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01 - Prejudices of Philosophers - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche · Logic Library

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This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Beyond Good
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and Evil by Frederic Nietzsche, Chapter one, Prejudices of Philosophers, read by
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Hugh Maguire one. The will to truth, which is to tempt us to
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many a hazardous enterprise, the famous truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken
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with respect. What questions has this will to truth not laid before us?
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What strange, perplexing, questionable questions? It is already a long story,
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yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if
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we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away, that
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the Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves. Who is it really
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that puts questions to us here? What really is this will to truth?
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In us? In fact, we made a long halt at the questions as
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to the origin of this will, until at last we came to an absolute
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standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the value of this
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will. Granted that we want the truth, why not rather untruth and uncertainty,
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even ignorance. The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us?
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Or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us
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is the Oedipus? Here which the sphinx? It would seem to be a
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rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it
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at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before,
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as if we were the first to discern it, Get a sight of it,
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and risk raising it, For there is risk in raising it, perhaps
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there is no greater risk. Two, How could anything originate out of its
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opposite? For example, truth out of error, or the will to truth
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out of the will to deception, or the generous deed out of selfishness,
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or the pure sun bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness. Such
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genesis is impossible. Whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay worse than
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a fool. Things of the highest value must have a different origin, an
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origin of their own. In this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world,
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in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source,
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but rather in the lap of being, in the intransitory, in the concealed
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God, in the thing in itself, there must be their source, and
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nowhere else. This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of
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all times can be recognized. This mode of valuation is at the back of
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all their logical procedure. Through this belief of theirs, they exert themselves for
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their knowledge for something that is, in the end solemnly christened the truth.
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The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in antithesis of values. It never
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occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here, on the very threshold
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where doubt, however, was most necessary, though they had made a solemn
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vow de omnibus dubitundum. For it may be doubted firstly whether antithesis exists at
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all, and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antithesis of value upon which
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metaphysicians have set their seal are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives,
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besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below frog perspectives,
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as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of
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all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the
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unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life
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generally should be assigned to pretense, to the will, to delusion, to
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selfishness and cupidity. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of
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those good and respected things consists precisely in their being insidiously related, natted,
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and crotcheted to these evil and apparently opposed things, perhaps even in being essentially
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identical with them. Perhaps, But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous
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perhapses that investigation One must await the advent of a new order of philosophers,
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such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent
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philosophers of the dangerous, perhaps in every sense of the term, and to
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speak, in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear.
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Three. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their
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lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious
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thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in
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the case of philosophical thinking, one has here to learn anew as one learned
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new about heredity and innateness. As little as the act of birth comes into
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consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is being
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conscious opposed the instinctive in any decisive sense. The greater part of the conscious
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thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts and forced into definite channels.
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And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations,
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or, to speak more plainly, physiological demands for the maintenance of a
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definite mode of life, for example, that the certain is worth more than
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the uncertain, that the illusion is less valuable than the truth. Such valuations,
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in spite of their regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding, be only
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superficial valuations, special kinds of mayiseri, such as may be necessary for the
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maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing in effect, that man is not
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just the measure of things. Four, the falseness of an opinion is not
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for us any objection to it. It is here, perhaps that our new
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language sounds most strangely, the question is how far an opinion is life furthering,
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life, persevering, species persevering, perhaps species rearing. And we are
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fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions to which the synthetic judgments a priority
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belong, are the most indispensable to us. That without a recognition of logical
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fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute
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and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
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man could not live. That the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation
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of life, a negation of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of
