The Half-Assed Philosopher Pays the Wages of Hubris

If there’s one thing about myself that I wish I could change, it would be my tendency to expect my present circumstances to persist indefinitely.

This tendency takes a variety of different forms. Sometimes I find myself thinking that whatever misfortune I’m undergoing must last forever. I’ll feel glum for some reason or another, and get so preoccupied with my glumness that I’ll become convinced it’s now my new baseline. But of course, the following week, day, or hour, things change for the better.

Either I overcome whatever misfortune was weighing on me, or it resolves itself all on its own. The latter is more often the case—it’s amazing how many of life’s problems can be solved with a little patience.

Of course, the flip side of this is that I often get too comfortable in some happy set of circumstances. Maybe I’ve had a few productive writing days, and start expecting myself to churn out at least a thousand words a day for the rest of my life. Maybe I stop being attentive enough to a friend, because they’ve been such a mainstay that I’ve started taking them for granted. Maybe I assume that my financial stability will persist indefinitely because that’s what I’m used to.

It stings when one of these comfortable assumptions is dispelled, and all the more so because of the ease and good feelings that precede the inevitable reality check.

Change is the only constant in life, to invoke a tired cliché. And I should really have had this in mind when I was brazenly committing to produce an uninterrupted analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil—a work of daunting complexity by one of modern philosophy’s heaviest hitters.

Enthusiasm is fickle. What is novel is irresistible, but only remains irresistible for as long as the novelty lasts. The more certain we are of something, the more reason we have to question that something.

These are all things that I should have considered when committing to my ongoing Nietzsche project. At the time, I was excited to delve into his work, and I really couldn’t wait to get reading, get thinking, and get writing.

But it was naïve of me to expect that my initial enthusiasm would last long enough to carry me through such a huge undertaking—especially one with such vague parameters and no set time limit.

Recently, my writing about Nietzsche has become a slog more than something I actually want to do. Not only that, but it’s made this blog feel like more of a chore than the creative and philosophical outlet that I was looking for when I started.

Now I’m not saying all of this in preparation to abandon my blog or my Nietzsche project—not exactly. I fully intend to keep blogging every week, and I fully intend to keep discussing Nietzsche.

But it’s obvious now that I can’t keep this thing running on Nietzsche alone. While the me of several months ago was certain he could immerse himself in BGaE for as long as it took to get to the end, current me sees a fast-approaching future in which I get bored, bitter, and call off the whole blog after a final string of half-hearted and sparse posts.

So, I think it’s time to shelve Nietzsche, at least for the moment.

I know I said that I would power through to the end of the book in a months-long marathon of blog posts, but it’s obvious that I won’t be able to do that. To put it bluntly, I’m not going to do the thing that I said I’d definitely do.

However—

I will finish Chapter One of BGaE. I’m currently on Part 19, and Chapter One ends with Part 23, so there’s a milestone within reach, and I intend to reach it. And I do still hope to make my way to the end of Beyond Good and Evil, and to keep posting as I go.

But I need a break.

I need to get back to what I originally intended this blog to be about, which was whatever I wanted it to be about. I’ve been shelving ideas, ignoring inspiration, and filing away interesting thoughts as I pump out posts about Nietzsche, and it’s time to go back and revisit those neglected musings.

So I’ll wrap up Chapter One of Beyond Good and Evil over the next two or three weeks, but after that I’ll be turning my attention to other topics. I will absolutely return to Nietzsche, and will continue to work my way through BGaE, but it won’t be the marathon that I originally predicted it would be.

In order to get the most out of this blog and maintain momentum, I need to change directions, so Nietzsche will be on the sidelines by the end of July. I’ll get back to him eventually, but not before I’ve racked up a few non-Nietzschean posts.

Until then, I do hope everyone here will stick around. Nietzsche or not, there’s plenty of half-assed philosophizing to come.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Parts 15-18

The next few parts of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil deal mostly with our perceptions and our experience of the world. Nietzsche continues to avoid targeting individual philosophers or philosophical traditions—for the most part. He does casually refute them here and there in order to illustrate larger points, but he seems to have left off with devoting whole sections to the undermining of a single person or named philosophy.

That being said, he’s no less relentless than before.

But I’ve found, and I think you will too, that he’s getting more thoughtful in his writing. He’s still bombastic, he still relies heavily on vague language and hedging, and he continues his love affair with the run-on sentence. But there seems to be some self-awareness creeping into the mix.

His writing is starting to rely less on outright attacks, and more on mildly mean-spirited disagreement. This is an improvement by Nietzsche’s standards, and a welcome one. I think if he’d continued this far without changing his approach, I’d have been long since turned off by his writing. Instead, I find that the subtle change in tone has me wanting to read on.

Part 15 is just a couple paragraphs long, and it basically amounts to a case for sensualism—albeit a terse case. Nietzsche has mentioned sensualism a few times, but he’s never really come out for or against it. In Part 15, he concedes that sensualism is necessary “at least as a regulative hypothesis, if not as a heuristic principal.”

To illustrate this point, Nietzsche uses the example of idealism, a philosophy which holds that the external, physical world is a creation of our senses, rather than something that is perceived by them.

He then points out that, since our bodies are part of the physical world, idealism would require them to be the work of our senses and sense organs. Finally, if we hold this to be true, then “…our organs themselves would be—the work of our organs!”

The absurdity of this line of reasoning is enough to refute the idea that the external world is the work of our senses, according to Nietzsche. So, while he doesn’t declare his unconditional acceptance of sensualism, he at least recognizes that there is an external world, and that we can glean information about it from our senses.

Part 16, however, offers an example of how our perception falls short.

Nietzsche calls out “…harmless self-observers” (a title that’s both polite and brutally condescending) “who believe there are ‘immediate certainties’; for example, ‘I think’…”

He starts off by saying that to know something means to understand it completely, which I think is a reasonable assessment. If we assume this, and then go on to say that we know that we think, “[Nietzsche finds] a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible to prove.”

To be certain that “I think,” I’d have to prove that “I” am thinking, which means I’d have to prove that thinking requires an agent, that that agent causes thinking, and that I am that agent. Finally, and most importantly—I’d have to know exactly what thinking is. Unless I have an airtight definition for thinking, there’s no way to know if what I call thinking “…is not perhaps ‘willing’ or ‘feeling.’”

Nietzsche says that a philosopher (presumably not one of the prejudiced ones) will see in this “immediate certainty” an avalanche claims which must be proven in order to establish even the least bit of certainty. Each of the questions mentioned above would themselves give rise to multiple new questions, and the whole process of proving this “certainty” would quickly descend into endless Socratic head scratching.

Nietzsche finishes by “thinking aloud,” and asking why it is that someone should even want to convince themselves or anyone else that they think. He presents his question as the musing of an imaginary philosopher.

“’Sir,’ the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, ‘it is improbable that you are not mistaken; but why insist on the truth?’”

