According to Nietzsche, the history of philosophy from Plato to his
own time is a progress of the idea that objective truth (a conception
of "the true world") is not only not attainable, but does not exist
at all. He expresses this idea in his Twilight of the Idols (English
edition, pp. 122-123) under the caption, "How the 'True World' Finally
Became a Fable," which describes the successive stages as follows:
"1. The true world attainable by the wise, the pious, and
the virtuous man,--he lives in it, he embodies it.
"(Oldest form of the idea, relatively rational, simple,
and convincing. Transcription of the proposition, 'I,
Plato, am the truth,')
"2. The true world unattainable at present, but promised
to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man (to the
sinner who repents).
"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more
insidious, more incomprehensible,--it becomes feminine, it
becomes Christian.)
"3. The true world unattainable, undemonstrable, and
unable to be promised; but even as conceived, a comfort,
an obligation, and an imperative.
"(The old sun still, but shining only through mist and
scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, northerly,
Koenigsbergian.)
"4. The true world--unattainable? At any rate unattained.
And being unattained also unknown. Consequently also
neither comforting, saving nor obligatory: what obligation
could anything unknown lay upon us?
"(Gray morning. First dawning of reason. Cock-crowing of
Positivism.)
"5. The 'true world'--an idea neither good for anything,
nor even obligatory any longer,--an idea become useless
and superfluous; consequently a refuted idea; let us do
away with it!
"(Full day; breakfast; return of _bon sens_ and
cheerfulness; Plato blushing for shame; infernal noise of
all free intellects,)
"6. We have done away with the true world: what world is
left? perhaps the seeming?... But no! in doing away with
the true, we have also done away with the seeming world!
"(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; end of the
longest error; climax of mankind; _Incipit Zarathustra!_)"
The reader will ask, "What next?" Probably afternoon and evening, and
then night. In the night presumably "the old sun," i. e., the idea of
Plato's true world, which (according to Nietzsche) grew pale in the
morning, will shine again.
Nietzsche's main desire was to live the real life and make his home not
in an imaginary Utopia but in this actual world of ours. He reproached
the philosophers as well as the religious leaders and ethical teachers
for trying to make mankind believe that the teal world is purely
phenomenal, for replacing it by the world of thought which they called
"the true world" or the world of truth. To Nietzsche the typical
philosopher is Plato. He and all his followers are accused of hypocrisy
for making people believe that "the true world" of their own fiction is
real and that man's ambition should be to attain to this "true world"
(the world of philosophy, of science, of art, of ethical ideals) built
above the real world. Nietzsche means to shatter all the idols of the
past, and he has come to the conclusion that even the scientists were
guilty of the same fault as the philosophers. They erected a world of
thought, of subjective conception from the materials of the real world,
and so he denounces even their attempts at constructing a "true world"
as either a self-mystification or a lie. It is as imaginary as the
world of the priest. In order to lead a life worthy of the "overman,"
we should assert ourselves and feel no longer hampered by rules of
conduct or canons of logic or by any consideration for truth.
With all his hatred of religion, Nietzsche was nevertheless an
intensely religious character, and knowing that he could not clearly
see a connection between his so-called "real world" and his actual
surroundings, he developed all the symptoms of religious fanaticism
which characterizes religious leaders of all ages. He indulged in
a mystic ecstacy, preaching it as the essential feature of his
philosophy, and his Dionysiac enthusiasm is not the least of the
intoxicants which are contained in his thought and bring so many
poetical and talented but immature minds under his control.
It is obvious that "the real world" of Nietzsche is more unreal than
"the true world" of philosophy and of religion which he denounces as
fictitious, but he was too naive and philosophically crude to see this.
Nietzsche's "real world" is a fabric of his own personal imagination,
while the true world of science is at least a thought-construction
of the world which pictures facts with objective exactness; it is
controlled by experience and can be utilized in practical life; it is
subject to criticism and its propositions are being constantly tested
either to be refuted or verified. Nietzsche's "real world" is the hope
(and perhaps not even a desirable hope) of a feverish brain whose
action is influenced by a decadent body.
Nietzsche's so-called "real world" is one ideal among many others. It
is as much subjective as the ideals of other mortals,--of men who seek
happiness in wealth, or in pleasures, or in fame, or in scholarship,
or in a religious life--all of them imagine that the world of their
thoughts is real and the goal which they endeavor to reach is the only
thing that possesses genuine worth. In Nietzsche's opinion all are
dreamers catching at shadows, but the shadow of his own fancy appeared
to him as real.