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life, that is certainly to impunge the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous
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manner. And a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed
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itself beyond good and evil. Five. That which causes philosophers to be regarded
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half distrustfully and half mockingly is not the oft repeated discovery, how innocent they
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are, how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way. In
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short, how childish and childlike they are. But that there is not enough
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honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when
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the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all
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pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self evolving
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of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic. In contrast to all sorts
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of mystics, who fairer and foolisher talk of inspiration, whereas in fact a
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prejudice, proposition, idea, or suggestion, which is generally their heart's desire,
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abstracted and refined, is defended by them, with arguments sought out after
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the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as
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such, generally astute defenders also of their prejudices, which they dub truths,
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and very far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very
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far from having the good taste of the courage, which goes so far as
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to let this be understood, perhaps to warm friend or foe, or in
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ch cheerful confidence and self grecule. The spectacle of the tartufery of old Kant,
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equally stiff and decent with which he entices us into the dialectic byways that
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lead more correctly mislead to his categorical imperative. Makes us fasidious ones smile,
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we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists
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and ethical preachers, or still more so the hocus pocus in mathematical form,
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by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in
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male and mask in fact the love of his wisdom to translate the term fairly
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and squarely, in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of
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the assailant, who should dare to cast a glance on the invincible maiden that
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pallis athene. How much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a
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sickly recluse betray six It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy
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up till now has consisted of, namely the confession of its originator and a
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species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography. And moreover that the moral or immoral purpose
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in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ, out of which the entire
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plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusist metaphysical assertions of
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a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well and wise to first
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ask oneself what morality do they or does he aim at? Accordingly, I
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do not believe that an impulse to knowledge is the father of philosophy, but
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that another impulse here is elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge, and
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mistaken knowledge as an instrument. But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with
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a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring Jenny or
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as demons and Cobald's, will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one
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time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too
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glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord
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over all other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as such attempts
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to philosophye. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the
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case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise better if you will there
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there may really be such a thing as an impulse to knowledge, some kind
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of small, independent clockwork which when well wound up, works away industriously to
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that end, without the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.
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The actual interests of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another
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direction, in the family, perhaps, or in money making, or in
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politics. It is in fact almost indifferent at what point of research his little
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machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist,
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a mushroom specialist, or a chemist. He is not characterized by becoming this
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or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing
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impersonal, and above all his morality furnishes a decide and decisive testimony as to
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who he is. That is to say, in what order the deepest impulses
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of his nature stand to each other. Seven How malicious philosophers can be,
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I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurius took the liberty of making
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on Plato and Platonists. He called them Dionysio colakes in its original sense,
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and on the face of it, the word signifies flatterers of Dionysius. Consequently,
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tyrants, accessories, and lickspittles. Besides this, however, it is
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as much to say they are all actors. There is nothing genuine about them.
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For Dionysio Collas was a popular name for an actor, and the latter
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is really the malignant reproach that Epicurius cast upon Plato. He was annoyed by
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the grandiose manner the Mesoncene's style, of which Plato and his scholars were masters,
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of which Epicurius was not a master. He the old school teacher of
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Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens and wrote three hundred
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books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato. Who knows Greece
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took a hundred years to find out who the garden god Epicurius really was.
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Did she ever find out? Eight? There is a point in every philosophy
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at which the conviction of the philosopher appears on the scene. Or, to
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put it in the words of the ancient mystery aventavit Asinos pulker A fortissimus.
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Nine you desire to live according to nature, Oh, you noble stoics,
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What fraud of words? Imagine to yourselves indifference as a power? How could
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you live in accordance with such indifference? To live, is not that just
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endeavoring to be otherwise than this? Nature is not living valuing, preferring being
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unjust being limited, endeavoring to be different. And granted that your imperative living
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according to nature means actually the same as living according to life, how could
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you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves
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are and must be in reality? However, it is quite otherwise with you.
