The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Values

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:11 pm

(b) The Starting-point of Epistemology.

470.

Profound disinclination to halt once and for all at any collective view of the world. The charm of the opposite point of view: the refusal to relinquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.

471.

The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such a moral fashion that human reason must be right, is a mere piece of good-natured and simple-minded trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness—God regarded as the Creator of all things.—These concepts are our inheritance from a former existence in a Beyond.

472.

The contradiction of the so-called "facts of consciousness." Observation a thousand times more difficult, error is perhaps the absolute condition of observation.

473.

The intellect cannot criticise itself, simply because it can be compared with no other kind of intellect, and also because its ability to know would only reveal itself in the presence of "actual reality"; that is to say, because, in order to criticise the intellect, we should have to be higher creatures with "absolute knowledge." This would presuppose the existence of something, a "thing-in-itself," apart from all the perspective kinds of observation and senso-spiritual perception. But the psychological origin of the belief in things, forbids our speaking of "things in themselves."

474.

The idea that a sort of adequate relation exists between subject and object, that the object is something which when seen from inside would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I believe, has seen its best days. The measure of that which we are conscious of, is perforce entirely dependent upon the coarse utility of the function of consciousness: how could this little garret-prospect of consciousness warrant our asserting anything in regard to "subject" and "object," which would bear any relation to reality!

475.

Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous starting-point, as if there were such things as "facts of consciousness"—and no phenomenalism in introspection.

476.

"Consciousness"—to what extent is the idea which is thought of, the idea of will, or the idea of a feeling (which is known by us alone), quite superficial? Our inner world is also "appearance."

477.

I am convinced of the phenomenalism of the inner world also: everything that reaches our consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted, simplified, schematised, interpreted, the actual process of inner "perception," the relation of causes between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and may be purely imaginary. This "inner world of appearance" is treated with precisely the same forms and procedures as the "outer" world. We never come across a single "fact": pleasure and pain are more recently evolved intellectual phenomena....

Causality evades us; to assume the existence of an immediate causal relation between thoughts, as Logic does, is the result of the coarsest and most clumsy observation. There are all sorts of passions that may intervene between two thoughts: but the interaction is too rapid—that is why we fail to recognise them, that is why we actually deny their existence....

"Thinking," as the epistemologists understand \r it, never takes place at all: it is an absolutely gratuitous fabrication, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and by eliminating all the rest—an artificial adjustment for the purpose of the understanding....

The "mind," something that thinks: at times, even, "the mind absolute and pure"—this concept is an evolved and second result of false introspection, which believes in "thinking": in the first place an act is imagined here which does not really occur at all, i.e. "thinking"; and, secondly, a subject-substratum is imagined in which every process of this thinking has its origin, and nothing else—that is to say, both the action and the agent are fanciful.

478.

Phenomenalism must not be sought in the wrong quarter: nothing is more phenomenal, or, to be more precise, nothing is so much deception, as this inner world, which we observe with the "inner sense."

Our belief that the will is a cause was so great, that, according to our personal experiences in general, we projected a cause into all phenomena (i.e. a certain motive is posited as the cause of all phenomena).

We believe that the thoughts which follow one upon the other in our minds are linked by some sort of causal relation: the logician, more especially, who actually speaks of a host of facts which have never once been seen in reality, has grown accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts are the cause of thoughts.

We believe—and even our philosophers believe it still—that pleasure and pain are the causes of reactions, that the very purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For hundreds of years, pleasure and pain have been represented as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we are bound to concede that everything would have proceeded in exactly the same way, according to precisely the same sequence of cause and effect, if the states "pleasure" and "pain" had been entirely absent; and that we are simply deceived when we believe that they actually cause anything:—they are the attendant phenomena, and they have quite a different purpose from that of provoking reactions; they are in themselves effects involved in the process of reaction which takes place.

In short: Everything that becomes conscious is a final phenomenon, a conclusion—and is the cause of nothing; all succession of phenomena in consciousness is absolutely atomistic.—And we tried to understand the universe from the opposite point of view—as if nothing were effective or real, save thinking, feeling, willing! ...

479.

The phenomenalism of the "inner world!" A chronological inversion takes place, so that the cause reaches consciousness as the effect.—We know that pain is projected into a certain part of the body although it is not really situated there; we have learnt that all sensations which were ingenuously supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, as a matter of fact, conditioned by the inner world: that the real action of the outer world never takes place in a way of which we can become conscious.... That fragment of the outer world of which we become conscious, is born after the effect produced by the outer world has been recorded, and is subsequently interpreted as the "cause" of that effect....

In the phenomenalism of the "inner world," the chronological order of cause and effect is inverted. The fundamental fact of "inner experience" is, that the cause is imagined after the effect has been recorded.... The same holds good of the sequence of thoughts: we seek for the reason of a thought, before it has reached our consciousness; and then the reason reaches consciousness first, whereupon follows its effect. All our dreams are the interpretation of our collective feelings with the view of discovering the possible causes of the latter; and the process is such that a condition only becomes conscious, when the supposed causal link has reached consciousness.[1]

The whole of "inner experience" is founded on this: that a cause is sought and imagined which accounts for a certain irritation in our nerve-centres, and that it is only the cause which is found in this way which reaches consciousness; this cause may have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause—it is a sort of groping assisted by former "inner experiences," that is to say, by memory. The memory, however, retains the habit of old interpretations,—that is to say, of erroneous causality,—so that "inner experience" comprises in itself all the results of former erroneous fabrications of causes. Our "outside world," as we conceive it every instant, is indissolubly bound up with the old error of cause: we interpret by means of the schematism of "the thing," etc.

"Inner experience" only enters consciousness when it has found a language which the individual can understand—that is to say, a translation of a certain condition into conditions with which he is familiar; "understand" means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of something old or familiar. For instance, "I feel unwell"—a judgment of this sort presupposes a very great and recent neutrality on the part of the observer: the simple man always says, "This and that make me feel unwell,"—he begins to be clear concerning his indisposition only after he has discovered a reason for it.... This is what I call a lack of philological knowledge; to be able to read a text, as such, without reading an interpretation into it, is the latest form of "inner experience,"—it is perhaps a barely possible form....

[1] When in our dream we hear a bell ringing, or a tapping at our door, we scarcely ever wake before having already accounted for the sound, in the terms of the dream-world we were in.—TR.


480.

There are no such things as "mind," reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or truth: they all belong to fiction, and can serve no purpose. It is not a question of "subject and object," but of a particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, regularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalised)....

Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It is therefore obvious that it increases with each advance of power....

The purpose of knowledge: in this case, as in the case of "good" or "beautiful," the concept must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation—and not some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception—stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge; ... they evolve in such a way that their observations may suffice for our preservation. In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the Will to Power grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality, in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount in its service.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:13 pm

(c) The Belief in the "Ego." Subject.

481.

In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. "Everything is subjective," ye say: but that in itself is interpretation. The subject is nothing given, but something superimposed by fancy, something introduced behind.—Is it necessary to set an interpreter behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis.

To the extent to which knowledge has any sense at all, the world is knowable: but it may be interpreted differently, it has not one sense behind it, but hundreds of senses.—"Perspectivity."

It is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which it would fain impose upon all the other instincts as their norm.

482.

Where our ignorance really begins, at that point from which we can see no further, we set a word; for instance, the word "I," the word "do," the word "suffer"—these concepts may be the horizon lines of our knowledge, but they are not "truths."

483.

Owing to the phenomenon "thought," the ego is taken for granted; but up to the present everybody believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion "I think," and that by analogy with our understanding of all other causal reactions this "I" was the given cause of the thinking. However customary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imaginary nature of its origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.

484.

"Something is thought, therefore there is something that thinks": this is what Descartes' argument amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion "substance" as an "a priori" truth:—that there must be something "that thinks" when we think, is merely a formulation of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here—and it is not merely an ascertainment of fact.... On Descartes' lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith.

If the proposition be reduced to "Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the "reality of thought," is not touched upon,—so that, in this form, the apparitional character of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was, that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.

485.

The concept substance is an outcome of the concept subject, and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, the subject, the very conditions for the concept "substance" are lacking. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost.

Criticism of "reality": what does a "plus or minus of reality" lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe?

The degree of our feeling of life and power (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of "Being," "reality," "non-appearance."

Subject i this is the term we apply to our belief in an entity underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality; we regard this belief as the effect of a cause,—and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine "truth," "reality," "substantiality."—a "Subject" is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first created the "similarity" of these states; the similising and adjusting of them is the fact—not their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).

486.

One would have to know what Being is, in order to be able to decide whether this or that is real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness"); it would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth.—But, as we do not know these things, a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is nonsensical: how is it possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even define itself!

487.

Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend?—that is to say, our belief in the "ego" as a substance, as the only reality according to which, alone, we are able to ascribe reality to things? The oldest realism at length comes to light, simultaneously with man's recognition of the fact that his whole religious history is no more than a history of soul-superstitions. Here there is a barrier; our very thinking, itself, involves that belief (with its distinctions—substance, accident, action, agent, etc.); to abandon it would mean to cease from being able to think.

But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities.

488.

The psychological origin of our belief in reason.—The ideas "reality," "Being," are derived from our subject-feeling.

"Subject," interpreted through ourselves so that the ego may stand as substance, as the cause of action, as the agent.

The metaphysico-logical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc. etc., draws its convincing character from our habit of regarding all our actions as the result of our will: so that the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of changes.—But there is no such thing as will. We have no categories which allow us to separate a "world as thing-in-itself," from "a world of appearance." All our categories of reason have a sensual origin: they are deductions from the empirical world. "The soul," "the ego"—the history of these concepts shows that here, also, the oldest distinction ("spiritus," "life") obtains....

If there is nothing material, then there can be nothing immaterial. The concept no longer means anything.

No subject-"atoms." The sphere of a subject increasing or diminishing unremittingly, the centre of the system continually displacing itself, in the event of the system no longer being able to organise the appropriated mass, it divides into two. On the other hand, it is able, without destroying it, to transform a weaker subject into one of its own functionaries, and, to a certain extent, to compose a new entity with it. Not a "substance," but rather something which in itself strives after greater strength; and which wishes to "preserve" itself only indirectly (it wishes to surpass itself).

489.

Everything that reaches consciousness as an entity is already enormously complicated: we never have anything more than the semblance of an entity.

The phenomenon of the body is the richer, more distinct, and more tangible phenomenon: it should be methodically drawn to the front, and no mention should be made of its ultimate significance.

490.

The assumption of a single subject is perhaps not necessary, it may be equally permissible to assume a plurality of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the bottom of our thought and our consciousness in general. A sort of aristocracy of "cells" in which the ruling power is vested? Of course an aristocracy of equals, who are accustomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how to command?