According to Nietzsche the universe is not a cosmos but a chaos. He
says (_La Gaya Scienza_, German edition, p. 148):
"The astral order in which we live is an exception. This
order and the relative stability which is thereby caused,
made the exception' of exceptions possible,--the formation
of organisms. The character-total of the world is into all
eternity chaos, not in the sense of a missing necessity,
but of missing order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom,
and as all our æsthetic humanities may be called."
In agreement with this conception of order, Nietzsche says of man, the
rational animal:
"I fear that animals look upon man as a being of their own
kind, which in a most dangerous way has lost the sound
animal-sense,--as a lunatic animal, a laughing animal, a
crying animal, a miserable animal." (_La Gaya Scienza_,
German edition, p. 196.)
If reason is an aberration, the brute must be superior to man and
instinct must range higher than logical thought. Man's reason,
according to this consistent nominalist view, is purely subjective and
has no prototype in the objective world. This is a feature common to
all nominalistic philosophies. John Stuart Mill regards the theorems
of logic and mathematics, not only not as truths, but as positive
untruths. He says:
"The points, lines, circles, and squares, which any one
has in his mind, are (I apprehend) simply copies of the
points, lines, circles, and squares which he has known in
his experience. Our idea of a point, I apprehend to be
simply our idea of the _minimum visibile_, the smallest
portion of surface which we can see. A line, as defined
by geometers, is wholly inconceivable. We can reason
about a line as if it had no breadth; because we have a
power, which is the foundation of all the control we can
exercise over the operations of our minds; the power, when
a perception is present to our senses, or a conception
to our intellects, of attending to a part only of that
perception or conception, instead of the whole. But we
cannot conceive a line without breadth; we can form no
mental picture of such a line: all the lines which we have
in our minds are lines possessing breadth."
Nietzsche shows his nominalistic tendencies by repeatedly pronouncing
the same propositions in almost literally the same words,[1] without,
however, acknowledging the school in which he picked up this error.
It is quite true that mathematical lines and circles are human
conceptions, but they are not purely subjective conceptions, still
less untruths; they are great and important discoveries. They are
not arbitrarily devised but constructed according to the laws of the
uniformities that dominate existence. They represent actual features
of the factors which shape the objective universe, and thus only is it
possible that the astronomer through the calculation of mathematical
curves can predict the motion of the stars.[2]
Reason is the key to the universe, because it is the reflex of cosmic
order, and the cosmic order, the intrinsic regularity and immanent
harmony of the uniformities of nature, is not a subjective illusion but
an objective reality.
When Goethe claims that all things transitory are symbols of that
which is intransitory and eternal, Nietzsche answers that the idea of
anything intransitory is a mere symbol, and God (the idea of anything
eternal) a poet's lie.
Like a mocking-bird, the nominalist philosopher imitates the ring of
Goethe's well-known lines at the conclusion of the second part of
"Faust," in which the "real world" of transient things is considered as
a mere symbol of the true world of eternal verities:
"Das Unvergangliche
Ist nur dein Gleichniss.
Gott der Verfängliche
Ist Dichter-Erschleichniss.
Weltspiel, das herrische,
Mischt Sein und Schein:--
Das Ewig-Närrische
Mischt uns--hinein."
"The non-deciduous
Is a symbol of _thy_ sense,
God ever invidious,
A poetical license.
World-play domineeringly
Mixes semblance and fact,
And between them us sneeringly
The Ever-Foolish has packed."
In spite of Nietzsche's hunger for the realities of life, that is
to say for objectivity, he was in fact the most subjective of all
philosophers--so much so that he was incapable of formulating any
thought as an objectively precise statement. He did not believe in
truth: "There is probability, but no truth," says he in _Der Wanderer
und sein Schatten_, p. 190; and he adds concerning the measure of the
value of truth (ibid., Aphorism 4): "The trouble in ascending mountains
is no measure of their height, and should it be different in science?"
It is true that such words as "long" and "short" are relative, because
dependent on subjective needs and valuations. But must we for that
reason give up all hope of describing facts in objective terms? Are not
meters and foot-measures definite magnitudes, whether or not they be
long for one purpose and short for another? Relativity itself admits
of a description in objective terms; but if a statement of facts in
objective terms were impossible, the ideals of exact science (as all
ideals) would be a dream.