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While you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law and nature,
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you want something quite contrary. You extraordinary stage players and self deluds in
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your pride. You wish to dictate your morals and ideals to nature, to
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nature herself, and to incorporate them therein. You insist that it shall be
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nature according to the Stoa, and would like everything to be made after your
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own image, as a vast eternal glorification and generalism of stoicism. With all
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your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently,
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and with hypnotic rigidity, to see nature falsely, that is to say,
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stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise, and to
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crown all some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the belamite hope that because you are able
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to tyrannize over yourselves, stoicism is self tyranny. Nature will also allow herself
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to be tyrannized over. Is not the stoic a part of nature? But
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this is an old and everlasting story. What happened in old times with the
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stoic still happens today. As soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in
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itself, it always creates the world in its own image. It cannot do
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otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual will to power,
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the will to creation of the world, the will to cause a prima
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ten, the eerness and subtle, I should even say, craftiness with which
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the problem of the real and the apparent world is dealt with. At present,
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throughout Europe furnishes food for thought and attention, And he who hears only
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a will to truth in the background and nothing else cannot certainly boast of the
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sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that
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such a will to truth a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition
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of the forlorn hope has participated therein that which, in the end always prefers
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a handful of certainty to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities. There may even
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be puritanical fanatics of conscience who prefer to put their last trust in assure nothing
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rather than in an uncertain something. But that is nihilism and the sign of
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a despairing, morally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue made
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as say. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier
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thinkers, who are still eager for life, in that they side against appearance
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and speak superciliously of perspective, in that they rank the credibility of their own
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bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that the earth stands
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still, and thus apparently allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape. For
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what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body. Who
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knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an
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even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times.
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Perhaps the immortal soul, perhaps the old God, in short, ideas
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by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and
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more joyously than by modern ideas. There is distrust of these modern ideas in
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this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed
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yesterday and today. There is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn which
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can no longer endure the BRITA bract of ideas of the most varied origin,
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such as so called positivism at present throws on the market a disgust at the
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more refined taste, at the village fair motliness and patchiness of all these reality
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philosophasters in whom there is nothing either new or true except this motleliness. Therein,
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it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti realists and
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knowledge microscopists of the present day. Their instinct which repels them from modern reality
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is unrefuted. What do their retrograde bypaths concern us? The main thing about
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them is not that they wish to go back, but that they wish to
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get away therefrom little more strength, swing, courage, and artistic power,
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and they would be off and not back eleven. It seems to me that
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there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence which
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Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which he
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set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his table of categories.
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With it in his hand, he said, this is the most difficult
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thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics. Let us only understand
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this could be. He was proud of having discovered a new faculty in Man,
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the faculty of synthetic judgment, a priory granting that he deceived himself in
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this matter. The development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his
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pride and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover, if possible,
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something at all events, new faculties of which to be still prouder.
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But let us reflect for a moment it is high time to do so.
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How are synthetic judgments a priority possible? Kant asks himself, and what is
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really his answer by means of a means faculty, But unfortunately not in five
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words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German profundity
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and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niazeri a lamande
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involved in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this new
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faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered a moral faculty
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in Man, for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling
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in the politics of hard fact. Then came the honeymoon of German philosophy.
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All the young theologians of the Tubigene Institution went immediately into the groves, all
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seeking for faculties. And what did they not find in that innocent, rich
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and still youthful period of the German spirit to which Romanticism the malicious fairy piped
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and sang when one could not yet distinguish between finding and inventing. Above all
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a faculty for the transcendental shell ichristened it intellectual intuition and thereby gratified the most
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earnest longings of the naturally pious incline Germans. One can do no greater wrong
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to the whole of this exuberant and ecstatic movement, which was really youthfulness,
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notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly in hoary and senile conceptions than to take
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it seriously or even treat it with moral indignation. However, the world grew
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older and the dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads,
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and they still rubbed today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost
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old kant by means of a means faculty, he had said, or at
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least meant to say. But is that an answer, an explanation, or
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is it not rather merely a repetition of the question, how does opium induce
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sleep? By means of a faculty? Namely, the virtuous dormitiva, replies
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the doctor in moliere kia s in eovitrus dormitiva kujus s natura census asuper.
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But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time
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to replace the Kantian question, how are synthetic judgments a priori possible? By
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another question, why is belief in such judgments necessary? In effect, it
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is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be
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true for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves. Though they still
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might naturally be false judgments or more plainly spoken and roughly and readily synthetic judgments,
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a priority should not be possible at all. We have no right to
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them in our mouths. They are nothing but false judgments. Only, of
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course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular
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evidence belonging to the prospective view of life. And finally, to call to
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mind the enormous influence which German philosophy I hope you understand its right to inverted
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commas goose feet, has exercised throughout the whole of Europe. There is no
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doubt that a certain virtuous dormitiva had a share in it thanks to German philosophy.