I’m not exactly sure what kind of answer Nietzsche expects here, but it’s an interesting question that he poses. The desire to have others accept one’s personal truth is universal—we all experience it on a regular basis. But when faced with the question of why it’s so important that others see things my way, I find myself fumbling to come up with a good answer.

Where philosophical questions are concerned (as opposed to more practical ones like how to maintain public health, ensure food security, fix my refrigerator, etc.), it’s hard to justify the idea that one opinion must win out over the others.

Why insist on the truth indeed? Because it feels good to be right? Because such questions are interesting? Because to prove that “I think” will somehow contribute to my mental wellbeing?

These are all flimsy answers, and I’m wondering now if Nietzsche expected anything but flimsy answers.

In Part 17, Nietzsche goes on to unpack one small aspect of the above “certainty.” In so doing, he further demonstrates what a monumental task it would be to prove even a simple statement like “I think.”

“…it is a falsification of the facts…” he says, “to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think.’

Instead, Nietzsche says it’s better to say that “it” thinks, and that it’s a stretch to assume that “it” is “I,” or the ego. And he goes even further than this, suggesting that “it” might not be thinking at all. “…even the ‘it’ contains an interpretation of the process,” he says, “and does not belong to the process itself.”

Nietzsche claims that the certainty that there must be a thinker is just the result of a “grammatical habit,” and that we’re so accustomed to the need for an action to have an agent that we compulsively apply this linguistic principle to philosophy.

The need for there to be a thinker, says Nietzsche, is linked to the atomistic need for an indivisible center of things—a perspective that he’s recently rejected in no uncertain terms. He finishes, as he has before, by expressing a hope for the future of philosophy. This time, that hope is that one day we’ll be able “…to get along without the little ‘it’…”

Part 18 is another of Nietzsche’s briefer musings. I’d be tempted to call it a blurb if that word didn’t seem too modern to a apply to something written over a century ago. In any case, it’s short enough to quote in its entirety:

“It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts subtler minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of free will owes its persistence to this charm alone; again and again someone comes along who feels he is strong enough to refute it.”

This paragraph is short and simple, and has an obvious surface-level meaning. But the more I read it, the more layers it seems to acquire. On the one hand, it’s a simple introduction to Part 19 of BGaE, which deals with free will. But it could also be self-aggrandizement on the part of the author, because in refuting the theories discussed over the course of this post, he’s placed himself amongst those “subtler minds” that he mentions.

Then again, when he claims that the belief in free will is so frequently revisited because of that charm, he seems to be implying that the debate is tiresome, and maybe that those who continue to keep it alive are just reaching for low-hanging philosophical fruit.

This casts a whole different light on the paragraph, and I can now imagine Nietzsche winking at the reader as he lingers sarcastically on the word “subtle.” 

He seems to be simultaneously claiming that intelligent people will be drawn to refutable theories, but also that the attention they give to these theories is what causes them (the theories) to remain in the public consciousness. If the theories are refutable, then it might be best to forget them in favor of better alternatives, but the very act of refuting them keeps the discussion surrounding them alive!

It makes the whole business of discussing philosophy seem brainless and compulsive, rather than serious, and now I find myself asking if Nietzsche really meant to count himself amongst those “subtler minds.” And if that was his intention, was it meant to be self-deprecation rather than self-aggrandizement?

I feel as though the answer might lean towards the former.

In any case, Nietzsche continues to demand that we look at everything critically, and it’s becoming clear that he includes his own opinions in that imperative. 

Beyond Good and Evil: Parts 12-14

Several posts ago I committed to keeping my analyses simple and general. I stated my intention to cover multiple sections of Beyond Good and Evil in each post, and to avoid crawling through the book one Part at a time.

As I worked on last week’s recap, I realized that I’ve basically forgotten that goal altogether. I’ve been zeroing in on small sections of the book with alarming frequency, and I’m starting to chuckle to myself every time the term “broad strokes” pops into my head or appears in my writing.

It’s become clear that my posts will be what they’ll be, and that I shouldn’t make assurances concerning things I haven’t written, and which are themselves about things I haven’t yet read.

So, I hereby give up. Some of my posts will cover multiple sections of the book at once, but most probably won’t. It seems that, for better or worse, I just can’t help but get bogged down in details.

That being said, I was pleased to find that a common thread ran through Parts 12-14 of BGaE, and that these three fit nicely into a single post.

They deal with different topics, but it seems to me that they convey a common message (warning? admonition? rule?). They remind the reader to never consider a matter fully closed. There are some things which seem in the moment to be fait accompli—scientific truths, moral imperatives etc.—but none of these should ever be immune to scrutiny.

This doesn’t mean that we should regress, and embrace ideas that are patently false or behaviors which are cruel or destructive. But it does mean that no line of thinking should be off limits, nor any truth considered sacrosanct.

Part 12 of BGaE starts off with a brusque dismissal of Atomism. Nietzsche isn’t referring to the modern scientific understanding of atoms, as I initially though he was, but instead to the idea that everything is made up of tiny components which cannot be subdivided, and which endure forever. This is different from atoms as we know them, which can be subdivided into particles and all sorts of quantumy bits.

Nietzsche rejects Atomism as a description of the physical world, but also warns against its religious implications:

He says that “…one must also, first of all, give the finishing stroke to that other and more calamitous form of atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the soul atomism.”

We’re already familiar with Nietzsche’s disdain for old religious ideas, so it’s no surprise that he wouldn’t have any time for the idea that the soul exists as an indivisible constant. But interestingly enough, Nietzsche goes on to suggest that there may indeed be such thing as a soul—just not an immortal soul.

“But the way is open” he says, “for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis.” He proposes the idea of a “mortal soul” (italics are mine), and suggests that the term could be used to describe key aspects of what it is to be human, such as our social structures and our drives.

But Nietzsche maintains that the idea of an immortal soul must be rejected. And he asserts that by doing so, a person “practically exiles himself,” which paves the way for new ways of thinking and new discoveries. There is a large gap left in the worldview of someone who’s given up their belief in the immortal soul—but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room in that gap for any kind of soul at all. Indeed, the concept of a soul could have some serious merit, and it’s for this reason that we shouldn’t get rid of the soul altogether, in spite of its long association with questionable spiritual ideas.

Part 13 of BGaE has to do with the survival instinct common to all organisms. Unsurprisingly (for a contrarian like Nietzsche, at least), Nietzsche asserts that survival is not the main drive of living things. And not only does he not believe survival to be our chief motivator, but he even refers to such a belief as a “superfluous teleological principal.”

He goes on to say that “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.” (If memory serves, Nietzsche goes into extensive detail on the idea of will to power later on in the book, so I won’t dwell on it here.)

