公 法 评 论 |
惟愿公平如大水滚滚,使公义如江河滔滔! |
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
FIRST CHAPTER.
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
by Friedrich Nietzsche (1885)
1.
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the
famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect,
what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing,
questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it
were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose
patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to
ask questions ourselves? Who is it really that puts questions to us here?
What really is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long
halt at the question as to the origin of this Will - until at last we came
to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired
about the value of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: why not rather
untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth
presented itself before us - or was it we who presented ourselves before the
problem? Which of us is the ?dipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to
be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed
that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before,
as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and risk raising
it. For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.
2.
"How could anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth
out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous
deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out
of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool,
nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different
origin, an origin of their own - in this transitory, seductive, illusory,
paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their
source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed
God, in the 'Thing-in-itself' - there must be their source, and nowhere else!"
- This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians
of all times can be recognised, this mode of valuation is at the back of all
their logical procedure; through this "belief" of theirs, they exert
themselves for their "knowledge," for something that is in the end
solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of metaphysicians
is the belief in antitheses of values. It never occurred even to the wariest
of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most
necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, "de omnibus dubitandum."
For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly,
whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians
have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely
provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps
from below - "frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression
current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the
true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher
and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence,
to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible
that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists
precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these
evil and apparently opposed things - perhaps even in being essentially identical
with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous
"Perhapses"! For that investigation one must await the advent of
a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations,
the reverse of those hitherto prevalent - philosophers of the dangerous "Perhaps"
in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new
philosophers beginning to appear.
3.
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines
long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking
must be counted amongst the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the
case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned
anew about heredity and "innateness." As little as the act of birth
comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just
as little is "being-conscious" opposed to the instinctive in any
decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher
is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels.
And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations,
or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a
definite mode of life. For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth": such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding be only
superficial valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary
for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that
man is not just the "measure of things.".
4.
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here,
perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how
far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps
species-rearing; and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest
opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most
indispensable to us; that without a recognition of logical fictions, without
a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and
immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live - that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation
of life, a negation of life. To recognise untruth as a condition of life:
that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous
manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed
itself beyond good and evil.
5.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly,
is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are - how often and easily
they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike
they are, - but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas
they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness
is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real
opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold,
pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics,
who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"); whereas, in fact,
a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments
sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded
as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they
dub "truths," and very far from having the conscience which bravely
admits this to itself; very far from having the good taste of the courage
which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or
foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery
of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic
by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"
- makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying
out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more
so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has as
it were clad his philosophy in mail and mask - in fact, the "love of
his wisdom," to translate the term fairly and squarely - in order thereby
to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to
cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene: - how much of
personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse
betray!
6.
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now
has consisted of - namely, the confession of its originator, and a species
of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral
(or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ
out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how
the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived
at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality
do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse
to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse,
here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!)
as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with
a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii
(or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practised philosophy
at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too
glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate
lord over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as such,
attempts to philosophise. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case
of really scientific men it may be otherwise - "better," if you
will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge,"
some kind of small, independent clockwork, which, when well wound up, works
away industriously to that end, without the rest of the scholarly impulses
taking any material part therein. The actual "interests" of the
scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction - in the family,
perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent
at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful
young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist;
he is not characterised by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the
contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal, and above all, his morality
furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is, - that is to say,
in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other,
7.
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the
joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists: he called
them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it; the word
signifies "Flatterers of Dionysius" - consequently, tyrants' accessories
and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They
are all actors, there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax
was a popular name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach
that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the
mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters - of which
Epicurus was not a master. The, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed
in his little garden at Athens and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out
of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years
to find out who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8.
There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of
the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient
mystery:
Adventaavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus
9.
You desire to live "according to Nature "? Oh, you noble Stoics,
what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly
extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without
pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves
indifference as a power - how could you live in accordance with such indifference?
To live - is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?
Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring
to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according
to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life
- how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what
you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise
with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in
Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players
and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals
to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist
that it shall be Nature "'according to the Stoa," and would like
everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification
and generalisation of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced
yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see
Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to
see it otherwise - and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives
you the Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannise over yourselves
- Stoicism is self-tyranny - Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannised
over: is not the Stoic a part of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting
story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens to-day, as
soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the
world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical
impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation
of the world," the will to the causa prima.
10.
