Beyond Good and Evil by Frederich Nietzsche. A user’s guide.

Part 3 of 10 : Prejudices of Philosophers

Teachers notes and Evaluation notes taken from
https://hxtarth.medium.com

Teacher’s Notes

Nietzsche opens by questioning the will to truth that makes us such inquisitive creatures.Of all the questioning this will excites in us, we rarely question the value of truth itself.

Nietzsche confronts what he calls the “faith in opposite values.” This is the belief that the world can be divided into opposites, starting with the opposition of truth and falsehood.

Nietzsche suggests that perhaps the relationship between so-called “opposites” is far more complex. Often, our “truths” are born from our prejudices, from our will to deceive; they are born from our falsehoods.

For instance, conscious thinking is usually contrasted with instinct, but Nietzsche argues that most conscious thinking tends to be informed precisely by instinct.

Instinctively, we value truth over falsehood, but perhaps falsehood can be a valuable — even indispensable — condition for life. While philosophers generally would like to proclaim their objectivity and disinterestedness, their instincts and prejudices are usually what inform them.

At bottom, we find a bunch of old prejudices called “truths” and a whole system of philosophy built up after the fact to justify these “truths.” Nietzsche believes that every philosophy is, essentially, the confession of a philosopher, and it gives us more of an insight into that philosopher’s character than anything else.

To elaborate on this point, Nietzsche examines a number of different philosophers, beginning with the Stoics. These philosophers who urged us to live “according to nature” were not trying to re-create us in the image of nature (which Nietzsche argues is absurd) but were trying rather to re-create nature in the image they desired.

Philosophy, “the most spiritual will to power,” says Nietzsche, “always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise.” This will to power, according to Nietzsche, is our cardinal instinct, more fundamental even than the instinct of self-preservation.

Nietzsche also dissects anti-realism, Kantianism, and materialistic atomism. He argues that Kant never gives anything more than circular reasons for believing that there is a faculty capable of synthetic a priori judgments. Nonetheless, we need to believe in synthetic a priori judgments and will believe in such a faculty even though we don’t actually have it.

Another prejudice of philosophers is the belief in “immediate certainties,” the most famous of which is Descartes’ assertion that he cannot possibly doubt that he is thinking. This certainty only reflects a lack of reflection on what is meant by “I think.” Why am I so certain that it is “I” that thinks? That I am the cause of the thinking? Doesn’t a thought come to me, isn’t it the thought that thinks? And how can I know, without further assumptions or certainties, that I am thinking, and not willing or feeling or something else?

Nietzsche is particularly harsh on our conception of “free will.” First, he argues that the will is far more complicated than we make it out to be: the word “I” obscures and fudges together a whole complex of commanding and obeying wills. This “freedom” of the will comes only from identifying this “I” as the source both of the commanding and the obeying. The concept of free will also relies on the erroneous notions of cause and effect, which see our will as a “cause.” Cause and effect are a part of a larger picture of physics, according to which nature is governed by laws. Nietzsche argues that this is a democrat’s interpretation of nature: we could equally well see it as totally lawless, governed only by the unfettered assertion of wills.

Evaluation

Nietzsche’s understanding of “truth” is subtle and deep.
Logically speaking, “true” and “false” apply to sentences and propositions, not to things or wills or people.

● Any statement that purports to be true can be seen as expressing a particular point of view.

● No point of view can comprehend absolute truth: there are only different perspectives from which one can see a matter.

● If one sees a matter from only one perspective, one is seeing a distorted and incomplete picture.

Truth, being something expressible only in propositions, demands a point of view, a particular perspective, and, in claiming truth for that perspective, distorts the bigger picture.

Truth, we might say, falsifies the overall picture. Once we abandon a belief in absolute truths and absolute falsehoods, the relationship between truth and falsity becomes richer and more complex.

Our “truths,” according to Nietzsche, are not absolute, but are rather particular interpretations of what we see. For instance, Nietzsche argues that it is only “true” that nature operates according to laws if we take a particularly democratic perspective toward the workings of nature. Nietzsche sees the same regularity in nature, but doesn’t interpret this regularity as the proper governance of law so much as the constancy of the domination of stronger wills over weaker ones. Nietzsche’s discussion of wills will be discussed shortly.