I wasn’t surprised to see Nietzsche contradict such a well-established truth, but I have a hard time accepting his assertion. This seems to be a retreat back into contradiction for contradiction’s sake—a charge that I’ve levelled against Nietzsche more than once. That being said, it’s his right to do so, and it’s important for people like me to be reminded of that right, even it seems like a waste of time to dig up long-buried lines of questioning. At the very least it’s consistent, and it ties in with Nietzsche’s notion of foreground estimates, and the deeper realities that underly those we perceive.

Part 14 concerns the field of physics, and its usefulness as an explanation of the universe. Nietzsche doesn’t fully discount the validity of physics, but he does object to the term “explanation.” He contends that it’s more of an interpretation of the world, and an interpretation that’s intended to suit us, at that.

He attributes the popularity of physics to the fact that it relies on information available to the senses and “…strikes an age with fundamentally plebian tastes as fascinating, persuasive, and convincing…” Since sensualism was so prominent during Nietzsche’s time (and continues to be), an explanation of the world that relied on the senses was bound to be popular.

But he goes on to contrast physics with “the charm of the Platonic way of thinking”, which he calls a “noble way of thinking.” He claims that Plato and his contemporaries overcame the senses, and seems to view this as a triumph on their part, and indicative of a way of thinking which was, at its heart, “more enjoyable.”

He says that the same comparison can also be made between Plato and the “…Darwinists and anti-teleologists…with their principle of ‘the smallest possible force’ and the greatest possible stupidity.” He obviously has little respect for these latter two, though he doesn’t go into detail (yet) as to why that is.

Nietzsche finishes Part 14 by saying that all the aforementioned scientific perspectives “[may be right] for a tough, industrious race of machinists and bridgebuilders of the future, who have nothing but rough work to do.”

It’s unclear to me if this last remark is meant to be disparaging, though it does imply that a scientific approach is best suited to simple, hands-on activities and ways of life. More broadly, it suggests that different philosophies and worldviews are suited to different sorts of people, as opposed to a single philosophy being good for everyone. It exemplifies the common theme in Parts 12-14 of BGaE, which is the importance of remaining flexible in one’s beliefs.

I was confused at first when Nietzsche expressed doubt about the validity of physics, when earlier in the book he referred to scientists as being the only real, objective advocates of truth. Not only that, but I was surprised to see him talk about Plato in such favorable terms, given the not-so-nice things he’s had to say about the Greek philosopher—and ancient philosophy in general—in previous sections of the book.

But I think he’s doing this to drive his point home all the more strongly. He’s deliberately contradicting himself not only to remind the reader not to nod unthinkingly along with everything he says, but also to admonish himself against becoming too certain of anything.

Nietzsche believes in the importance of questioning everything “at the threshold,” and even though his contrarian attitude can get tiresome, it’s refreshing to see that he won’t shy away from questioning his own views, even if he has yet to do so explicitly.

Beyond Good and Evil: Another Look at Parts 1-11

In the foreword to Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche declares that a “magnificent tension of the spirit” has seized European society. This tension comes from the decline of Platonic and Christian ideals, he says, and the empty space that they’ve left behind. Nietzsche is happy enough to see these old “dogmatic” ideals fall by the wayside, but asserts that a new philosophy is required to replace them, and to satiate the “need of the spirit” that has arisen in their absence.  

Chapter One of BGaE, called On the Prejudices of the Philosophers, sets out elaborate on just how those older philosophical traditions fall short, and why it is that we need something new and better. I’m still not all the way through Chapter One, but I’m going to take this week to go back over what I’ve read so far and highlight some key points.

Even though my posts to date have really only scratched the surface of the subject matter, I’d still like to look at what I’ve read through an even wider lens for the benefit of anyone who’s as overwhelmed as I am.

When I’m in the thick of one of BGaE’s subsections, I’m often so absorbed in trying to make sense of Nietzsche’s prose that I forget what came before the paragraph I’m currently reading. His writing can be rambling, and it frequently seems that each section of the book begins midway through a train of thought. But after going through everything I’ve written up to now and looking at it all with fresh eyes, I’ve identified a few points that pop up with some regularity, and that are worth revisiting.

One of Nietzsche’s first complaints targets the assumptions that philosophers have made over the years. In Part 2, he identifies the existence of opposites as one of these assumptions, and questions why it is that selflessness, for example, should be considered the opposite of selfishness, or truth the opposite of deception. In making their judgements, philosophers lean heavily on their belief in opposites, and the fact that they never question this “faith,” as Nietzsche calls it, casts doubt on every conclusion they draw. He proposes that selfishness and deception might well be on equal footing with selflessness and truth, at least in terms of their necessity for the preservation of life.

Keeping with the theme of opposites, Nietzsche also calls out the assumption that conscious thinking is the opposite of instinct. Though this is regularly taken for granted, Nietzsche contends that much of conscious thinking is in fact directed by instinct without our realizing it, and that philosophy itself is driven by instinct.

And with that in mind, the next point I’ll touch on is the effect of philosophers’ subconscious desires, or instincts, on their philosophy. Nietzsche is adamant that philosophers bring their preexisting worldviews to their work, and that whatever conclusions they draw are not descriptions of the world so much as they are reflections of how a given philosopher thinks the world should be. Most philosophers, he contends, don’t set out to learn about the world, but to describe it in such a way as fits their preconceived notions.

This extends to laypeople as well, and Nietzsche frequently talks about the average European’s desire for a philosophy that feeds their innate sense of piety, or which contains elements of Christianity, or which at least leaves room for the existence of God and the immortal soul. In part 11, he points to the “discovery” of the faculty of intuition as being particularly attractive to a populace that is mired in sensualism, but that also feels a strong need for the spiritual.

Another theme that has come up more than once in BGaE is truth, not surprisingly. Nietzsche has complicated views on truth, which I suspect will only get more complicated as the book goes on. So far, he’s questioned both the honesty of those who claim to seek truth, and even its necessity.

When the subject of truth comes up, he says, most philosophers are more concerned with appearing to have hit upon it than with actually having hit upon it. They all have opinions about what it is, and are certain that they’ve discovered its nature, when in fact they’re mostly just “advocates who resent that name,” as Nietzsche says in Part 5. This goes back to his assertion that philosophers are more concerned with promoting their own prejudices than with discovering truth, and he points to Kant and Spinoza as examples of philosophers who rely on jargon and obtuse, overcomplicated reasoning to bewilder people into accepting their notions of truth.

But even though Nietzsche doubts the honesty of philosophers who claim to know the truth, he also doubts the value of truth itself—or at the very least he suggests that untruth might be just as valuable.

He points to a priori judgements as an example of the importance of untruth. A priori judgments are judgments made using reasoning and calculation rather than by observing the real world. These sorts of judgments are used every day, and are invaluable to us as humans, but they all hinge on imagined scenarios and the hypothetical. Because of this, Nietzsche classifies a priori judgments as untrue, and considers it significant that they are simultaneously untrue and indispensable.