My hypotheses. The subject as a plurality. Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment harmful, projected. The effect always "unconscious": the inferred and imagined cause is projected, it follows the event. Pleasure is a form of pain. The only kind of power that exists is of the same nature as the power of will: a commanding of other subjects which thereupon alter themselves. The unremitting transientness and volatility of the subject. "Mortal soul." Number as perspective form.

491.

The belief in the body is more fundamental than the belief in the soul: the latter arose from the unscientific observation of the agonies of the body. (Something which leaves it. The belief in the truth of dreams)

492.

The body and physiology the starting-point: why?—We obtain a correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that is to say, as a number of regents at the head of a community (not as "souls" or as "life-forces") as also of the dependence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of a hierarchy, and of the division of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain a correct image of the way in which the living entities continually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the "subject"; we realise that the struggle finds expression in obeying as well as in commanding, and that a fluctuating definition of the limits of power is a factor of life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler is kept, of the individual performances and even disturbances taking place in the community, also belong to the conditions under which government may be carried on. In short, we obtain a valuation even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things-generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsification, and of perspective. What is most important, however, is, that we regard the ruler and his subjects as of the same kind, all feeling, willing, thinking—and that wherever we see or suspect movement in a body, we conclude that there is co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Movement as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought.

The danger of directly questioning the subject concerning the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection, consists in this, that it might be a necessary condition of its activity to interpret itself erroneously. That is why we appeal to the body and lay the evidence of sharpened senses aside: or we try and see whether the subjects themselves cannot enter into communication with us.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:14 pm

(d) Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Perspectivity.

493.

Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. The value for Life is ultimately decisive.

494.

It is unlikely that our "knowledge" extends farther than is exactly necessary for our self-preservation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in proportion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase.

495.

If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie" be refuted, the sense for truth will then have to justify itself before another tribunal—as a means to the preservation of man, as Will to Power.

Likewise our love of the beautiful: it is also the creative will. Both senses stand side by side; the sense of truth is the means wherewith the power is appropriated to adjust things according to one's taste. The love of adjusting and reforming—a primeval love! We can only take cognisance of a world which we ourselves have made.

496.

Concerning the multifariousness of knowledge. The tracing of its relation to many other things (or the relation of kind)—how should "knowledge" be of another? The way to know and to investigate is in itself among the conditions of life; that is why the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for ourselves) than the kind which serves the purpose of our preservation is an excessively hasty one: this actual condition may be only an accidental, not in the least an essential; one.

Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not adjusted for knowledge.

497.

The most strongly credited a priori "truths" are, to my mind, mere assumptions pending further investigation; for instance, the law of causation is a belief so thoroughly acquired by practice and so completely assimilated, that to disbelieve in it would mean the ruin of our kind. But is it therefore true? What an extraordinary conclusion! As if truth were proved by the mere fact that man survives!

498.

To what extent is our intellect also a result of the conditions of life?—We should not have it did we not need to have it, and we should not have it as we have it, if we did not need it as we need it—that is to say, if we could live otherwise.

499.

Thinking in a primitive (inorganic) state is to persevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal.—In our thought, the essential factor is the harmonising of the new material with the old schemes (= Procrustes' bed), the assimilation of the unfamiliar.

500.

The perception of the senses projected outwards: "inwards" and "outwards"—does the body command here?

The same equalising and ordering power which rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorporation of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation and harmonisation in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the "impression."

501.

All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of comparing[2] has as a first condition the act of equalising, and earlier still the act of "making equal." The process of making equal is the same as the assimilation by the amœba of the nutritive matter it appropriates.

"Memory" late, in so far as the equalising instinct appears to have been subdued: the difference is preserved. Memory—a process of classification and collocation; active—who?

[2] The German word vergleichen, meaning "to compare," contains the root "equal" (gleich) which cannot be rendered in English. TR.


502.

In regard to the memory, we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a "soul," which, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live "in the memory"; I have nothing to do with it when memory "comes," my will is inactive in regard to it, as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which I become conscious: now something similar comes—who has called it forth? Who has awakened it?

503.

The whole apparatus of knowledge is an abstracting and simplifying apparatus—not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things: "end" and "means" are as remote from the essence of this apparatus as "concepts" are. By the "end" and the "means" a process is appropriated (—a process is invented which may be grasped), but by "concepts" one appropriates the "things" which constitute the process.

504.

Consciousness begins outwardly as co-ordination and knowledge of impressions,—at first it is at the point which is remotest from the biological centre of the individual; but it is a process which deepens and which tends to become more and more an inner function, continually approaching nearer to the centre.

505.

Our perceptions, as we understand them—that is to say, the sum of all those perceptions the consciousness whereof was useful and essential to us and to the whole organic processes which preceded us: therefore they do not include all perceptions (for instance, not the electrical ones);—that is to say, we have senses only for a definite selection of perceptions—such perceptions as concern us with a view to our self-preservation. Consciousness extends so far only as it is useful. There can be no doubt that all our sense-perceptions are entirely permeated by valuations (useful or harmful—consequently, pleasant or painful). Every particular colour; besides being a colour, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after it has affected us exclusively for a long time, as in the case of convicts in gaol or lunatics). Insects likewise react in different ways to different colours: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are a case in point.

506.

In the beginning images how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words—the assembling of several pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word" generates,—that is, then, which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word is used,—this simple emotion is the common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same, is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a confusion of two very intimately associated feelings in the ascertainment of these feelings;—but who is it that ascertains? Faith is the very first step in every sensual impression: a sort of yea-saying is the first intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business, therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing-to-be-true" arose! What sensation lies beneath the comment "true"?

507.

The valuation, "I believe that this and that is so," is the essence of "truth." In all valuations, the conditions of preservation and of growth find expression. All our organs and senses of knowledge have been developed only in view of the conditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that experience has taught the usefulness of these things to life: not their "truth." The prerequisites of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt at all concerning all essential values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true, not that it is true.

"The real world and the world of appearance"— I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We have posited our conditions of existence as the attributes of being in general. Owing to the fact that, in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief, we developed the idea that the real world was neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a world of being.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:16 pm

(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic.

508.

Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished—and are still perishing.

509.

The kingdom of desires out of which logic grew: the gregarious instinct in the background. The assumption of similar facts is the first condition for "similar souls." For the purpose of mutual understanding and government.

510.

Concerning the origin of logic. The fundamental proneness to equalise things and to see them equal, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what is useful or harmful—in fact, by considerations of success: it then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder way, without at the same time denying life or endangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which the protoplasm continually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what it appropriates, and arranges it according to its own forms and requirements.

511.

Likeness and Similarity.

1. The coarser the organ the more apparent likenesses it sees;

2. The mind will have likeness—that is to say, the identification of one sensual impression with others already experienced: just as the body assimilates inorganic matter.

For the understanding of Logic:—

The will which tends to see likeness everywhere is the will to power—the belief that something is so and so (the essence of a judgment), is the result of a will which would fain have it as similar as possible.

512.

Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted that identical cases exist. As a matter of fact, before one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, this condition must first be assumed. That is to say, the will to logical truth cannot be consummated before a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has been assumed. From which it follows that an instinct rules here, which is capable of employing both means: first, falsification; and secondly, the carrying out of its own point of view: logic does not spring from a will to truth.

513.

The inventive force which devised the categories, worked in the service of our need of security, of quick intelligibility, in the form of signs, sounds, and abbreviations.—"Substance," "subject," "object," "Being," "Becoming," are not matters of metaphysical truth. It was the powerful who made the names of things into law, and, among the powerful, it was the greatest artists in abstraction who created the categories.

514.

A moral—that is to say, a method of living which long experience and experiment have tested and proved efficient, at last enters consciousness as a law, as dominant.... And then the whole group of related values and conditions become part of it: it becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true; a necessary part of its evolution is that its origin should be forgotten.... That is a sign that it has become master. Exactly the same thing might have happened with the categories of reason: the latter, after much groping and many trials, might have proved true through relative usefulness.... A stage was reached when they were grasped as a whole, and when they appealed to consciousness as a whole,—when belief in them was commanded,—that is to say, when they acted as if they commanded.... From that time forward they passed as a priori, as beyond experience, as irrefutable. And, possibly, they may have been the expression of no more than a certain practicality answering the ends of a race and a species,—their usefulness alone is their "truth."

515.

The object is, not "to know," but to schematise,—to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos, as our practical needs require. In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was a need in us that was the determining power: not the need "to know," but to classify, to schematise, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment and interpretation of all similar and equal things,—the same process, which every sensual impression undergoes, is the development of reason!) No pre-existing "idea" had anything to do with it: but utility, which teaches us that things can be reckoned with and managed, only when we view them roughly as equal.... Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: Life degenerates with every other form of reason, although constant attempts are being made to attain to those other forms of reason;—for Life would then become too obscure, too unequal.

The categories are "truths" only in the sense that they are the conditions of our existence, just as Euclid's Space is a conditional "truth." (Between ourselves, as no one will maintain that men are absolutely necessary, reason, as well as Euclid's Space, are seen to be but an idiosyncrasy of one particular species of animals, one idiosyncrasy alone among many others....)

The subjective constraint which prevents one from contradicting here, is a biological constraint: the instinct which makes us see the utility of concluding as we do conclude, is in our blood, we are almost this instinct.... But what simplicity it is to attempt to derive from this fact that we possess an absolute truth! ... The inability to contradict anything is a proof of impotence but not of "truth."

516.

We are not able to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: that is a principle of subjective experience—which is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inability.

If, according to Aristotle, the principium contradictionis is the most certain of all principles; if it is the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every demonstration; if the principle of every other axiom lie within it: then one should analyse it all the more severely, in order to discover how many assumptions already lie at its root. It either assumes something concerning reality and Being, as if these had become known in some other sphere—that is to say, as if it were impossible to ascribe the opposite attributes to it; or the proposition means: that the opposites should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not directed at the knowledge of truth, but at the adjusting and fixing of a world which must seem true to us.

In short, the question is a debatable one: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality, or are they measures and means by which alone we can, create realities, or the concept "reality"?... In order to affirm the first alternative, however, one would, as we have seen, require a previous knowledge of Being; which is certainly not the case. The proposition therefore contains no criterion of truth, but an imperative concerning that which should pass as true.

Supposing there were no such thing as A identical with itself, as every logical (and mathematical) proposition presupposes, and that A is in itself an appearance, then logic would have a mere world of appearance as its first condition. As a matter of fact, we believe in that proposition, under the influence of an endless empiricism which seems to confirm it every minute. The "thing"—that is the real substratum of A; our belief in things is the first condition of our faith in logic. The A in logic is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the thing.... By not understanding this, and by making logic into a criterion of real being, we are already on the road to the classification of all those hypostases, substance, attribute, object, subject, action, etc., as realities—that is to say, the conception of a metaphysical world or a "real world" (—this is, however, once more the world of appearance...).