The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with which the problem
of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout
Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a
"Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly
boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have
happened that such a Will to Truth - a certain extravagant and adventurous
pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope - has participated therein:
that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to
a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical
fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in assured nothing,
rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign
of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing
such a virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side against
appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they
rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of
the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently,
allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does
one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?), - who knows if
they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even
securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times,
perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in
short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously
and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is distrust of
these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that
has been constructed yesterday and to-day; there is perhaps some slight admixture
of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the bric-a-brac of ideas
of the most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws
on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness
and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing
either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it seems to me that we
should agree with those sceptical anti-realists and knowledge microscopists
of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from modern reality,
is unrefuted. what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing
about them is not that they wish to go "back," but that they wish
to get away therefrom. A little more strength, swing, courage, and artistic
power, and they would be off - and not back!
11.
It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention
from the actual influence which Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially
to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kant was first and
foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This
is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics."
Let us only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having discovered
a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori: Granting
that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing
of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager
rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something - at all
events "new faculties" - of which to be still prouder!" - But
let us reflect for a moment - it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic
judgments a priori possible?" Kant asks himself - and what is really
his answer? "By means of a means (faculty)" - but unfortunately
not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display
of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight
of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. People were
beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached
its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man - for at that
time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard
fact." Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians
of the Tübingen institution went immediately into the groves - all seeking
for "faculties." And what did they not find - in that innocent,
rich, and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism,
the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between
"finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the
"transcendental "; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition,
and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined
Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric
movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised
itself so boldly in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously,
or even treat it with moral indignation Enough, however - the world grew older,
and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and
they still rub them to-day. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost
- old Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)" - he had said, or at
least meant to say. But, is that - an answer? An explanation? Or is it not
rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By
means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the
doctor in Molière,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace
the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?"
by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments necessary?"
- in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments
must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures
like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! Or,
more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily - synthetic judgments a priori
should not "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our
mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in
their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging
to the perspective view of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous
influence which "German philosophy" - I hope you understand its
right to inverted commas (goosefeet)? - has exercised throughout the whole
of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain virtus dormitiva had a share in
it; thanks to German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the
virtuous, the mystics, the artists, the three-fourths Christians, and the
political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming
sensualism which overflowed from the last century into this, in short - "sensus
assoupire.".
12.
As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best refuted theories that
have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the learned
world so unscholarly as to attach serious signification to it, except for
convenient everyday use (as an abbreviation of the means of expression) -
thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto
been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For whilst
Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the
earth does not stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in
the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth - the belief in "substance,"
in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle - atom: it is the
greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One
must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the
knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous
after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated
"metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing
stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught
best and longest, the soul-atomism. Let it be permitted to designate by this
expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible,
eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled
from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of
"the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most
venerated hypotheses - as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists,
who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way
is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such
conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul as subjective multiplicity,"
and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want
henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the new psychologist
is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished
with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really,
as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust - it is
possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time
of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned
to invent - and, who knows? perhaps to discover the new.
13.
Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of
self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing
seeks above all to discharge its strength - life itself is Will to Power;
self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.
In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of superfluous teleological
principles! - one of which is the instinct of self- preservation (we owe it
to Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which
must be essentially economy of principles.
14.
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is
only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may say
so!) and not a world-explanation; but in so far as it is based on belief in
the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded
as more - namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own, it
has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly,
persuasively, and convincingly upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes
- in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular
sensualism. What is clear, what is "explained "? Only that which
can be seen and felt - one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely,
however, the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an aristocratic
mode, consisted precisely in resistance to obvious sense-evidence - perhaps
among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries,
but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them: and
this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they threw over
the motley whirl of the senses - the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In
this overcoming of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner
of Plato, there was an enjoyment different from that which the physicists
of to-day offer us - and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among
the physiological workers, with their principle of the "smallest possible
effort," and the greatest possible blunder. "Where there is nothing
more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do" -
that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may
notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists
and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing but rough work to perform.
15.
To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that
the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy;
as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least
as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? And others
say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body,
as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then
our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that
this is a complete reductio ad absurdum, if the conception causa sui is something
fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is not the work of
our organs -?
16.
There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate
certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition
of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will "; as though cognition here got
hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without
any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object.
I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty,"
as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself,"
involve a contradictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves from
the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that
cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself:
"When I analyse the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,'
I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which
would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think,
that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an
activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause,
that there is an "ego," and finally, that it is already determined
what is to be designated by thinking - that I know what thinking is. For if
I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could
I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing'
or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I compare my
state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order
to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with
further 'knowledge,' it has at any rate no immediate certainty for me."
- In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may
believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical
questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect,
to wit: "From whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? Why do I believe
in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an 'ego,' and even
of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego ' as cause of thought?"
He who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal
to a sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, "I think,
and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain" - will encounter
a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir,"
the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable
that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the truth?"
17.
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasising
a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognised by these credulous minds
- namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I"
wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the
subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think."
One thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego,"
is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not
an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with
this "one thinks" - even the "one" contains an interpretation
of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here
according to the usual grammatical formula - "To think is an activity;
every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the
operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and
out of which it operates - the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt
at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps
some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view,
to get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego"
has refined itself).
