Thursday, July 15, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Gay Science, section 347
Believers and their need to believe. - How much one needs a faith in order to flourish, how much that is "firm" and that one does not wish to be shaken because one clings to it, that is a measure of the degree of one's strength (or, to put the point more clearly, of one's weakness).* Christianity, it seems to me, is still needed by most people in old Europe even today;** therefore it still finds believers. For this is how man is: An article of faith could be refuted before him a thousand times - if he needed it, he would consider it "true" again and again, in accordance with that famous "proof of strength" of which the Bible speaks.***
Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty^ that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty) - this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, to be sure, does not create religious, metaphysical systems, and convictions of all kinds but - conserves them.
Actually, what is steaming around all of these positivistic systems is the vapor of a certain pessimistic gloom, something that smells of weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments - or else ostentatious wrath, a bad mood, the anarchism of indignation, and whatever other symptoms and masquerades of the feeling of weakness there may be. Even the vehemence with which our most intelligent contemporaries lose themselves in wretched nooks and crannies, for example, into patriotism^^ (I mean what the French call chauvinisme and the Germans "German") or into petty aesthetic creeds after the manner of French naturalisme (which drags up and bares only that part of nature which inspires nausea and simultaneous amazement - today people like to call this part la verite vraie^^^) or into nihilism a la Petersburg (meaning the belief in unbelief even to the point of martyrdom*^) always manifests above all the need for faith , a support, backbone, something to fall back on.
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely - a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant - which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will^^ that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence
*This crucial point, which recurs elsewhere in Nietzsche's writings, makes clear, we might say, "how he is not pious," and thus needs to be considered when interpreting secton 344 above.
**This was written in 1886
***Nietzsche also refers to the "proof of strength" in section 50 of The Antichrist and in notes 171 and 452 of The Will to Power. But it is only in this passage above that Nietzsche claims that "the Bible speaks" of it. The reference is to I Corinthians 2.4, where the King James Bible has "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" and Luther "in Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft."
In theological and homiletical quotations the old-fashioned Beweisung gave way to Beweis (proof - the word Nietzsche uses) during the nineteenth century. Since Schleiermacher this passages became very popular, and the parallelism of Geist and Kraft was replaced by either Geist or, as in Nietzsche's case, Kraft. I am indebted to Professor Otto A. Piper for this information.
^At first glance
Metaphysics is still needed by some; but so is that impetuous demand for certainty^ that today discharges itself among large numbers of people in a scientific-positivistic form. The demand that one wants by all means that something should be firm (while on account of the ardor of this demand one is easier and more negligent about the demonstration of this certainty) - this, too, is still the demand for a support, a prop, in short, that instinct of weakness which, to be sure, does not create religious, metaphysical systems, and convictions of all kinds but - conserves them.
Actually, what is steaming around all of these positivistic systems is the vapor of a certain pessimistic gloom, something that smells of weariness, fatalism, disappointment, and fear of new disappointments - or else ostentatious wrath, a bad mood, the anarchism of indignation, and whatever other symptoms and masquerades of the feeling of weakness there may be. Even the vehemence with which our most intelligent contemporaries lose themselves in wretched nooks and crannies, for example, into patriotism^^ (I mean what the French call chauvinisme and the Germans "German") or into petty aesthetic creeds after the manner of French naturalisme (which drags up and bares only that part of nature which inspires nausea and simultaneous amazement - today people like to call this part la verite vraie^^^) or into nihilism a la Petersburg (meaning the belief in unbelief even to the point of martyrdom*^) always manifests above all the need for faith , a support, backbone, something to fall back on.
Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely - a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant - which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will^^ that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence
*This crucial point, which recurs elsewhere in Nietzsche's writings, makes clear, we might say, "how he is not pious," and thus needs to be considered when interpreting secton 344 above.
**This was written in 1886
***Nietzsche also refers to the "proof of strength" in section 50 of The Antichrist and in notes 171 and 452 of The Will to Power. But it is only in this passage above that Nietzsche claims that "the Bible speaks" of it. The reference is to I Corinthians 2.4, where the King James Bible has "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" and Luther "in Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft."
In theological and homiletical quotations the old-fashioned Beweisung gave way to Beweis (proof - the word Nietzsche uses) during the nineteenth century. Since Schleiermacher this passages became very popular, and the parallelism of Geist and Kraft was replaced by either Geist or, as in Nietzsche's case, Kraft. I am indebted to Professor Otto A. Piper for this information.