The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and negation, the holding of a thing for true, and the holding of a thing for not true,—in so far as they do not only presuppose a mere habit, but the very right to postulate truth or untruth at all,—are already dominated by a belief, that there is such a thing as knowledge for us, and that judgments can really hit the truth: in short, logic never doubts that it is able to pronounce something concerning truth in itself (—that is to say, that to the thing which is in itself true, no opposite attributes can be ascribed).

In this belief there reigns the sensual and coarse prejudice that our sensations teach us truths concerning things,—that I cannot at the same moment of time say of one and the same thing that it is hard and soft. (The instinctive proof, "I cannot have two opposite sensations at once," is quite coarse and false.)

That all contradiction in concepts should be forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we are able to form concepts, that a concept not only characterises but also holds the essence of a thing.... As a matter of fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only holds good of assumed existences which we have created. Logic is the attempt on our part to understand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is our attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation, for our own purposes....

517.

In order to be able to think and to draw conclusions, it is necessary to acknowledge that which exists: logic only deals with formulæ for things which are constant. That is why this acknowledgment would not in the least prove reality: "that which is" is part of our optics. The ego regarded as Being (not affected by either Becoming or evolution).

The assumed world of subject, substance, reason, etc., is necessary, an adjusting, simplifying falsifying, artificially-separating power resides in us. "Truth" is the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is the will to classify phenomena according to definite categories. In this way we start out with a belief in the "true nature" of things (we regard phenomena as real).

The character of the world in the process of Becoming is not susceptible of formulation; it is "false" and "contradicts itself." Knowledge and the process of evolution exclude each other. Consequently, knowledge must be something else: it must be preceded by a will to make things knowable, a kind of Becoming in itself must create the illusion of Being.

518.

If our "ego" is the only form of Being, according to which we make and understand all Being: very good! In that case it were very proper to doubt whether an illusion of perspective were not active here—the apparent unity which everything assumes in our eyes on the horizon-line. Appealing to the body for our guidance, we are confronted by such appalling manifoldness, that for the sake of method it is allowable to use that phenomenon which is richer and more easily studied as a clue to the understanding of the poorer phenomenon.

Finally: admitting that all is Becoming, knowledge is only possible when based on a belief in Being.

519.

If there is "only one form of Being, the ego," and all other forms of Being are made in its own image,—if, in short, the belief in the "ego," together with the belief in logic, stands and falls with the metaphysical truth of the categories of reason: if, in addition, the "ego" is shown to be something that is evolving: then——

520.

The continual transitions that occur, forbid our speaking of the "individual," etc.; the "number" of beings itself fluctuates. We should know nothing of time or of movement, if, in a rough way, we did not believe we saw things "standing still" behind or in front of things moving. We should also know just as little about cause and effect, and without the erroneous idea of "empty space" we should never have arrived at the concept of space at all. The principle of identity is based on the "fact of appearance" that there are some things alike. Strictly speaking, it would not be possible to "understand" and "know" an evolving world; something which is called "knowledge" exists only in so far as the "understanding" and "knowing" intellect already finds an adjusted and rough world to hand, fashioned out of a host of mere appearances, but become fixed to the extent in which this kind of appearance has helped to preserve life; only to this extent is "knowledge" possible—that is to say, as a measuring of earlier and more recent errors by one another.

521.

Concerning logical appearance.—The concept "individual" and the concept "species" are equally false and only apparent. "Species" only expresses the fact that an abundance of similar creatures come forth at the same time, and that the speed of their further growth and of their further transformation has been made almost imperceptible for a long time: so that the actual and trivial changes and increase of growth are of no account at all (—a stage of evolution in which the process of evolving is not visible, so that, not only does a state of equilibrium seem to have been reached, but the road is also made clear for the error of supposing that an actual goal has been reached—and that evolution had a goal...).

The form seems to be something enduring, and therefore valuable; but the form was invented merely by ourselves; and however often "the same form is attained," it does not signify that it is the same form,—because something new always appears; and we alone, who compare, reckon the new with the old, in so far as it resembles the latter, and embody the two in the unity of "form." As if a type had to be reached and were actually intended by the formative processes.

Form, species, law, idea, purpose—the same fault is made in respect of all these concepts, namely, that of giving a false realism to a piece of fiction: as if all phenomena were infused with some sort of obedient spirit—an artificial distinction is here made between that which acts and that which guides action (but both these things are only fixed in order to agree with our metaphysico-logical dogma: they are not "facts").

We should not interpret this constraint in ourselves, to imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws ("a world of identical cases") as if we were in a position to construct a real world; but as a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our existence will be ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.

The very same constraint is active in the functions of the senses which support the reason—by means of simplification, coarsening, accentuation, and interpretation; whereon all "recognition," all the ability of making one's self intelligible rests. Our needs have made our senses so precise, that the "same world of appearance" always returns, and has thus acquired the semblance of reality.

Our subjective constraint to have faith in logic, is expressive only of the fact that long before logic itself became conscious in us, we did nothing save introduce its postulates into the nature of things: now we find ourselves in their presence,—we can no longer help it,—and now we would fain believe that this constraint is a guarantee of "truth." We it was who created the "thing," the "same thing," the subject, the attribute, the action, the object, the substance, and the form, after we had carried the process of equalising, coarsening, and simplifying as far as possible. The world seems logical to us, because we have already made it logical.

522.

Fundamental solution.—We believe in reason: this is, however, the philosophy of colourless concepts. Language is built upon the most naïf prejudices.

Now we read discord and problems into things, because we are able to think only in the form of language—we also believe in the "eternal truth" of "wisdom" (for instance, subject, attribute, etc.).

We cease from thinking if we do not wish to think under the control of language; the most we can do is to attain to an attitude of doubt concerning the question whether the boundary here really is a boundary.

Rational thought is a process of interpreting according to a scheme which we cannot reject.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:17 pm

(f) Consciousness.

523.

There is no greater error than that of making psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two manifestations of the same substance. By this means nothing is explained: the concept "substance" is utterly useless as a means of explanation. Consciousness may be regarded as secondary, almost an indifferent and superfluous thing, probably destined to disappear and to be superseded by perfect automatism—

When we observe mental phenomena we may be likened to the deaf and dumb who divine the spoken word, which they do not hear, from the movements of the speaker's lips. From the appearance of the inner mind we draw conclusions concerning invisible and other phenomena, which we could ascertain if our powers of observation were adequate for the purpose.

For this inner world we have no finer organs, and that is why a complexity which is thousandfold reaches our consciousness as a simple entity, and we invent a process of causation in it, despite the fact that we can perceive no cause either of the movement or of the change—the sequence of thoughts and feelings is nothing more than their becoming visible to consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a chain of causes is not worthy of belief: consciousness never communicates an example of cause and effect to us.

524.

The part "consciousness" plays,—It is essential that one should not mistake the part that "consciousness plays" it is our relation to the outer world; it was the outer world that developed it. On the other hand, the direction—that is to say, the care and cautiousness which is concerned with the inter-relation of the bodily functions, does not enter into our consciousness any more than does the storing activity of the intellect: that there is a superior controlling force at work in these things cannot be doubted—a sort of directing committee, in which the various leading desires make their votes and their power felt. "Pleasure" and "pain" are indications which reach us from this sphere: as are also acts of will and ideas.

In short: That which becomes conscious has causal relations which are completely and absolutely concealed from our knowledge—the sequence of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, in consciousness, does not signify that the order in which they come is a causal order: it is so apparently, however, in the highest degree. We have based the whole of our notion of intellect, reason, logic, etc., upon this apparent truth (all these things do not exist: they are imaginary syntheses and entities), and we then projected the latter into and behind all things!

As a rule consciousness itself is understood to be the general sensorium and highest ruling centre; albeit, it is only a means of communication: it was developed by intercourse, and with a view to the interests of intercourse.... "Intercourse" is understood, here, as "relation," and is intended to cover the action of the outer world upon us and our necessary response to it, as also our actual influence upon the outer world. It is not the conducting force, but an organ of the latter.

525.

My principle, compressed into a formula which savours of antiquity, of Christianity, Scholasticism, and other kinds of musk: in the concept, "God is spirit," God as perfection is "denied...."

526.

Wherever people have observed a certain unity in the grouping of things, spirit has always been regarded as the cause of this co-ordination: an assumption for which reasons are entirely lacking. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of that fact? Or why should the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause?

We must be on our guard against explaining finality by the spirit: there is absolutely no reason whatever for ascribing to spirit the peculiar power of organising and systematising. The domain of the nervous system is much more extensive: the realm of consciousness is superadded. In the collective process of adaptation and systematising, consciousness plays no part at all.

527.

Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it gains in clearness: the most lucid consciousness and the most logical and impassive thought are of the first order. Meanwhile—according to what standard is this value determined?—In regard to the discharge of will-power the most superficial and most simple thought is the most useful—it might therefore, etc. etc. (because it leaves few motives over).

Precision in action is opposed to the far-sighted and often uncertain judgments of caution: the latter is led by the deeper instinct.

528.

The chief error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as of a lower kind than the distinct; but that which keeps at a distance from our consciousness and which is therefore obscure, may on that very account be quite clear in itself. The fact that a thing becomes obscure is a question of the perspective of consciousness.

529.

The great misapprehensions:—

(1) The senseless overestimation of consciousness, its elevation to the dignity of an entity: "a spirit," "a soul," something that feels, thinks, and wills;

(2) The spirit regarded as a cause, especially where finality, system, and co-ordination appear;

(3) Consciousness classed as the highest form attainable, as the most superior kind of being, as "God";

(4) Will introduced wherever effects are observed;

(5) The "real world" regarded as the spiritual world, accessible by means of the facts of consciousness;

(6) Absolute knowledge regarded as the faculty of consciousness, wherever knowledge exists at all.

Consequences:—

Every step forward consists of a step forward in consciousness; every step backwards is a step into unconsciousness (unconsciousness was regarded as a falling-back upon the passions and senses—as a state of animalism ....)

Man approaches reality and real being through dialectics: man departs from them by means of instincts, senses, and automatism....

To convert man into a spirit, would mean to make a god of him: spirit, will, goodness—all one.

All goodness must take its root in spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness.

Every step made towards something better can be only a step forward in consciousness.

(g) Judgment. True—false.

530.

Kant's theological bias, his unconscious dogmatism, his moral outlook, ruled, guided, and directed him.

The πρῶτον ψεῡδος: how is the fact knowledge possible? Is knowledge a fact at all? What is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly reply to the question, Is there such a thing as knowledge? Very fine! But if I do not already "know" whether there is, or can be, such a thing as knowledge, I cannot reasonably ask the question, "What is knowledge?" Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he requires is a piece of naïveté: the knowledge of knowledge!

