Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy Volume I: Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics 9781474274777, 9781474274807, 9781474274791

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Editors:
Contributors:
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant
Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Writings
Abbreviations or ‘Siglen’ for Nietzsche’s Writings in German
Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Writings in English
Abbreviations of Kant’s Writings with Indicationof the Corresponding AA Volume
References
Nietzsche’s writings
Kant’s writings
Translations of Nietzsche’s and Kant’s Writings
Nietzsche
Kant
Introduction
1. The young Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant and Kantianism
2. Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant
3. Outline of the volume
Notes
References
1 Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject
1. Introduction
2. Transcendental argument in Kant
3. Nietzsche against transcendental argument
4. Necessary perspectives
Notes
References
2 From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge: Nietzsche’s (Virtual) Objections to Kant’s First Critique
1. Introduction
2. Reason is a natural and historical product
3. Reason is one and the same thing as language
4. The formation of concepts of empirical objects
5. Concluding remarks
Notes
References
3 The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy: Some Aspects of Nietzsche’s Reception and Criticism of Transcendental I
1. Introduction
2. Spir’s concept of identity and Nietzsche’s tropological model of cognition
3. Nietzsche’s Parmenides in the light of Spir’s ontology
4. Nietzsche, Spir and the reality of time
5. The origin of representation from the becoming
6. The temporality of representation and the intentionality of drives
Notes
References
4 The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique: Nietzsche on Truth and the Thing in Itself
1. Introduction
2. Nietzsche on Kant’s first Critique: from The Birth of Tragedy to Human, All Too Human
3. Nietzsche on Kant’s first Critique: from The Gay Science onwards
4. The thing in itself and the problem of truth
5. Conclusion
Notes
References
5 Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself
1. Introduction
2. Kant and the thing in itself
3. Nietzsche’s criticisms of the thing in itself
Notes
References
6 Nietzsche on Kant’s Distinction between Knowledge (Wissen) and Belief (Glaube)
1. Introduction
2. Kant’s realm of belief
3. Lange’s reshaping of Kant’s normative realm
4. Nietzsche’s early reaction
5. Nietzsche’s late reaction
6. Conclusions
Notes
References
7 On Teleological Judgement: A Debate between Kant and Nietzsche
1. Teleology vs. contingency
2. Purposiveness and self-design
3. On the meaning of human existence
Notes
References
8 ‘Resolute Reversals’: Kant’s and Nietzsche’s Orienting Decisions Concerning the Distinction between Reason and Nature
1. Nietzsche’s esteem of Kant for his ‘resolute’ critical ‘reversal’ of the distinction between reason and nature
2. Kant’s orienting technique for making distinctions in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason
3. Kant’s persistent uncritical presuppositions
4. Nietzsche’s ‘revolution of the way of thinking’ regarding the distinction between reason and nature: Pluralization and funct
5. Kant’s far-reaching critical premises: Pluralization and functionalization of reason for orientation II
Notes
References
9 The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power
1. Introduction
2. Nietzsche’s appraisal of Kant
3. The will to power: An alternative to Kant’s synthesis
4. Objections and replies
Notes
References
10 ‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’: Meaning and Function of the Type ‘Kant’ and his Philosophy in Twilight of the Id
1. Text and intertext
2. Philosophy as ‘symptomatology’: ‘Kant’ in Twilight of the Idols
3. ‘Reason’ in philosophy
Notes
References
11 Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation: Dealing with the Risk of ‘Landing in Anticyra’
1. Kant on self-observation
2. Nietzsche on self-observation
2.1 Getting closer to Anticyra
3. Landing in Anticyra: A lucky shipwreck?
Notes
References
Complete Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

  i

Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

ii

Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy Edited by Marco Brusotti, Herman Siemens, João Constâncio, Tom Bailey Nietzsche has often been considered a thinker independent of the philosophy of his time and radically opposed to the concerns and concepts of modern and contemporary philosophy. But there is an increasing awareness of his sophisticated engagements with his contemporaries and of his philosophy’s rich potential for debates with modern and contemporary thinkers. Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy explores a significant field for such engagements, Kant and Kantianism.   Bringing together an international team of established Nietzsche-​scholars who have done extensive work in Kant, contributors include both senior scholars and young, upcoming researchers from a broad range of countries and traditions. Working from the basis that Nietzsche is better understood as thinking ‘with and against’ Kant and the Kantian legacy, they examine Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit treatments of Kant, Kantians, and Kantian concepts, as well as the philosophical issues that they raise for both Nietzschean and Kantian philosophy. Volume I: Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Edited by Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens Volume II: Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics Edited by João Constâncio and Tom Bailey Volume III: Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology Edited by Maria João Mayer Branco and Katia Hay

  iii

Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy Volume I Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Edited by Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

iv

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Marco Brusotti, Herman Siemens and Contributors, 2017 Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the editors. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: Pack: 978-1-4742-7603-0 HB: 978-​1-​4742-​7477-​7 ePDF: 978-1-3500-3557-7 ePub: 978-1-3500-3558-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Brusotti, Marco, editor. Title: Nietzsche’s engagements with Kant and the Kantian legacy / edited by Marco Brusotti, Herman Siemens, João Constâncio, Tom Bailey. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017– | Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Volume 1. Nietzsche, Kant, and the problem of metaphysics / edited by Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens -- Volume 2. Nietzsche and Kantian ethics / edited by João Constâncio and Tom Bailey – Volume 3. Nietzsche and Kant on aesthetics and anthropology / edited by Maria Branco and Katia Hay. Identifiers: LCCN 2016040856 | ISBN 9781474274777 (volume 1 : hb) | ISBN 9781474274791 (volume 1 : epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. | Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804. Classification: LCC B3317 .N5424 2017 | DDC 193–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040856 Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image © Getty Images Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

  v

Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant Translations of Nietzsche’s and Kant’s Writings Introduction  Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens 1 2 3

vii xi xii xviii 1

Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject  John Richardson

27

From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge: Nietzsche’s (Virtual) Objections to Kant’s First Critique  Benedetta Zavatta

45

The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy: Some Aspects of Nietzsche’s Reception and Criticism of Transcendental Idealism via Afrikan Spir  William Mattioli

71

The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique: Nietzsche on Truth and the Thing in Itself  João Constâncio

103

5

Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself  André Luís Mota Itaparica

139

6

Nietzsche on Kant’s Distinction between Knowledge (Wissen) and Belief (Glaube)  Mattia Riccardi

153

On Teleological Judgement: A Debate between Kant and Nietzsche  Beatrix Himmelmann

167

‘Resolute Reversals’: Kant’s and Nietzsche’s Orienting Decisions Concerning the Distinction between Reason and Nature  Werner Stegmaier

181

The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power  Tsarina Doyle

205

4

7 8

9

vi

vi

Contents

10 ‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’: Meaning and Function of the Type ‘Kant’ and his Philosophy in Twilight of the Idols Axel Pichler

233

11 Nietzsche, Kant and Self-​Observation: Dealing with the Risk of ‘Landing in Anticyra’  Luca Lupo

255

Complete Bibliography Name Index Subject Index

275 289 293

  vii

Notes on Contributors Editors: Marco Brusotti is professor of history of philosophy at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy) and lecturer in philosophy at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is president of the Nietzsche-​Gesellschaft, a member of the academic board of the Friedrich-​Nietzsche-​Stiftung, the director of the section of the ‘Colli Montinari’ Center for Nietzsche Studies in Lecce and a member of the editorial board of the database Nietzsche Online (Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter). He has published widely on Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, is the author of Die Leidenschaft der Erkenntnis. Philosophie und ästhetische Lebensgestaltung von Morgenröthe bis Also sprach Zarathustra (De Gruyter, 1997) and has edited, with R. Reschke, ‘Einige werden posthum geboren.’ Friedrich Nietzsches Wirkungen (De Gruyter, 2012)  and, with H.  Heit and G.  Abel, Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie:  Hintergründe, Wirkungen und Aktualität (De Gruyter, 2011). Herman Siemens is associate professor of modern philosophy at Leiden University, adjunct professor at the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile) and research associate of the University of Pretoria (South Africa) and the Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal). He is president of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society and, with P.  van Tongeren, director of the Nietzsche-​Wörterbuch (De Gruyter). He specializes in Nietzsche and post-​Nietzschean philosophy, political philosophy and aesthetics and has published widely in these areas, including the book, coedited with V.  Roodt, Nietzsche, Power and Politics:  Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought (De Gruyter, 2008). He currently leads a research programme on Nietzsche and Kant as ancestors of contemporary agonistic and deliberative theories of democracy.

