406.
Let us rid ourselves of a few superstitions which heretofore have been
fashionable among philosophers!
407.
Philosophers are prejudiced _against_ appearance, change, pain, death,
the things of the body, the senses, fate, bondage, and all that which
has no purpose.
In the first place, they believe in: absolute knowledge, (2) in
knowledge for its own sake,
(3) in virtue and happiness as necessarily related,
(4) in the recognisability of men's acts. They are led by instinctive
determinations of values, in which _former_ cultures are reflected
(more dangerous cultures too).
408.
What have philosophers _lacked_! (1) A sense of history, (2) a
knowledge of physiology, (3) a goal in the future.--The ability to
criticise without irony or moral condemnation.
409.
Philosophers have had (1) from times immemorial a wonderful capacity
for the _contradictio in adjecto,_ (2) they have always trusted
concepts as unconditionally as they have mistrusted the senses: it
never seems to have occurred to them that notions and words are our
inheritance of past ages in which thinking was neither very clear nor
very exact.
What seems to dawn upon philosophers last of all: that they must
no longer allow themselves to be presented with concepts already
conceived, nor must they merely purify and polish up those concepts;
but they must first _make_ them, _create_ them, themselves, and
then present them and get people to accept them. Up to the present,
people have trusted their concepts generally, as if they had been a
wonderful _dowry_ from some kind of wonderland: but they constitute
the inheritance of our most remote, most foolish, and most intelligent
forefathers. This _piety_ towards that _which already exists in us_
is perhaps related to the _moral element in science._ What we needed
above all is absolute scepticism towards all traditional concepts (like
that which a certain philosopher may already have possessed--and he was
Plato, of course: for he taught _the reverse_).
410.
Profoundly mistrustful towards the dogmas of the theory of knowledge,
I liked to look now out of this window, now out of that, though I took
good care not to become finally fixed anywhere, indeed I should have
thought it dangerous to have done so--though finally: is it within the
range of probabilities for an instrument to criticise its own fitness?
What I noticed more particularly was, that no scientific scepticism or
dogmatism has ever arisen quite free from all _arrières pensées_--that
it has only a secondary value as soon as the motive lying immediately
behind it is discovered.
Fundamental aspect: Kant's, Hegel's, Schopenhauer's, the sceptical and
epochistical, the historifying and the pessimistic attitudes--all have
a _moral_ origin. I have found no one who has dared to _criticise the
moral valuations,_ and I soon turned my back upon the meagre attempts
that have been made to describe the evolution of these feelings (by
English and German Darwinians).
How can Spinoza's position, his denial and repudiation of the moral
values, be explained? (It was the result of his Theodicy!)
411.
_Morality regarded as the highest form of protection._--Our world is
_either_ the work and expression (the _modus_) of God, in which case
it must be _in the highest degree perfect_ (Leibnitz's conclusion
...),--and no one doubted that he knew what perfection must be
like,--and then all evil can only be _apparent_ (Spinoza is _more
radical,_ he says this of good and evil), or it must be a part of God's
high purpose (a consequence of a particularly great mark of favour
on God's part, who thus allows man to choose between good and evil:
the privilege of being no automaton; "freedom," with the ever-present
danger of making a mistake and of choosing wrongly.... See Simplicius,
for instance, in the commentary to Epictetus).
_Or_ our world is imperfect; evil and guilt are real, determined, and
are absolutely inherent to its being; in that case it cannot be the
_real_ world: consequently knowledge can only be a way of denying
the world, for the latter is error which may be recognised as such.
This is Schopenhauer's opinion, based upon Kantian first principles.
Pascal was still more desperate: he thought that even knowledge must be
corrupt and false--that _revelation_ is a necessity if only in order to
recognise that the world should be denied....
412.
