1. 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.
2. "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
sun-bright 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 intransitory,
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. 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.
3. 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 maiserie, 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."
4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to
it: 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.
5. 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!
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. 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:
Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.
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.
10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness,
with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is
dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought
and attention; and he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the
background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the
sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have
happened that such a Will to Truth—a certain extravagant and
adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn
hope—has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers
a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful
possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of
conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing,
rather than in an uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and
the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding
the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It seems,
however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who
are still eager for life. In that they side AGAINST appearance, and
speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the
credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of
the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus,
apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to
escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in
one's body?),—who knows if they are not really trying to win back
something which was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the
"immortal soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which
they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more
joyously, than by "modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern
ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that
has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some
slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure
the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the most varied origin, such as
so-called Positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of
the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and
patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is
nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it
seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists
and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct,
which repels them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted … what do
their retrograde by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is
NOT that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY
therefrom. A little MORE strength, swing, courage, and artistic
power, and they would be OFF—and not back!
11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at
present to divert attention from the actual influence which Kant
exercised on German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently
the value which he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost
proud of his Table of Categories; with it in his hand he said:
"This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on
behalf of metaphysics." Let us only understand this "could be"! He
was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man, the faculty of
synthetic judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in
this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German
philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager
rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something—at all events "new faculties"—of which to be still
prouder!—But let us reflect for a moment—it is high time to do so.
"How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks
himself—and what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS
(faculty)"—but unfortunately not in five words, but so
circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of German
profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight
of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer.
People were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty,
and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further discovered
a moral faculty in man—for at that time Germans were still moral,
not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came the
honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the
Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves—all seeking
for "faculties." And what did they not find—in that innocent, rich,
and still youthful period of the German spirit, to which
Romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could
not yet distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a
faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it,
intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest
longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do no
greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement
(which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised
itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it
seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. Enough,
however—the world grew older, and the dream vanished. A time came
when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today.
People had been dreaming, and first and foremost—old Kant. "By
means of a means (faculty)"—he had said, or at least meant to say.
But, is that—an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely
a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By
means of a means (faculty), "namely the virtus dormitiva, replies
the doctor in Moliere,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high
time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments
a PRIORI possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such
judgments necessary?"—in effect, it is high time that we should
understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the
sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they
still might naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken,
and roughly and readily—synthetic judgments a priori should not "be
possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are
nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their
truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence
belonging to the perspective view of life. And finally, to call to
mind the enormous influence which "German philosophy"—I hope you
understand its right to inverted commas (goosefeet)?—has exercised
throughout the whole of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain
VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to German philosophy, it
was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, the
artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the political
obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still
overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into
this, in short—"sensus assoupire." …
12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-
refuted theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is
now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach
serious signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as
an abbreviation of the means of expression)— thanks chiefly to the
Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the
greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For
while Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the
senses, that the earth does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us
to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the
earth—the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the
earth-residuum, and particle- atom: it is the greatest triumph over
the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must,
however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to
the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a
dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the
more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above
all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous
atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-
ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the
belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal,
indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be
expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all
necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one
of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses—as happens frequently
to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul
without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new
acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such
conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective
multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of the instincts and
passions," want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In
that the NEW psychologist is about to put an end to the
superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical
luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were,
thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust—it is
possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more
comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that
precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT—and, who knows?
perhaps to DISCOVER the new.
13. 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.
14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural
philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement
(according to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation;
but in so far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is
regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as
more—namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own,
it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates
fascinatingly, persuasively, and CONVINCINGLY upon an age with
fundamentally plebeian tastes—in fact, it follows instinctively the
canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear, what
is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and felt—one must
pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the
Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode, consisted
precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence—perhaps among men
who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our
contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in
remaining masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey
conceptional networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the
senses—the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of
the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato,
there was an ENJOYMENT different from that which the physicists of
today offer us—and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists
among the physiological workers, with their principle of the
"smallest possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder.
"Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also
nothing more for men to do"—that is certainly an imperative
different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the
right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and
bridge- builders of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to
perform.
15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist
on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of
the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis,
if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the
external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a
part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But
then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It
seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the
conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd.
Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our
organs—?