The last point I want to touch on, and one of the most interesting, is Nietzsche’s repeated allusion to the idea that our experience of life is but a pale reflection of what life actually consists of. This comes across as odd, given that it’s reminiscent of the Platonic idea of the real and apparent world—an idea that Nietzsche doesn’t seem to favor, at least in its modern incarnations. But there are several points in the excerpts I’ve read so far where Nietzsche talks about “foreground estimates,” and the fact that our limited human perspective fails to capture the real stuff of life.

With regard to a priori judgements, for example, he talks in Part 11 about how we likely aren’t actually using these kinds of judgment to arrive at our own conclusions. Rather, they are simply the visible part of much more complex processes that take place below the surface of our awareness, and which only seem to be our conscious handiwork.

In Part 2, he uses similar language about the opposites of which he’s so dismissive. He says that the value of things like honesty and dishonesty, and their perceived opposition, may be nothing more than a trick of the perspective from which we Humans view the world.

Finally (for this article at least), I’ll return to consciousness. We know that Nietzsche doubts that consciousness is separate from instinct, but that doesn’t mean he discounts its importance altogether. He doesn’t believe that consciousness allows us to make totally independent decisions, but he does acknowledge that it is vital to life. All of the valuations and impressions that underly our conscious experience are important to us and to how we function, but Nietzsche just doesn’t think that they tell the whole story.

So, there you have a few points that I see Nietzsche driving at so far.  I could have said more, and could have offered more opinions to go along with my summary, but I’ll stop here in the interest of brevity. I know that if I tried to do more than just summarize, that this post would stretch out for far too long. I did try to include the greatest hits from Parts 1-11 here, though, and I hope I’ve been able to bring some of Nietzsche’s ideas together in a more cohesive way.

He does ramble, and his writing is dense and hard to follow, but there are definitely some common themes developing. They’re just not necessarily developing in a linear fashion.

I hope this post helped to illuminate what I’ve covered so far and to connect a few dots. I know that writing it was helpful for me, and I have a much clearer picture now of the problems that Nietzsche sees with his European predecessors and contemporaries. Now it’s time to see if the picture gets any clearer as I read on.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Part 11

In Part 5 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche identified the German philosopher Immanuel Kant as of someone who covered up the deficiencies in his work with overly complex reasoning and colorful language. However, Nietzsche didn’t go into detail, and I grumbled about how it wasn’t much good using Kant as an example if he wasn’t going to elaborate.

Well, Nietzsche must have seen that coming, because in Part 11 of BGaE, he sets his sights squarely on Kant—in particular on his ‘discovery’ of the faculty for a priori judgements and its subsequent impact on European philosophy.

The impact was substantial. But Nietzsche attributes this impact not to the validity of Kant’s discovery, but to the rivalry that it stirred up in younger generations of German philosophers, which was a result of Kant’s pride more than anything else. As soon as he identified the faculty for judgements a priori, there followed a frenzy of discovery in which his German contemporaries named droves of new faculties.

Of this frenzy Nietzsche says “The honeymoon of German philosophy arrived. All the young theologians of the Tubingen seminary went into the bushes—all looking for ‘faculties.’”

And countless ‘discoveries’ were made, though Nietzsche coyly suggests that Germans at this time struggled to tell the difference between discovering and inventing (“’Finden’ und ‘Erfinden’”, as translator Walter Kaufmann mentions in his notes).

Among these discoveries (or inventions, if you like), was that of the “suprasensible” faculty of intuition, which Nietzsche attributes to Schilling. This discovery “…gratified the most heartfelt cravings of the Germans, whose cravings were at bottom pious.”

It certainly didn’t gratify Nietzsche, however, and he takes a dismissive tone as he describes this faculty frenzy as nothing more than youthfulness wrapped up in “hoary and senile concepts.”

“One can do no greater wrong…” he says, “than to take it seriously.”

This enthusiasm for faculties eventually cooled enough for the question to arise of where these newly discovered faculties came from, or how they were possible at all. With regard to his famous faculty for a priori judgments, Kant offered an explanation that Nietzsche found (understandably) disappointing.

According to Nietzsche, Kant claimed that this faculty was possible “By virtue of a faculty.”

Yikes.

Now Nietzsche does admit that Kant didn’t use this exact phrase, but implied it in more longwinded remarks “…and with such a display of German profundity and curlicues that people simply failed to note the comical niaiserie allemande [German foolishness] involved in such an answer.”

Kant may not have just blurted out those five inadequate words, but Nietzsche contends that they are what his argument boiled down to. He compares Kant’s position to two lines from a play in which a doctor explains that opium puts people to sleep “Because it contains a sleepy faculty whose nature it is to put the senses to sleep.” This comparison wasn’t really necessary—the inadequacy of Kant’s explanation is plain enough already—but it certainly does help hammer home Nietzsche’s disdain for his countryman.

In any case, Nietzsche goes on to declare that the question of how such judgements are possible isn’t even that important. What people should be asking, he says, is why it is necessary to believe in judgements a priori.

He points out, as he has once already, that such judgements shouldn’t really be possible at all since they don’t relate to definite events or objects in the real world. But they are indeed necessary, and must be believed “…for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves…”

Now, Nietzsche affirms that it is important to ask this question—why judgements a priori are necessary, that is—but he doesn’t offer an answer of his own. What he does say is that it’s really only the belief in their truth that is necessary “…as a foreground belief and visual evidence belonging to the perspective optics of life.”

I’ll admit that I had to sit and stare at the page for a long time in order to make sense of what he meant here. I’m not even sure that I did make sense of it, but I certainly understand it better than the first time I read it.

I think what he means is that a priori judgements are the surface-level component of something totally inaccessible to us (see “visual evidence”). They are the way in which we perceive predictive processes which are otherwise too complex, or take place too deep within us, to comprehend. I’d compare it to pressing down on the gas pedal in a car. It feels as though we’re making the vehicle accelerate by the application of force with our foot, but the reality is that our participation is just a tiny part of what makes the engine run.

We’re not able to explain our ability to calculate, reason, and predict, but we must nonetheless put our faith in this ability because of how well it has served us. Never mind the fact that it’s much more complex than we are able to perceive. We must believe in its truth because it has yet to let us down, and because we’d be lost without it.

Now, returning to the text, Nietzsche laments (yes, I think “laments” is the right word) that the influence of these faculties spread from Germany throughout the rest of Europe, and had a lasting effect on European philosophy. “…it was a delight to noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, artists, three-quarter Christians, and political obscurantists of all nations…”

He goes on to say that it was “…an antidote to the predominant sensualism which overflowed from the last century into this…” which “sensus assoupire[put the senses to sleep].”