^At first glance
Will to Power, section 770 (Jan. - Fall 1888)
The degree of resistance that must be continually overcome in order to remain on top is the measure of freedom, whether for individuals or for societies - freedom understood, that is, as positive power, as will to power. According to this concept, the highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would in all probability emerge not five steps from its opposite, where the danger of slavery hangs over existence like a hundred swords of Damocles. Look at history from this viewpoint: the ages in which the "individual" achieves such ripe perfection, i.e., freedom, and the classic type of the sovereign man is attained - oh no! they have never been humane ages!
One must have no choice: either on top - or underneath, like a worm, mocked, annihilated, trodden upon. One must oppose tyrants to become a tyrant, i.e., free. It is no small advantage to live under a hundred swords of Damocles: that way one learns to dance, one attains "freedom of movement."
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's and R.J. Holligndale's 1967 translation.
One must have no choice: either on top - or underneath, like a worm, mocked, annihilated, trodden upon. One must oppose tyrants to become a tyrant, i.e., free. It is no small advantage to live under a hundred swords of Damocles: that way one learns to dance, one attains "freedom of movement."
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's and R.J. Holligndale's 1967 translation.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Gay Science, section 299
What one should learn from artists. - How can we make things beautiful, attractive, and desirable for us when they are not? And I rather think that in themselves they never are. Here we could learn something from physicians, when for example they dilute what is bitter or add wine and sugar to a mixture - but even more from artists who are really continually trying to bring off such inventions and feats. Moving away from things until there is a good deal that one no longer sees and there is much that our eye has to add if we are still to see them at all; or seeing things around a corner and as cut out and framed; or to place them so that they partially conceal each other and grant us only glimpses of architectural perspectives; or looking at them through tinted glass or in the light of the sunset; or giving them a surface and skin that is not fully transparent - all this we should learn from artists while being wiser than they are in other matters. For with them this subtle power usually comes to an end where art ends and life begins; but we want to be the poets of our life - first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
Gay Science, sections 267, 268, 270
267
With a great goal. - With a great goal one is superior even to justice, not only to one's deeds and one's judges.
268
What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.
270
What does your conscience say? - "You shall become the person you are."*
* Nietzsche derived thsi motto from Pinday, Pyth. II, 73 and later gave his Ecce Homo the subtitle: "How one becomes what one is." Cf. also Hegel's formulation that "spirit...makes itself that which it is." Cf. Kaufmann, 159, and Hegel, section 60; also section 335 below, near the end.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
With a great goal. - With a great goal one is superior even to justice, not only to one's deeds and one's judges.
268
What makes one heroic? - Going out to meet at the same time one's highest suffering and one's highest hope.
270
What does your conscience say? - "You shall become the person you are."*
* Nietzsche derived thsi motto from Pinday, Pyth. II, 73 and later gave his Ecce Homo the subtitle: "How one becomes what one is." Cf. also Hegel's formulation that "spirit...makes itself that which it is." Cf. Kaufmann, 159, and Hegel, section 60; also section 335 below, near the end.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
Gay Science, section 335
Long live physics! - How many people know how to observe something? Of the few who do, how many observe themselves? "Everybody is farthest away - from himself";* all who try the reins know this to their chagrin, and the maxim "know thyself!" addressed to human beings by a god, is almost malicious. That the case of self-observation is indeed as desperate as that is attested best of all by the manner in which almost everybody talks about the essence of moral actions - this quick, eager, convinced, and garrulous manner with its expression, its smile, and its obliging ardor! One seems to have the wish to say to you: "But my dear friend, precisely this is my specialty. You have directed your question to the one person who is entitled to answer you. As it happens, there is nothing about which I am as wise as about this. To come to the point: when a human being judges 'this is right' and then infers 'therefore it must be done,' and then proceeds to do what he has thus recognized as right and designated as necessary - then the essence of his action is moral."
But my friend, you are speaking of three actions instead of one. When you judge "this is right," that is an action, too. Might it not be possible that one could judge in a moral and in an immoral manner? Why do you consider this, precisely this, right?
"Because this is what my conscience tells me; and the voice of conscience is never immoral, for it alone determines what is to be moral."