That Nietzsche prefers the abrupt style of aphorisms to dispassionate
inquisitions is a symptom that betrays the nature of his philosophy.
His ideas, thus expressed, are easily understood. They are but very
loosely connected, and we find them frequently contradictory. They are
not presented in a logical, orderly way, but sound like reiterated
challenges to battle. They are appeals to all wild impulses and a
clamor for the right of self-assertion.
While Nietzsche's philosophy is in itself inconsistent and illogical,
it is yet born of the logic of facts; it is the consistent result and
legitimate conclusion of principles uttered centuries ago and which
were slowly matured in the historical development of thought.
The old nominalistic school is the father of Nietzsche's philosophy.
A consistent nominalist will be driven from one conclusion to another
until he reaches the stage of Nietzsche, which is philosophical
anarchism and extreme individualism.
The nominalist denies the reality of reason; he regards the existence
of universals as a fiction, and looks upon the world as a heap of
particulars. He loses sight of the unity of the world and forgets that
form is a true feature of things. It is form and the sameness of the
laws of form which makes universality of reason possible.
Nominalism rose in opposition to the medieval realism of the schoolmen
who looked upon universals as real and concrete things, representing
them as individual beings that existed _ante res, in rebus_, and
_post res_, i. e., in the particulars, before them and after them.
The realists were wrong in so far as they conceived universals as
substances or distinct essences, as true realities (hence the name
"realism"); only they were supposed to be of a more spiritual nature
than material things but, after all, they were concrete existences.
They were said to have been created by God as an artisan would make
patterns or molds for the things which he proposes to produce.
According to Plato, ideas serve the Creator as models of concrete
objects of which they are deemed to be the prototypes. The realists
were mistaken in regarding the ideal as concrete and real, but the
nominalists, on the other hand, also went too far in denying the
objective significance of universals and declaring that universals were
mere names (_nomina_ and _flatus vocis_), i. e., words invented for the
sake of conveniently thinking things and serving no other purpose.
At the bottom of the controversy lies the problem as to the nature of
things. The question arises, What are things in themselves? Do things,
or do they not, possess an independence of their own? Kant's reply is,
that things in themselves can not be known; but our reply is, that
the nature of a thing consists in its form; a thing is such as it is
because it has a definite form. Therefore "things in themselves" do not
exist; but there are "forms in themselves."
Form is not a non-entity but the most important feature of reality,
and the pure laws of form are the determinative factors of the world.
The sciences of the laws of pure form, logic, arithmetic, algebra,
geometry, etc., are therefore the key to a comprehension of the world,
and morality is the realization of ideals, i. e., of the conceptions of
pure forms, which are higher, nobler, and better than those which have
been actualized.
From our standpoint, evolution is a process in which the eternal laws
of being manifest themselves in a series of regular transformations,
reaching a point at which sentiency appears. And then evolution takes
the shape of progress, that is to say, sentient beings develop
mind; sentiments become sensations, i. e., representative images;
and words denote the universals. Then reason originates as a reflex
of the eternal laws of pure form. Human reason is deepened in a
scientific world-conception, and becoming aware of the moral aspect of
universality it broadens out into comprehensive sympathy with all forms
of existence that like ourselves aspire after a fuller comprehension of
existence.
Thus the personality of man is the reflex of that system of
eternalities which sways the universe, and humanity is found to be a
revelation of the core of the cosmos, an incarnation of Godhood. This
revelation, however, is not closed. The appearance of the religions of
good-will and mutual sympathy merely marks the beginning of a new era,
and we may expect that the future of mankind will surpass the present,
as much as the present surpasses savagery. Such is the higher humanity,
the true "overman," representing a higher species of mankind, whom we
expect.
Nietzsche's philosophy of "unmorality" looms on the horizon of human
thought as a unique conception apparently ushered into this world
without any preparation and without any precedent. It sets itself up
against tradition. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's immediate predecessor,
regarded history as the desolate dream of mankind, and Nietzsche
exhibits a remorseless contempt for everything that comes to us as a
product of history. Nietzsche scorns not only law and order, church
and state, but also reason, argument, and rule; he scorns consistency
and logic which are regarded as toys for weaklings or as tools of the
crafty.