Nietzsche’s distaste for Kant’s influence is obvious, and he sees it as another example of people choosing a philosophy which fits their inclinations rather than developing one that best describes reality. The idea of possessing faculties which exist by their own virtue, and especially a faculty of intuition, was attractive to many people in Germany and the rest of Europe, and they were quick to accept it. Never mind whether it made sense or truly reflected reality as they perceived it—it was a comfortable fit and allowed them to go on believing more or less what they’d always believed, and so they decided it must be true.

Off the cuff, I’d say that I share Nietzsche’s mistrust. It’s an all-too-common occurrence for people shop around from one philosophy to the next until they find one that aligns with their pre-existing values. The desire to have one’s biases confirmed and to see one’s innermost beliefs reflected in the world outside one’s head is insidious, and continuously undermines Humanity’s collective ability to think critically.

That being said, this is something I’m guilty of myself. I frequently skim over information that challenges what I hold to be true, and I linger on content that aligns with my beliefs. As much as I cringe at confirmation bias, I can’t pretend that I don’t suffer from it, or that it’s not an integral part of the Human condition.

If I’d been raised differently or grown up in different circumstances, I’d likely have wildly different beliefs. I might deny the existence of confirmation bias altogether, or at the very least deny that I was susceptible to it.

But I digress.

Part 11 of BGaE, like those that came before it, continues to chip away at the foundations of popular philosophical traditions, but it seems more and more like Nietzsche might actually be going somewhere. He’s introducing questions and pausing more frequently in his attacks, and there’s a distinct sense that he’s building up towards something.

He remains belligerent, and his florid style contains plenty of its own German profundity and curlicues. But in spite of his bluster, which hasn’t diminished, he’s starting to make me think. He’s posing interesting, open-ended questions, and I find myself wanting to stick around and see them answered.  

Beyond Good and Evil: First Interlude

I have family visiting from far away places this week, and between that and a hectic work schedule, I’ve had to interrupt my examination of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. My posts might not be long, but there’s a lot of rereading, rewriting, and head scratching that goes into them, and I’m afraid I just don’t have the time for that this week.

What I do have time for, however, is an off-the-cuff commentary on what I’ve done so far—a little introspection and recalibration. It’s been a few weeks and a few thousand words, and overall, I’m proud of what I’ve put out up to this point. This isn’t my first attempt at a blog, but it’s the first one that’s lasted past two or three posts, and I’m excited to keep the momentum going.

But even though I’ve been posting regularly, momentum does seem to be a problem, and I often find that I barely finish my analyses in time to meet my personal deadlines. The writing process is painstaking, and there are times when I feel I’m forming my analyses as I write, as opposed to building the groundwork of my interpretations before putting pen to paper.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. On more than one occasion, a last-minute rereading of one of Nietzsche’s run-on sentences has suddenly illuminated its meaning and helped me avoid what would otherwise have been an embarrassing misinterpretation. But I sometimes feel like my efforts are geared too much towards just producing content on time, rather than towards understanding what I’m reading and helping others do the same.

Consistency is important, of course, but the fact that a thousand words appear on my website once per week doesn’t necessarily mean I’m fulfilling my mission statement. They need to reflect what I’ve learned and what I think about what I’ve learned. So far, I’m confident that that’s the case. I’m getting plenty out of my reading, and I believe I’m producing something valuable as a result.

But with the last couple posts, I’ve found myself focusing so hard on interpreting the latest section of the book, and on writing enough with enough time to spare, that my focus has begun to narrow. I’ll be so caught up in finishing a post about Part x, y, or z, that I won’t spend enough time considering what preceded it, and how it fits into the broader context of the book.

I’ve been mentioning previous sections of Beyond Good and Evil as I forge ahead, and quipping about Nietzsche’s ongoing themes and restated opinions, but it often seems like I’m doing this simply to check a box, so to speak. The way in which I relate the content-at-hand to the content that precedes it has started to seem formulaic—like a mantra more than an earnest evaluation.

Basically, by laboring over the parts of the book one (or two or three) at a time, I’m coming dangerously close to breaking the rule laid out by translator Walter Kaufmann, which is that the individual parts of Beyond Good and Evil must not be read and analyzed in isolation. They are pieces of a larger whole, and must be read as such. To treat them as little pearls of wisdom rather than deeply connected building blocks is to miss out on most of their meaning.

Now, I don’t think that I’m guilty of this yet, but I’m standing at the top of a slippery slope. I’ve been so focused on finishing each new post and on interpreting its associated content that I often have to remind myself to consider everything that came before it, and I’m convinced that it’s only a matter of time before I break Kaufmann’s rule.

 So, with the benefit of foresight, I need to address this risk. To be honest, I should be grateful that I don’t have the time to do a proper post this week, because the break in rhythm has given me the opportunity to consider this emerging problem.

As I see it, there are a couple of options. The first is just to take more time between posts, which would allow me, in theory, to do a deeper analysis of each part of the book and ensure that it’s properly couched in the context of everything that preceded it. But I already post just once per week, and to stretch that to once every two weeks would likely cause both my initiative and the interest of readers to taper off, to say nothing of the likelihood that I’d just procrastinate away the extra time.

I think the best thing to do would be to write a “roundup” once in a while in lieu of a regular post. Every few weeks I could go back over what I’ve written, reread the content that I’ve covered, and summarize it all. I’d make a few connections that I missed before, clarify some things that I worded poorly, and tie everything together.

I’ll keep refining my individual posts and analyses so that they fit more seamlessly into the larger framework of the book, but in the meantime, I think that the occasional interlude will help keep me from looking too narrowly at the individual elements of Nietzsche’s work. At the very least it’s worth a try.

I already have a post in the works for next week that focuses on Part 11, but I’ll try writing a recap of everything I’ve done for the following week. Hopefully it’ll be valuable to you the readers and to me. And hopefully it’ll keep Walter Kaufmann’s vengeful ghost from showing up at my apartment.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Part 10

Part 10 of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil starts with the invocation of an ancient philosophical trope:

“The eagerness and subtlety—might I even say shrewdness—with which the problem of the ‘real and apparent world’ is today attacked all over Europe makes one think and wonder; and anyone who in the background hears nothing but a ‘will to truth,’ certainly does not have the best ears.”

The “real and apparent world” refers to the idea that there is a disconnect between the information available to us through our senses and the real nature of the universe. What we see and experience is a pale reflection of the real stuff of existence. I think it was Plato who illustrated this concept with his Allegory of the Cave, in which people spend their whole lives watching shadows move about on the wall of a cave, never realizing that the shadows are produced by tricks of light and the efforts of puppeteers, and that a whole world exists outside of what they see on the cave wall.

With regard to these categories of apparent and real, Nietzsche identifies two kinds of people.

The first kind of people he identifies are, as I see it, those who are most fixated on the apparent world—the world of the senses. That’s not to say that they are overly sensual or hedonistic, but just that they only have time for that which appears to be certain—they “…ultimately prefer even a handful of ‘certainty’ to a whole carload of beautiful possibilities.” These people would rather be certain about anything, no matter how bleak or limited, rather than live with unanswered questions and unpredictability. Nietzsche calls this perspective “…nihilism and the sign of a despairing, mortally weary soul.”