But why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? And what gives you the right to consider sucha judgment true and infallible? For this faith - is there no conscience for that? Have you never heard of an intellectual conscience?** A conscience behind your "conscience"? Your judgment "this is right" has a pre-history in your instincts, likes dislikes, experiences, and lack of experiences. "How did it originate there?" you must ask, and then also: "What is it that impels me to listen to it?" You can listen to its commands like a good soldier who hears his officer's command. Or like a woman who loves the man who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward who is afraid of the commander. Or like a dunderhead who obeys because no objection occurs to him. In short, there are a hundred ways in which you can listen to your conscience. But that you take this or that judgment for the voice of conscience - in other words, that you feel somethin to be right - may be due to the fact that you have never thoguht much about yourself and simply have accepted blindly that what you had been told ever since your childhood was right; or it may be due to the fact that what you call your duty has up to this point brought you sustenance and honors - and you consider it "right" because it appears to you as your own "condition of existence" (and that you have a right to existence seems irrefutable to you).
For all that, the firmness of your moral judgment could be evidence of your personal abjectness, of impersonality; your "moral strength" might have its source in your stubborness - or in your inability to envisage new ideals. And, briefly, if you had thought more subtly, observed better, and learned more, you certainly would not go on calling this "duty" of yours and this "conscience" of yours duty and conscience. Your understanding of the manner in which moral judgments have originated would spoil these grand words for you, just as other grand words, like "sin" and "salvation of the soul" and "redemption" have been spoiled for you. - And now don't cite the categorical imperative, my friend! This term tickles my ear and makes me laugh despite your serious presence. It makes me think of the old Kant who had obtained the "thing in itself" by stealth - another very ridiculous thing! - and was punished for this when the "categorical imperative" crept stealthily into his heart and led him astray - back to "God," "soul," "freedom," and "immortality," like a fox who loses his way and goes astray back into his cage. Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage!***
What? You admire the categorical imperative within you? This "firmness" of your so-called moral judgment? This "unconditional" feeling that "here everyone must judge as I do"? Rather admire your selfishness at this point. And the blindness, pettiness, and frugality of your selfishness. For it is selfish to experience one's own judgment as a universal law; and this selfishness is blind, petty, and frugal because it betrays that you have not yet discovered yourself nor created for yourself an ideal o your own, your very own - for that coudl never be somebody else's and much less that of all, all!
Anyone who still judges "in this case everybody would have to act like this" has not yet taken five steps toward self-knowledge. Otherwise he would know that there neither are nor can be actions that are the same; that every action that has ever been done was done in an altogether unique and irretrievable way, and that this will be equally true of every future action; that all regulations about actions relate only to their coarse exterior (even the most inward and subtle regulations of all moralities so far); that these regulations may lead to some semblance of sameness, but really only to some semblance; that as one contemplates or looks back upon any action at all, it is and remains impenetrable; that our opinions, valuations, and tables of what is good certainly belong among the most powerful levers in the involved mechanism of our actions, but that in any particular case the law of their mechanism is indemonstrable.
Let us therefore limit ourselves to the purification of our opinions and valuations and to the creation of our own new tables of what is good, and let us stop brooding about the "moral value of our actions"! Yes, my friends, regarding all the moral chatter of some about others it is time to feel nauseous. Sitting in moral judgment should offend our taste. Let us leave such chatter and such bad taste to those who have nothing else to do but drag the past a few steps further through time and who never live in the present - which is to say the many, the great majority. We, however, want to become those we are^ - human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense - while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics - our honesty!^^
*"Jeder ist sich selber der Fernste." Der Fernste (the farthest) is the opposite of der Naechste (the nearest), which is the word used in the German Bible where the English versions have the "neighbor."
**Cf. sections 2, 319, and 244
***Like most philosophers after Kant, Nietzsche believes that Kant was not entitled to the "thing in itself" and that this notion conradicts the central tenets of Kant's theory of knowledge. Most philosophers since Kant would also agree with Nietzsche that the doctrine of the categorical imperative, the core of Kant's ethics, is untenable; and in his ethics - specifically, in his Critique of Practical Reason - Kant "postulates" God, freedom and immortality, after having shown in his Critique of Pure Reason that all three are indemonstrable. While few philosophers have followed Kant at these points, Nietzsche's discussion is distinguished by its irreverent wit, which recalls the tone of Heine's On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (German 1st ed. 1835, 2nd ed. 1852).
^Cf. section 270 and 270n, above.
