Nietsche Metaphysics - Lecture notes 4 PDF

Preview

Summary

Lecture notes on Modern European Philosophy module...

Description

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Is Nietzsche a metaphysician? Completing On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche’s attack on “the true world” Positivism and Perspectivism Nietzsche’s metaphysics

(1) Is Nietzsche a metaphysician? Why he isn't: Because he says so (“historical philosophy”, “overcoming”) Because others say so He is a psychologist He is an historian Because his work fails to meet the criteria for being classified (and dismissed) as metaphysics When you reader you either read histories, or poems, therefore for logical or neo-Humean he is not a metaphysician. Why he is: Because his inversion of Platonism and Christianity situates him in the same (metaphysical tradition) as Platonism and Christianity Because his work frequently claims to have identified fundamental features of life and though (will to power, value) Not that hes against valuing, rather he wants to find a life affirming value. Presupposes a metaphysics of value (2) Completing On the Genealogy of Morals The three essays: “Good and Evil, “Good and Bad” “Guilt”, “Bad Conscience,” and the Like What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals? The 3rd essay an exercise in re-reading the first two essays from the standpoint of the ascetic ideal, and posing the question: ‘What if anything can check or challenge the power of that ideal?’

What are ascetic ideals? (“poverty, chastity, humility”)  What is involved in choosing these ideals, choosing conditions and states that are elsewhere deemed undesirable unenjoyable, symptoms of a failed life. Will-to-Power  Each of us, each psychical investment, each evaluation, decision, or interpretation seeks to maximise the feeling of power.  Where x is willed, x is an expression of this maximisation. 

Will to power (not to be subordinated to a philosophical account of the will – “will to power” as a critique of a traditional philosophy of the will)

  

The powerful and the powerless will increase The will not as desire (what one wants) but as the possibility of mastering desire Both the will-less and the will-full will will for more power.

   

Will as command – the pleasure of commanding The self as both commanded and commanding Life itself as will to power: exuberance, increase Life expressed in, as and through this exuberance and increase

How or why would the will to power (life) express itself in, as and through ascetic ideals?  

A qualification (and an interesting criticism) Sometimes it is simply a matter of surviving, extreme distress etc.. (then the will to power expresses itself as no more than survival – a will to survive, but this is merely one instance, not a general law or principle, contrast with Darwin).

Will to power, an excess of feeling – in different times and places, different forms and consequences – a psychological investigation and explanation – actions and motivations can be re-described in terms of a will to power… (Example: Ressentiment, the ‘slave’s’ imaginary or fantasy of revenge.) What is the role of the ascetic priest? To teach ascetic ideals. Why? Suffering is inevitable; meaningless suffering is unbearable. Ascetic ideals – give suffering a meaning, the ascetic priest as a genius of suffering. Ressentiment: one suffers, one resents one’s suffering, one seeks something or someone to blame for one’s suffering… The ascetic priest uses guilt [Essay 2]. Who is to blame? The sufferer. Suffering as punishment. The ascetic priest suffers with the sufferer he ‘teaches’. Why is there no alternative to the priest’s solution?  The success of the ascetic ideal – its authority as the single true interpretation.  It succeeds only to the extent that no alternative is conceivable The curse that earlier spread itself over humans was not suffering, but the senselessness of suffering—and the ascetic ideal offered them a meaning! The ascetic ideal has been the only meaning offered up to this point. Any meaning is better than no meaning at all 

With the ascetic ideal, suffering was interpreted, the huge hole appeared filled in, the door shut against all suicidal nihilism. Darwin interpretation of the biological cycle  The interpretation undoubtedly brought new suffering with it—more profound, more inner, more poisonous, and more life-gnawing suffering; it brought all suffering under the perspective of guilt. . . .



Nietzsche’s book as an investigation into the psychology of the ascetic priest.

What does Nietzsche want? New nobles? But no one could be the powerful (good) noble of the 1st essay, anymore than they could be the forgetful animal in the essay on history. A new anti-Christian aristocratism? New vlaues, new virtues? The problem with the values and virtues originating from “slave morality”: they couldn’t admit or accept their historicity. They required a supernatural or theistic origin and justification. A new interpretation?  The problem with the interpretation originating from “slave morality”: it presented itself as the only possible interpretation (as the truth)  In breaking with it we also need to break with that sense of an absolute (singular) truth: the truth of things as they are in themselves  Attacking an absolute truth The will to truth as will to power