The second kind of people he identifies are just the opposite, and he describes them as “…stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life.” These people are so suspicious of the apparent world, says Nietzsche, that they doubt even the evidence for the existence of their own bodies, “…and thus…let their securest possessions go…” Nietzsche speculates that this mistrust for the information provided by the senses might be a sign of their desire to “…win back something that was formerly an even securer possession…perhaps the ‘immortal soul,’ perhaps ‘the old God,’ in short, ideas by which one could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and cheerfully, than by ‘modern ideas[.]’”

From here, Nietzsche steers towards his key point, which is that, though these two types of people may differ greatly in their views, they both converge in their disdain for “modern ideas.” And though he questions the validity of their perspectives, he does agree with them:

“It is in this…” he says, “…we should agree with these skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists; their instinct, which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted—what do their retrograde bypaths concern us!”

The problem with modern ideas, says Nietzsche, is that they’re a motley mix of different concepts, more of a patchwork than anything coherent. He blames positivism for this problem—positivism being the idea that for anything to be true, it must be verifiable by either science or by logical proof. The result is an overly complex and disconnected set of truths, which simultaneously overwhelm and are insufficient for people seeking greater meaning.

Nietzsche doesn’t blame people for wanting to free themselves from this way of thinking, even by taking refuge in worldviews which he doesn’t consider to be much better. But he’s careful to point out that, in his view, they don’t want to return to an older worldview “…but that they wish to get—away.” They’re fed up with the way things are, but that doesn’t mean they want to return to the way things were (whatever that means).

“A little more strength, flight, courage, and artistic power,” he declares, “and they would want to rise—not return!”

This is fairly standard fare compared to what we’ve seen so far. Nietzsche attacks a certain worldview or way(s) of thinking in grandiose style, and then finishes by looking at the horizon, eyes twinkling, and wondering aloud what could possibly serve to replace the deficient philosophical traditions of history. He’s introduced a few new targets here, but not much has changed otherwise. Positivism has joined the ranks of Stoicism, Platonism, et al. as a worldview which begs to be replaced by something better.

I’m still waiting with bated breath to find out what that something better will be, although I realize that I’ll at least have to make it through the first chapter of BGaE to find out. And at the rate I’m going…well…let’s just say that patience will be in order.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Part 9

Since starting this blog, and in particular this examination of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, I’ve made it no secret that I’m a total amateur. I doubt that I have even of a fraction of the philosophical education that Nietzsche’s intended reader would have had. Beyond the Stoicism in which I’ve immersed myself in recent years, I have only a simple understanding of most venerable western philosophical traditions, and that understanding is rooted in an introductory philosophy class taken more than ten years ago. The best I can say for myself as I fumble through my current project is that I’m enthusiastic about it.

Nonetheless, I’ve been enjoying this project in spite of my shaky philosophical footing, and it might not be a stretch to say that my naivete has lent a unique perspective to my interpretations. There’s plenty in Nietzsche’s writing for which I lack the proper context, but I’m still getting a lot out of it.

When I started reading Part 9, I was pleased to see that it dealt principally with Stoicism—a philosophy in which I’m fairly well versed—and I was excited to finally read something of Nietzsche’s whose myriad references wouldn’t just go over my head. And I did indeed understand what he was talking about without having to ruminate or resort to Google even once.

Unfortunately, my understanding of Nietzsche’s references made it obvious to me that he barely understood them himself.

This was not necessarily surprising. Nietzsche is just as blustery as he is eloquent, and I didn’t need to fully understand the philosophies he’s discussed so far to see that he probably hasn’t been treating them fairly. But I wonder now if I’ve been too kind to Nietzsche, because Part 9 of BGaE relies on an understanding of Stoicism that he could have acquired from a hasty reading of a book jacket in a checkout line.

Nietzsche starts out by asking “‘According to nature’ you want to live? Oh you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time;”

What Nietzsche is referring to here is the Stoic admonition that one should live according to nature. What the Stoics meant by this is that we should strive to be content with what nature, or the universe, or God, or whatever might be calling the shots, has allotted us. We’re all born into a particular station in life, and while there’s nothing wrong with trying to make the most of life, the best path to a fulfilling existence is to be grateful for the good things that come our way and to accept the misfortunes in equal measure. To live according to nature is to recognize that much of what happens lies beyond our control, and that our primary source of misery is the desire to change things which cannot be changed.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, has invented his own version of what the Stoics meant in order to better attack them. He seems to have understood nature as referring to literal nature—that is to say the natural world as untouched by humans, with all its chaos, squalor, and uncertainty—rather than as the intractable unfolding of the universe.

He then goes on to say “Imagine indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to this indifference?… Is not living—estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different?”

Again, Nietzsche has latched onto a common Stoic trope and misunderstood it. Stoics do indeed promote an indifferent approach to life, but not one that is the opposite of living. Stoics don’t exist in a state of total disinterest, having no preferences, lying inert while life simply happens to them. To be indifferent in the Stoic sense of the word means to avoid attachment to things that aren’t in your control, and it’s closely linked to the idea of living in accordance with nature.

It’s fine to have opinions, to have preferences, and to want to be different (a Stoic would draw the line at being unjust). But Stoics recognize that their hopes may go unfulfilled, that their opinions may be invalidated or ignored, and that they may well go through life in total anonymity or die before they can do anything worthwhile. So, while they strive for certain things in life, they recognize that they may achieve none of them, and prepare themselves to be content no matter their circumstances.

At any rate, in spite of his ham-fisted take on Stoicism, Nietzsche remains consistent in his overall message. He continues Part 9 with the assertion that the Stoics, just like all of history’s most prominent philosophers, are more interested in seeing their point of view validated than actually inferring truth from their own investigations. He declares that the Stoics want all of existence to be “an immense eternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism.” He says that because Stoics tyrannize themselves (I assume on account of their temperance and conscious indifference), that they wish for nature to be tyrannized as well. He then goes on to ask if the Stoics themselves aren’t a piece of nature, with the tone implying that he considers this to be a real bombshell.

Of course, the answer to that question is that yes, Stoics are a part of nature, and would be the first ones to say so. It’s from that very fact that they get the idea of living in accordance with nature and of cultivating indifference. To do otherwise would be ridiculous since Stoics are a part of nature and subject to her whims. But I digress. This is, after all, an essay bout Beyond Good and Evil, and not about Stoicism.

As I said, Nietzsche remains consistent. He continues to drive at the point that the most prominent philosophies must be looked at with suspicion, and that something better should be sought in their stead. The final paragraph of Part 9, in my opinion, is a spot-on summary of what he’s been trying to say so far, and a beautifully worded on at that:

“But this is an ancient, eternal story: What formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today, too, as soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the ‘creation of the world,’ to the causa prima.”