^^We might question the claim that in order to become autonomous "we must become physicists" and discover "everything that is lawful and necessary in the world." We might well wonder whether Nietzsche is using the term "physics" in some extended sense, comparable to the use of "chemistry" in the first section of Human, All-too-Human, which is entitled "Chemistry of Concepts and Sensations." There the problem is: "How can anything develop out of its opposite; for example...logic out of unlogic...living for others out of egoism, truth out of errors?" And the point is that "this chemistry" might lead to the result "that in this area, too, the most magnificent colors have been derived fro lowly, even despised materials. Now we might suppose that in "Long live physics!" Nietzsche is thinking of a "physics of moral feelings and judgments." But he is not.
What he argues in the penultimate paragraph above is that (a) no two actions can ever be the same actions; that (b) even those moral regulations which concern themselves with the inside of actions (with motives and feelings) really stay on the surface; that (d) our moral judgments are among the most important and "powerful" causes of our actions; but that (e) "in any particular case the law of their mechanism is indemonstrable."
Although this list does nto cover all of his points, it is clearly possible to accept some of these claims while questioning or denying others. One may grant (a) not only in the weak, tautologous sense but also in the strong and interesting sense that poses a problem for the kind of ethic that Jean-Paul Sartre proposed in "Existentialism is a Humanism" (reprinted in Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre); here Nietzsche is much more radical than Sartre; (b) is also plausible in a strong and interesting sense; (c) is less clear but means presumably that we can never be sure that any account of the causes and motivations of an action is true; something important may have been left out; and we cannot judge the relative importance or "power" of different causes and motives; (d) is remarkable because there are passages in which Nietzsche plays down the role of consciousness and treates it more like an epiphenomenon (see Kaufmann, 262-69); (e) does not presuppose any of the four preceding claims but is entirely compatible with all of them; and it is (e) that explains the introduction of physics in the final paragraph. Instead of passing moral judgments, we should "discover everythign that is lawful and necessary int he world." Why?
Even as one has to know physics to build airplanes and to make flying possible - apparently defying the laws o gravity - one also has to know physics to become autonomous: that is Nietzsche's point. Does the analogy hold? It would surely be much more plausible if Nietzsche had spoken of psychology instead of physics. Even "physiology" would have been more plausible, and "physics" seems farfetched unless we assume that what is meant is the study of nature (physis in Greek). Since Nietzsche himself did not turn to physics, it seems clear that he intended a sharp and inclusive contrast with metaphysics. Cf. section 293 and "we godless anti-metaphysicians" in sectoin 344; also Human, All-Too-Human, sections 6,9, and 18. His many contemptuous references to metaphysics invite comparison with the writings of positivists, but Nietzsche also questions the science, and specifically the physics, of his time - see Beyond Good and Evil, sections 14 and 22 (BWN, 211f. and 220f.) and The Will to Power, notes 623, 636, et passim.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
But my friend, you are speaking of three actions instead of one. When you judge "this is right," that is an action, too. Might it not be possible that one could judge in a moral and in an immoral manner? Why do you consider this, precisely this, right?
"Because this is what my conscience tells me; and the voice of conscience is never immoral, for it alone determines what is to be moral."
But why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? And what gives you the right to consider sucha judgment true and infallible? For this faith - is there no conscience for that? Have you never heard of an intellectual conscience?** A conscience behind your "conscience"? Your judgment "this is right" has a pre-history in your instincts, likes dislikes, experiences, and lack of experiences. "How did it originate there?" you must ask, and then also: "What is it that impels me to listen to it?" You can listen to its commands like a good soldier who hears his officer's command. Or like a woman who loves the man who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward who is afraid of the commander. Or like a dunderhead who obeys because no objection occurs to him. In short, there are a hundred ways in which you can listen to your conscience. But that you take this or that judgment for the voice of conscience - in other words, that you feel somethin to be right - may be due to the fact that you have never thoguht much about yourself and simply have accepted blindly that what you had been told ever since your childhood was right; or it may be due to the fact that what you call your duty has up to this point brought you sustenance and honors - and you consider it "right" because it appears to you as your own "condition of existence" (and that you have a right to existence seems irrefutable to you).