European Nihilism (1887) What advantages did the hypothesis (interpretation) of Christian morality offer?  Conferred on ‘man’ an absolute value (in contrast to becoming, flux, cosmic ‘smallness’) Gave humans a sense of being at the centre of things - ingenious way of placing significance on somthing  Served the advocates of God by enabling the world to have the character of perfection (inc. freedom) – theodicy; evil and suffering given a sense.  Posited a knowledge of absolute values in humans, thus giving an adequate knowledge of the most important thing – adequation, correspondence (truth) Our knowledge was adequate to reality, what Christian interpretation gives us an extraordinary central foundation in understanding means of preservation.  It prevented humans from despising themselves as humans, from taking against life, from despairing of knowing: it was a means of preservation. In sum, morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism.  Christian morality prevented humans from despising themselves as humans, from taking against life, from despair – the despairing of knowing (destructive scepticism?) Christian morality – a means of preservation.  Morality (Christian morality) itself becomes the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism. Morality values Truthfulness  But Truthfulness turns on Morality – discovers or demonstrates its teleology, its partiality, its being a perspective. (On the Genealogy of Morals) 

“God” is much too extreme a hypothesis. It cannot be replaced by a moderate one.



One interpretation has collapsed – but it was considered and willed itself to be THE interpretation – against which all else was in vain, useless, meaningless What N describes is truth turning against the moral tradition that which truth is based on.

(3) Nietzsche’s attack on “the true world” Six stages, states and briefly comments on each 1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue, - he lives in it, he is it (The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition “I, Plato, am the truth.”) 2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue (“to the sinner who repents”). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive, - it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian...) 3.

The true world – unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable, but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian.) Nietzsche's "Epoch"  Positivism  Genealogy of old values  Affirmation of new values 4. The true world - is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to? (The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.) If it's unattained, its unknown (4) Positivism and Perspectivism  Against positivism, which halts at phenomena: “There are only facts”  I would say: No, facts are precisely what there are not, only interpretations.  We cannot determine any fact “in itself”: perhaps it is nonsensical to want to do such a thing. “Everything is subjective,” you say; but even that is itself an interpretation. The “subject” is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is. — Finally, is it even necessary to posit an interpreter behind the intepretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis. Insofar as the word “knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. — “Perspectivism.”

… It is our needs which interpret the world; our drives and their for and against. Every drive is a kind of lust for domination; each one has its perspective which it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm. Writings from the Late Notebooks (Notebook 7 [60]) p139; Will to Power #481 5. The “true world” - an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything, - a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it! (Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame, a din from all free-spirits.) Nietzsche’s perspectivism:  is necessarily atheistic;  insists on an irreducibly evaluative component to existence (in other words, reconstrues descriptions as evaluations or implicit prescriptions);  re-construes facts as interpretations  reaffirms philosophy in its task of concept formation. 6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? The apparent world perhaps? …Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance! (Noon; moment of the shortest shadows; end of the longest error; mankind’s zenith; Incipit Zarathustra.) Only meaningful if it’s the only interpretation (5) Nietzsche's Metaphysics Revisiting the question of value. What are values? Are there really values? VALUES as CONCEPTS / CONCEPTS as VALUES 

Concepts as Values. Emphasizing this creativity, this capacity to think otherwise, to think anew….In valuing we conceptualize… Philosophy and concept formation.



Our “new infinite” - a new concept, a new value.



Interpretation – as the demonstration and inculcation of value. (Interpretation is always evaluative).



Moral interpretation of the world (moral values)



Rejecting or challenging that interpretation (higher values)

If values are not real ---- if they do not exist, or, rather, if the metaphysics of values involves their reification, what are to say of life and the will-to-power? Life devalued…. (moral interpretation) Life re-valued…. (‘higher’ interpretation) Life as the will-to-power Life evaluated & interpreted as will-to-power?

 

Life (will to power) finally given an appropriate value? An addition to knowledge, the truth about life and about what it is?



Will-to-power – everywhere operative, manifest, etc. (where there is life there is willto-power)? Will-to-power affirmed and manifest only in the values of the “higher men” Nietzsche’s new “nobles”.



  

The moral interpretation of the world denigrates and devalues life (reactive, resentful) …? Life is will to power An interpretation that acknowledges and affirms and accepts that

“Value” as Nietzsche’s central term. ”Value” – tests and experiments in the joy that might be possible in. and through affirmation But those tests and experiments presuppose the “truth” of value and evaluation as the means by which life as will to power is revealed.

Seminar He thinks we have forgotten that we are value creating beings Dilemma: what he calls ideals have been so successful, when they function as well as they do (Plato) Consciousness: Kantian idea of good, freedom and the soul Nietzsche - these aren't simply facts, we interpret what we discover, we decide...