"Knowledge is judgment." But judgment is a belief that something is this or that! And not knowledge! "All knowledge consists in synthetic judgments" which have the character of being universally true (the fact is so in all cases, and does not change), and which have the character of being necessary (the reverse of the proposition cannot be imagined to exist).

The validity of a belief in knowledge is always taken for granted; as is also the validity of the feelings which conscience dictates. Here moral ontology is the ruling bias.

The conclusion, therefore, is: (1) there are propositions which we believe to be universally true and necessary.

(2) This character of universal truth and of necessity cannot spring from experience.

(3) Consequently it must base itself upon no experience at all, but upon something else, it must be derived from another source of knowledge!

Kant concludes (1) that there are some propositions which hold good only on one condition; (2) this condition is that they do not spring from experience, but from pure reason.

Thus, the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such propositions? No, whence does our belief get its cause? But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and very limited and narrow experience frequently brings about such a belief! It already presupposes that there are not only "data a posteriori" but also "data a priori"— that is to say, "previous to experience." Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience: it is therefore quite clear that it has come to us without experience at all?

There is no such thing as an isolated judgment!

An isolated judgment is never "true," it is never knowledge; only in connection with, and when related to, many other judgments, is a guarantee of its truth forthcoming.

What is the difference between true and false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly! Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience! It is therefore independent of experience, of all experience! The view which comes quite a priori, and therefore independent of all experience, merely out of reason, is "pure knowledge"!

"The principles of logic, the principle of identity and of contradiction, are examples of pure knowledge, because they precede all experience."—But these principles are not cognitions, but regulative articles of faith.

In order to establish the a priori character (the pure rationality) of mathematical axioms, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason.

Hume had declared that there were no a priori synthetic judgments. Kant says there are—the mathematical ones! And if there are such judgments, there may also be such things as metaphysics and a knowledge of things by means of pure reason!

Mathematics is possible under conditions which are not allowed to metaphysics. All human knowledge is either experience or mathematics.

A judgment is synthetic—that is to say, it co-ordinates various ideas. It is a priori—that is to say, this co-ordination is universally true and necessary, and is arrived at, not by sensual experience, but by pure reason.

If there are such things as a priori judgments, then reason must be able to co-ordinate: co-ordination is a form. Reason must possess a formative faculty.

531.

Judging is our oldest faith; it is our habit of believing this to be true or false, of asserting or denying, our certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, our belief that we really "know"—what is believed to be true in all judgments?

What are attributes?—We did not regard changes in ourselves merely as such, but as "things in themselves," which are strange to us, and which we only "perceive"; and we did not class them as phenomena, but as Being, as "attributes"; and in addition we invented a creature to which they attach themselves—that is to say, we made the effect the working cause, and the latter we made Being. But even in this plain statement, the concept "effect" is arbitrary: for in regard to those changes which occur in us, and of which we are convinced we ourselves are not the cause, we still argue that they must be effects: and this is in accordance with the belief that "every change must have its author";—but this belief in itself is already mythology; for it separates the working cause from the cause in work. When I say the "lightning flashes," I set the flash down, once as an action and a second time as a subject acting; and thus a thing is fancifully affixed to a phenomenon, which is not one with it, but which is stable, which is, and does not "come."—To make the phenomenon the working cause, and to make the effect into a thing—into Being: this is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.

532.

The Judgment—that is the faith: "This and this is so. In every judgment, therefore, there lies the admission that an "identical" case has been met with: it thus takes some sort of comparison for granted, with the help of the memory. Judgment does not create the idea that an identical case seems to be there. It believes rather that it actually perceives such a case; it works on the hypothesis that there are such things as identical cases. But what is that much older function called, which must have been active much earlier, and which in itself equalises unequal cases and makes them alike? What is that second function called, which with this first one as a basis, etc. etc, "That which provokes the same sensations as another thing is equal to that other thing": but what is that called which makes sensations equal, which regards them as equal?—There could be no judgments if a sort of equalising process were not active within all sensations: memory is only possible by means of the underscoring of all that has already been experienced and learned. Before a judgment can be formed, the process of assimilation must already have been completed: thus, even here, an intellectual activity is to be observed which does not enter consciousness in at all the same way as the pain which accompanies a wound. Probably the psychic phenomena correspond to all the organic functions—that is to say, they consist of assimilation, rejection, growth, etc.

The essential thing is to start out from the body and to use it as the general clue. It is by far the richer phenomenon, and allows of much more accurate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit.

"However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth." But what is truth? Perhaps it is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for instance, in regard to causality.

533.

Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth ("omne illud verum est, quod clare et distincte percipitur."—Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible.

But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum veri. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred, valued, and marked as true—The intellect sets its freest and strongest faculty and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true....

"True"—from the standpoint of sentiment—is that which most provokes sentiment ("I");

from the standpoint of thought—is that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength;

from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing—is that which calls forth the greatest resistance.

Thus it is the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its "reality." The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there is something which is being resisted.

534.

The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.

535.

According to my way of thinking, "truth" does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas other errors might not tyrannise over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other "tyrants," could even be laid aside and "refuted." Why should an irrefutable assumption necessarily be "true"? This question may exasperate the logicians who limit things according to the limitations they find in themselves: but I have long since declared war with this logician's optimism.

536.

Everything simple is simply imaginary, but not "true." That which is real and true is, however, neither a unity nor reducible to a unity.

537.

What is truth?—Inertia; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intellectual strength, etc.

538.

First proposition. The easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way;—dogmatically: simplex sigillum veri.—Dico: to suppose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute childishness. . . .

Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of things, and of all those constant entities, is a hundred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . .

Third proposition. Logic was intended to be a method of facilitating thought: a means of expression, —not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .

539.

Parmenides said: "One can form no concept of the non-existent";—we are at the other extreme, and say, "That Of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional."

540.

There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes—therefore there must be many kinds of "truths," and consequently there can be no truth.

541.

Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum.

"That which is necessarily true in thought must be necessarily true in morality."—HERBERT SPENCER.

"The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negation,"—HERBERT SPENCER.

542.

If the character of existence were false,:—and this would be possible,—what would truth then be, all our truth? ... An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? ...

543.

In a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a higher degree of falsity. For a world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created (it being understood that he must believe himself to be "truthful").

Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to himself, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such a man conceives a world of Being as "God" in His own image.

In order that truthfulness may be possible, the whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable: the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one.—Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.

544.

"Dissimulation" increases in accordance with the rising order of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. There power opposes power quite roughly —ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Cæsar and Napoleon (see Stendhal's remark concerning him),[3] as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man. ... The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal.... The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts: the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first principle of thought itself. Before "thought" is possible, "fancy" must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is more primeval than the cognition of identity.

[3] The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: "Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et à plus forte raison quand il écrit."
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:19 pm

(h) Against Causality.

545.

I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. "Changes" are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us); if we set recurrence, however regular, between them, nothing is proved beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc, is easily explained as the result of a misunderstanding, it is comprehensible. But appearances cannot be "causes"!

546.

The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentiation, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is "altered."

547.

Psychological history of the concept subject. The body, the thing, the "whole," which is visualised by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the "subject" over.

548.

Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independent being, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that it flashes, even the little word "I." A sort of double-sight in seeing which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the "subject" of the "ego."

549.

"Subject," "object," "attribute"—these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who "has" something, who "has" a quality.

550.

In every judgment lies the whole faith in subject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent), and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most fundamental belief! there are such things as subjects, everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort.

I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind it, and, above all, I look for one who has an intention, for a subject, an agent: every phenomenon is an action, formerly intentions were seen behind all phenomena, this is our oldest habit. Has the animal also this habit? As a living organism, is it not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question why? is always a question concerning the causa finalis, and the general "purpose" of things. We have no sign of the "sense of the efficient cause"; in this respect Hume is quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that a certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in causality, is not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes, but our inability to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of design. It is the belief in living and thinking things, as the only agents of causation; it is the belief in will, in design—the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; it is the belief in the "subject." Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an arrant absurdity?

Question: Is the design the cause of a phenomenon? Or is that also illusion? Is it not the phenomenon itself?

551.

A criticism of the concept "cause."—We have absolutely no experience concerning cause, viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are causes—that is to say, that the arm moves.... But that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme—we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that, as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as "Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we projected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon, it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept "cause" we have embraced our feeling of will, our feeling of "freedom," our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efficiens and causa finalis are fundamentally one.

We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us.... On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will "act." The thing, the subject the will, the design—all inherent in the conception "cause." We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the "atom" is one of these fanciful inventions like the "thing" and the "primitive subject."...

At last we understand that things—consequently also atoms—effect nothing: because they are non-existent; and that the concept causality is quite! useless. Out of a necessary sequence of states, the latter's causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active principle from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). There is no such thing as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I imagine muscle separated from its "effects," I have denied it....

In short: a phenomenon is neither effected nor capable of effecting. Causa is a faculty to effect something, superadded fancifully to what happens....

The interpretation of causality is an illusion.... A "thing" is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of a concept, an image. As a matter of fact, science has robbed the concept causality of all meaning, and has reserved it merely as an allegorical formula, which has made it a matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It is asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant.

The calculability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that a rule is observed, or that a necessity is obeyed, or that we have projected a law of causality into every phenomenon: it lies in the recurrence of "identical cases."

There is no such thing as a sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast, we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon.... As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known.—It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar.

552.

To combat determinism and teleology.—From the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has "no free will." "Mechanical necessity" is not an established fact: it was we who first read into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising phenomena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the existence of subjects "agents" in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject—exercised by whom? once more by an "agent." The concept "Cause and Effect" is a dangerous one, so long as people believe in something that causes, and a something that is caused.

(a) Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

***

(b) When it is understood that the "subject" is nothing that acts, but only a thing of fancy, there is much that follows.

Only with the subject as model we invented thingness and read it into the pell-mell of sensations. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces.

In this case the world of acting atoms also disappears: for this world is always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary.

Ultimately, of course, the "thing-in-itself" also disappears: for at bottom it is the conception of a "subject-in-itself." But we have seen that the subject is an imaginary thing. The antithesis "thing-in-itself" and "appearance" is untenable; but in this way the concept "appearance" also disappears.

***

(c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what is called subject, nor in what is called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable—they are distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo with which they happen (repose—movement, fixed —loose: all antitheses which do not exist in themselves and by means of which differences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts—and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things).

***

(d) If we abandon the ideas "subject" and "object"; then we must also abandon the idea "substance"—and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: "matter," "spirit," and other hypothetical things, "eternity and the immutability of matter," etc. We are then rid of materiality.

***

From a moral standpoint the world is false. But inasmuch as morality itself is a part of this world, morality also is false. The will to truth is a process of establishing things, it is a process of making things true and lasting, a total elimination of that false character, a transvaluation of it into being. Thus, "truth" is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or, better still, to the Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose: to introduce truth is a processus in infinitum, an active determining—it is not a process of becoming conscious of something, which in itself is fixed and determined. It is merely a word for "The Will to Power."