For all that, the firmness of your moral judgment could be evidence of your personal abjectness, of impersonality; your "moral strength" might have its source in your stubborness - or in your inability to envisage new ideals. And, briefly, if you had thought more subtly, observed better, and learned more, you certainly would not go on calling this "duty" of yours and this "conscience" of yours duty and conscience. Your understanding of the manner in which moral judgments have originated would spoil these grand words for you, just as other grand words, like "sin" and "salvation of the soul" and "redemption" have been spoiled for you. - And now don't cite the categorical imperative, my friend! This term tickles my ear and makes me laugh despite your serious presence. It makes me think of the old Kant who had obtained the "thing in itself" by stealth - another very ridiculous thing! - and was punished for this when the "categorical imperative" crept stealthily into his heart and led him astray - back to "God," "soul," "freedom," and "immortality," like a fox who loses his way and goes astray back into his cage. Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage!***
What? You admire the categorical imperative within you? This "firmness" of your so-called moral judgment? This "unconditional" feeling that "here everyone must judge as I do"? Rather admire your selfishness at this point. And the blindness, pettiness, and frugality of your selfishness. For it is selfish to experience one's own judgment as a universal law; and this selfishness is blind, petty, and frugal because it betrays that you have not yet discovered yourself nor created for yourself an ideal o your own, your very own - for that coudl never be somebody else's and much less that of all, all!
Anyone who still judges "in this case everybody would have to act like this" has not yet taken five steps toward self-knowledge. Otherwise he would know that there neither are nor can be actions that are the same; that every action that has ever been done was done in an altogether unique and irretrievable way, and that this will be equally true of every future action; that all regulations about actions relate only to their coarse exterior (even the most inward and subtle regulations of all moralities so far); that these regulations may lead to some semblance of sameness, but really only to some semblance; that as one contemplates or looks back upon any action at all, it is and remains impenetrable; that our opinions, valuations, and tables of what is good certainly belong among the most powerful levers in the involved mechanism of our actions, but that in any particular case the law of their mechanism is indemonstrable.
Let us therefore limit ourselves to the purification of our opinions and valuations and to the creation of our own new tables of what is good, and let us stop brooding about the "moral value of our actions"! Yes, my friends, regarding all the moral chatter of some about others it is time to feel nauseous. Sitting in moral judgment should offend our taste. Let us leave such chatter and such bad taste to those who have nothing else to do but drag the past a few steps further through time and who never live in the present - which is to say the many, the great majority. We, however, want to become those we are^ - human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To that end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators in this sense - while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics or were constructed so as to contradict it. Therefore: long live physics! And even more so that which compels us to turn to physics - our honesty!^^
*"Jeder ist sich selber der Fernste." Der Fernste (the farthest) is the opposite of der Naechste (the nearest), which is the word used in the German Bible where the English versions have the "neighbor."
**Cf. sections 2, 319, and 244
***Like most philosophers after Kant, Nietzsche believes that Kant was not entitled to the "thing in itself" and that this notion conradicts the central tenets of Kant's theory of knowledge. Most philosophers since Kant would also agree with Nietzsche that the doctrine of the categorical imperative, the core of Kant's ethics, is untenable; and in his ethics - specifically, in his Critique of Practical Reason - Kant "postulates" God, freedom and immortality, after having shown in his Critique of Pure Reason that all three are indemonstrable. While few philosophers have followed Kant at these points, Nietzsche's discussion is distinguished by its irreverent wit, which recalls the tone of Heine's On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (German 1st ed. 1835, 2nd ed. 1852).
^Cf. section 270 and 270n, above.
^^We might question the claim that in order to become autonomous "we must become physicists" and discover "everything that is lawful and necessary in the world." We might well wonder whether Nietzsche is using the term "physics" in some extended sense, comparable to the use of "chemistry" in the first section of Human, All-too-Human, which is entitled "Chemistry of Concepts and Sensations." There the problem is: "How can anything develop out of its opposite; for example...logic out of unlogic...living for others out of egoism, truth out of errors?" And the point is that "this chemistry" might lead to the result "that in this area, too, the most magnificent colors have been derived fro lowly, even despised materials. Now we might suppose that in "Long live physics!" Nietzsche is thinking of a "physics of moral feelings and judgments." But he is not.
What he argues in the penultimate paragraph above is that (a) no two actions can ever be the same actions; that (b) even those moral regulations which concern themselves with the inside of actions (with motives and feelings) really stay on the surface; that (d) our moral judgments are among the most important and "powerful" causes of our actions; but that (e) "in any particular case the law of their mechanism is indemonstrable."