Our interpretation of experience is ultimately based on the perspective we choose, and the perspective we choose is largely based on moral assumptions and prejudices:

we see the world the way we want to see it.

Philosophers are in the business of trying to justify seeing the world in their own particular way, and they come up with reasons why the world should be viewed from their perspective rather than some other. Ultimately, they see their moral prejudices and their perspective on things as “truths.” As a result, philosophy is as much autobiography as anything else: philosophers attempt to justify and to convince others of what it is that drives and motivates them.

The obvious, and sometimes justified, objection to lots of talk about relative truths and perspectives and the like is: “But aren’t there some things that are simply true or simply false? That 1 + 1 = 2 doesn’t depend on my perspective.” True enough. To understand what Nietzsche means, we need to understand his conception of the will to power.

According to Nietzsche, the significant fact about the universe is that it is always changing. A philosophy of facts and things only reinforces the misconception that the universe is fixed. Nietzsche identifies will as the agent of all change in the universe, and so focuses his philosophy more on the will. All wills struggle for domination, independence, and power over one another, which is the source of change in the universe. This change is thus effected by what Nietzsche calls the “will to power,” the struggle for independence and dominance over other wills. Nietzsche sees people not as “things” or “selves” but as a complex of wills, all struggling with one another for domination.

He calls philosophy the “most spiritual will to power” because it is an attempt on the part of the philosopher to impose his prejudices and assumptions — his “spirit” — on everyone else. The philosopher wants his will to be “truth.”

To return to the earlier objection, 1 + 1 = 2 without a doubt, but this truth is a simple fact, and we only get a part of the picture unless we ask who asserts it and why. Why would a mathematician devote his entire life to the pursuit of such truths? What does that say about the mathematician? What does it then say about the truths? What wills are at play, what will is dominant in the pursuit of mathematics? These are the questions that interest Nietzsche, as a philosopher of the will, and not of facts and things. The “truths” of philosophers are expressions of their wills and not simple facts. A particular perspective taken on the truth is evidence for a particular will claiming dominance.

One of Nietzsche’s pet peeves is the influence that grammar, and particularly the subject-predicate form, has upon philosophy. For instance, Nietzsche accuses us of misunderstanding “I think” as implying that there is an “I” which is a distinct entity, and thinking, which is an action undertaken by the “I.” First of all, as Nietzsche explains, this “I” only appears as a stable thing on the surface, but it is in essence a complex of competing wills.

Further, he suggests, thoughts come to us: we don’t create them. While it is impossible to find a satisfactory expression in language, we might be better off substituting for “I think” the less simple sentence: “the will to think became dominant over other wills at such-and-such place and time.”

[1] The Will to Truth
The Will to Truth Which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, What questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us!What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced;Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away?

That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves?
WHO is it really that puts questions to us here?
WHAT really is this ‘Will to Truth’ in us?

In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will — until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will.

Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us — or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx?

It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

Nietzsche’s understanding of “truth” is subtle and deep. Logically speaking, “true” and “false” apply to sentences and propositions, not to things, or wills, or people.

Suppose our ‘truths’ are servants of a higher purpose. What might that purpose be ? Who cares about the truth anyway ? Who would see themselves as the custodians of that truth?

“ We do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors — in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all…….” [“On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” written in 1873].

[2] All philosophy hitherto is one-dimensional

HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness?or the pure sunbright vision of the wise man out of covetousness?

Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own — in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source.
But rather in the lap of Being, in the in-transitory, in the concealed God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself — THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!’ -
This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this ‘belief’ of theirs, they exert themselves for their ‘knowledge,’ for something that is in the end solemnly christened ‘the Truth.’

The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, ‘DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM.’

For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below — ‘frog perspectives,’ as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. [perspectivism]

In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity.

It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things — perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.

Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous ‘Perhapses’! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent — philosophers of the dangerous ‘Perhaps’ in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear.

Nietzsche confronts what he calls the “faith in opposite values.” This is the belief that the world can be divided into opposites, starting with the opposition of truth and falsehood. Nietzsche suggests that perhaps the relationship between so-called “opposites” is far more complex. Often, our “truths” are born from our prejudices, from our will to deceive; they are born from our falsehoods or crude simplifications.