Contributors: João Constâncio is associate professor of philosophy at Nova University of Lisbon (UNL/​FCSH). He earned his PhD there with a dissertation on Plato. He

viii

viii

Notes on Contributors

also does research at IFILNOVA/​FCSH, where he directs the research group ‘Nietzsche International Lab’ (NIL). He is the author of Arte e niilismo: Nietzsche e o enigma do mundo (2013) and co-​editor of four books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity (De Gruyter, 2015). He has also published many articles on Nietzsche, including ‘On Consciousness: Nietzsche’s Departure from Schopenhauer’, Nietzsche-​Studien 40 (2011). Tsarina Doyle is lecturer in philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She has written journal articles on various aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy and is the author of Nietzsche on Epistemology and Metaphysics: The World in View (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). Beatrix Himmelmann is professor of philosophy at The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø. She has worked extensively on themes in Kant and Nietzsche; her systematic interests focus on issues of practical philosophy. She has held visiting positions at Zurich University, at Humboldt University of Berlin, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign and at Brown. From 2004 to 2012 she served as president of the German Nietzsche Society. Her book publications include Kants Begriff des Glücks (de Gruyter, 2003); (ed.) Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit (de Gruyter, 2005); Nietzsche (2006); and (ed.) On Meaning in Life (2013). André Luís Mota Itaparica teaches philosophy at Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, Brazil. He has published several articles on Nietzsche. He is also author of Nietzsche: Estilo e Moral (Discurso/​UNIJUÍ, 2001) and co-​ editor, with Márcio José Silveira Lima, of Verdade e linguagem em Nietzsche (Edufba, 2014). Luca Lupo is researcher in moral philosophy and assistant professor in applied ethics and bioethics at the University of Calabria. His research focuses primarily on the textual and philosophical analysis of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly on Nietzsche’s ethics and anthropology. He is a member of the Interdepartmental Centre for Nietzsche Studies for Nineteenth-​and Twentieth-​ Century Studies, the Seminario Permanente Nietzscheano; the Groupe International de Recherches sur Nietzsche (GIRN); the Centro Studi di Filosofia e Psicoanalisi of the University of Calabria and editor of the Bollettino Filosofico. His publications include: Filosofia della Serendipity (Guida, 2012), Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880–​1888 (ETS, 2006) as well as many articles in books and journals.

  ix



Notes on Contributors

ix

William Mattioli is a PhD student at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is a member of the Nietzsche-​Group UFMG (GruNie). He received his master’s degree under the Erasmus Mundus Program: EuroPhilosophie. His research interests include:  Nietzsche, neo-​Kantianism, epistemology and the problem of the Unconscious. Axel Pichler is a researcher (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Stuttgart Research Centre for Text Studies. He studied philosophy and German studies at the Universities of Vienna and Graz (Austria), where he received his PhD in 2009 with a study on Nietzsche, die Orchestikologie und das dissipative Denken (Passagen, 2010). Thanks to a scholarship by the Fritz-​Thyssen-​Stiftung, he investigated the influence of textuality on Nietzsche’s philosophy at FU Berlin in 2012 (cf. Philosophie als Text –​Zur Darstellungsform der ‘Götzen-​Dämmerung’, De Gruyter 2014). Currently he is co-​editing a new critical edition of Theodor W. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Mattia Riccardi is project-​ director at the Internationales Zentrum für Philosophie NRW Institute of Philosophy of the University of Bonn, Germany. After obtaining his PhD from Humboldt Universität, Berlin, he was postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, Portugal. His main areas of research are the history of nineteenth-​century philosophy and the philosophy of mind. He has written a book on Nietzsche’s metaphysics and published articles in journals such as European Journal of Philosophy, Inquiry and Nietzsche-​Studien. John Richardson is professor of philosophy at New  York University. Besides numerous articles on nineteenth-​and twentieth-​ century continental philosophy, he is the author of Nietzsche’s System (Oxford University Press, 1996), Nietzsche’s New Darwinism (Oxford University Press, 2004), Existential Epistemology:  A  Heideggerian Critique of the Cartesian Project (Oxford University Press, 1986) and Heidegger (Routledge, 2012). He is also the co-​editor of Nietzsche (with B.  Leiter, Oxford University Press, 2001)  and The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche (with K. Gemes, Oxford University Press, 2013). Werner Stegmaier is Gründungsprofessor at the Institut für Philosophie of the University of Greifswald; he occupied the chair of philosophy in the field of practical philosophy until 2011 and is currently co-​editor of Nietzsche-​Studien and the Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-​Forschung. His key publications

x

x

Notes on Contributors

include:  Substanz. Grundbegriff der Metaphysik (Frommann-​Holzboog, 1977); Philosophie der Fluktuanz. Dilthey und Nietzsche (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992); Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral. Werkinterpretation (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994); Levinas (Herder, 2002); Philosophie der Orientierung (de Gruyter, 2008); Nietzsche zur Einführung (Junius, 2011); and Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie. Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft (de Gruyter, 2012). Benedetta Zavatta is Marie Curie Fellow at ITEM (CNRS/​ENS). Previously, she was a research fellow of the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) and visiting scholar at the Columbia University of New York (2013), at the University of Basel (2005–​2006), at Ludwig-​Maximillians University of Munich (Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow 2007–​2009) and at the Maison Française d’Oxford (2008). Her research focuses on Nietzsche and nineteenth-​century German Philosophy, and she has published numerous articles on Nietzsche’s relations to other philosophers.

  xi

Acknowledgements Previous/​earlier versions of the papers by André Luís Mota Itaparica and by William Mattioli appeared in Portuguese in the journal Kriterion (Itaparica, André Luis Mota: ‘As objeções de Nietzsche ao conceito de coisa em si’. Kriterion, Vol. 54, no. 128, dez 2013, 307–​20; Mattioli, William: ‘O devir e o lugar da filosofia: alguns aspectos da recepção e da crítica de Nietzsche ao idealismo transcendental via Afrikan Spir’. Kriterion, Vol. 54, no. 128, dez 2013, 321–​48). The editors and publishers also wish to thank Walter de Gruyter for permission to use the figures in the chapter by Axel Pichler from:  Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘Arbeitsheft W II 3’, in: KGW IX/​7: Arbeitshefte W II 3 and W II 4, ed. by Haase, Marie-​Luise/​Riebe, Thomas/​Röllin, Beat/​Stockmar, René/​Trenkle, Franziska/​Weißbrodt, Daniel. Unter Mitarb. V. Weber, Karoline (2008, p. 129).

xii

Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Writings All references to Nietzsche’s writings are from the following editions: BAW

Nietzsche, F. (1933–40), Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, Hans Joachim Mette/Carl Koch/Karl Schlechta (eds), Munich:  C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Reprinted as:  Frühe Schriften 1854–1869, Munich: DTV 1994. KGB Nietzsche, F. (1975–2004), Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, continued by Norbert Miller and Annemarie Pieper, Berlin/New  York:  De Gruyter. KGW Nietzsche, F. (1967–), Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, continued by Wolfgang Müller-Lauter and Karl Pestalozzi (eds), Berlin/New  York:  De Gruyter. KGW IX Nietzsche, F. (2001–): Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung IX:  Der handschriftliche Nachlaß ab Frühjahr 1885 in differenzierter Transkription, Marie-Louise Haase/Michael Kohlenbach et al. (eds), Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. KSA Nietzsche, F. (1980), Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, Giorgio Colli/Mazzino Montinari (eds), Munich/Berlin/ New York: DTV/De Gruyter. KSB Nietzsche, F. (1986), Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bänden, Giorgio Colli/Mazzino Montinari (eds), Munich/Berlin/ New York: DTV/De Gruyter.