I want to finish by admitting that this whole post smacks of favoritism on my part. I’ve devoted over a thousand words to defending this particular school of philosophy, in spite of having simply shrugged at Nietzsche’s attacks on others. But the reason for this is that I understand Stoicism much better than any of the other philosophies at which Nietzsche has taken aim. This leads me to suspect that anyone more well versed in the other traditions he’s mentioned thus far would also be able to poke holes in his assessments of them. So now I find myself wondering if anything Nietzsche has said about other schools of philosophy can be trusted at all. On top of that, I wonder if he really did understand his predecessors this poorly, or if he just adjusted his understanding to better fit his own aims.

Cough cough.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Parts 5-8

We’ve heard plenty from Nietzsche about the folly of philosophers—about their misconceptions, assumptions, and the fact that their philosophizing might not be altogether voluntary, but rather instinctual. Up to this point, his complaints have related mostly to their misunderstanding and guiltless confusion. But in Part 5 of Beyond Good and Evil he starts getting personal.

That’s not to say that anything about the book so far has been impersonal, of course, but Part 5 sees Nietzsche take explicit aim at the character of philosophers. This is something he hasn’t done yet—at least not overtly.

‘What provokes one to look at all philosophers half suspiciously, half mockingly,’ he says, ‘is not…how innocent they are…but that they are not honest enough in their work, although they all make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely.’

Ouch.

Nietzsche takes a sharp turn in Part 5 of Beyond Good and Evil, and declares that Philosophers were never interested in finding out the truth. He says that their convictions aren’t the result of serious investigation, but that the reverse is true. According to him, all philosophers are ‘advocates who resent that name,’ and their arguments and rationalizations were developed to defend their personal prejudices.

He names Kant and Spinoza as examples of philosophers who use complex reasoning to deter people from questioning their views—leading people down ‘dialectical bypaths’ in the case of the former, and employing a ‘hocus-pocus of mathematical form’ in the case of the latter.

He goes on in Part 6 to claim that philosophers aren’t motivated by a drive to truth, but that their philosophy does indeed come from internal drives. Those drives—he doesn’t specify one, but refers broadly to any and all drives that a person might have—would all like to see themselves as being ‘the ultimate purpose of existence,’ and ‘all of them have done philosophy at some time.’

Basically, philosophers are motivated by whatever internal drive is strongest in them, and they concoct their philosophies to validate that drive. So says Nietzsche.

Conversely, he says, it’s in scholars and scientists that a real drive for knowledge and truth can be found. He refers to that drive as a ‘small, independent clockwork that, once well wound, works on vigorously without any essential participation from all the other drives of the scholar.’

This ‘clockwork,’ as he calls it, could be applied to pretty much anything, and the same scholar who studies linguistics could easily have instead become a biologist or physicist. It’s just a matter of where they direct that ‘clockwork.’ Their area of scholarly expertise is not their main drive, and so they are able to pursue their studies with impartiality, while having their personal interests center on family, politics, or money. Not so with philosophers, according to Nietzsche. It is their drives that direct them, and not the other way round.

Part 7 continues this indictment of philosophy with the words of famed philosopher Epicurus, who joked that Platonists were ‘“flatterers of Dionysius,” in other words, tyrant’s baggage and lickspittles;’ Nietzsche also points out that the Greek word Dionysiokolax (flatterer of Dyonisius) was often used to refer to actors, and so this jab should also be understood as meaning that Platonists were showy and disingenuous.

Part 8 consists of just a few lines of text, which speak for themselves. Nietzsche states that ‘There is a point in every philosophy when the philosopher’s “conviction” appears on stage—or to use the language of an ancient Mystery:

[The ass has arrived, beautiful and most brave.]’

What Nietzsche means to say here, near as I can tell, is simply that the underlying prejudice of any philosophy will always be revealed, given sufficient scrutiny. It may be masked with flowery language and high-minded moralizing, but it is definitely there. An ass is still an ass, even if it’s finely adorned.

And that about covers the content of Parts 5 through 8. Actually, if I’m being honest, it doesn’t even begin to cover it. This was a summary, and a sparing one at that. I could write a whole post on each one of the sentences in this book, and I’m sure that the above paragraphs omitted enough to drive any semi-serious Nietzsche scholar nuts.

But it’s the best I could do with the time available to me outside of work, and I do think I’ve at least covered the basics. To expect more of myself would be wishful thinking, in any case, so what I’ve presented here will have to do.

Now, I’ve graduated from covering one or two parts in a post to bunching four together, so bear with me as forge ahead with my analysis. Should I have interwoven it with my summary? Maybe, but I didn’t. Will I next time? Maybe. Let’s see how this goes first.

For his claim that all philosophers are dishonest, Nietzsche provides no substantial proof. This is a habit whereby he’s continuously undermined most of what he’s said so far. In Part 5, he makes vague references to the philosophies of Kant and Spinoza which clearly assume that the reader is familiar with them (I’m sure this was a fairly safe assumption in nineteenth century Europe), but he doesn’t do much more than that.

As I said, this has been an ongoing problem with the book so far. Nietzsche consistently fails to provide proof for the claims he makes, and he assumes that his readers will all intuitively understand his references. Again, this was probably not as much of a problem at the time of writing as it is now for this millennial dabbler, but it does get distracting.

I’ve been subconsciously noting all of the instances of generalization and hedging that I’ve come across while reading BGaE, and I doubt this book would last one minute under the pens of even the most forgiving of my old university professors.

Again, I’m reminded of that comment I read claiming that Nietzsche writes well but has nothing to say.

In spite of all this, I’m inclined to accept what Nietzsche says about the origins of prominent philosophical traditions—namely that they arose in order to validate their progenitors’ prejudices, rather than as the result of actual impartial investigation of truth.

Why?

Because I’ve witnessed proof of that particular human tendency for as long as I’ve been alive, and in myself most of all. One has only to observe human beings for an hour or two to see how hasty we are in our reasoning. Opinions are formed in an eyeblink, and conclusions are almost exclusively jumped to. I myself spend my waking life staggering from one knee-jerk reaction to the next, and usually only reason my way through these as I’m falling asleep at the end of a long and preoccupied day. The same is true of pretty much everyone I interact with.

 And while I’m sure that there are an exceptional few among us who really are able to take their time in drawing conclusions, I doubt the ratio is high enough to include all of history’s great philosophers, or even most of them.

So I’m perfectly happy to accept Nietzsche’s petulant assertion that philosophers have mostly been motivated by “a love of [their] wisdom” as he puts it in Part 5. As far as I’m concerned, it would be no less controversial to claim that history’s greatest philosophers all wore clothes or drank water. These are a given for human beings, just as it’s a given that we race to conclusions and reason them out after the fact.