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It was a delight to the noble, idlers, the virtuous, the
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mystics, the artiste, the three fourths Christians, and the political obscurantists of
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all nations to find an antidote to the still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the
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last centrally into this in short census asupire twelve. As regards materialistic atomism,
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It is one of the best refuted theories that have been advanced, and in
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Europe there is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to
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attach serious signification to it, except for convenient everyday use as an abbreviation of
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the means of expression. Thanks chiefly to the pole Boskovich, he and the
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pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence.
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For while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses,
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that the Earth does not stand fast, Boskovich has taught us to abjure the
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belief in the last thing that stood fast of the Earth, the belief in
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substance in matter, in the earth residum and particle atom. It is the
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greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on Earth. One must,
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however, go still further and also declare war, relentless war to the
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knife against the atomistic requirements, which still lead a dangerous after life in places
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where no one suspects them, Like the more celebrated metaphysical requirements. One must
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also, above all give the finishing stroke to that other more portentous atomism,
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which Christianity has taught best and longest, the soul atomism. Let it be
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permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something in
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destruction, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon. This
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belief ought to be expelled from science between ourselves. It is not at all
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necessary to get rid of the soul thereby, and thus renounce one of the
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oldest and most venerated hypotheses. Has happened frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists,
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who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way
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is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul hypothesis, and such conceptions
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as mortal soul and soul of subjective multiplicity, and soul as social structure of
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the instincts and passions want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that
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new psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished
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with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul. He is really,
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as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust,
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it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of
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it. Eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned
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to invent, and who knows, perhaps to discover the new thirteen Psychologists should
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bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self preservation, As the cardinal instinct
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of an organic being, a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength.
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Life itself is will to power. Self preservation is only one of the
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indirect and most frequent results thereof. In short, here as everywhere else,
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let us beware of superfluous teleological principles, one of which is the instinct of
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self preservation. We owe it to Spinosa's inconsistency. It is thus, in
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effect that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles fourteen. It
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is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is only a
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world exposition and world arrangement according to us if I may say so, and
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not a world explanation. But in so far as it is based on belief
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in the senses, it is regarded as more and for a long time to
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come must be regarded as more namely, as an explanation. It has eyes
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and fingers of its own. It has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own.
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This operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly upon an age with fundamentally plebeian
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tastes. In fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular
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sensualism. What is clear, what is explained, only that which can be
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seen and felt. One must peruse a every problem thus far. Aversely,
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however, the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an aristocratic
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mode, consisted precisely in resistance to obvious sense evidence, perhaps among men who
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enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how
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to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them, and this by means
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of pale, cold, gray conceptual networks, which they threw over the motley
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whirl of the senses, the mob of the senses. As Plato said,
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in this Overcoming of the World and interpreting of the World. In the manner
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of Plato, there was an enjoyment different from that which the physicist of today
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offer us, and likewise the Darwinists and anti teleologists among the physiological workers,
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with their principle of the smallest possible effort and the greatest possible blunder. Where
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there is nothing more to see or grasp, there is also nothing more for
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men to do. That is certainly an imperative different from the platonic one,
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but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of
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machinists and bridge builders of the future, who have nothing but rough work to
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perform. Fifteen. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist
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on the fact that the sense organs are not phenomena in the sense of the
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idealistic philosophy. As such, they certainly could not be causes sensualism therefore,
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at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as euristic principle. What and others
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say even that the external world is the work of our organs, but then
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our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work
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of our organs. But then our organs themselves would be the work of our
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organs. It seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum.
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If the conception causa sui is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world
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is not the work of our organs. Sixteen. There are still harmless self
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observers who believe that there are immediate certainties. For instance, I think,
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or as a superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, I will, as though cognition
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here got hold of its object purely and simply as the thing in itself,
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without any falsification taking place, either on the part of the subject or the
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object. I would repeat it, however a hundred times that immediate certainty,
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as well as absolute knowledge and the thing in its involve a contradictio in adjecto.
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We really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words. The
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people, on their part, may think that cognition is knowing all about things,
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But the philosopher must say to himself, when I analyze the process that
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is expressed in the sentence, I think, I find a whole series of
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daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible.
33:31
For instance, that it is I who think that there must necessarily be something
33:38
that thinks that thinking is an activity and an operation on the part of a
33:45
being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ego,
33:50
and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking?
33:55
That I know what thinking is. For if I had not already done
34:00
sided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that
34:05
which is just happening is not perhaps willing or feeling? In short, the
34:08
assertion I think assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other
34:15
states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is.
34:20
On account of this retrospective connection with further knowledge, it has at any rate
34:24
no immediate certainty for me, in place of the immediate certainty in which the
34:32
people may believe in the special case. The philosopher thus finds a series of
34:37
metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit,
34:45
whence did I get this notion of thinking? Why do I believe in
34:50
cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ego and
34:54
even of an ego as cause, and finally of an ego as cause of
35:00
thought? He who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal
35:06
to a sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, I think
35:09
and I know that this at least is true, actual, and certain,
35:15
will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher. Nowadays,
35:20
sir, the philosopher will perhaps given to understand, it is improbable that you
35:24
are not mistaken, But why should it be the truth? Seventeen With regard
35:32
to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small,
35:38
terse fact which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds, namely, that a
35:45
thought comes when it wishes, and not when I wish. So that it
35:51
is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject I
35:55
is the condition of the predicate think one thinks, but that this one is
36:05
precisely the famous old ego is to put it, mildly, only a supposition,
36:09
an assertion, and assuredly not an immediate certainty. After all, one
36:15
has even gone too far with this, one thinks, even the one contains
36:21
an interpretation of the process and does not belong to the process itself. One
36:27
infers here, according to the usual grammatical formula to think is an activity.
36:32
Every activity requires an agency that is active. Consequently, it was pretty much
36:38
the same lines that the older atomists sought. Besides the operating power the material
36:46
particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates the atom. More rigorous
36:52
minds, however, learned it last to get along without this earth residium.
36:58
And perhaps someday we shall accusts to ourselves, even from the logician's point of
37:01
view, to get along without the little one to which the worthy old ego
37:07
has refined itself. Eighteen. It is certainly not the least charm of a
37:13
theory that it is refutable. It is precisely thereby that it attracts the more
37:19
subtle minds. It seems that the hundred times refuted theory of the free will
37:25
owes its persistence to this charm alone. Someone is always appearing who feels himself
37:32
strong enough to refute it. Nineteen. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the
37:39
will as though it were the best known thing in the world. Indeed,
37:44
Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us,
37:49
absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and
37:54
again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are
38:00
in the habit of doing. He seems to have adopted a popular prejudice and
38:06
exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something
38:12
that is a unity only in name. And it is precisely in a name
38:17
that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of
38:23
philosophers in all ages. So let us for once be more cautious. Let
38:29
us be unphilosophical. Let us say that in all willing there is firstly a
38:34
plurality of sensations, namely the sensation of the condition away from which we go,
38:42
the sensation of the condition towards which we go, the sensation of this
38:47
from and towards itself. And then besides an accompanying muscular sensation, which,
38:55
even without our putting in motion arms and legs, commences its action by force
39:01
of habit. Directly we will anything therefore, just as sensations, and indeed
39:09
many kinds of sensations are to be recognized as ingredients of the will. So
39:15
in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized in every act of
39:22
the will, there is a ruling thought. And let us not imagine it
39:27
possible to sever this thought from the willing, as if the will would then
39:32
remain over. In the third place, the will is not only a complex
39:39
of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in
39:44
fact the emotion of the command, that which is termed freedom of the will
39:49
is essentially the emotion of supremacy and respect. To him who must obey,
39:54
I am free, he must obey. This consciousness is inherent in every will
40:00
will, and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look,
40:04
which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that this and nothing
40:10
else is necessary now, the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered, and
40:16
whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands
40:22
something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But
40:29
now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will, this affair
40:32
so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as,
40:39
in the given circumstances, we are, at the same time the commanding
40:45
and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party, we know the sensations
40:51
of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence
40:57
immediately after the act of wills. Much as on the other hand, we
41:00
are accustomed to disregard this duality and to deceive ourselves about it by means of
41:06
the synthetic term I. A whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of
41:14
false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing,
41:19
to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for
41:23
action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will
41:30
when the effect of the command consequently obedience and therefore action was to be expected,
41:37
the appearance has translated itself into sentiment, as if there were a necessity
41:44
of effect. In a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount
41:50
of certainty that will and action are somehow won. He ascribes the success the
41:57
carrying out of the willing to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase
42:01
of the sensation of power which accompanies all success freedom of will, that is
42:10
the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who
42:16
commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order,
42:22
who as such enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that
42:28
it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way, the
42:31
person exercising volition adds feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful
42:38
under wills or under souls. Indeed, our body is but a social structure
42:44
composed of many souls. To his feelings of delight, as Commander le fessemis,
42:51
what happens here is what happens in every well constructed and happy commonwealth,
42:55
namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth.
43:01
In all willing. It is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying on the
43:07
basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many souls,
43:13
on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within
43:19
the sphere of morals regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy, under
43:24
which the phenomenon of life manifests itself. Twenty that the separate philosophical ideas are
43:32
not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with
43:38
each other that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history
43:45
of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective
43:50
members of the fauna of a continent. Is betrayed in the end by the
43:54
circumstance. How unfailingly, the most diverse philosopher always fill in again a definite
44:01
fundamental scheme of possible philosophies under an invisible spell. They always revolve once more
44:09
in the same orbit. However, independent of each other they may feel themselves
44:15
with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels
44:22
them, in definite order, the one after the other, to wit the
44:28
innate methodology and relationship of their ideas. Their thinking is in fact, far
44:35
less a discovery than a re recognizing, a remembering, a return and a
44:42
homecoming to far off ancient common household of the soul out of which those ideas
44:49
formerly grew. Philosophizing is so far a kind of activism of the highest order.
44:54
The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek and German philosophizing is easily
45:00
enough explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language owing to the
45:06
common philosophy of grammar, I mean, owing to the unconscious domination and guidance
45:10
of similar grammatical functions, it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the
45:16
outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems. Just as the way
45:23
seems barred against certain other possibilities of world interpretation, it is highly probable that
45:30
philosophers within the domain of the ural altaic languages, where the conception of the
45:37
subject is least developed, look otherwise into the world, and will be found
45:43
on paths of thought different from those of the Indo Germans and Mussulmans. The
45:47
spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial
45:55
conditions. So much by way of daring Locke superficiality with regard to the origin
46:02
of ideas twenty one, the causa sui is the best self contradiction that has
46:09
yet been conceived. It is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness. But
46:15
the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this
46:21
very folly. The desire for freedom of will in the superlative metaphysical sense,
46:28
such as still holds sway unfortunately in the minds of the half educated, the
46:34
desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to
46:39
absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society. Therefrom involves
46:45
nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and with more than Munchausen
46:52
daring to pull oneself up into existence by the hair out of the slough of
46:58
nothingness. Very one should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the
47:04
celebrated conception of free will, and put it out of his head altogether.
47:08
I beg of him to carry his enlightenment a step further, and also put
47:14
out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of free will, I
47:19
mean non free will, which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect.
47:23
One should not wrongly materialize cause and effect, as the natural philosophers do,
47:30
and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at present according to the prevailing mechanical
47:37
doultishness, which makes the cause press and push until it affects its end.
47:43
One should use cause and effect only as pure conceptions, that is to say,
47:46
as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding, not for
47:53
explanation. In being in itself there is nothing of causal connection, of nonses
48:00
necessity, or of psychological non freedom. There the effect does not follow the
48:06
cause, their law does not obtain. It is we alone who have devised
48:10
cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom,
48:19
motive, and purpose. And when we interpret and intermix this symbol world
48:24
as being in itself with things, we act once more as we have always
48:30
acted. Mythologically, the non free will is mythology. In real life,
48:36
it is only a question of strong and weak wills. It is almost always
48:40
a symptom of what is lacking in himself. When a thinker, in every
48:45
causal connection and psychological necessity, manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness,
48:54
oppression, and non freedom, it is suspicious to have somes the person betrays
49:01
himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the non freedom
49:07
of the will is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but
49:14
always in a profoundly personal manner. Some will not give up their responsibility,
49:21
their belief in themselves the personal right to their merits at any price. The
49:27
vain races belong to this class. Others, on the contrary, do not
49:32
wish to be answerable for anything or blamed for anything, and, owing to
49:37
an inward self contempt, seek to get out of the business no matter how
49:44
The latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of
49:47
taking the side of criminals. A sort of socialistic sympathy is their favorite disguise,
49:54
and as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak willed embellishes
49:59
itself surprise when it compose as la religion de las sufranc umene, that is
50:06
its good taste. Twenty two. Let me be pardoned as an old philologist
50:13
who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation.
50:19
But nature's conformity to law of which you physicists talk so proudly, as
50:24
though why it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad philology, it is
50:30
no matter of fact, no text, but rather just naively humanitarian adjustment and
50:37
perversion of meeting with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the
50:44
modern soul. Everywhere equality before the law. Nature is not different in that
50:49
respect, nor better than we a fine instance of secret motive in which the
50:54
vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic wise a second and more refined atheism,
51:01
in which a vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic. Likewise a second and
51:08
more refined atheism is once more disguised. Ni dieu nimehtre. That also is
51:15
what you want, and therefore cheers for natural law? Is it not so?
51:22
But as has been said, that is interpretation, not text. And
51:27
somebody might come along who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could
51:34
read out of the same nature and with regard to the same phenomena, just
51:38
the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of power. An interpreter who
51:45
should so place the unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all will to power before your eyes,
51:53
that almost every word and the word tyranny itself would eventually seem unsuitable,
52:00
or like a weakening and softening metaphor, as being too human and who should
52:06
nevertheless end by asserting the same about this world as you do, namely,
52:13
that it has a necessary and calculable course, not however, because laws obtain
52:19
in it, but because they are absolutely lacking, and every power affects its
52:23
ultimate consequences every moment. Granted that this also is only interpretation, and you
52:30
will be eager enough to make this objection well, so much the better.
52:36
Twenty three. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities.
52:44
It has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as
52:47
it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written evidence of that
52:53
which has hitherto been kept silent. It seems as if nobody had yet harbored
52:59
the notion of psychology as the morphology and development doctrine of the will to power.
53:05
As I conceive of it, the power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply
53:12
into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and
53:19
has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner.
53:27
A proper physiopsychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator,
53:34
it has the heart against it. Even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness
53:38
of the good and the bad impulses causes as refined immorality, distress, and
53:46
aversion in a still strong and manly conscience. Still more so, a doctrine
53:53
of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. If, however,
53:59
a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and
54:04
imperiousness as life conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present fundamentally and essentially
54:12
in the general economy of life, which must therefore be further developed. If
54:16
life is to be further developed, he will suffer from such a view of
54:21
things as from sea sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being strangest
54:28
and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge. And
54:34
there are in fact a hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it.
54:38
Who can do so. On the other hand, if one has once
54:43
drifted hither with one's bark, well, very good. Now, let us
54:49
set our teeth firmly, let us open our eyes and keep our hands fast
54:52
on the helm, we sail away right over morality we crush out, We
54:59
destroy, perhaps the remains of our own mortality by daring to make our voyage
55:05
thither. But what do we matter? Never yet did a profounder world of
55:09
insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers. And the psychologist who thus makes
55:16
a sacrifice it is not the sacrificio del intellecto. On the contrary, will
55:24
at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized
55:30
as the queen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other sciences
55:36
exist, For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems. End
55:45
of Chapter one,