The latter is only an _expression_ for the order among the spheres of
power and their interplay.
_(i)_ The Thing-in-Itself and Appearance.
553.
The foul blemish on Kant's criticism has at last become visible
even to the coarsest eyes: Kant had no right to his distinction
"_appearance_" and "_thing-in-itself,_"--in his own writings he had
deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this
old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of
drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appearance from the
appearance itself, as unallowable in accordance with his conception
of the idea of causality and its _purely intraphenomenal_ validity,
and this conception, on the other hand, already anticipates that
_differentiation,_ as if the "thing in itself" were not only inferred
but actually _given._
554.
It is obvious that neither things-in-themselves _nor_ appearances can
be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this
it follows that the concept "cause and effect" is _not applicable_ in a
philosophy which believes in things-in-themselves and in appearances.
Kant's mistake--... As a matter of fact, from a psychological
standpoint, the concept "cause and effect" is derived from an attitude
of mind which believes it sees the action of will upon will everywhere,
which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not
in things). Within the mechanical view of the world (which is logic
and its application to space and time) that concept is reduced to
the mathematical formula with which--and this is a fact which cannot
be sufficiently emphasised--nothing is ever understood, but rather
_defined_--deformed.
555.
The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People
would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but
behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even supposing there
_were_ an "in-itself," an unconditional thing, it could on that very
account _not be known_! Something unconditioned cannot be known:
otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a
process of "coming into relation with something"; the knowledge-seeker,
on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing
to him, and to be nothing to anybody at all: and from this there
results a contradiction,--in the first place, between this _will_ to
know, and this desire that the thing to be known _should_ be nothing
to him (wherefore know at all then?); and secondly, because something
which is nothing to anybody, does not even _exist,_ and therefore
cannot be known. Knowing means: "to place one's self in relation with
something," to feel one's self conditioned by something and one's
self conditioning it under all circumstances, then, it is a process
of _making stable or fixed,_ of _defining,_ of _making conditions
conscious_ (not a process of _sounding_ things, creatures, or objects
in-themselves).
556.
A "thing-in-itself" is just as absurd as a "sense-in-itself," a
"meaning-in-itself." There is no such thing as a "fact-in-itself,"
_for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact._
The answer to the question, "What is that?" is a process of _fixing a
meaning_ from a different standpoint. The "_essence_" the "_essential
factor,_" is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective,
and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the
question is "What is that for me?" (for us, for everything that lives,
etc. etc.).
A thing would be defined when all creatures had asked and answered this
question, "What is that?" concerning it. Supposing that one single
creature, with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all
things, were lacking, that thing would still remain undefined.
In short: the essence of a thing is really only an _opinion_ concerning
that "thing." Or, better still; "_it is worth_" is actually what is
meant by _"it is"_ or by "that is."
One may not ask: "_Who_ interprets, then?" for the act of interpreting
_itself_ as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as
"Being," but as a _process,_ as _Becoming_) as a passion.
The origin of "things" is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking,
willing, and feeling subject. The concept thing as well as all its
attributes.--Even "the subject" is a creation of this order, a "thing"
like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the
_power_ that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from
all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined
or distinct from all other individual capacities; at bottom action
conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to
come (action and the probability of similar action).
557.