Owing to our habit of believing in unconditional authorities, we have
grown to feel a profound need for them: indeed, this feeling is so
strong that, even in an age of criticism such as Kant's was, it showed
itself to be superior to the need for criticism, and, in a certain
sense, was able to subject the whole work of critical acumen, and to
convert it to its own use. It proved its superiority once more in
the generation which followed, and which, owing to its historical
instincts, naturally felt itself drawn to a relative view of all
authority, when it converted even the Hegelian philosophy of evolution
(history rechristened and called philosophy) to its own use, and
represented history as being the self-revelation and self-surpassing
of moral ideas. Since Plato, philosophy has lain under the dominion of
morality. Even in Plato's predecessors, moral interpretations play a
most important rôle (Anaximander declares that all things are made to
perish as a punishment for their departure from pure being; Heraclitus
thinks that the regularity of phenomena is a proof of the morally
correct character of evolution in general).
413.
The progress of philosophy has been hindered most seriously hitherto
through the influence of moral _arrières-pensées._
414.
In all ages, "fine feelings" have been regarded as arguments, "heaving
breasts" have been the bellows of godliness, convictions have been the
"criteria" of truth, and the need of opposition has been the note of
interrogation affixed to wisdom. This falseness and fraud permeates
the whole history of philosophy. But for a few respected sceptics,
no instinct for intellectual Uprightness is to be found anywhere.
Finally, _Kant_ guilelessly sought to make this thinker's corruption
scientific by means of his concept, "_practical reason_". He expressly
invented a reason which, in certain cases, would allow one _not_ to
bother about reason--that is to say, in cases where the heart's desire,
morality, or "duty" are the motive power.
415.
_Hegel_: his popular side, the doctrine of war and of great men. Right
is on the side of the victorious: he (the victorious man) stands for
the progress of mankind. His is an attempt at proving the dominion of
morality by means of history.
Kant: a kingdom of moral values withdrawn from us, invisible, real.
Hegel: a demonstrable process of evolution, the actualisation of the
kingdom of morality.
We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived either in Kant's or Hegel's
way:--We no longer _believe,_ as they did, in morality, and therefore
have no philosophies to found with the view of justifying morality.
Criticism and history have no charm for us _in this_ respect: what is
their charm, then?
416.
The importance of German philosophy (_Hegel,_) the thinking out of a
kind of _pantheism_ which would not reckon evil, error, and suffering
as arguments against godliness. _This grand initiative_ was misused
by the powers that were (State, etc.) to sanction the rights of the
people that happened to be paramount.
_Schopenhauer_ appears as a stubborn opponent of this idea; he is a
moral man who, in order to keep in the right concerning his moral
valuation, finally becomes a _denier of the world._ Ultimately he
becomes a "mystic."
I myself have sought an _æsthetic_ justification of the ugliness in
this world. I regarded the desire for beauty and for the persistence
of certain forms as a temporary preservative and recuperative measure:
what seemed to me to be fundamentally associated with pain, however,
was the eternal lust of creating and the _eternal compulsion to
destroy._
We call things ugly when we look at them with the desire of attributing
some sense, some _new_ sense, to what has become senseless: it is the
accumulated power of the creator which compels him to regard what has
existed hitherto as no longer acceptable, botched, worthy of being
suppressed--ugly!
417.
_My first solution of the problem: Dionysian wisdom. The joy in the
destruction of the most noble thing,_ and at the sight of its gradual
undoing, regarded as the joy over what is _coming and what lies in the
future,_ which triumphs over _actual things, however good they may
be._ Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life
(voluptuousness of the martyr included).
_My innovations._ The Development of Pessimism: intellectual
pessimism; _moral_ criticism, the dissolution of the last comfort.
Knowledge, a sign of _decay,_ veils by means of an illusion all strong
action; isolated culture is unfair and therefore strong.
(1) My _fight_ against decay and the increasing weakness of
personality. I sought a new _centrum._
(2) The impossibility of this endeavour is _recognised._
(3) _I therefore travelled farther along the road of dissolution--and
along it I found new sources of strength for individuals._ We _must
be destroyers_!--I perceived that the state of _dissolution is one
in which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind of perfection
not possible hitherto, it is an image and isolated example of life
in general._ To the paralysing feeling of general dissolution and
imperfection, I opposed the _Eternal Recurrence._
418.
People naturally seek the picture of life in _that_ philosophy which
makes them most cheerful--that is to say, in that philosophy which
gives the highest sense of freedom to _their strongest instinct._ This
is probably the case with me.
419.