Life is based on the hypothesis of a belief in stable and regularly recurring things, the mightier it is, the more vast must be the world of knowledge and the world called being. Logicising, rationalising, and systematising are of assistance as means of existence.

Man projects his instinct of truth, his "aim," to a certain extent beyond himself, in the form of a metaphysical world of Being, a "thing-in-itself," a world already to hand. His requirements as a creator make him invent the world in which he works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipation (this faith in truth) is his mainstay.

***

All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as a contest....

***

As soon as we fancy that some one is responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God, Nature), and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us.

***

The "welfare of the individual" is just as fanciful as the "welfare of the species": the first is not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species is just as fluid as the individual. "The preservation of the species" is only a result of the growth of the species—that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind.

***

Theses:—The apparent conformity of means to end ("the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man) is merely the result of that "Will to Power" which manifests itself in all phenomena:—To become stronger involves a process of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end:—The ends which are apparent are not intended but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organisation which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends.

Against apparent "necessity":—

This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else.

Against the apparent conformity of means to ends":—

The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:20 pm

(i) The Thing-in-Itself and Appearance.

553.

The foul blemish on Kant's criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant had no right to his distinction "appearance" and "thing-in-itself,"—in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appearance from the appearance itself, as unallowable in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity, and this conception, on the other hand, already anticipates that differentiation, as if the "thing in itself" were not only inferred but actually given.

554.

It is obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this it follows that the concept "cause and effect" is not applicable in a philosophy which believes in things-in-themselves and in appearances. Kant's mistake—... As a matter of fact, from a psychological standpoint, the concept "cause and effect" is derived from an attitude of mind which believes it sees the action of will upon will everywhere, which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechanical view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time) that concept is reduced to the mathematical formula with which—and this is a fact which cannot be sufficiently emphasised—nothing is ever understood, but rather defined—deformed.

555.

The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even supposing there were an "in-itself," an unconditional thing, it could on that very account not be known! Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of "coming into relation with something"; the knowledge-seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothing to anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction,—in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then?); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means: "to place one's self in relation with something," to feel one's self conditioned by something and one's self conditioning it under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects in-themselves).

556.

A "thing-in-itself" is just as absurd as a "sense-in-itself," a "meaning-in-itself." There is no such thing as a "fact-in-itself," for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact.

The answer to the question, "What is that?" is a process of fixing a meaning from a different standpoint. The "essence" the "essential factor," is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective, and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the question is "What is that for me?" (for us, for everything that lives, etc. etc.).

A thing would be defined when all creatures had asked and answered this question, "What is that?" concerning it. Supposing that one single creature, with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all things, were lacking, that thing would still remain undefined.

In short: the essence of a thing is really only an opinion concerning that "thing." Or, better still; "it is worth" is actually what is meant by "it is" or by "that is."

One may not ask: "Who interprets, then?" for the act of interpreting itself as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as "Being," but as a process, as Becoming) as a passion.

The origin of "things" is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking, willing, and feeling subject. The concept thing as well as all its attributes.—Even "the subject" is a creation of this order, a "thing" like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the power that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined or distinct from all other individual capacities; at bottom action conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to come (action and the probability of similar action).

557.

The qualities of a thing are its effects upon other "things."

If one imagines other "things" to be non-existent, a thing has no qualities.

That is to say; there is nothing without other things.

That is to say; there is no "thing-in-itself."

558.

The thing-in-itself is nonsense. If I think all the "relations," all the "qualities" all the "activities" of a thing, away, the thing itself does not remain: for "thingness" was only invented fancifully by us to meet certain logical needs—that is to say, for the purposes of definition and comprehension (in order to correlate that multitude of relations, qualities, and activities).

559.

"Things which have a nature in themselves"—a dogmatic idea, which must be absolutely abandoned.

560.

That things should have a nature in themselves, quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a perfectly idle hypothesis: it would presuppose that interpretation and the act of being subjective are not essential, that a thing divorced from all its relations can still be a thing.

Or, the other way round: the apparent objective character of things; might it not be merely the result of a difference of degree within the subject perceiving?—could not that which changes slowly strike us as being objective, lasting, Being, "in-itself"?—could not the objective view be only a false way of conceiving things and a contrast within the perceiving subject?

561.

If all unity were only unity as organisation. But the "thing" in which we believe was invented only as a substratum to the various attributes. If the thing "acts," it means: we regard all the other qualities which are to hand, and which are momentarily latent, as the cause accounting for the fact that one individual quality steps forward—that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities—x—as the cause of the quality x; which is obviously quite absurd and imbecile!

All unity is only so in the form of organisation and collective action: in the same way as a human community is a unity—that is to say, the reverse of atomic anarchy; thus it is a body politic, which stands for one, yet is not one.

562.

"At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing." The "thing-in-itself" remained over. 'The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based upon that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also—substance. "The thing affects a subject?" Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside ourselves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all!

Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation.

In movement no new meaning is given to feeling. That which is, cannot be the substance of movement: it is therefore a form of Being.

N.B.—The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede it (purposes);

Secondly, through mental images of phenomena which follow behind it (the mathematico-physical explanation).

The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which is the symbolisation of the world by means of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation: physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without feeling or purpose right up to the highest man. And teleology is only a history of purposes, and is never physical.

563.

Our method of acquiring "knowledge" is limited to a process of establishing quantities, but we can by no means help feeling the difference of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us; it is not a "thing-in-itself."

Our senses have a certain definite quantum as a mean, within the limits of which they perform their functions—that is to say, we become conscious of bigness and smallness in accordance with the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish—that is to say, we feel even proportions as qualities in regard to our possibilities of existence.

564.

But could not all quantities be merely tokens of qualities? Another consciousness and scale of desires must correspond to greater power in fact, another point of view; growth in itself is the expression of a desire to become more; the desire for a greater quantum springs from a certain quale, in a purely quantitative world, everything would be dead, stiff, and motionless.—The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: it is discovered that they can only stand together, an analogy—

565.

Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity—that is to say, as qualities, which we can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. But everything in regard to which the word "knowledge" has any sense at all, belongs to the realm of reckoning, weighing, and measuring, to quantity whereas, conversely, all our valuations (that is to say, our sensations) belong precisely to the realm of qualities, i.e. to those truths which belong to us alone and to our point of view, and which absolutely cannot be "known." It is obvious that every one of us, different creatures, must feel different qualities, and must therefore live in a different world from the rest. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy proper to human nature; the demand that these our human interpretations and values, should be general and perhaps real values, belongs to the hereditary madnesses of human pride.

566.

The "real world," in whatever form it has been conceived hitherto—was always the world of appearance over again.

567.

The world of appearance, i.e. a world regarded in the light of values; ordered, selected according to values—that is to say, in this case, according to the standpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and the increase of power of a certain species of animals.

It is the point of view, then, which accounts for the character of "appearance." As if a world could remain over, when the point of view is cancelled! By such means relativity would also be cancelled!

Every centre of energy has its point of view of the whole of the remainder of the world—that is to say, its perfectly definite valuation, its mode of action, its mode of resistance. The "world of appearance" is thus reduced to a specific kind of action on the world proceeding from a centre.

But there is no other kind of action: and the "world" is only a word for the collective play of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every isolated factor against the whole.

There no longer remains a shadow of a right to speak here of "appearance." ...

The specific way of reacting is the only way of reacting; we do not know how many kinds and what sort of kinds there are.

But there is no "other," no "real," no essential being,—for thus a world without action and reaction would be expressed....

The antithesis: world of appearance and real world, is thus reduced to the antitheses "world" and "nonentity."

568.

A criticism of the concept "real and apparent world."—Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things.

Appearance itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e. in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance; a tempo in which observation and comparison is possible, etc.

"Appearance" is an adjusted and simplified world, in which our practical instincts have worked: for us it is perfectly true: for we live in it, we can live in it: this is the proof of its truth as far as we are concerned....

The world, apart from the fact that we have to live in it—the world, which we have not adjusted to our being, our logic, and our psychological prejudices—does not exist as a world "in-itself"; it is essentially a world of relations: under certain circumstances it has a different aspect from every different point at which it is seen: it presses against every point, and every point resists it—and these collective relations are in every case incongruent.

The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power: under what form, force, or constraint, it acts or resists.

Our particular case is interesting enough: we have created a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to enable us to endure life in that world....

569.

The nature of our psychological vision is determined by the fact—

(1) That communication is necessary, and that for communication to be possible something must be stable, simplified, and capable of being stated precisely (above all, in the so-called identical case). In order that it may be communicable, it must be felt as something adjusted, as "recognisable." The material of the senses, arranged by the understanding, reduced to coarse leading features, made similar to other things, and classified with its like. Thus: the indefiniteness and the chaos of sense-impressions are, as it were, made logical.

(2) The phenomenal world is the adjusted world which we believe to be real, Its "reality" lies in the constant return of similar, familiar, and related things, in their rationalised character, and in the belief that we are here able to reckon and determine.

(3) The opposite of this phenomenal world is not "the real world," but the amorphous and unadjustable world consisting of the chaos of sensations—that is to say, another kind of phenomenal; world, a world which to us is "unknowable."

(4) The question how things-in-themselves are constituted, quite apart from our sense-receptivity and from the activity of our understanding, must be answered by the further question: how were we able to know that things existed? "Thingness" is one of our own inventions. The question is whether there are not a good many more ways of creating such a world of appearance—and whether this creating, rationalising, adjusting, and falsifying be not the best-guaranteed reality itself: in short, whether that which "fixes the meaning of things" is not the only reality: and whether the "effect of environment upon us" be not merely the result of such will-exercising subjects.... The other "creatures" act upon us; our adjusted world of appearance is an arrangement and an overpowering of its activities: a sort of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable; the hypothesis might be advanced that subjects are all that exist,—that "object" is only a form of action of subject upon subject ... a modus of the subject.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:32 pm

(k) The Metaphysical Need.

570.

If one resembles all the philosophers that have gone before, one can have no eyes for what has existed and what will exist—one sees only what is. But as there is no such thing as Being; all that the philosophers had to deal with was a host of fancies, this was their "world."

571.

To assert the existence as a whole of things concerning which we know nothing, simply because there is an advantage in not being able to know anything of them, was a piece of artlessness on Kant's part, and the result of the recoil-stroke of certain needs—especially in the realm of morals and metaphysics.

572.