Although this list does nto cover all of his points, it is clearly possible to accept some of these claims while questioning or denying others. One may grant (a) not only in the weak, tautologous sense but also in the strong and interesting sense that poses a problem for the kind of ethic that Jean-Paul Sartre proposed in "Existentialism is a Humanism" (reprinted in Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre); here Nietzsche is much more radical than Sartre; (b) is also plausible in a strong and interesting sense; (c) is less clear but means presumably that we can never be sure that any account of the causes and motivations of an action is true; something important may have been left out; and we cannot judge the relative importance or "power" of different causes and motives; (d) is remarkable because there are passages in which Nietzsche plays down the role of consciousness and treates it more like an epiphenomenon (see Kaufmann, 262-69); (e) does not presuppose any of the four preceding claims but is entirely compatible with all of them; and it is (e) that explains the introduction of physics in the final paragraph. Instead of passing moral judgments, we should "discover everythign that is lawful and necessary int he world." Why?
Even as one has to know physics to build airplanes and to make flying possible - apparently defying the laws o gravity - one also has to know physics to become autonomous: that is Nietzsche's point. Does the analogy hold? It would surely be much more plausible if Nietzsche had spoken of psychology instead of physics. Even "physiology" would have been more plausible, and "physics" seems farfetched unless we assume that what is meant is the study of nature (physis in Greek). Since Nietzsche himself did not turn to physics, it seems clear that he intended a sharp and inclusive contrast with metaphysics. Cf. section 293 and "we godless anti-metaphysicians" in sectoin 344; also Human, All-Too-Human, sections 6,9, and 18. His many contemptuous references to metaphysics invite comparison with the writings of positivists, but Nietzsche also questions the science, and specifically the physics, of his time - see Beyond Good and Evil, sections 14 and 22 (BWN, 211f. and 220f.) and The Will to Power, notes 623, 636, et passim.
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Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Gay Science, section 57
To the realists - You sober people who feel well armed against passion and fantasies and would like to turn your emptiness into a matter of pride and an ornament: you call yourselves realists and hint that the world really is the way it appears to you. As if reality stood unveiled before you only, and you yourselves were perhaps the best part of it - O you beloved images of Sais! But in your unveiled state are not even you still very passionate and dark creatures compared to fish, and still far too similar to an artist in love? And what is "reality" for an artist in love? You are still burdened with those estimates of things that have their origin in the passions and loves of former centuries. Your sobriety still contains a secret and inextinguishable drunkenness. Your love of "reality," for example - oh, that is a primeval "love." Every feeling and sensation contains a piece of this old love; and some fantasy, some prejudice, some unreason, some ignorance, some fear, and ever so much else has contributed to it and worked on it. That mountain there! That cloud there! What is "real" in that? Subtract the phantasm and every human contribution from it, my sober friends! If you can! If you can forget your descent, your past, your training - all of your humanity and animality. There is no "reality" for us - not for you either, my sober friends. We are not nearly as different as you think, and perhaps our good will to transcend intoxication is as respectable as your fatih that you are altogether incapable of intoxication.
*
Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation
*
Copied from Walter Kaufmann's 1974 translation
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Beyond Good and Evil, section 19
"Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world...Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word - and it is precisely in this one word that the popular prejudice lurks, which has defeated the always inadequate caution of philosophers. So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let us say that in all willing there is, first, a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the state "away from which," the sensation of the state "towards which," the sensations of this "from" and "towards" themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting into motion "arms and legs," begins its action by force of habit as soon as we "will" anything.
Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, secondly, should thinking also: in every act o the will there is a ruling thought - let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the "willing," as if any will would them remain over!
Third, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of the command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey" - this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look that fixes itself exclusively on one aim, the unconditional evaluation that "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered - and whatever else belongs to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience."
to be continued...
Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, secondly, should thinking also: in every act o the will there is a ruling thought - let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the "willing," as if any will would them remain over!
Third, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of the command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey" - this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look that fixes itself exclusively on one aim, the unconditional evaluation that "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered - and whatever else belongs to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience."
to be continued...
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Beyond Good and Evil - Preface
"But the fight against Plato or...the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millenia...has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of which had never yet existed on earth: with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals.
"...we good Europeans* and free, very free spirits - we still feel it, the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of its bow. And perhaps also the arrow, the task, and - who knows? - the goal -"
*Nietzsche's coinage, intiially introduced by him in Human, All-Too-Human (1878), section 475 (Portable Nietzsche, pp. 61-63).
[From Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann, pp. 193-194]
"...we good Europeans* and free, very free spirits - we still feel it, the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of its bow. And perhaps also the arrow, the task, and - who knows? - the goal -"
*Nietzsche's coinage, intiially introduced by him in Human, All-Too-Human (1878), section 475 (Portable Nietzsche, pp. 61-63).
[From Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann, pp. 193-194]
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