German philosophy, as a whole,--Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to
mention the greatest,--is the most out-and-out _form of romanticism_
and home-sickness that has ever yet existed: it is a yearning for the
best that has ever been known on earth. One is at home nowhere; that
which is ultimately yearned after is a place where one can somehow
feel at home; because one has been at home there before, and that
place is the _Greek_ world! But it is precisely in that direction
that airbridges are broken down_--save,_ of course, the rainbow
of concepts! And the latter lead everywhere, to all the homes and
"fatherlands" that ever existed for Greek souls! Certainly, one must be
very light and thin in order to cross these bridges! But what happiness
lies even in this desire for spirituality, almost for ghostliness!
With it, how far one is from the "press and bustle" and the mechanical
boorishness of the natural sciences, how far from the vulgar din
of "modern ideas"! One wants to get back to the Greeks _via_ the
Fathers of the Church, from North to South, from formulæ to forms; the
passage out of antiquity--Christianity--is still a source of joy as a
means of access to antiquity, as a portion of the old world itself,
as a glistening mosaic of ancient concepts and ancient valuations.
Arabesques, scroll-work, rococo of scholastic abstractions--always
better, that is to say, finer and more slender, than the peasant and
plebeian reality of Northern Europe, and still a protest on the part
of higher intellectuality against the peasant war and insurrection
of the mob which have become master of the intellectual taste of
Northern Europe, and which had its leader in a man as great and
unintellectual as Luther:--in this respect German philosophy belongs
to the Counter-Reformation, it might even be looked upon as related
to the Renaissance, or at least to the will to Renaissance, the will
to get ahead with the discovery of antiquity, with the excavation of
ancient philosophy, and above all of pre-Socratic philosophy--the
most thoroughly dilapidated of all Greek temples! Possibly, in à few
hundred years, people will be of the opinion that all German philosophy
derived its dignity from this fact, that step by step it attempted
to reclaim the soil of antiquity, and that therefore all demands for
"originality" must appear both petty and foolish when compared with
Germany's higher claim to having refastened the bonds which seemed for
ever rent--the bonds which bound us to the Greeks, the highest type
of "men" ever evolved hitherto. To-day we are once more approaching
all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony which the Greek mind
in Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and
Anaxagoras, was responsible for. Day by day we are growing more
_Greek_; at first, as is only natural, the change remains confined to
concepts and valuations, and we hover around like Greasing spirits: but
it is to be hoped that some day our _body_ will also be involved! Here
lies (and has always lain) my hope for the German nation.
420.
I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary
and perhaps desirable that the philosopher should be a _rare_
plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of
philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy
has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say
that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person
from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion
"philosopher" should not completely perish in Germany. There are so
many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal
their ineptitude beneath such noble names.
421.
I must _set up the highest ideal of a philosopher._ Learning is not
everything! The scholar is the sheep in the kingdom of learning; he
studies because he is told to do so, and because others have done so
before him.
422.
The superstition concerning _philosophers_: They are confounded with
men _of science._ As if the value of things were inherent in them
and required only to be held on to tightly! To what extent are their
researches carried on under the influence of values which already
prevail (their hatred of appearance of the body, etc.)? Schopenhauer
concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism). Ultimately the confusion
goes so far that Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at the
present day power has gone over to the men of _science._ Even Frenchmen
like Taine prosecute research, or mean to prosecute research,
_without_ being already in possession of a standard of valuation.
Prostration before "facts" of a kind of cult. As a matter of fact, they
_destroy_ the existing valuations.
The _explanation_ of this misunderstanding. The man who is able to
command is a rare phenomenon; he misinterprets himself. What one
_wants_ to do, above all, is to disclaim all authority and to attribute
it to _circumstances._ In Germany the critic's estimations belong to
the history of awakening _manhood._ Lessing, etc. (Napoleon concerning
Goethe). As a matter of fact, the movement is again made retrograde
owing to German romanticism: and the _fame_ of German philosophy
relies upon it as if it dissipated the danger of scepticism and could
_demonstrate faith._ Both tendencies culminate in Hegel: at bottom,
what he did was to generalise the fact of German criticism and the
fact of German romanticism,--a kind of dialectical fatalism, but to
the honour of intellectuality, with the actual submission of the
philosopher to reality. _The critic prepares the way_: that is all!