An artist cannot endure reality; he turns away or back from it: his earnest opinion is that the worth of a thing consists in that nebulous residue of it which one derives from colour, form, sound, and thought; he believes that the more subtle, attenuated, and volatile, a thing or a man becomes, the more valuable he becomes: the less real, the greater the worth. This is Platonism: but Plato was guilty of yet further audacity in the matter of turning tables—he measured the degree of reality according to the degree of value, and said: The more there is of "idea" the more there is of Being. He twisted the concept "reality" round and said: "What ye regard as real is an error, and the nearer we get to the 'idea' the nearer we are to 'truth.'"—Is this understood? It was the greatest of all rechristenings: and because Christianity adopted it, we are blind to its astounding features. At bottom, Plato, like the artist he was, placed appearance before Being! and therefore lies and fiction before truth! unreality before actuality!—He was, however, so convinced of the value of appearance, that he granted it the attributes of "Being," "causality," "goodness," and "truth," and, in short, all those things which are associated with value.

The concept value itself regarded as a cause: first standpoint.

The ideal granted all attributes, conferring honour: second standpoint.

573.

The idea of the "true world" or of "God" as absolutely spiritual, intellectual, and good, is an emergency measure to the extent to which the antagonistic instincts are all-powerful....

Moderation and existing humanity is reflected exactly in the humanisation of the gods. The Greeks of the strongest period, who entertained no fear whatever of themselves, but on the contrary were pleased with themselves, brought down their gods to all their emotions.

The spiritualisation of the idea of God is thus very far from being a sign of progress: one is heartily conscious of this when one reads Goethe—in his works the vaporisation of God into virtue and spirit is felt as being upon a lower plane.

574.

The nonsense of all metaphysics shown to reside in the derivation of the conditioned out of the unconditioned.

It belongs to the nature of thinking that it adds the unconditioned to the conditioned, that it invents it—just as it thought of and invented the "ego" to cover the multifariousness of its processes i it measures the world according to a host of self-devised measurements—according to its fundamental fictions "the unconditioned," "end and means," "things," "substances," and according to logical laws, figures, and forms.

There would be nothing which could be called knowledge, if thought did not first so re-create the world into "things" which are in its own image. It is only through thought that there is untruth.

The origin of thought, like that of feelings, cannot be traced: but that is no proof of its primordiality or absoluteness! It simply shows that we cannot get behind it, because we have nothing else save thought and feeling.

575.

To know is to point to past experience: in its nature it is a regressus in infinitum. That which halts (in the face of a so-called causa prima or the unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness.

576.

Concerning the psychology of metaphysics—the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the greatest suffering (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the "real" world. Thus the passions have been step by step struck out, God posited as the opposite of evil—that is to say, reality is conceived to be the negation of the passions and the emotions (i.e. nonentity).

Irrationality, impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incalculable suffering). Consequently they denied this element in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute "rationality" and "conformity of means to ends."

Change and perishability were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with Spinoza: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm).

A nature overflowing and playing with energy, would call precisely the passions, irrationality and change, good in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc.

577.

Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza's artlessness and Descartes' likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita——

578.

Moral values in epistemology itself:—

The faith in reason—why not mistrust?

The "real world" is the good world—why?

Appearance, change, contradiction, struggle, regarded as immoral: the desire for a world which knows nothing of these things.

The transcendental world discovered, so that a place may be kept for "moral freedom" (as in Kant).

Dialectics as the road to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: probably because sophistry was held to be the road to immorality).

Time and space are ideal: consequently there is unity in the essence of things; consequently no sin, no evil, no imperfection, a justification of God.

Epicurus denied the possibility of knowledge, in order to keep the moral (particularly the hedonistic) values as the highest.

Augustine does the same, and later Pascal ("corrupted reason"), in favour of Christian values.

Descartes' contempt for everything variable; likewise Spinoza's.


579.

Concerning the psychology of metaphysics.—This world is only apparent: therefore there must be a real world;—this world is conditioned: consequently there must be an unconditioned world;—this world is contradictory: consequently there is a world free from contradiction;—this world is evolving: consequently there is somewhere a static world:—a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also exist). Pain inspires these conclusions: at bottom they are withes that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is likewise revealed by the fact that another and better world is imagined: the resentment of the metaphysician against reality is creative here.

The second series of questions: wherefore suffer? ... and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the real world to our apparent, changing, suffering, and contradictory world: (1) Suffering as the consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as the consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (A host of experiences drawn from the sphere of nature or society, universalised and made absolute.) But if the conditioned world be causally determined by the unconditioned, then the freedom to err, to be sinful, must also be derived from the same quarter: and once more the question arises, to what purpose? ... The world of appearance, of Becoming, of contradiction, of suffering, is therefore willed; to what purpose?

The error of these conclusions; two contradictory concepts are formed—because one of them corresponds to a reality, the other "must" also correspond to a reality. "Whence" would one otherwise derive its contradictory concept? Reason is thus a source of revelation concerning the absolute.

But the origin of the above contradictions need not necessarily be a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose the real genesis of the concepts, this springs from practical spheres, from utilitarian spheres, hence the strong faith it commands (one is threatened with ruin if one's conclusions are not in conformity with this reason; but this fact is no "proof" of what the latter asserts).

The preoccupation of metaphysicians with pain, is quite artless. "Eternal blessedness": psychological nonsense. Brave and creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions—they are incidental conditions: both of them must be desired when one will attain to something. It is a sign of fatigue and illness in these metaphysicians and religious men, that they should press questions of pleasure and pain into the foreground. Even morality in their eyes derives its great importance only from the fact that it is regarded as an essential condition for abolishing pain.

The same holds good of the preoccupation with appearance and error the cause of pain. A superstition that happiness and truth are related (confusion: happiness in "certainty," in "faith").

580.

To what extent are the various epistemological positions (materialism, sensualism, idealism) consequences of valuations? The source of the highest feelings of pleasure ("feelings of value") may also judge concerning the problem of reality!

The measure of positive knowledge is quite a matter of indifference and beside the point; as witness the development of Indici.

The Buddhistic negation of reality in general (appearance pain) is perfectly consistent: undemonstrability, inaccessibility, lack of categories, not only for an "absolute world," but a recognition of the erroneous procedures by means of which the whole concept has been reached. "Absolute reality," "Being in itself," a contradiction. In a world of Becoming, reality is merely a simplification for the purpose of practical ends, or a deception resulting from the coarseness of certain organs, or a variation in the tempo of Becoming.

The logical denial of the world and Nihilism is a consequence of the fact that we must oppose nonentity with Being, and that Becoming is denied. ("Something" becomes.)

581.

Being and Becoming.—"Reason" developed upon a sensualistic basis upon the prejudices of the senses—that is to say, with the belief in the truth of the judgment of the senses.

"Being," as the generalisation of the concept "Life" (breath), "to be animate," "to will," "to act upon," "become."

The opposite is: "to be inanimate," "not to become," "not to will." Thus: "Being" is not opposed to "not-Being," to "appearance," nor is it opposed to death (for only that can be dead which can also live).

The "soul," the "ego," posited as primeval facts; and introduced wherever there is Becoming.

582.

Being—we have no other idea of it than that which we derive from "living."—How then can everything "be" dead?

583.

A.

I see with astonishment that science resigns itself to-day to the fate of being reduced to the world of appearance: we certainly have no organ of knowledge for the real world—be it what it may.

At this point we may well ask: With what organ of knowledge is this contradiction established?...

The fact that a world which is accessible to our organs is also understood to be dependent upon these organs, and the fact that we should understand a world as subjectively conditioned, are no proofs of the actual possibility of an objective world. Who urges us to believe that subjectivity is real or essential?

The absolute is even an absurd concept: an "absolute mode of existence" is nonsense, the concept "being," "thing," is always relative to us.

The trouble is that, owing to the old antithesis "apparent" and "real," the correlative valuations "of little value" and "absolutely valuable" have been spread abroad.

The world of appearance does not strike us as a "valuable" world; appearance is on a lower plane than the highest value. Only a "real" world can be absolutely "valuable"....

Prejudice of prejudices! It is perfectly possible in itself that the real nature of things would be so unfriendly, so opposed to the first conditions of life, that appearance is necessary in order to make life possible.... This is certainly the case in a large number of situations—for instance, marriage.

Our empirical world would thus be conditioned, even in its limits to knowledge, by the instinct of self-preservation, we regard that as good, valuable, and true, which favours the preservation of the species....

(a) We have no categories which allow us to distinguish between a real and an apparent world. (At the most, there could exist a world of appearance, but not our world of appearance.)

(b) Taking the real world for granted, it might still be the less valuable to us; for the quantum of illusion might be of the highest order, owing to its value to us as a preservative measure. (Unless appearance in itself were sufficient to condemn anything?)

(c) That there exists a correlation between the degrees of value and the degrees of reality (so that the highest values also possessed the greatest degree of reality), is a metaphysical postulate which starts out with the hypothesis that we know the order of rank among values; and that this order is a moral one. It is only on this hypothesis that truth is necessary as a definition of all that is of a superior value.

B.

It is of cardinal importance that the real world should be suppressed. It is the most formidable inspirer of doubts, and depredator of values, concerning the world which we are: it was our most dangerous attempt heretofore on the life of Life.

War against all the hypotheses upon which a real world has been imagined. The notion that moral values are the highest values, belongs to this hypothesis.

The superiority of the moral valuation would be refuted, if it could be shown to be the result of an immoral valuation—a specific case of real immorality: it would thus reduce itself to an appearance, and as an appearance it would cease from having any right to condemn appearance.

C.

Then the "Will to Truth" would have to be examined psychologically: it is not a moral power, but a form of the Will to Power. This would have to be proved by the fact that it avails itself of every immoral means there is; above all, of the metaphysicians.

At the present moment we are face to face with the necessity of testing the assumption that moral values are the highest values, Method in research is attained only when all moral prejudices have been overcome: it represents a conquest over morality....

584.

The aberrations of philosophy are the outcome of the fact that, instead of recognising in logic and the categories of reason merely a means to the adjustment of the world for utilitarian ends (that is to say, especially, a useful falsification), they were taken to be the criterion of truth—particularly of reality. The "criterion of truth" was, as a matter of fact, merely the biological utility of a systematic falsification of this sort, on principle: and, since a species of animals knows nothing more important than its own preservation, it was indeed allowable here to speak of "truth." Where the artlessness came in, however, was in taking this anthropocentric idiosyncrasy as the measure of things, as the canon for recognising the "real" and the "unreal": in short, in making a relative thing absolute. And behold, all at once, the world fell into the two halves, "real" and "apparent": and precisely that world which man's reason had arranged for him to live and to settle in, was discredited. Instead of using the forms as mere instruments for making the world manageable and calculable, the mad fancy of philosophers intervened, and saw that in these categories the concept of that world is given which does not correspond to the concept of the world in which man lives.... The means were misunderstood as measures of value, and even used as a condemnation of their original purpose....

The purpose was, to deceive one's self in a useful way: the means thereto was the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which the confusing multifariousness of life could be reduced to a useful and wieldy scheme.