I don’t, however, think this makes philosophers dishonest, or lickspittles, or mere actors. To think so would be to assume that their post hoc reasoning is done intentionally, rather than automatically. It would actually be at odds with Nietzsche’s earlier (also apt) assertion that reason and philosophy are instinctual acts.

If much of what we do is automatic or preprogrammed, how can it be that a subsection of us (philosophers) are dishonest because of that automaticity when the rest of us are just being human?

In any case, whether you call it dishonesty or just folly, it’s a fair point that Nietzsche makes, even if he does so without any real proof. This is one of those rare truths that most people can intuit themselves without needing to be convinced.

We’re a hasty species, and far less rational than we’d like to think, and that’s even true for those of us who most pride themselves on their ability to reason and remain objective. But even though that uncomfortable fact might be all the more glaring when noted amongst philosophers, it doesn’t mean they’re deceitful or duplicitous.

But just as Nietzsche is too harsh towards philosophers, I think he’s far too kind to the scholars that he holds up as paragons of impartiality. He seems convinced that the average scientist is able to keep their work and their personal life separate, and that it’s impossible that personal prejudice could ever impact a scholar’s ability to apply the scientific method with integrity.

I suppose Nietzsche thought that a little contrast might help him make his point about philosophers. But the idea that scientists have an incorruptible drive for truth that is set apart from the rest of their lives is just…goofy. It’s obviously not true, and I think ol’ Friedrich could have tried a little harder here. Even by his standards, his section about scholars as the opposites of philosophers just doesn’t hold water.

Nonetheless, his point is well taken. Philosophers are humans, and bring an array of assumptions, prejudices, and conflicting drives to their philosophizing. These will all make themselves known one way or another, as he emphasizes in Part 8. If one looks closely enough at any prominent philosophy, one will eventually find evidence of the flawed human that cooked it up, and see the prejudices that underly it.

Beyond Good and Evil Chapter One: Part 4

The last time I posted here, I said that I intended to start covering more of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in each of my articles, rather than just having each post pertain to a single ‘part’ of the book. I meant that. I really did. And I will start being broader in my analysis.

Just not this time.

My last post focused on Part 3 and the relationship between instinct and conscious thinking. Part 3 continued what Parts 1 and 2 started by shining a light on another assumption that people in western society are apt to lean on, and I probably could, in hindsight, have condensed those three parts into a single article.

I intended to do just that with my next article—to have it cover three or four parts at once. But as I continued reading, I realized that Part 4 was in the same vein as Parts 1-3, and Parts 5-8 not only fit together nicely, but went in a different direction from the first four. So, it seems I’ve painted myself into a corner.

Part 4 would be out of place in a post that also covers Parts 5-8, and the opportunity to cover it in conjunction with Parts 1-3 is gone. So, on behalf of my lackluster planning, I present Part 4 of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

At the beginning of Chapter One, Nietzsche asked why we shouldn’t prefer untruth instead of truth. He went on to list a few examples of things which we hold to be true, or on which we base our notions of truth, and declared them, not unconvincingly, to be unreliable. He took aim at the idea that consciousness (and therefore philosophy itself) is separate from instinct, as well as at the generally unquestioned acceptance of various opposites and their values (honesty is good, dishonesty is bad, etc.). He’s been questioning our conceptions of truth so far, but it wasn’t until Part 4 that he finally started explaining why untruth might be preferable to truth.

And he gets right to the point.

He says that the value of a judgement depends on ‘…to what extent it is life promoting, life preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating.’ And then goes on to state that ‘… the falsest judgements (which include synthetic judgements a priori) are the most indispensable for us…’

The falsest judgements are the most indispensable for us.

It’s an awfully grandiose claim, but one that he immediately explains. The key to what he’s talking about lies between those parentheses, in the term a priori.

Judgements a priori are conclusions drawn from theoretical thinking, deduction, reasoning etc. as opposed to conclusions drawn from observations of the real world. These are a vital part of everyday life, and allow us to plan our actions without needing to literally see what their results will be before doing them. For example, we might run a simulation in our heads of how a comment will be received, based on a catalogue of past conversations, and then will either make that comment or not make it depending on how an imaginary version of our interlocutor reacts to it. We’re basing a decision on unreality—on something we’ve imagined—but no-one would question the value of doing so.

We spend our whole lives immersed in an imaginary world where we plan conversations, plan battles, and plan anything else that may or may not lie in our future. The mathematical equations we use to precisely predict outcomes in the physical world even fall under this category of the unreal, since they are inventions and not physical objects. But as Nietzsche says: ‘…without this constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—’.

And he’s right, of course. If we consider a priori judgements to be a kind of untruth, then it’s absolutely correct to say that we as humans rely on untruth. And not just in the superficial sense of using white lies to make our lives easier. No, we do indeed base almost all of our actions on imaginary precedents, and we wouldn’t be able to function as individuals or as a society without this habit of falsifying the world.

Nietzsche finishes off Part 4 by pointing out that to recognize the significance of untruth ‘…means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way…’, and that ‘…a philosophy that risks this would…place itself beyond good and evil.’

It’s becoming clearer to me that Nietzsche is not all hot air. He’s got plenty of hot air, of course, but he’s beginning to focus it more and more narrowly. We are, it seems, really starting to get somewhere following the bold claims of his opening paragraphs.

But I do have one major complaint about Part 4. Nietzsche is right about our reliance on a falsified world, but I feel like it’s a stretch to call this an example of untruth. If you ask the average person (like yours truly) what the word untruth means, they’ll likely provide a definition that involves deceit, disingenuity, or confusion. Untruth is usually understood as either a deliberate obscuring of truth or a misunderstanding of truth.

And while reasoning and deduction and theoretical thinking might not involve things which exist in the real world—which have no perceptible manifestation which could be called true—I don’t think that this merits their association with untruth. They may be unreal or something along those lines, but I don’t think that untruth as it’s understood by the layman (again, yours truly) really applies to them.

Judgments a priori stem from a desire to better understand the world and better predict events, and a priori judgements are often informed by previous experience in the real world. By deducing an outcome without actually seeing an outcome, we’re not lying about the outcome or misunderstanding it. We’re just doing our best to predict it, and thereby make our lives a little easier and maybe even make our next prediction a little more accurate.

I don’t wholly reject Nietzsche’s labelling of a priori reasoning as being untrue, but I think it’s pretty obvious that he selected that particular term from a list of others because it would get the best reaction from the reader, and not because it was the most apt word to use.

But of course, that’s very much on brand for Nietzsche.

As his ideas come together, he continues with his dramatic style, and that style can occasionally hamper his ability to clearly convey his ideas. It’s not a huge problem, but it’s ever-present, and here we have a perfect example of it.

Even when I agree with Nietzsche, and that’s not infrequently, I find myself doing so with one eyebrow raised. It’s pretty clear that he wants to get a rise out of his readers as much as he wants to make himself understood. This can be frustrating, but it does make for good reading.