With Schopenhauer the philosopher's mission dawns; it is felt that
the object is to determine _values_; still under the dominion of
eudemonism. The ideal of Pessimism.
423.
_Theory and practice._--This is a pernicious distinction, as if there
were an _instinct of knowledge,_ which, without inquiring into the
utility or harmfulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth; and
then that, apart from this instinct, there were the whole world of
_practical_ interests.
In contradiction of this, I try to show what instincts are active
behind all these _pure_ theorists,--and how the latter, as a whole,
under the dominion of their instincts, fatally make for something
which _to their minds_ is "truth," to their minds and _only_ to their
minds. The struggle between systems, together with the struggle between
epistemological scruples, is one which involves very special instincts
(forms of vitality, of decline, of classes, of races, etc.).
The so-called _thirst for knowledge_ may be traced to the _lust of
appropriation_ and of _conquest_: in obedience to this lust the
senses, memory, and the instincts, etc., were developed. The quickest
possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of spoil
from the world of knowledge (_i.e._ that portion of the world which has
been appropriated and made manageable)....
Morality is therefore such a curious science, because it is in the
highest degree _practical_: the purely scientific position, scientific
uprightness, is thus immediately abandoned, as soon as morality calls
for replies to its questions. Morality says: I _require_ certain
answers--reasons, arguments; scruples may come afterwards, or they may
not come at all.
"How must one act?" If one considers that one is dealing with a
supremely evolved type--a type which has been "dealt with" for
countless thousands of years, and in which everything has become
instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality, the _urgency_ of this moral
question seems rather funny.
"How must one act?" Morality has always been a subject of
misunderstanding: as a matter of fact, a certain species, which was
constituted to act in a certain way, wished to justify itself by
_making_ its norm paramount.
"How must one act?" this is not a cause, but an _effect._ Morality
follows, the ideal comes first....
On the other hand, the appearance of moral scruples (or in other
words, _the coming to consciousness of the values_ which guide action)
betray a certain _morbidness_; strong ages and people do not ponder
over their rights, nor over the principles of action, over instinct or
over reason. _Consciousness_ is a sign that the real morality--that
is to say, the certainty of instinct which leads to a definite
course of action--is going to the dogs.... Every time a new _world
of consciousness_ is created, the moralists are signs of a lesion,
of impoverishment and of disorganisation. Those who are _deeply
instinctive_ fear bandying words over duties: among them are found
pyrrhonic opponents of dialectics and of knowableness in general.... A
virtue is _refuted_ with a "for." ...
_Thesis_: The appearance of moralists belongs to periods when morality
is declining.
_Thesis_: The moralist is a dissipator of moral instincts, however much
he may appear to be their restorer.
_Thesis_: That which really prompts the action of a moralist is not a
moral instinct, but the _instincts of decadence,_ translated into the
forms of morality (he regards the growing uncertainty of the instincts
as _corruption_).
_Thesis_: The _instincts of decadence_ which, thanks to moralists, wish
to become master of the instinctive morality of stronger races and
ages, are:--
(1) The instincts of the weak and of the botched;
(2) The instincts of the exceptions, of the anchorites, of the
unhinged, of the abortions of quality or of the reverse;
(3) The instincts of the habitually suffering, who require a noble
interpretation of their condition, and who therefore require to be as
poor physiologists as possible.
424.
The humbug of the _scientific spirit._--One should not affect the
spirit of science, when the time to be scientific is not yet at
hand; but even the genuine investigator has to abandon vanity, and
has to affect a certain kind of method which is not yet seasonable.
Neither should we falsify things and thoughts, which we have arrived
at differently, by means of a false arrangement of deduction and
dialectics. It is thus that Kant in his "morality" falsifies his
inner tendency to psychology; a more modern example of the same thing
is Herbert Spencer's _Ethics._ A man should neither conceal nor
misrepresent the _facts_ concerning the way in which he conceived his
thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible books will certainly
always have something of the aphoristic and impetuous character of
Pascal's _Pensées_. The motive forces and valuations have lain long
below the surface; that which comes uppermost is their effect.