But woe! a moral category was now brought into the game: no creature would deceive itself, no creature may deceive itself—consequently there is only a will to truth. What is "truth"?

The principle of contradiction provided the scheme: the real world to which the way is being sought cannot be in contradiction with itself, cannot change, cannot evolve, has no beginning and no end.

That is the greatest error which has ever been committed, the really fatal error of the world: it was believed that in the forms of reason a criterion of reality had been found—whereas their only purpose was to master reality, by misunderstanding it intelligently....

And behold, the world became false precisely owing to the qualities which constitute its reality, namely, change, evolution, multifariousness, contrast, contradiction, war. And thenceforward the whole fatality was there.

1. How does one get rid of the false and merely apparent world? (it was the real and only one).

2. How does one become one's self as remote as possible from the world of appearance? (the concept of the perfect being as a contrast to the real being; or, more correctly still, as the contradiction of life....).

The whole direction of values was towards the slander of life; people deliberately confounded ideal dogmatism with knowledge in general: so that the opposing parties also began to reject science with horror.

Thus the road to science was doubly barred: first, by the belief in the real world; and secondly, by the opponents of this belief. Natural science and psychology were (1) condemned in their objects, (2) deprived of their artlessness....

Everything is so absolutely bound and related to everything else in the real world, that to condemn, or to think away anything, means to condemn and think away the whole. The words "this should not be," "this ought not to be," are a farce.... If one imagines the consequences, one would ruin the very source of Life by suppressing everything which is in any sense whatever dangerous or destructive. Physiology proves this much better!

We see how morality (a) poisons the whole concept of the world, (b) cuts off the way to science, (c) dissipates and undermines all real instincts (by teaching that their root is immoral).

We thus perceive a terrible tool of decadence at work, which succeeds in remaining immune, thanks to the holy names and holy attitudes it assumes.

585.

The awful recovery of our consciousness: not of the individual, but of the human species. Let us reflect; let us think backwards; let us follow the narrow and broad highway.

A.

Man seeks "the truth": a world that does not contradict itself, that does not deceive, that does not change, a real world—a world in which there is no suffering: contradiction, deception, variability—-the causes of suffering! He does not doubt that there is such a thing as a world as it ought to be; he would fain find a road to it. (Indian criticism: even the ego is apparent and not real.)

Whence does man derive the concept of reality? —Why does he make variability, deception, contradiction, the origin of suffering; why not rather of his happiness? ...

The contempt and hatred of all that perishes, changes, and varies: whence comes this valuation of stability? Obviously, the will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world.

The senses deceive; reason corrects the errors: therefore, it was concluded, reason is the road to a static state; the most spiritual ideas must be nearest to the "real world."—It is from the senses that the greatest number of misfortunes come they are cheats, deluders, and destroyers.

Happiness can be promised only by Being: change and happiness exclude each other. The[Pg 89] loftiest desire is thus to be one with Being. That is the formula for the way to happiness.

In summa: The world as it ought to be exists; this world in which we live is an error—this our world should not exist.

The belief in Being shows itself only as a result: the real primum mobile is the disbelief in Becoming, the mistrust of Becoming, the scorn of all Becoming....

What kind of a man reflects in this way? An unfruitful, suffering kind, a world-weary kind. If we try and fancy what the opposite kind of man would be like, we have a picture of a creature who would not require the belief in Being; he would rather despise it as dead, tedious, and indifferent....

The belief that the world which ought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the unfruitful, who do not wish to create a world as it should be. They take it for granted, they seek for means and ways of attaining to it. "The will to truth"—is the impotence of the will to create.

To recognise that something } Antagonism in
is thus or thus: } the degrees of
To act so that something will } energy in
be thus or thus: } various natures.


The fiction of a world which corresponds to our desires; psychological artifices and interpretations calculated to associate all that we honour and regard as pleasant, with this real world.

"The will to truth" at this stage is essentially the art of interpretation: to which also belongs that interpretation which still possesses strength.

The same species of men, grown one degree poorer, no longer possessed of the power to interpret and to create fictions, produces the Nihilists. A Nihilist is the man who says of the world as it is, that it ought not to exist, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist. According to this, existence (action, suffering, willing, and feeling) has no sense: the pathos of the "in vain" is the Nihilist's pathos—and as pathos it is moreover an inconsistency on the part of the Nihilist.

He who is not able to introduce his will into things, the man without either will or energy, at least invests them with some meaning, i.e. he believes that a will is already in them.

The degree of a man's will-power may be measured from the extent to which he can dispense with the meaning in things, from the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning: because he himself arranges a small portion of it.

The philosophical objective view of things may thus be a sign of poverty both of will and of energy. For energy organises what is closest and next; the "scientists," whose only desire is to ascertain what exists, are such as cannot arrange things as they ought to be.

The artists, an intermediary species, they at least set up a symbol of what should exist,—they are productive inasmuch as they actually alter and transform; not like the scientists, who leave everything as it is.

The connection between philosophers and the pessimistic religions; the same species of man (they attribute the highest degree of reality to the things which are valued highest).

The connection between philosophers and moral men and their evaluations (the moral interpretation of the world as the sense of the world: after the collapse of the religious sense).

The overcoming of philosophers by the annihilation of the world of being: intermediary period of Nihilism; before there is sufficient strength present to transvalue values, and to make the world of becoming, and of appearance, the only world to be deified and called good.

B.

Nihilism as a normal phenomenon may be a symptom of increasing strength or of increasing weakness:—

Partly owing to the fact that the strength to create and to will has grown to such an extent, that it no longer requires this collective interpretation and introduction of a sense ("present duties," state, etc.);

Partly owing to the fact that even the creative power necessary to invent sense, declines, and disappointment becomes the ruling condition. The inability to believe in a sense becomes "unbelief."

What is the meaning of science in regard to both possibilities?

(1) It is a sign of strength and self-control; it shows an ability to dispense with healing, consoling worlds of illusion.

(2) It is also able to undermine, to dissect, to disappoint, and to weaken.

C.

The belief in truth, the need of holding to something which is believed to be true: psychological reduction apart from the valuations that have existed hitherto. Fear and laziness.

At the same time unbelief: Reduction. In what way does it acquire a new value, if a real world does not exist at all (by this means the capacity of valuing, which hitherto has been lavished upon the world of being, becomes free once more).

586.

The real and the "apparent" world.

A.

The erroneous concepts which proceed from this concept are of three kinds:—

(a) An unknown world:—we are adventurers, we are inquisitive,—that which is known to us makes us weary (the danger of the concept lies in the fact it suggests that "this" world is known to us....);

(b) Another world, where things are different:—something in us draws comparisons, and thereby our calm submission and our silence lose their value—perhaps all will be for the best, we have not hoped in vain.... The world where things are different—who knows?—where we ourselves will be different....

(c) A real world:—that is the most singular blow and attack which we have ever received; so many things have become encrusted in the word "true," that we involuntarily give these to the "real world"; the real world must also be a truthful world, such a one as would not deceive us or make fools of us; to believe in it in this way is to be almost forced to believe (from convention, as is the case among people worthy of confidence).

***

The concept, "the unknown world," suggests that this world is known to us (is tedious);

The concept, "the other world," suggests that this world might be different, it suppresses necessity and fate (it is useless to submit and to adapt one's self);

The concept, the true world, suggests that this world is untruthful, deceitful, dishonest, not genuine, and not essential, and consequently not a world calculated to be useful to us (it is unadvisable to become adapted to it; better resist it).

***

Thus we escape from "this" world in three different ways:——

(a) With our curiosity—as though the interesting part was somewhere else;

(b) With our submission—as though it was not necessary to submit, as though this world was not an ultimate necessity;

(c) With our sympathy and respect—as though this world did not deserve them, as though it was mean and dishonest towards us....

In summa: we have become revolutionaries in three different ways; we have made x our criticism of the "known world."

B.

The first step to reason: to understand to what extent we have been seduced,—for it might be precisely the reverse:

(a) The unknown world could be so constituted as to give us a liking for "this" world—it may be a more stupid and meaner form of existence.

(b) The other world, very far from taking account of our desires which were never realised here, might be part of the mass of things which this world makes possible for us; to learn to know this world would be a means of satisfying us,

(c) The true world: but who actually says that the apparent world must be of less value than the true world? Do not our instincts contradict this judgment? Is not man eternally occupied in creating an imaginative world, because he will have a better world than reality? In the first place, how do we know that our world is not the true world? ... for it might be that the other world is the world of "appearance" (as a matter of fact, the Greeks, for instance, actually imagined a region of shadows, a life of appearance, beside real existence). And finally, what right have we to establish degrees of reality, as it were? That is something different from an unknown world—that is already the will to know something of the unknown. The "other," the "unknown" world—good! but to speak of the "true world" is as good as "knowing something about it,"—that is the contrary of the assumption of an x-world....

In short, the world x might be in every way a more tedious, a more inhuman, and a less dignified world than this one.

It would be quite another matter if it were assumed that there were several x-worlds—that is to say, every possible kind of world besides our own. But this has never been assumed....

C.

Problem: why has the image of the other world always been to the disadvantage of "this" one—that is to say, always stood as a criticism of it; what does this point to?—

A people that are proud of themselves, and who are on the ascending path of Life, always; picture another existence as lower and less valuable than theirs; they regard the strange unknown world as their enemy, as their opposite; they feel no curiosity, but rather repugnance in regard to what is strange to them.... Such a body of men would never admit that another people were the "true people"....

The very fact that such a distinction is possible,—that this world should be called the world of appearance, and that the other should be called the true world,—is symptomatic.

The places of origin of the idea, of "another world":

The philosopher who invents a rational world where reason and logical functions are[Pg 96] adequate:—this is the root of the "true" world.

The religious man who invents a "divine world";—this is the root of the "denaturalised" and the "anti-natural" world.

The moral man who invents a "free world":—this is the root of the good, the perfect, the just, and the holy world.


The common factor in the three places of origin: psychological error, physiological confusion.

With what attributes is the "other world," as it actually appears in history, characterised? With the stigmata of philosophical, religious, and moral prejudices.

The "other world" as it appears in the light of these facts, is synonymous with not-Being, with not-living, with the will not to live....

General aspect: it was the instinct of the fatigue of living, and not that of life, which created the "other world."

Result: philosophy, religion, and morality are symptoms of decadence.
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:34 pm

(l) The Biological Value of Knowledge.

587.

It might seem as though I had evaded the question concerning "certainty". The reverse is true: but while raising the question of the criterion of certainty, I wished to discover the weights and measures with which men had weighed heretofore—and to show that the question concerning certainty is already in itself a dependent question, a question of the second rank.

588.

The question of values is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter only becomes serious once the question of values has been answered.

Being and appearance, regarded psychologically, yield no "Being in itself," no criterion for reality, but only degrees of appearance, measured according to the strength of the sympathy which we feel for appearance.