Nietzsche is a nominalist with a vengeance. His philosophy is
particularism carried to extremes. There is no unity of existence to
him. The God-idea is dead--not only the old metaphysical notion of a
God-individual, but also God in the sense of the ultimate ground of
being, the supreme norm of the cosmos. Nietzsche's world is split up
into particular selves. He does not ask how they originated; he only
knows that they are here. Above all, he knows that his own self is
here, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. The
higher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. His ideal
is brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his
fellowmen. Democracy is an abomination to him, and he despises the
gospel of love as it is preached by both Christ and Buddha. This is
the key to his anti-moralism and to the doctrine of the autonomy of
selfhood.
Nietzsche's philosophy might be called philosophical nihilism, if
he did not object to the word. He calls it positivism, but it is
particularism, or rather an aristocratic individualism which in the
domain of thought plays the same role that political nihilism plays
in Russia. It would dethrone the hereditary Czar, the ruler by God's
grace, but it would not establish a republic. It would set on the
throne a ruthless demagogue, a self-made political boss--the overman.
It is the philosophy of protest, and Nietzsche is conscious of being
Slavic in thought and aspiration. Nor does he forget that his ancestors
belonged to the nobility. He claims to have been descended from a
Polish nobleman by the name of Niëtzki, a Protestant who came to
Germany in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.
Nietzsche's love of Slavism manifested itself in his childhood, for
when the news of the fall of Sebastopol became known, Nietzsche, at
that time a mere boy, was so dejected that he could not eat and gave
expression to his chagrin in mournful strains of verse.
He who has faith in truth accepts truth as authority; he who accepts
truth as authority recognizes duty; he who recognizes duty beholds
a goal of life. He has found a purpose for which life appears worth
living, and reaches out beyond the bounds of his narrow individuality
into the limitless cosmos. He transcends himself, he grows in truth, he
increases in power, he widens in his sympathies.
Here we touch upon the God problem. In denning God as the ultimate
authority of conduct, we are confronted by the dilemma, Is there, or
is there not a norm of morality, a standard of right and wrong, to
which the self must submit? And this question is another version of
the problem as to the existence of truth. Is there truth which we
must heed, or is truth a fiction and is the self not bound to respect
anything? We answer this question as to the existence of truth in the
affirmative, Nietzsche in the negative.
But he who rejects truth cuts himself loose from the fountain-head of
the waters of life. He may deify selfhood, but his own self will die of
its self-apotheosis. His divinity is not a true God-incarnation, it is
a mere assumption and the self-exaltation of a pretender.
Nietzsche's philosophy is more consistent than it appears on its face.
Being the negation of the right of consistency, its lack of consistency
is its most characteristic feature. If the intellect is truly, as
Schopenhauer suggests, the servant of the will, then there is no
authority in reason, and arguments have no strength. All quarrels are
simply questions of power. Then, there is might, but not right; right
is simply the _bon plaisir_ of might. Then there is no good nor evil;
good is that which I will, bad is that which threatens to thwart my
will. Good and evil are distinctions invented for the enslavement of
the masses, but the free man, the genius, the aristocrat, who craftily
tramples the masses under foot, knows no difference. He is beyond good
and evil.
This, indeed, is the consequence which Nietzsche boldly draws. It is a
consistent anarchism; it is unmoralism, a courageous denial of ethical
rule; and a proud aristocratism, the ruthless shout of triumph of the
victor who hails the doctrine of the survival of the strongest and
craftiest as a "joyful science."
Nietzsche would not refute the arguments of those who differ from
him; for refutation of other views does not befit a positive mind that
posits its own truth. "What have I to do with refutations!" exclaims
Nietzsche in the Preface to his Genealogy of Morals. The self is
lord. There is no law for the lord, and so he denounces the ethics of
Christianity as slave-morality, and preaches the lord-morality of the
strong which is self-assertion.
Morality itself is denounced by Nietzsche as immoral. Morality is the
result of evolution, and man's moral ideas are products of conditions
climatic, social, economical, national, religious, and what not. Why
should we submit to the tyranny of a rule which after all proves to be
a relic of barbarism? Nietzsche rejects morality as incompatible with
the sovereignty of selfhood, and, pronouncing our former judgment a
superstition, he proposes "a transvaluation of all values." The self
must be established as supreme ruler, and therefore all rules, maxims,
principles, must go, for the very convictions of a man are mere chains
that fetter the freedom of his soul.
[1] _La Gaya Scienza_, German edition, p. 154; and _passim_ in
_Menschliches_, etc.
[2] For further details of a refutation of this wrong conception of
geometry, see the author's _Foundation of Mathematics_.