blindness and Forgetting as Conditions of Possibility

This affinity becomes even clearer when Derrida's blindness is placed alongside Nietzsche's account of forgetting.

Nietzsche insists that forgetfulness is not a defect but an active and positive force:

"Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae... but is rather an active ability to suppress" (Nietzsche, 2006, II:1).

Without forgetting, consciousness would be overwhelmed by accumulated impressions. Forgetfulness is not the failure of memory but one of the conditions that make memory meaningful and selective.

Derrida attributes a comparable role to blindness. The temporary interruption of sight is not an obstacle to drawing but one of its enabling conditions. The artist creates precisely because direct perception is suspended.

In both cases, what appears secondary proves fundamental. Forgetting is internal to memory, just as blindness is internal to vision. Neither stands outside the process it seems to negate.

This reversal recalls Derrida's notion of the supplement in Of Grammatology. What appears merely additional turns out to be indispensable. The supposedly subordinate term becomes the condition of possibility for the privileged one. Memory depends upon forgetting; vision depends upon blindness.

The Blind Spot of the Promise

This perspective allows us to rethink Nietzsche's sovereign individual in a new light.

The promise is often interpreted as the highest expression of self-mastery. Yet every promise contains a blind spot. The future self remains inaccessible. One cannot know in advance the person one will become, the circumstances one will encounter, or the desires one will possess.

The sovereign individual appears capable of mastering the future, but that future can never be entirely present to him. His promise reaches toward a subject who does not yet exist. The very possibility of promising therefore rests upon an encounter with uncertainty.

In this respect, promising resembles drawing from memory. The artist traces an image that cannot be fully seen. The promisor commits himself to a future that cannot be fully known. Both acts depend upon a relation to what remains absent.

Derrida's analysis thus reveals a hidden dimension of Nietzsche's account. The sovereignty of the promising subject is not the overcoming of blindness but its organization. The subject can commit itself only because it ventures beyond what it can fully foresee. The blind spot is not an accidental limitation of the promise; it is one of its conditions.

Conclusion

Nietzsche's promising animal and Derrida's self-portraitist illuminate one another in unexpected ways. Both confront the problem of self-relation across a distance that cannot be abolished. The artist cannot fully see himself. The promisor cannot fully know himself.

What emerges from both texts is a conception of subjectivity grounded not in self-presence but in mediation. Memory depends upon forgetting, vision upon blindness, and sovereignty upon an encounter with what remains beyond control.

Read through Derrida, Nietzsche's sovereign individual appears less as a figure of complete self-mastery than as a subject sustained by a constitutive limitation. The promise and the self-portrait are often understood as expressions of mastery, yet each reveals the same truth: the self can relate to itself only through a gap. Far from being a defect, that gap is the condition under which identity becomes possible at all.

Related Posts

The Blindness of Vision: Derrida, Memory, and the Ruin of the Self

https://derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-post_04.html

The Promising Animal: Memory, Forgetting, and the Fragility of Sovereignty in Nietzsche

https://derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com/2026/05/blog-post_138.html

References

Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.

Derrida, J. (1993). Memoirs of the blind: The self-portrait and other ruins (P.-A. Brault & M. Naas, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.

Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Norton.

Nietzsche, F. (2006). On the genealogy of morality (M. Clark & A. J. Swensen, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. (Original work published 1887)