01. CHAPTER I
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
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 Oedipus 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 recognized, 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 among 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 maiserie, 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
auto-biography; 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 practiced 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
philosophize. 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 clock-work, 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! He, 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:
Adventavit 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 generalism 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 tyrannize over
yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow
herself to be tyrannized 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 today, 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 a
sure 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 today; 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 skeptical
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 Tubingen 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
today. 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 Moliere,
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 artiste, 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 while 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 of 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 today 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 analyze 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: "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 emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly
recognized 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
recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognized; 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 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 MOI. 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-recognizing, a
remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient
common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly
grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest
order. The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and
German philosophizing 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
naturalize 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 "casual-
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
souffrance 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 naively 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 maitre"--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 recognize 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 travelers and adventurers, and the
psychologist who thus "makes a sacrifice"--it is not the
sacrifizio dell' intelletto, on the contrary!--will at least be
entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be
recognized 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.