The blurring of truth and falseness is an extremely slippery concept to grasp. See one person’s explanation below, you will have your own.

“According to Nietzsche, no point of view can comprehend absolute truth: there are only different perspectives from which one can see a matter. If one sees a matter from only one perspective, one is seeing a distorted and incomplete picture.

Truth, being something expressible only in propositions, demands a point of view, a particular perspective, and, in claiming truth for that perspective, distorts the bigger picture. Truth, we might say, falsifies the overall picture. Once we abandon a belief in absolute truths and absolute falsehoods, the relationship between truth and falsity becomes richer and more complex.”

[3] Man is not just the measure of things
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and ‘innateness.’ As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is ‘being-conscious’ OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense;

the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life.

For example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than ‘truth’ such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of naiserie, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the ‘measure of things.’

We over-simplify things to make sense of them. Prone to making crude generalisations and not precise or accurate at all in our evaluations. This is different to how we think of ourselves as good judges and reliable measurers of things. For example, most car drivers think they are ‘above average’.

[4] Alice in Wonderland
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to. It is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely.

The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live — that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.

TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

Without being able to conceptualise, idealise and approximate, man could not live. This is obvious yet it comes as quite a shock to realise it. Could it be that the inner world of make-believe is more important to us than the real world ?
Seeing is believing but believing is seeing also; before one sees something one has to believe it. There are things we cannot bear or stand to see. We cannot handle certain truths. “How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare?… that became for me more and more the real measure of value.“ — Friedrich Nietzsche

“We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live — by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.” from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, s.121, Walter Kaufmann transl..

[5] The Sickly Recluse
That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are — how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are, — but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner.

They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of ‘inspiration’), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or ‘suggestion,’ which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event.

They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub ‘truths,’ — and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.

The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his ‘categorical imperative’ — makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers.

Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask — in fact, the ‘love of HIS wisdom,’ to translate the term fairly and squarely — in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene: — how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!

Laying claim to an elegant chain of reasoning when the starting point is always a crude and brutal proposition from a sickly recluse. Nietzsche’s main point is that philosophy is pretentious introspection. Carried out by celebrity monks or high-profile hermits engaged in navel-gazing. In true theatrical tradition he comes along to upstage them all; Nietzsche was a sickly recluse himself.

[6] Who is He ?
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of — namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself:

‘What morality do they (or does he) aim at?

Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument.

But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses.

For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize.

To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise — ‘better,’ if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an ‘impulse to knowledge,’ some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.

The actual ‘interests’ of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction — in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that.

In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS, — that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.

How do we evaluate morality? is it there to: improve the species?, make us live in harmony with nature?, or make humanity live in harmony with itself? What is your yardstick? Neitzsche’s unit of measurement is Human progress over time; a God interested in human flourishing. This is Nietzches’s impulse to knowledge and how he will systematically evaluate moral history. Using this method we can play at being God too. Looking back historically at inversions in moral perspectives — what do they teach us ? What kind of morality works best for people? and why ? Or, is the language of our emotions beyond our control and thus it is foolish to think we could improve our moral language. Or does our new, deeper level of self-knowledge enable us to learn from the past and improve ourselves?

[7] They are all Actors
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies ‘Flatterers of Dionysius’ — consequently, tyrants’ accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say,

They are all ACTORS, there is nothing genuine about them’ (for Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters — of which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?

Larger-than-life characters. Thespians. Show-offs. Extroverts at best. Exhibitionists at worst.

[8] The Ass arrives, beautiful and most brave
There is a point in every philosophy at which the ‘conviction’ of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: Addentavi asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.

Something absurd and ridiculous enters the stage.

[9] You desire to LIVE ‘according to Nature’?
Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power — how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference?

To live — is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?

Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, ‘living according to Nature,’ means actually the same as ‘living according to life’ — how could you do DIFFERENTLY?

Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders!

In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature ‘according to the Stoa,’ and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism!

With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise — and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves — Stoicism is self-tyranny — Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? …

But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to ‘creation of the world,’ the will to the causa prima.

Philosophy is tyranny, projecting itself outwards on to the world. When political leaders believe too much in their own rhetoric and propaganda, tyranny follows. Stalinism and Maoism for example. We know this is true.