  xiii



Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

xiii

Abbreviations or ‘Siglen’ for Nietzsche’s Writings in German AC EH EH (GT) EH Schicksal EH Vorwort FW GD GD Alten GD Fabel GD Sokrates GD Streifzüge GM GT GT Versuch JGB M MA VM WA WA Epilog WA Nachschrift WS Z Z I Verbrecher

Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christenthum Ecce homo. Wie man wird, was man ist see GT Warum ich ein Schicksal bin Ecce Homo, Vorwort Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (‘la gaya scienza’) Götzen-Dämmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt Was ich den Alten verdanke Wie die ‘wahre Welt’ endlich zur Fabel wurde Das Problem des Sokrates Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift Die Geburt der Tragödie Die Geburt der Tragödie, Versuch einer Selbstkritik Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister. Erster Band (MA II) Erste Abtheilung:  Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche Der Fall Wagner. Ein Musikanten-Problem Der Fall Wagner, Epilog Der Fall Wagner, Nachschrift (MA II) Zweite Abtheilung: Der Wanderer und sein Schatten Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen [1. Teil], Vom bleichen Verbrecher

Abbreviations for Nietzsche’s Writings in English A AOM BGE

The Antichrist Assorted Opinions and Maxims (HH II) Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

xiv

xiv

Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

BT BT Attempt D D Preface EH EH (BT) EH (Z) GM GS HH (volume I) PTG SE TI TI Errors TI Fable TI Germans TI Improvers TI Morality TI Reason TI Skirmishes TI Socrates TL UM WS Z Z I Goals Z IV The Shadow

The Birth of Tragedy The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt at a Self-Criticism Daybreak or Dawn Daybreak or Dawn, Preface Ecce Homo. How One Becomes What One Is Ecce Homo, The Birth of Tragedy Ecce Homo, Thus Spoke Zarathustra On the Genealogy of Morals (or Morality). A Polemic The Gay Science Human, All Too Human Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (UM III) Schopenhauer as Educator Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer The Four Great Errors How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable What the Germans lack The ‘Improvers’ of Humanity Morality as Anti-Nature ‘Reason’ in Philosophy Skirmishes of an Untimely Man The Problem of Socrates On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral (or Nonmoral) Sense Untimely Meditations (HH II) The Wanderer and his Shadow Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None Part 1, Of the Thousand and One Goals Part 4, The Shadow

Abbreviations of Kant’s Writings with Indication of the Corresponding AA Volume AA

Anth Br

Kant, I.  (1900–), Gesammelte Schriften, ed. the Royal Prussian (later German, then Berlin-Brandenburg) Academy of Sciences, Berlin: Reimer, later De Gruyter, 29 vols. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht/Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (AA 07) Briefe/Correspondence (AA 10–13)

  xv



GMS GSK IaG

KpV KrV KU Log MAN NTH

Päd Prol ÜGTP

V-Mo/Mron WA WDO

Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

xv

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten/Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (AA 04) Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte/ Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (AA 01) Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht/Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (AA 08) Kritik der praktischen Vernunft/Critique of Practical Reason (AA 05) Kritik der reinen Vernunft/Critique of Pure Reason Kritik der Urteilskraft/Critique of the Power of Judgement (AA 05) Logik/Logic (AA 09) Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaften/ Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (AA 04) Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels/ Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (AA 01) Pädagogik/Pedagogy (AA 09) Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik/ Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (AA 04) Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie/On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (AA 08) Moral Mrongovius/Lecture on Moral Philosophy Mrongovius (AA 27) Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?/An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (AA 08) Was heißt sich im Denken orientiren?/What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (AA 08)

References Nietzsche’s writings Emphases in Nietzsche’s writings:  normal emphases (= ‘gesperrt’ in KSA) are rendered in italics. Further emphases (‘halbfett’ in KSA for the Nachlass) are rendered in bold italics.

xvi

xvi

Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

Interventions/omissions: any interventions in citations by the author, including insertions of original German words, are indicated by square brackets: []. Any omissions by the author are also inserted in square brackets [. . .] in order to distinguish them from Nietzsche’s own ellipses. References to Nietzsche’s published/titled texts:  follow the standard abbreviations given in Nietzsche-Studien under ‘Siglen’ and are listed here. Authors have used either German or English abbreviations, followed by the section/aphorism number (e.g. JGB 12 or BGE 12, M 54 or D 54, GM I 13). For sections/chapters that are not numbered but named, the abbreviations from Nietzsche-Studien have been used or otherwise devised for easy identification when necessary, for example: Twilight of the Idols, ‘What the Germans Lack’, section 3 = TI Germans 3 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, On the Three Transformations  =  Z I Transformations. Page references, where given, are to the relevant passage in the Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA), not to any translations used. The format is as follows: BGE 12, KSA 5.76 (= Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 12, KSA volume 5, page 76); M 95, KSA 3.86f. (Morgenröthe, aphorism 95, KSA volume 3, page 86f.). References to the Nachlass: follow the notation in KSA, followed by volume and page and preceded by NL and the year, for example: NL 1883 15[44], KSA 10.491 = note 15[71] in KSA volume 10, page 491. NL 1885-86 2[15], KSA 12.74 = note 2[15] in KSA volume 12, page 74. References to the Nachlass material in Kaufmann’s The Will to Power (=WP) are given as references to the equivalent notes in KSA. References to Nietzsche’s letters:  include addressee, date, volume and page number in KSB (Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe) or KGB (Nietzsche Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe).

Kant’s writings Emphases and interventions/omissions are rendered as earlier.

  xvii



Abbreviations and References for Nietzsche and Kant

xvii

References to Kant’s texts: follow the standard German abbreviations given in Kant-Studien and are listed here. The abbreviations are followed by the page number(s) in the ‘Akademie Ausgabe’ (AA), for example, KU 238 (= AA vol. 5, p. 238), Anth 315–16 (= AA vol. 7, pp. 315–16). The relevant volume of the AA for each work is given in the list of abbreviations. Where relevant, the standard A and/or B version for first and second editions of Kant’s works are given, for example, KrV B150, KrV A743/B771. References to numbered sections/paragraphs are also sometimes given by the author, for example, KrV §25 B157, KU §1 204 (= AA vol. V, p. 204).

xviii

Translations of Nietzsche’s and Kant’s Writings Next to their own translations, authors and editors have drawn on a broad range of available translations of Nietzsche’s and Kant’s writings, modifying and combining them as they considered appropriate. Translations used:

Nietzsche The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New  York:  Vintage (1974); The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.  J. Hollingdale, New  York:  Vintage (1968); Daybreak, eds Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1997); The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of idols, ed. Aaron Ridley, trans. Judith Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005); Writings from Late Notebooks, ed. Rüdiger Bittner, trans. Kate Sturge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006); On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. Carol Diethe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2007); Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London: Penguin (1990); Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London: Penguin (1992); Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1993); Untimely Meditations, trans. R.  J. Hollingdale, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1994); Human, All Too Human, trans. R.  J. Hollingdale, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1996); ‘On Schopenhauer’, trans. Christopher Janaway, in:  Willing and Nothingness:  Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator, Oxford:  Clarendon Press (1998); Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan, Washington: Regnery Publishing (1998); Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Faber, Oxford:  Oxford University Press (1998); On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J.  Swensen, Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing Company (1998); Twilight of the Idols, trans. Duncan Large, Oxford:  Oxford University Press (1998); The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Ronald Speirs, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (2000); The Birth of Tragedy (and Other Writings), ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1999); Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes, New York: Oxford University Press (2005); Unpublished Writings

newgenprepdf   xix



Translations of Nietzsche’s and Kant’s Writings

xix

from the Period of Unfashionable Observations, trans. R. T. Gray, Stanford: Stanford University Press (1999); Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, ed. R.-P. Horstmann and J. Norman, trans. Judith Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002); ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’, in: Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s, trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press (1979).

Kant Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998); ‘Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces’, trans. John Handyside, in: Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation and Early Writings on Space, Westport, CT: Hyperion Press (1929); The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London:  Macmillan (1929); Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. James Ellington, Indianapolis, IN:  Bobbs-Merril (1970); Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. Stanley L.  Jaki, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press (1981); Opus postumum, trans. Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press (1993); Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Werner S.  Pluhar, Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing Company (2002); Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. and ed. Robert B. Louden, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2006).

xx

  1

Introduction Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

Nietzsche has often been considered a thinker independent of the philosophy of his time and radically opposed to the concerns and concepts of modern and contemporary philosophy. But there is an increasing awareness of his sophisticated engagements with his contemporaries and of his philosophy’s rich potential for debates with modern and contemporary thinkers. The present volume is the first of a set of three, which explore an extremely significant and fruitful field for such engagements, namely, Kant and Kantianism. Nietzsche’s explicit and implicit treatments of Kant, Kantians and Kantian concepts are examined, as well as the philosophical issues that they raise for both Nietzschean and Kantian philosophy. Nietzsche is not known as an admirer or follower of Kant, but on the contrary as one who criticizes and enjoys poking fun at him. There is no shortage of references to Kant, Kant-​related authors, theories and themes in his writings –​but do Nietzsche’s criticisms really deserve to be taken seriously? Are there also positive relations to Kantianism that inform and structure his thought? The affirmative answer to both these questions is a rather minority view among scholars. However, the fact that the whole issue is worth investigating is just what this book and its companion volumes intend to show.1 Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics is the first of three volumes that address Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy. The second volume, Nietzsche and Kantian Ethics, treats the critical relations between Nietzsche’s and Kant’s approaches to ethics and undertakes to explore the critical responses to Kantian senses of agency, freedom and responsibility, duty, equality and normativity, and to specific Kantian moral and political duties that can be derived from Nietzsche’s work. The third volume, Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology, focuses on questions specific to aesthetics (beauty, the sublime, disinterestedness, originality) and to anthropology (sociability, human nature and physiology), giving special attention to issues that cut across the two domains and defy any clear-​cut classification: the role of the senses (and

2

2

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

of the drives) and the significance of the imagination in our manifold relations to the world (not just in aesthetic judgement and creation), as well as overlapping topics, such as laughter, language and genius. This first volume concerns epistemology and the problem of metaphysics. Phenomenon and thing in itself, empirical and transcendental, space and time, intuition and thought, the I, self-​observation and self-​consciousness, concepts and judgements, categories and schemata, teleological judgement: on these and other issues Nietzsche took a stance that can be put in relation to Kant. The question of historical mediation –​not only through Schopenhauer –​ arises from the beginning: the early Nietzsche sees a thread running from Kant through Schopenhauer to his own ‘tragic’ philosophy. On the other side, the late Nietzsche presents his own views for the most part as a radical subversion of Kant’s philosophy. Nietzsche himself thus encourages the widespread view that his thought is incompatible with Kant’s in style and results. While the difference between the two styles of thought must be conceded, Nietzsche still thinks ‘with and against’ Kant and the Kantian legacy. Dealing with different phases and aspects of his philosophy, the chapters of this first volume take up the question of the extent to which he criticizes and the extent to which he reformulates Kant’s critique of metaphysics. After a broad sketch of Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant in Sections 1 and 2, a survey of the specific topics of our volume will be given in Section 3, together with an outline of its contents.

1.  The young Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant and Kantianism ‘Among recent philosophers I have studied Kant and Schopenhauer with a strong predilection.’2 Applying for a philosophical chair, Nietzsche here intends to suggest to the rector of Basel University that he is well acquainted with Kant. Kant was indeed the first reference of the two most important philosophers for the young Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and the neo-​Kantian Friedrich Albert Lange, author of the History of Materialism (1866; 1873–​75; Engl.: 1880): ‘Kant, Schopenhauer and this book by Lange –​I need no more than this.’3 The young philologist followed Schopenhauer and Lange in acknowledging Kant as an epoch-​making philosopher. But that Nietzsche ascribed to Kant a prominent symbolic role does not mean that he actually felt the need to go beyond what

  3

Introduction

3

Schopenhauer, historians of philosophy or contemporary theorists wrote about him. Did Nietzsche, who never studied philosophy, ever read at least one of the three Critiques? It cannot be ruled out, but that he ‘studied’ Kant –​as he writes to Wilhelm Vischer-​Bilfinger –​does not necessarily imply a first-​hand reading. For various reasons, Nietzsche did not have much time to spend on Kant during his formative years: he first studied and then taught philology, had a very broad range of interests (from music and literature to natural sciences), intended to publish on Greek philosophy (from his Democritea to the Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks) and not only read Schopenhauer, his followers and critics, but also tried in general to pick up the state of the art in philosophy from scratch. Even later, with few exceptions (Montaigne, Pascal), he would continue to read his contemporaries rather than the classics of modern philosophy. Nietzsche does not seem to have ever owned any of Kant’s works, not even the Prolegomena, nor to have borrowed anything written by Kant from the library in Basel.4 Some scholars assume that in 1867–​68 he studied (some sections of) the third Critique first-​hand and/​or that two decades later, during his stay in Chur (8 May–​8 June 1887), he did some direct reading of works by Kant in the public library. But for the most part he seems to have consulted indirect sources; even the Kant quotations with page numbers we find in Nietzsche’s posthumous notes in these and other cases stem mainly from secondary sources.5 In 1884, Nietzsche also criticized the publication of the Opus postumum, but there is no clue that he really had a look at it.6 One could guess that he at some moment held writings by Kant in his hands; and it cannot be excluded that he read the one or the other of them, even if only in part. But there is no conclusive evidence. And this is not the main issue. The Critiques are texts which need to be worked through, again and again. They need to be studied, not simply scanned. What Nietzsche could have done as a direct reading would scarcely have been enough to enable him to master them. On the other hand, Nietzsche’s indirect, mediated contacts with Kant’s philosophy were more than frequent. Whereas he possibly never owned a single work by Kant, a good shelf of his personal library is filled with histories of philosophy (Fischer, Ueberweg), works about Kant (Lehmann,7 Kohl,8 Romundt9), writings by early neo-​Kantians in the narrower sense of the term (Lange, Helmholtz, Fischer, Liebmann) or by philosophers who –​even if they did not plea for a ‘return to Kant’ –​gave a central place to a critical confrontation with Kant (Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Spir and many others). The philosophical knowledge that Nietzsche gained in Schulpforta (concerning Emerson and ancient philosophy) did not in any way compare with the

4

4

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

impressive philological skills he acquired there, which paved the way for his philological career. We do not know when Nietzsche came across Kant’s name for the first time (perhaps reading a classical author such as Schiller or Goethe). In any case, already in Pforta, he did become acquainted with at least one central accomplishment of Kant’s first Critique through his teacher in religion, Karl Eduard Niese (1804–​82). In (unpublished) notes On the Doctrine of Religion (‘Zur Religionslehre’), Nietzsche agrees with Kant’s criticism of the proofs for the existence of God. Loosely following Kant (cf. KrV B619), Nietzsche rejects, among others, the ‘cosmological proof ’, the ‘teleol proof ’ (with the physico-​theological argument as a subtype) and ‘Anselm’s o the ontological proof ’ (Mp V 33, 17). He establishes, for instance, that ‘[i]‌n the Critique of Pure Reason Kant has demonstrated the weaknesses’ (Mp V 33,18) of the teleological proof. Nietzsche also mentions the ‘Kantian o moral’ argument (Mp V 33,17), the ‘practical proof ’, and concludes: ‘Itself no proof for the merely thinking spirit, but only for the moral’ (Mp V 33,18).10 Hence, Nietzsche had already learned of Kant before discovering Schopenhauer in 1865. In October 1864, at the beginning of his studies in Bonn, he declares that he wants to focus his ‘scholarly activity’ on ‘Hebrew’, ‘the history of art and the history of philosophy since Kant, which I  am already studying privately with the help of a few books’.11 In the following summer semester of 1865 Nietzsche attended Carl Schaarschmidt’s course ‘General History of Philosophy’. In the context of a concise outline of the whole history of Western philosophy, Schaarschmidt (1857), perhaps drawing on a chapter from his Entwicklungsgang, also dealt with Kant.12 Close to the end of the (unpublished) Kollegnachschrift, conserved at the Goethe-​ und Schiller-​Archiv in Weimar (reference:  GSA 71/​41 C II 1), Nietzsche takes some lecture notes under the heading ‘Most recent philosophy’ (‘Neueste Philosophie’). Without mentioning Kant by name, the student writes down ‘1721–​1804’ (C II 1: 56), obviously a (mistaken) attempt to give the philosopher’s birth and death years, and lists some of his works beginning with the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. On another page Nietzsche writes down very short ‘abstracts’ of the first and second Critiques. ‘Are there apriori. synthet. judgements?’. The brief summary of the first Critique, which begins with this Kantian question, contains the noteworthy statement: ‘We never experience anything of things in themselves. The teaching of the subjectiv. of all appear. was entirely new’ (C II 1: 61).13 The young student was able to gather basic Kantian conceptions like this from Schaarschmidt.

  5

Introduction

5

On a sheet of paper that seems to be related to the end of the Kollegnachschrift, Nietzsche took his first known excerpts from Schopenhauer, specifically from the critical appendix on Kant’s philosophy.14 Was this in direct connection with Schaarschmidt’s lecture? Do these excerpts stem from his period in Bonn  –​ hence already months before Nietzsche’s official ‘discovery’ of Schopenhauer in the antiquarian bookshop of his landlord Rohn in Leipzig in the autumn of 1865? Some scholars assume so.15 This first known trace of Nietzsche’s acquaintance with The World as Will and Representation is more about Kant than Schopenhauer (cf. Figl 1991: 97ff.). The heading of Nietzsche’s notes, ‘Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy by A.  Schopenhauer’ [‘Kritik der Kantische[n]‌Philosophie von A.  Schopenhauer’] (C II 1:  59), should not mislead us. Nietzsche is not only interested in Schopenhauer’s arguments against Kant. Quite to the contrary:  here he summarizes only the first pages of the appendix, in which Schopenhauer praises Kant as the great pathbreaker in philosophy, before going on to criticize him. Accordingly, Nietzsche writes in the margin: ‘Introduction. Kant’s three principal achievements [Hauptverdienste]’ (ibid.). The first and foremost among them is the ‘doctrine of the complete divergence [der gänzlichen Diversität] of the real from the ideal’ (ibid.), that is, the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself. Kant’s second main achievement is that he places ‘the moral significance of human acting’ in relation to ‘the thing in itself ’; his third, that he finally puts an end to the ‘the whole scholastic period’ (ibid.). In the following year, by the end of August 1866, the philosophical beginner enthused about Friedrich Albert Lange and his History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Present Importance. Among early neo-​Kantians, Lange had the most pronounced impact on the young philologist.16 This ‘supremely enlightened Kantian and investigator of nature’ deflated the question that was central for the young Schopenhauerian, reducing it to irrelevance:  the status of the thing in itself. By the end of August 1866 Nietzsche had not just reached the conclusion that appearances are a ‘product’ of our ‘organization’, but more radically that the whole ‘opposition’ of phenomenon and thing in itself is ‘conditioned by our organization’, thus excluding any metaphysical use of the ‘concept’ of thing in itself (letter to Carl von Gersdorff, end of August 1866, KSB 2.160).17 Schopenhauer and Lange, the two prominent readers of Kant who most impressed the philology student, developed Kant’s thought in very different, if not opposed directions: Schopenhauer towards idealism and metaphysics (even if the late Ergänzungen (volume II of The World as Will and Representation) in particular exhibit a considerable shift towards physiology), Lange towards

6

6

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

empiricism and naturalism: ‘The physiology of the sense organs is the developed or justified Kantianism, and Kant’s system can be seen as a research programme, as it were, for the recent discoveries in this area’ (Lange 1866: 482).18 However, a principal reason for the appeal of Lange’s philosophy to the student is that he found in it a legitimation for further cherishing Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, even if only as a free art in the realm of concepts: ‘Art is free, also in the domain of concepts. If philosophy is art, then Haym can also crawl into a hole before Schopenhauer [sich vor Schopenhauer verkriechen]’ (KSB 2.160). Even adopting Lange’s ‘extremely rigorous critical standpoint’, Schopenhauer’s philosophy, when conceived as a ‘poetry in concepts [Begriffsdichtung]’, remains legitimate. Nietzsche thus makes fun of philosophers who intend ‘to refute Schopenhauer with reasons’ (letter to Paul Deussen, October/​November 1867; KSB 2.229), like ‘the overly audacious Überwegs [überverwegene Überwege] and the Hayms who are not at home in philosophy [in der Philosophie nicht heimische Hayme]’ (letter to Paul Deussen, second half of October 1868; KSB 2.328).19 But Nietzsche agrees with them that Schopenhauer’s metaphysical interpretation of the thing in itself is flawed. Nietzsche returns to the issue in his notes ‘Zu Schopenhauer’. Schopenhauer’s ‘attempt failed’ (‘der Versuch ist mißlungen’: NL 1867–​8 57[51], KGW I/​4.418).20 Rather than overcoming Kant, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics puts a poetic fiction (‘eine Erdichtung’), the will, ‘in the place of the Kantian X’. But even Kant’s ‘concept of a thing in itself ’ is, ‘to speak with Ueberweg, only a hidden category’ (NL 1867–​8 57[52], KGW I/​4.421).21 Besides this ‘hidden category’, the concept of the thing in itself, Nietzsche also rejects the overt categories, that is, Kant’s table of categories as a whole (ibid.). From Lange’s standpoint, Kantian ‘transcendental logic’ is mistaken, because it tries in vain to prove a priori what can be only investigated empirically  –​through the physiology of the senses. To Nietzsche this may have suggested that a thorough study of the architecture of the first Critique is not required. Prompted by Lange, the Leipzig Nietzsche contemplated writing a PhD dissertation, ‘half philosophical, half natural science’, under the heading ‘Concerning the Concept of the Organic since Kant’ (letter to Paul Deussen, April–​May 1868, KSB 2.269) or ‘Teleology since Kant’ (on this project, see Chapter  7 by Himmelmann in our volume). But he never completed –​or rather: never really began working on  –​this project. His notes are full of Kant quotations (even from the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens), which, however, are essentially second-​hand, stemming mostly from Fischer’s two-​volume Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre or from Ueberweg’s Grundriß der Geschichte der

  7

Introduction

7

Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart, as well as from Lange.22 Since not every quotation has been traced back to second-​hand sources, a first-​hand reading of the relevant sections of the third Critique in K. Rosenkranz’s edition (Kant 1838, vol. 4) cannot be ruled out, and some scholars assume it.23 However, even if Nietzsche may have contemplated an extended direct study of Kant, he does not seem to have done so in the preparatory stage in April–​May 1868, before he gave the project up. Fischer’s Immanuel Kant is a seminal work, which played an important role in the Kant renaissance of the 1860s.24 Even if Nietzsche’s notes draw heavily on Fischer, who gives a more idealistic reading of the critical project than the author of the History of Materialism, Nietzsche essentially still follows Lange in criticizing Kant along historical and Darwinist lines. Kant was a child of his age and his alleged subjective need to view organisms teleologically was just contingent, culturally and historically, and disappeared in the nineteenth century. Darwinism shows that there is no principled difference between explaining things and explaining organisms; one may be as sceptical about the one as about the other enterprise. Even if Nietzsche thinks that Kant’s views are being pushed farther and partly superseded by contemporary natural science, his early outlook is still Kantian in a broad sense: we should give up the unattainable metaphysical goal of ‘ “absolute” truth’ (der ‘absoluten’ Wahrheit), be ‘content with a conscious relativity of knowledge’ (‘mit einer bewußten Relativität des Wissens’) as it is offered by science, and pursue ‘edification’ (Erbauung), that is, ‘art’ in the broadest sense, including metaphysics. At this point, before meeting Richard Wagner in November 1868, Nietzsche, still a philosophical beginner, is moving along the two paths opened by Lange: (1) the investigation of the ‘limits of knowledge’ (Erkenntnißgrenzen) and sceptical criticism of metaphysical presuppositions with a certain inclination to a materialism inspired by natural science; (2)  the view that any post-​Kantian metaphysics can only be a sort of edifying ‘conceptual poetry [Begriffsdichtung]’ (letter to Paul Deussen, end of April/​beginning of May 1868, KSB 2.269).25 But does this remain the standpoint of The Birth of Tragedy? How far can its ‘artist’s metaphysics’ (GT Versuch 2, 5, 7, KSA 1.13, 17, 21) be subsumed under ‘conceptual poetry’? On what basis does The Birth of Tragedy, as Nietzsche’s late Attempt at a Self-​Criticism points out, try to express ‘with Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulae’ something that would have been against the ‘spirit’ and the ‘taste’ (GT Versuch 6, KSA 1.19) of both thinkers? Whence the dramatic conflict between ‘Socratic’ science and tragic art? These general questions cannot be addressed here  –​as little as can the radical change in Nietzsche’s

8

8

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

intellectual outlook that occurred after he met the ‘genius’ Wagner in his late Leipzig period and became more and more involved in his artistic and cultural projects. The neo-​Kantian criticism of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, and more generally, the early blend of radicalized theoretical neo-​Kantianism and ethical Schopenhauerianism, was clearly not compatible with Wagnerism. The Leipzig Nietzsche had left ‘conceptual poetry’ to Schopenhauer, rather than practicing it himself. In the early Basel years, however, he did not refrain from more constructive endeavours (cf. Gerratana 1988: 410). From 1869 on, in critical confrontation with Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious, Nietzsche modified his view of Kant’s role in the history of metaphysics, as well as in the philosophy of language. Thus, in a note from September 1870–​January 1871, Nietzsche follows Hartmann’s criticism of ‘Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer’ (cf. Gerratana 1988: 413f.) and points to a possibility that ‘the Kantian-​Schopenhauerian idealists not recognized’:  a new metaphysics starting out, not from the individual intellect, but rather from a ‘primordial intellect [Urintellekt]’ (NL 1870–​1 5[79], KSA 7.111) akin to Hartmann’s ‘Unconscious’. In the ‘metaphysical ­presumption’ of The Birth of Tragedy the place of the Urintellekt is taken by the Ur-​Eine, the ‘primordial One’.26 With Lange and Hartmann, Nietzsche sees the philosophy of language as a development of Kantian themes (cf. Crawford 1988). In ‘On the Origins of Language’, a chapter of his Vorlesungen über lateinische Grammatik (winter semester 1869/​1870), Nietzsche follows Hartmann in insisting on the instinctive nature of language.27 He points out that this view of the origins of language was not yet established by Herder, but only by Kant: The right insight has currency only since Kant, who in The Critique of Judgement both recognized teleology in nature as a matter of fact [etwas Thatsächliches], on the other hand emphasized the wonderful antinomy that something may be purposive [zweckmäßig] without a consciousness. This the essence of instinct. (KGW II/​2.188)

Thus the philosophy of language builds on a Kantian basis. Already the opening of Nietzsche’s Origins insists on this point: ‘The deepest philosophical knowledge lies already prepared in language. Kant said: “a great, perhaps the greatest portion of what our reason finds to do consists in the analysis of concepts which human beings already find in themselves” ’ (KGW II/​2.185). Nietzsche takes Kant’s sentence, actually a misquotation, from Hartmann, who begins his Philosophy of the Unconscious (November 1868) with the passage from §5 of Kant’s Anthropology, where it comes from (cf. Crawford 1988: 17, 37f.). For Nietzsche, the philosophy of language is from the beginning a critical development of Kantian themes; the

  9

Introduction

9

line running from Hamann, Humboldt, Lichtenberg, to Hartmann and Gerber leads to a criticism of Kant’s ‘impure reason’ (Gerber). Later developments of this critical line are discussed by Zavatta in Chapter 2 of this volume. After The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s image of Kant will be influenced, not just by Schopenhauer,28 Hartmann29 and early neo-​Kantianism, but by many post-​Kantian philosophers, more or less affiliated to Kant, each with his own personal agenda. Among them is Afrikan Spir, who begins to be important for Nietzsche as early as in 1873.30 In general, what Nietzsche’s minor contemporaries held to be Kant’s philosophy is often foreign to us. Thus, in the twenty-​first century, the difficulty of understanding Nietzsche’s view of Kant resides not only in Nietzsche’s scarce knowledge of the texts, but also in our own ignorance of the variegated positions of philosophers who do not belong to the ‘mighty dead’. Here the first neo-​Kantians, even if they are nowadays known only to scholars and far less than ‘later’ neo-​Kantians from Cohen through Natorp to Cassirer, belong to the less obscure figures and are much better known than, for example, Spir, Drossbach or Teichmüller.

2.  Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant In the summer semester of 1871 Nietzsche told his students that the philologist ‘must study philosophy’ and would profit the most from ‘the unification of Plato a Kant’ (KGW II/3.372). And at the time of the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche insisted on the ‘extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer’, seeing in the ‘tragic’ thinker Kant a forerunner of Schopenhauer and of his own philosophy. But gradually Kant’s role as a forerunner of Schopenhauer lost its importance, Nietzsche’s philosophy changed and his remarks on Kant became more critical and finally very aggressive. There are several general reasons for this shift. The religious interpretation of the whole of Kant’s philosophy developed by his friend Heinrich Romundt may have been partly responsible for Nietzsche’s change of view. Among Nietzsche’s personal acquaintances were few philosophers. As a student he had met Karl Schaarschmidt and Jürgen Bona Meyer in Bonn. But his fellow students here and then in Leipzig were obviously philologists, even if Nietzsche’s ‘propaganda’ converted Rohde and others to Schopenhauer’s philosophy (and to Wagnerism). In the end, Paul Deussen became a historian of philosophy, who also wrote on Kant.31 In Wagner’s entourage philosophers were rather rare. In Basel, Burckhardt and Overbeck, the most eminent among Nietzsche’s befriended colleagues, were historians. Among Nietzsche’s friends,

10

10

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

Paul Rée, who was a philosopher, was not very interested in Kant. However, Romundt was a Kantian (vgl. KGB 1/4.727f.). Romundt was a member of the philological association (Philologisches Verein zu Leipzig) from 1866 and became friends with Rohde and Nietzsche, who converted him to Schopenhauerianism. After gaining a PhD in philology in Leipzig in 1869, Romundt, who was profoundly influenced by Kant, switched from philology to philosophy; he became Privatdozent in Basel after writing a philosophical ‘Habilitationsschrift’ on Die menschliche Erkenntniß und das Wesen der Dinge, which he completed in 1872 and dedicated to Nietzsche.32 Nietzsche and Romundt are very likely to have had intensive discussions on Kant-​related topics. From the summer of 1872 to April 1875 Romundt shared the ‘Baumann cavern’ (Baumannshöhle) at Schützengraben 45 in Basel with Nietzsche and Overbeck. Hence Nietzsche could easily have borrowed books by and on Kant from his ‘fellow caveman’ (Syntroglodyte). Like Nietzsche, Romundt borrowed many books from the university library in Basel, and his Ausleiheliste (list of loans) in the years 1872–​75 may also offer some clues to Nietzsche’s background (cf. Treiber 1994: 3ff.; and Chapter 2 in this volume). Nevertheless, we do not know much about Romundt as a source of Nietzsche’s knowledge about Kant in the first half of the 1870s. What we do know is that for Nietzsche, Romundt’s conversion to Catholicism in the winter of 1874–​75 (cf. KGB I/4.727) was a traumatic experience. At the time Nietzsche was still working at the Untimely Meditations, but was moving swiftly in a very different direction: the ‘free spirit’ was not far off. For someone like Nietzsche, who had grown up in a staunch protestant milieu, a conversion to Catholicism was like a return to the Middle Ages. He counted Romundt among those in whose hands Kant himself becomes the instrument of a refined obscurantism (cf. VM 27, KSA 2.391f.). However, rather than reject such obscurantist readings, Nietzsche now surmised that Kant himself intended his critical enterprise in this regressive sense (see e.g. NL 1880 7[34], KSA 9.325). After Romundt’s conversion, Nietzsche’s remarks on Kant became gradually (not immediately) more and more dismissive. Was the Romundt experience thus the turning point in Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant’s personality and of his role in the history of philosophy? We would not go so far. Nietzsche’s whole philosophy was changing anyway. But certainly this episode influenced his general assessment: Kant was not a revolutionary, who might perhaps have made mistakes and been too compromising; rather, he was basically a reactionary: ‘in the end, an underhanded Christian’ (GD Vernunft 6, KSA 6.79) with a ‘backdoor philosophy’ (GD Streifzüge 16, KSA 6.121), whose success was ‘merely theologian-​success’ (AC 10, KSA 6.177).33

  11

Introduction

11

For Nietzsche, Kant is quite often a representative, a placeholder. In the case of many of Nietzsche’s contemporaries we have to carefully distinguish between the sometimes deep influence they had on the development of his philosophical thought and the role their name plays in his published writings: some of these authors are not mentioned at all (Lange); some of them only in an anonymous, impersonal way, for example, simply as a ‘logician’ (Spir); some others again are the target of attacks and disparaging remarks (Hartmann, Spencer), sometimes after having inspired Nietzsche for over a decade (Dühring). Nietzsche actually refrains from mentioning authors whom he perceives to be of minor importance. He behaves quite otherwise towards Kant, who, because of his prominence is very apt to play the role of a symbolic actor on Nietzsche’s philosophical stage.34 Although Nietzsche’s self-​assured judgements often intend to suggest a close acquaintance, he nevertheless lacks some very basic knowledge of Kant’s philosophy. Even supposing some direct reading, Nietzsche’s knowledge of Kant is first of all fragmentary. His Kant is at best understood as a mosaic, a patchwork, a jigsaw puzzle built up from heterogeneous, and sometime contradictory pieces, a composed portraiture whose constituent images come from very different sources. The question of sources is relevant only in this sense. Kant himself does not seem to belong to Nietzsche’s ‘sources’, even literal quotations from his works are generally taken from the books of other philosophers. The later Nietzsche mentions Kant frequently and rather loosely; even when he names him explicitly, he does not need to have a source in or outside Kant (cf. Chapter 10 by Pichler in this volume). Kant often stands for other positions, and arguments Nietzsche elaborated in controversies with the minor contemporaries he actually read gain a higher ‘status’ being directed against the prince of philosophers. Nietzsche shares this tendency with most interpreters, who tend to eschew his minor contemporaries as of little interest. A good example is the way most scholars have dealt with JGB 17, seeing in it only a criticism of Kant. With its proposal to substitute ‘it thinks’ for the ‘I think’ (and finally to get rid even of the ‘it’ in ‘it thinks’), this aphorism recalls Lichtenberg’s criticism of Kant. But the aphorism does not mention either of them; and even if the ‘I think’ is obviously a Kantian concept, the aphorism criticizes ‘the logicians’ in general –​with minor philosophers of the time in mind.35 If taken as direct criticism of Kant, Nietzsche’s texts may often seem clumsy to today’s professional philosophers and experienced Kant readers. However, his texts look less weak, indeed often perspicacious, if they are not taken as ‘dialogues between pinnacles’. As contributions to a contemporary debate they show

12

12

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

that Nietzsche was at the height of many ‘professionals’ of his time, who had delved in the three Critiques, even if Kant philology was still in its infancy. The later Nietzsche’s uncompromising criticism of Kant places him in clear opposition not only to Schopenhauer, but also to the early ‘back to Kant’ movement. Despite his intensive, although critical, engagement with the first generation of neo-​Kantians, Nietzsche obviously does not belong to them. It is, however, important to see that many of these professional philosophers had a rather loose relation to Kant’s theoretical philosophy (Lange and Liebmann, for instance, rather than Fischer, and not Cohen, whom Nietzsche does not seem to have known). That Nietzsche did not know Kant well may explain some of his statements and assessments; but sometime, and just when he clearly misses the point, he is simply taking up the opinion of the best reputed neo-​Kantians of the time. Just two examples: To study physiology with a good conscience, we must insist that the sense organs are not appearances [Erscheinungen] in the way idealist philosophy uses that term: as such, they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as a regulative principle, if not as a heuristic principle. –​What? and other people even say that the external world is the product of our organs? But then our body, as a piece of this external world, would really be the product of our organs! But then our organs themselves would really be –​the product of our organs! This looks to me like a thorough reductio ad absurdum: given that the concept of a causa sui is something thoroughly absurd. So does it follow that the external world is not the product of our organs –​? (JGB 15, KSA 5.29)

Now, two decades before Beyond Good and Evil, in August 1866, Nietzsche had synthesized the results of his reading of Lange’s History of Materialism in precisely this way, in a text that is a literal quotation from Lange’s own resumé in the first edition: ‘1) the world of the senses is a product of our organization. 2) our visible (bodily) organs are, like all other parts of the world of appearance, only pictures of an unknown object. 3)’ (letter to Carl von Gersdorff, end of August 1866, KSB 2.160; cf. Lange 1866: 493). In this letter the philosophical beginner commits himself to Lange’s theses, and the aphorism of BGE is thus a straightforward criticism of Lange36 and a sort of belated self-​criticism.37 One further example:  in January 1919 Karl Kraus remarks about the First World War –​‘The ‘categorical imperative’ has been perverted into a system of military discipline designed to inculcate the “will to power” ’ (F 501–​7, 113; quoted in Timms 1986: 14). The idea that the Prussian officer or civil servant was the embodiment of Kant’s categorical imperative was current in Germany

  13

Introduction

13

in the 1870s. It was clearly formulated by the prominent neo-​Kantian Otto Liebmann38 and allowed nationalistic Germans to explain the victory in the war against France in terms of moral superiority. Nietzsche had clearly seen and sharply criticized such ‘applications’ of the categorical imperative, but without seeing them as a ‘perversion’ of Kant’s theorem. Quite on the contrary, Nietzsche accepted such readings as straightforward and made out of them an objection to the categorical imperative, for instance, when he saw in Kant’s philosophy ‘the highest formula for the civil servant [Staats-​Beamten]’ (GD Streifzüge 29, KSA 6.130). This may seem silly to today’s Kant scholars (and really gets Kant wrong); however, it is interesting as a polemical contribution to a contemporary discourse, in which nationalistic Germans –​among them many professional Kant scholars –​tended to read Kant in just this way.

3.  Outline of the volume The contributors to this and all three volumes take a variety of approaches to Nietzsche’s relation to Kant, making for a plurality of interpretations that bring distinctive features of their relation, both critical and positive, to light. Most, even if not all, authors acknowledge the task of establishing systematic relations between Nietzsche’s thought and Kant’s. But in order to do so they take different paths. In some chapters Nietzsche and Kant are directly confronted face to face:  the authors concentrate on comparative analysis and intend to establish direct relations between Kant’s and Nietzsche’s thought. Other authors focus more on the historically situated and mediated nature of Nietzsche’s relation to Kant. Benedetta Zavatta (Chapter  2:  ‘From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge:  Nietzsche’s (Virtual) Objections to Kant’s First Critique’) belongs to the latter group of authors. According to her, Nietzsche did not address Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason directly but dealt with later theories that brought considerations from different fields such as the physiology of the senses (e.g. Helmholtz) or linguistics (e.g. Max Müller), to a simplified and reduced version of the conceptual apparatus of Kantian philosophy. This led Nietzsche to discuss issues that Kant could not have recognized as problematic, such as the image of the world (Weltansicht) on which reason (understood as conscious judgement) works, and to adopt a different methodology for enquiring into the human mind. What is more, this scientific background led Nietzsche to consider

14

14

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

human thinking as involved in a process of natural evolution (characterized by laws of spontaneous variation and selection), linking it to culture and language as historical products. In this way, she argues, Nietzsche criticizes the Kantian ideal of ‘pure reason’ and replaces it with the idea of ‘habits of sensation’, which unconsciously direct our representation of reality. As a consequence, the traditional distinction between reason and instinct is abolished, as well as the Kantian separation of the ‘theoretical’ from the ‘practical’. According to João Constâncio, even if Nietzsche’s early readings of Schopenhauer’s and Kuno Fischer’s interpretations of the Critique of Pure Reason had an enormous impact on him, his engagement with Lange’s History of Materialism shaped his philosophical views even more. Mattia Riccardi and Beatrix Himmelmann also deal with Lange’s important role in Nietzsche’s attempt to develop Kantian themes, with reference to his early years (Himmelmann), but also to the late period (Riccardi). William Mattioli (Chapter  3:  ‘The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy:  Some Aspects of Nietzsche’s Reception and Criticism of Transcendental Idealism via Afrikan Spir’) outlines the importance of Afrikan Spir for Nietzsche’s critical reception of transcendental idealism from 1873 on. Spir was a minor philosopher who went against the grain by resisting the hegemonic tendency to naturalize Kantianism. Instead, he reduces the a priori to a single constitutive element, the principle of identity, which provides us with the concept of Being and the Unconditioned, and asserts an ontological extension of this concept. He thereby brings to light a set of theoretical assumptions in transcendentalism that Nietzsche critically associated with an ontological commitment to the normative concept of Being going back to Parmenides. Spir’s criticism of the Kantian thesis of the transcendental ideality and apriorism of time holds a central place in Nietzsche’s attempt to deconstruct metaphysical ontology, and with the concept of Becoming he also provides the basis for Nietzsche’s programme of historical philosophy. For other authors the issue of historical mediation is less important. Axel Pichler concentrates instead on the specific literary forms in Nietzsche’s writings and their philosophical importance. In Chapter 10 (‘ “Kant: or cant as intelligible character.” Meaning and Function of the “Type” Kant and His Philosophy in Twilight of the Idols’), he investigates the meaning and function of the ‘type’ Immanuel Kant in Twilight of the Idols. This text, he argues, operates with a strategic understanding of Kant’s thought that is frequently not supported by Kant’s writings, exceeding the transcendental framework by developing an alternative access to philosophical questions: the text’s protagonist exhibits the

  15

Introduction

15

conditionality of his own epistemological position and thereby aims at showing that a non-​perspectival examination of epistemological questions is impossible. At the same time, this approach also has critical implications for systematic comparisons of Nietzsche’s philosophy with putative predecessors, such as Kant: any attempt at a systematic reconstruction and comparison of Nietzsche’s position and that of another philosopher is problematized to the extent that it abstracts from the literary specificity of Nietzsche’s text and its philosophical implications. John Richardson (Chapter 1: ‘Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject’) addresses the central epistemological question of the transcendental and examines Nietzsche’s appropriation and revision of Kant’s typical form of ‘transcendental argument’. His chapter deals with Nietzsche’s conversion of Kant’s possibility-​conditions into life-​conditions, and considers what lessons he means to draw for our conception of ourselves as subjects. Nietzsche, like Kant, argues that we humans deeply and implicitly take ourselves to be subjects. But whereas Kant presents this as a ‘condition of the possibility of experience’, which justifies the validity of the posit, Nietzsche interprets it as a ‘life-​condition’, which deprives it of that justifying force and even makes it count against the posit’s validity. Richardson finally asks if we can and should stop viewing ourselves as subjects. Among the fundamental issues raised by Kant’s critical project, the traditional problem of the status of the thing in itself is particularly relevant to Nietzsche’s formulation of his own philosophy. According to João Constâncio, (Chapter 4: ‘The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique: Nietzsche on Truth and the Thing in Itself ’), Nietzsche’s rejection of Kant’s thing in itself is an immanent critique and belongs to a wider critique of Kant’s failure to see the ultimate consequences of his first Critique. Constâncio argues that Nietzsche’s reflection on these consequences marks the whole corpus of his writings, and that his criticism of Kant, as well as his more general departure from transcendental idealism, presupposes basic results from the Critique of Pure Reason. The most important are: (1) that our basic categories belong to our cognitive apparatus, not to things in themselves; (2) that our world is structured by these categories, which entails (3) that we cannot know things in themselves, and hence (4) that we cannot have access to absolute or metaphysical truth (at best, we have access to what Lange termed a ‘relative truth’); (5) consequently, metaphysics is impossible. According to Constâncio, Nietzsche’s critique of truth is a version of Lange’s interpretation of Kant’s view of truth; until the end, Nietzsche endorses a ‘falsification thesis’ and this endorsement also rests on premises drawn from Lange. Nietzsche’s final view is not a consistent and well-​worked-​out theory, but rather a paradoxical

16

16

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

questioning of truth and the thing in itself motivated by normative (‘moral’) considerations, not by merely epistemological ones. In Chapter 5 (‘Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself ’) André Luís Mota Itaparica also deals with the practical side of Nietzsche’s criticism of the ‘thing in itself ’. Generally, scholars identify a path that leads Nietzsche from the assumption of an unknowable thing in itself in his youth to a final dismissal of this concept as self-​contradictory in his later philosophy. Itaparica, who basically agrees with this widespread view, deals with three objections to the concept of thing in itself made by the late Nietzsche and discusses the question whether what Nietzsche denies is really what Kant meant by thing in itself. Nietzsche distanced himself from Kant by rejecting any positive reading of the thing in itself, whether theoretical or practical. If Kant had understood that ‘thing in itself ’ is a contradictory concept, whose only utility consists in serving as a limit of what can be asserted meaningfully, he would not have contributed to a strengthening of a kind of metaphysics that he himself had tried to overcome. Nietzsche’s main target is Kant’s practical use of the concept of ‘thing in itself ’ and the return to articles of faith that it makes possible. This ‘return’ to faith or belief is addressed in Mattia Riccardi’s chapter (Chapter 6: ‘Nietzsche on Kant’s Distinction between Knowledge (Wissen) and Belief (Glaube)’). Riccardi focuses on Nietzsche’s reaction to Kant’s famously declared strategy of circumscribing ‘knowledge’ (Wissen) in order to make room for ‘belief ’ (Glaube). Despite an early sympathetic reaction, Nietzsche came to consistently reject this move for the rest of his philosophical career. Clark and Dudrick (2012), however, see a deep continuity with Kant’s philosophical project: they argue that Nietzsche too distinguishes between the space of reasons –​ what we ordinarily provide to justify what we do –​and the space of causes –​what scientists provide in order to explain a certain phenomenon. But the fact that Nietzsche consistently rejects the Kantian move to circumscribe ‘knowledge’ in order to make room for ‘belief ’, Riccardi argues, proves that Nietzsche does not share Kant’s concern with establishing a realm of reasons independent from that of causes. Teleology involves reasons which are causes, and Beatrix Himmelmann (Chapter 7: ‘On Teleological Judgement: A Debate between Kant and Nietzsche’) offers a comparative analysis of Kant’s and Nietzsche’s thought on this issue. In his early philosophical project ‘On Teleology since Kant’ (1868) Nietzsche is sceptical about Kant’s claim concerning the principle of purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit) as an a priori principle of judgement, which grounds our reflection on the particular in nature and human culture. Later on, Nietzsche

  17

Introduction

17

will criticize Darwin, emphasizing the significance of individual ‘formative forces’, which he perceives as the sources of evolution and development. It is the appearance of strong, interesting, very special and lavishly gifted individuals, who squander themselves and their affluence, which reveals the potential of nature and of life. However, in 1868, following Lange’s discussion of Darwin’s account of the origin of species, Nietzsche argues that the purposiveness exhibited by life forms is a product of chance. According to Werner Stegmaier (Chapter 8: ‘ “Resolute Reversals”: Kant’s and Nietzsche’s Orienting Decisions concerning the Distinction between Reason and Nature’), Kant’s distinctions between subject and object, transcendental and empirical, form and content, depend on the distinction between reason and nature. Kant held fast to the concept of reason in order to ground the possibility of objectivity for a pure ‘science of nature’ and of universalizing moral maxims. For this reason he referred nature back to the concept of an unknown X. Nietzsche’s move, Stegmaier argues, is to propose a new concept of reason from the unknown X of nature. In doing so, