Part One; On the Prejudices of Philosophers
| 'Traditional' Philosophical Truth | Nietzsche's view of Philosophers' 'Truth' |
| Objective | Subjective (philosophers have really been trying to impose their beliefs onto other people and the world) |
| Metaphysical | Truth is rooted in the body – Physical |
| A priori | A Posteriori |
| Transcendent | Relative to personal circumstance |
| Unconditional | Conditional (varies according to perspective) |
| Absolute |
|
| Abstract (abstracted from physical life) |
|
Traditionally, the will to truth is supposed to be pure. It is meant to be the extraction of oneself from the world to find objective, unconditional, a priori truth.
According to Nietzsche, philosophers have really been trying to impose their beliefs onto other people and the world. He argues then that actually the will to truth is in fact the desire for power, as philosophers impose their subjective truths onto the world, to the point where their beliefs are excepted and they are granted power in the form of knowledge/wisdom in the eyes of the people.
The will to truth can be referred to as the first philosophical prejudice
The second Philosophical Prejudice - the Opposition of Values
Nietzsche claimed that past philosophers believed in the opposition of values, for example. they believed that it was impossible that the truth could be found from a consideration of one's own interests. Something cannot be obtained from its opposite. Truth could only be achieved through extracting oneself from one's own circumstances. However, Nietzsche argued that this was impossible; 'the greatest part of conscious thought must still be attributed to instinctive activity' - even the conscious thought of the philosopher is naturally aimed at the 'preservation' of their own lives. In other words, Nietzsche says that these philosophers cannot avoid making judgements and arguments without applying an element of self-interest. For Nietzsche, truth is simply what is useful to a person, and the only scale by which truth may be judged is given by particular perspectives, individuals' or societies' points of view.
In what sense can Nietzsche claim that his 'new philosophy' will be 'beyond good and evil'?
Nietzsche claims that the new philosophers will not reject judgements (ideas, theories, about the world) because they are false. The only way to value a judgement is according to its usefulness in promoting or preserving a particular way of life.
Therefore, despite believing that all the claims and systems of philosophers such as
Descartes, Kant etc are false or fiction - he says that such claims are the most indispensable to us (the new philosophers). By this he does not mean that his new philosophy will use these specific ideas, but that such false or fictional claims can be the basis of a new way of finding truth because the new measure of truth will be its value in promoting a particular way of life.
In this way Nietzsche shows that the past philosophers belief in the opposition of values was wrong. However their mistake was not being unable to find a pure and unprejudiced place from which to construct a theory of truth, but in being unaware of their failure: they were unaware of their own falsity - their prejudices and personal circumstances informed their whole philosophy.
Nietzsche believes there is no way to abstract oneself from one's form of life, and his philosophy, knowing this, is able to see the childish simplicity of a belief in the opposition of good and evil.
So, he is able to claim that his new philosophy is beyond good and evil because the opposition does not exist (because nowhere is free from prejudice); there is only usefulness, and so oppositions like truth and falsity, and good and evil, can be done away with.
Philosophers and Scholars
Nietzsche provides us with a distinction between philosophers and scholars. Nietzsche says that philosophers are defined by their morality which is intimately linked to their will to power. He thinks that philosophers have a specific instinct for power. In contrast, scholars have a 'general interest for knowledge'. Nietzsche says that a scholar has a detached interest - a scientific interest - in his or her subject. Nietzsche gives the example of Socrates' predicament, as outlined by Plato. Whereas a scholar would have simply detached himself from his work, Socrates' philosophy made him who he is, and so he chose to drink the hemlock rather than escape because he believed that one should obey the laws of the society one lives in. His philosophy was bound to his moral character that it literally defined who he is and how he acts.
Appearance and Reality (sec 10)
Nietzsche attacks the philosophical obsession with the difference between appearance and reality. The existence of a reality behind appearance would suggest the possibility of objective truth. For Nietzsche everything is appearance, everything is perspective, there is no deeper reality.
He goes on to attack the modern ideas of science and the empirical methods they employ, as offering only fun fair colours and flimsy scraps; he sees nothing life-affirming in these ideas and understands why people are tempted to see the reality behind appearance as a kind of substitute for the old God. Science, he thinks, leads to a kind of nihilism; it makes people feel there is no meaning to life as it deals only in de-mystifying the world.
The third philosophical prejudice is the belief in the distinction between reality and appearance.
Section 11
Nietzsche continues to attack the idea of reality behind experience, but now focuses on Kant's philosophy. Nietzsche says that Kant's claim that human beings have a faculty of Reason through which they are able to judge the truth of both metaphysical and moral claims amounts to saying they are enabled by an ability to recognise Truth. He thinks that Kant has invented a kind of ability that human beings have and a special kind of objective truth that they can see using it. That is, synthetic a priori truth.
Section 13
Nietzsche is not necessarily anti Darwin but anti teleological
Teleological systems have a purpose, a goal
Self preservation - the survival of species is teleological
Th will to power has no such purpose
Nietzsche talks about the will to power
Wanting to express itself
Discharge
Vent
Section 15
Nietzsche attempts to refute idealism. Idealism is the logical conclusion to empiricism. It claims that because sense data occurs in the mind, and there is no known or obvious connection between our minds and the 'external world', our worlds must simply be in our minds (perceiving is existence). Nietzsche attempts to refute this claim in the following way. First, he makes the point that idealists claim 'the external world is a product of our [sense] organs'. He then goes on to make the point that if this is the case, then our bodies must also be product of these organs. If our bodies are, then our sense organs too must be the product of our sense organs... The contradiction here is obvious, and Nietzsche claims that because of this, idealism is absurd and so he can coherently reject its claims.
Section 17
In this section Nietzsche attacks Descartes and his cogito. He makes 3 main points against the statement i think therefore i am. Firstly, Nietzsche points out Descartes' assumption of the existence of I. Second, he claims that Descartes also assumes that i is the condition of the predicate think - that it is necessary to have an I to have thought. Finally, Nietzsche points out that Descartes' whole cogito is based upon a notion that can in itself be doubted very easily - the notion of cause and effect. Descartes reckoned that his thinking led to a guaranteed existence as a thing - a cause and an effect respectively. Therefore, his entire conclusion is in fact still susceptible to doubt.
Section 18 and 19
Nietzsche here goes on to examine free will. He claims that one of the biggest prejudices made by philosophers so far is the idea that the will is the most familiar thing in the world. He believes that in fact the will is something much more complicated, something that is unified only in a word. He suggests that instead of the will being one singular thing, it originates as
Nietzsche's attack on the 'prejudices of philosophers': Berkeley - a good example for the exam
Philosophers such as Hegel believed that philosophy is teleological; that it is actually the unfolding of ideas over time, and that these ideas are being gradually perfected as humanity progresses. Nietzsche would not disagree that previous philosophies inform one's own. However, he would argue that in fact it is the philosopher's prejudices and personal morality that determine the reaction to such previous philosophies. This, for Nietzsche, means that philosophy is not the disinterested application of reason to problems. To use the example of Berkeley, Nietzsche argues that although Berkeley may be reacting against Locke, his whole idealism may be read as a way of creating compatibility between the existence of God and the empiricism that was gaining popularity in his day.
Section 23
Nietzsche believes that psychology is again the path to fundamental problems. He says that psychology is the study of why people hold beliefs. Further, he says it wants to question why people have the moral values that they do - for we cannot take our own objectivity for granted. This is difficult because, as he puts it, the heart is against it, as for Nietzsche, any philosophy has to contend with unconscious resistances viz. the emotions of the researcher. This sums up what he's been talking about so far; the ways philosophers fool themselves about the nature of truth.
Nietzsche goes on to analyse the worth of negative emotions, moreover, their role in those things we consider good. He does not say that we should embrace negative emotions as good however, but merely try to obtain a deeper understanding; this is a summary of his statement beyond good and evil.
Nietzsche argues that up till now the values that have acted on our moralities and our philosophical enterprises have been so far unexamined - we are sailing straight over and away from morality. He says that this has so far led to philosophers making the same mistakes, based on their ignorances of their own prejudices. He thus thinks new philosophers, such as himself, to examine these prejudices and to analyse motives and values.
Explain Nietzsche's point when he says 'but suppose somebody...' (Sec23, line16)
Nietzsche is suggesting that philosophers could consider the affects hatred, envy, greed and power lust, elements that are commonly discouraged in people from birth, as elements that fundamentally need to be present in a person's total economy of life, viz. their whole self. Nietzsche thought this would help to create a more powerful, 'enhanced' human being. This thought Nietzsche says is disorientating, similar to the effects of sea-sickness. This is the first time when bad things are being considered in the overall scheme of things; prior to Nietzsche society had shunned such elements of 'evil'.