18.
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is
precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the
hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence
to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong
enough to refute it.
19.
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known
thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the
will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without
deduction or addition. But it again and again seems to me that in this case
Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing - he
seems to have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing - seems
to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only
in name - and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which
has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all
ages.
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical ": let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition "away from which we go," the sensation of the condition "towards which we go," the sensation of this "from" and "towards" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs," commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognised as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought; - and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the "willing," as if the will would then remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect 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 which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered - and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will, - this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term "I ": a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing - to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command - consequently obedience, and therefore action - was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were there a necessity of effect; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. "Freedom of Will" - that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order - who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls - indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls - to his feelings of delight as commander. L'effet c'est mon: what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls"; on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such within the sphere of morals - regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself.
20.
That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously
evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other; that,
however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought,
they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members
of the fauna of a Continent - is betrayed in the end by the circumstance:
how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite
fundamental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they
always revolve once more in the same orbit; however independent of each other
they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something
within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the one after
the other - to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas
Their thinking is in fact far less a discovery than a re-recognising, a remembering,
a return and a homecoming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul,
out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophising is so far a kind of
atavism of the highest order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian,
Greek, and German philosophising is easily enough explained. In fact, where
there is affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar -
I mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical
functions - it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for
a similar development and succession of philosophical systems; just as the
way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation.
It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic
languages (where the conception of the subject is least developed? Look otherwise
"into the world," and will be found on paths of thought different
from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical
functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial
conditions. - So much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard
to the origin of ideas,
21.
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived,
it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride
of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this
very folly. The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative,
metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds
of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility
for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance,
and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa
sui; and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence
by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out
in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free
will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his
"enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the
contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will ": I mean "non-free
will," which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. One should
not wrongly materialise "cause" and "effect," as the natural
philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalise in thinking at present),
according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press
and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause"
and "effect" only as pure conceptions, that is to say, as conventional
fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding, - not for
explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "causal-connection,"
of "necessity!" or of "psychological non-freedom" there
the effect does not follow the cause, there "law" does not obtain.
It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity,
constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret
and intermix this symbol-world, as "being in itself," with things,
we act once more as we have always acted - mythologically. The "non-free
will" is mythology; in real life it is only a question of strong and
weak wills. - It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself,
when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological
necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness,
oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings - the
person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the
"non-freedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely
opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will
not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves,
the personal right to their merits, at any price (the vain races belong to
this class); others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything,
or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to get
out of the business, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are
in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic
sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism
of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "la
religion de la souffrrance humaine"; that is its "good taste."
22.
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief
of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but "Nature's conformity
to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though - why, it
exists only owing to your interpretation and bad "philology." It
is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a na?vely humanitarian
adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions
to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! "Everywhere equality
before the law - Nature is not different in that respect, nor better than
we :" a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism
to everything privileged and autocratic - likewise a second and more refined
atheism - is once more disguised. "Ni dieu, ni ma?tre" - that, also,
is what you want; and therefore "Cheers for natural law!" - is it
not so? But, as has been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody
might come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation,
could read out of the same "Nature," and with regard to the same
phenomena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement
of the claims of power - an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness
and unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before your eyes, that
almost every word, and the word "tyranny" itself, would eventually
seem unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor - as being too
human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this
world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable"
course, not, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely
lacking, and every power effects its ultimate consequences every moment. Granted
that this also is only interpretation - and you will be eager enough to make
this objection? - well, so much the better.
23.
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities,
it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable
to recognise in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which
has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the
notion of psychology as the Morphology and Development-doctrine of the Will
to Power, as I conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has penetrated
deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent
and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive,
blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend
with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the
heart" against it: even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness
of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as refined
immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience -
still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad
ones. If, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy,
covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors
which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy
of life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further
developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from sea-sickness.
And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in
this immense and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge; and there are in
fact a hundred good reasons why every one should keep away from it who can
do so! On the other hand, if one has once drifted hither with one's bark,
well! very good! now let us set our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and
keep our hand fast on the helm! We sail away right over morality, we crush
out, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make
our voyage thither - but what do we matter! Never yet did a profounder world
of insight reveal itself to daring travellers and adventurers, and the psychologist
who thus "makes a sacrifice" - it is not the sacrifzio dell' intelletto,
on the contrary! - will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology
shall once more be recognised as the queen of the sciences, for whose service
and equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology is once more the path
to the fundamental problems.
Source:Beyond Good and Evil, from Nietzsche's Complete Works, Gordon Press, translated by Helen Zimmern (1974). Just the first chapter reproduced here.