[13] Nietzsche’s Ass
Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being.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 thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles! — one of which is the instinct of self- preservation (we owe it to Spinoza’s inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles.

Animals do not merely adapt — life is not a genetic lottery. Living things grow towards ‘more’; more light, more water, more food, more space — they want to expand, flourish, consume, develop and grow and crowd out other forms of life. Life is not passive or reactive. It is violently proactive, expansive, and if genetic adaptation assists in the struggle, then even better. Here is Nietzsche’s beautiful and most brave Ass: the ‘will to power’.

[19]. The Happy Commonwealth of the mind
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition.

But it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing-he seems to have adopted a POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it.

Willing -seems to me to be above all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name — and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.

So let us for once be more cautious, let us be ‘unphilosophical”:
let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations,
namely,the sensation of the condition ‘AWAY FROM WHICH we go,’
the sensation of the condition ‘TOWARDS WHICH we go,’
the sensation of this ‘FROM’ and ‘TOWARDS’ itself,

and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion ‘arms and legs,’ commences its action by force of habit, directly we ‘will’ anything.

Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought; — and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the ‘willing,’ as if the will would then remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed ‘freedom of the will’ is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey:

‘I am free, ‘he’ must obey’ — this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that ‘this and nothing else is necessary now,’ the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered — and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander.

A man who WILLS commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will, — this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name.

Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will;

inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term ‘I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing — to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action.

Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command — consequently obedience, and therefore action — was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT;

in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.

‘Freedom of Will’ — that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order — who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful ‘underwills’ or under-souls — indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls — to his feelings of delight as commander.

L’EFFET C’EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth.

In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many ‘souls’, on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing- as-such within the sphere of morals — regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of ‘life’ manifests itself.

Lord and master over your caprices, impulses, lusts, fears. What kind of ruler are you of yourself and your own emotions? This is reflected in how we treat others.

[20] The common household of the soul ??
That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent — is betrayed in the end by the circumstance:

how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the one after the other — to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas.

Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a rerecognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.

The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is easily enough explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar — I mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical functions — it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems, just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation.

It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of the subject is least developed) look otherwise ‘into the world,’ and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.- So much by way of rejecting Locke’s superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas.

Ethics develop from grammatical functions? A pet-theory of Nietzsche’s which today is regarded as speculative.

[21] The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction
The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for ‘freedom of will’ in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.

If any one should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of ‘free will’ and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry his ‘enlightenment’ a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of ‘free will”:I mean ‘non-free will,’ which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect.

One should not wrongly MATERIALISE ‘cause’ and ‘effect,’ as the natural philosophers do (and who- ever like them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it ‘effects’ its end; one should use ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding, -NOT for explanation.

In ‘being-in-itself’ there is nothing of ‘casual- connection,’ of ‘necessity,’ or of ‘psychological non-freedom”; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there ‘law’ does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol- world, as ‘being-in-itself,’ with things, we act once more as we have always acted — MYTHOLOGICALLY.

The ‘non- free will’ is mythology; in real life it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills. — It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every ’causal-connection’ and ‘psychological necessity,’ manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings — the person betrays himself.

And in general, if I have observed correctly, the ‘non-freedom of the will’ is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some will not give up their ‘responsibility,’ their belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to THEIR merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as ‘la religion de la souffrance humaine”; that is ITS. ‘good taste.’

[23] Sailing away right over morality
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it.

The power of moral prejudices…..has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner.

A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator,it has ‘the heart’ against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ impulses, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience — still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones.

If, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from sea-sickness.

And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge, and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one should keep away from it who CAN do so!

On the other hand, if one has once drifted hither with one’s bark, well! very good! now let us set our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm! We sail away right OVER morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither — but what do WE matter.

Never yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus ‘makes a sacrifice’ — it is not the sacrifizio dell’ intelletto, on the contrary! — will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist.For psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems.

To consider morality over time, we must sweep aside today’s conventions. Bring into consciousness the curious creature man really is. This is Nietzsche’s challenge. To get onto his wavelength you have to forget your own prejudices. If you can free yourself a tiny bit you are in a state of mind to proceed. Where Nietzsche is going — anything goes.