There is no struggle for existence between ideas and observations, but only a struggle for supremacy—the vanquished idea is not annihilated, but only driven to the background or subordinated. There is no such thing as annihilation in intellectual spheres.

589.

"End and means"
"Cause and effect"
"Subject and object"
"Action and suffering"
"Thing-in-itself and
appearance"


As interpretations (not as established facts)—and in what respect were they perhaps necessary interpretations? (as "preservative measures")—all in the sense of a Will to Power.

590.

Our values are interpreted into the heart of things.

Is there, then, any sense in the absolute?

Is not sense necessarily relative-sense and perspective?

All sense is Will to Power (all relative senses may be identified with it).

591.

The desire for "established facts"—Epistemology: how much pessimism there is in it!

592.

The antagonism between the "true world," as pessimism depicts it, and a world in which it were possible to live—for this the rights of truth must be tested. It is necessary to measure all these "ideal forces" according to the standard of life, in order to understand the nature of that antagonism: the struggle of sickly, desperate life, cleaving to a beyond, against healthier, more foolish, more false, richer, and fresher life. Thus it is not "truth" struggling with Life, but one kind of Life with another kind.—But the former would fain be the higher kind!—Here we must prove that some order of rank is necessary,—that the first problem is the order of rank among kinds of Life.

593.

The belief, "It is thus and thus," must be altered into the will, "Thus and thus shall it be."
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Re: The Will to Power, An Attempted Transvaluation of all Va

Postby admin » Thu Jan 18, 2018 10:36 pm

(m) Science.

594.

Science hitherto has been a means of disposing of the confusion of things by hypotheses which "explain everything"—that is to say, it has been the result of the intellect's repugnance to chaos. This same repugnance takes hold of me when I contemplate myself; I should like to form some kind of representation of my inner world for myself by means of a scheme, and thus overcome intellectual confusion. Morality was a simplification of this sort: it taught man as recognised, as known,—Now we have annihilated morality—we have once more grown completely obscure to ourselves! I know that I know nothing about myself. Physics shows itself to be a boon for the mind: science (as the road to knowledge) acquires a new charm after morality has been laid aside—and owing to the fact that we find consistency here alone, we must order our lives in accordance with it so that it may help us to preserve it. This results in a sort of practical meditation concerning the conditions of our existence as investigators.

595.

Our first principles: no God: no purpose: limited energy. We will take good care to avoid thinking out and prescribing the necessary lines of thought for the lower orders.

596.

No "moral education" of humanity: but the disciplinary school of scientific errors is necessary, because truth disgusts and creates a dislike of life, provided a man is not already irrevocably launched upon his way, and bears the consequences of his honest standpoint with tragic pride.

597.

The first principle of scientific work: faith in the union and continuance of scientific work, so that the individual may undertake to work at any point, however small, and feel sure that his efforts will not be in vain.

There is a great paralysing force: to work in vain, to struggle in vain.

***

The periods of hoarding, when energy and power are stored, to be utilised later by subsequent periods: Science as a half-way house, at which the mediocre, more multifarious, and more complicated beings find their most natural gratification and means of expression: all those who do well to avoid action.

598.

A. philosopher recuperates his strength in a way quite his own, and with other means: he does it, for instance, with Nihilism. The belief that there is no such thing as truth, the Nihilistic belief, is a tremendous relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is unremittingly struggling with a host of hateful truths. For truth is ugly.

599.

The "purposelessness of all phenomena": the belief in this is the result of the view that all interpretations hitherto have been false, it is a generalisation on the part of discouragement and weakness—it is not a necessary belief.

The arrogance of man: when he sees no purpose, he denies that there can be one!

600.

The unlimited ways of interpreting the world: every interpretation is a symptom of growth or decline.

Unity (monism) is a need of inertia; Plurality in interpretation is a sign of strength. One should not desire to deprive the world of its disquieting and enigmatical nature.

601.

Against the desire for reconciliation and peaceableness. To this also belongs every attempt on the part of monism.

602.

This relative world, this world for the eye, the touch, and the ear, is very false, even when adjusted to a much more sensitive sensual apparatus. But its comprehensibility, its clearness, its practicability, its beauty, will begin to near their end if we refine our senses, just as beauty ceases to exist when the processes of its history are reflected upon: the arrangement of the end is in itself an illusion. Let it suffice, that the more coarsely and more superficially it is understood, the more valuable, the more definite, the more beautiful and important the world then seems. The more deeply one looks into it, the further our valuation retreats from our view,-senselessness approaches! We have created the world that has any value! Knowing this, we also perceive that the veneration of truth is already the result of illusion—and that it is much more necessary to esteem the formative, simplifying, moulding, and romancing power.

"All is false—everything is allowed!"

Only as the result of a certain bluntness of vision and the desire for simplicity does the beautiful and the "valuable" make its appearance: in itself it is purely fanciful.

603.

We know that the destruction of an illusion does not necessarily produce a truth, but only one more piece of ignorance; it is the extension of our "empty space," an increase in our "waste."

604.

Of what alone can knowledge consist?—"Interpretation," the introduction of a sense into things, not "explanation" (in the majority of cases a new interpretation of an old interpretation which has grown incomprehensible and little more than a mere sign). There is no such thing as an established fact, everything fluctuates, everything, is intangible, yielding; after all, the most lasting of all things are our opinions.

605.

The ascertaining of "truth" and "untruth," the ascertaining of facts in general, is fundamentally different from the creative placing, forming, moulding, subduing, and willing which lies at the root of philosophy. To give a sense to things—this duty always remains over, provided no sense already lies in them. The same holds good of sounds, and also of the fate of nations they are susceptible of the most varied interpretations and turns, for different purposes.

A higher duty is to fix a goal and to mould facts according to it: that is, the interpretation of action, and not merely a transvaluation of concepts.

606.

Man ultimately finds nothing more in things than he himself has laid in them—this process of finding again is science, the actual process of laying a meaning in things, is art, religion, love, pride. In both, even if they are child's play, one should show good courage and one should plough ahead; on the one hand, to find again, on the other,—we are the other,—to lay a sense in things.

607.

Science: its two sides:—

In regard to the individual;

In regard to the complex of culture ("levels of culture")


—antagonistic valuation in regard to this and that side.

608.

The development of science tends ever more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is to do the reverse, and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the unknown to the known.

In short, science is laying the road to sovereign ignorance, to a feeling that "knowledge" does not exist at all, that it was merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing; further, that we have not preserved the smallest notion which would allow us to class knowledge even as a possibility that "knowledge" is a contradictory idea. We transfer a primeval myth and piece of human vanity into the land of hard facts: we can allow a thing-in-itself as a concept, just as little as we can allow "knowledge-in-itself." The misleading influence of "numbers and logic," the misleading influence of "laws."

Wisdom is an attempt to overcome the perspective valuations (i.e. the "will to power"): it is a principle which is both unfriendly to Life, and also decadent; a symptom in the case of the Indians, etc.; weakness of the power of appropriation.

609.

It does not suffice for you to see in what ignorance man and beast now live; you must also have and learn the desire for ignorance. It is necessary that you should know that without this form of ignorance life itself would be impossible, that it is merely a vital condition under which, alone, a living organism can preserve itself and prosper: a great solid belt of ignorance must stand about you.

610.

Science—the transformation of Nature into concepts for the purpose of governing Nature—that is part of the rubric means.

But the purpose and will of mankind must grow in the same way, the intention in regard to the whole.

611.

Thought is the strongest and most persistently exercised function in all stages of life—and also in every act of perception or apparent experience! Obviously it soon becomes the mightiest and most exacting of all functions, and in time tyrannises over other powers. Ultimately it becomes "passion in itself."

612.

The right to great passion must be reclaimed for the investigator, after self-effacement and the cult of "objectivity" have created a false order of rank in this sphere. Error reached its zenith when Schopenhauer taught: in the release from passion and in will alone lay the road to "truth," to knowledge; the intellect freed from will could not help seeing the true and actual essence of things. The same error in art: as if everything became beautiful the moment it was regarded without will.

613.

The contest for supremacy among the passions, and the dominion of one of the passions over the intellect.

614.

To "humanise" the world means to feel ourselves ever more and more masters upon earth.

615.

Knowledge, among a higher class of beings, will also take new forms which are not yet necessary.

616.

That the worth of the world lies in our interpretations (that perhaps yet other interpretations are possible somewhere, besides mankind's); that the interpretations made hitherto were perspective valuations, by means of which we were able to survive in life, i.e. in the Will to Power and in the growth of power; that every elevation of man involves the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every higher degree of strength or power attained, brings new views in its train, and teaches a belief in new horizons—these doctrines lie scattered through all my works. The world that concerns us at all is false—that is to say, is not a fact; but a romance, a piece of human sculpture, made from a meagre sum of observation; it is "in flux"; it is something that evolves, a great revolving lie continually moving onwards and never getting any nearer to truth—for there is no such thing as "truth."

617.

Recapitulation:—

To stamp Becoming with the character of Being—this is the highest Will to Power.

The twofold falsification, by the senses on the one hand, by the intellect on the other, with the view of maintaining a world of being, of rest, of equivalent cases, etc.

That everything recurs, is the very nearest approach of a world of Becoming to a world of Being, the height of contemplation.

It is out of the values which have been attributed to Being, that the condemnation of, and dissatisfaction with, Becoming, have sprung: once such a world of Being had been invented.

The metamorphoses of Being (body, God, ideas, natural laws, formulæ, etc.).

"Being" as appearance the twisting round of values: appearance was that which conferred the values.

Knowledge in itself in a world of Becoming is impossible; how can knowledge be possible at all, then? Only as a mistaking of one's self, as will to power, as will to deception.

Becoming is inventing, willing, self-denying, self-overcoming; no subject but an action, it places things, it is creative, no "causes and effects."

Art is the will to overcome Becoming, it is a process of eternalising, but short-sighted, always according to the perspective, repeating, as it were in a small way, the tendency of the whole.

That which all life shows, is to be regarded as a reduced formula for the collective tendency: hence the new definition of the concept "Life" as "will to power."

Instead of "cause and effect," the struggle of evolving factors with one another, frequently with the result that the opponent is absorbed; no constant number for Becoming.

The uselessness of old ideals for the interpretation of all that takes place, once their bestial origin and utility have been recognised, they are, moreover, all hostile to life.

The uselessness of the mechanical theory—it gives the impression that there can be no purpose.

All the idealism of mankind, hitherto, is on the point of turning into Nihilism—may be shown to be a belief in absolute worthlessness, i.e. purposelessness.

The annihilation of ideals, the new desert waste the new arts which will help us to endure it—amphibia that we are!

First principles, bravery, patience, no "stepping-back," not too much ardour to get to the fore. (N.B.—Zarathustra constantly maintaining an attitude of parody towards all former values, as the result of his overflowing energy.)
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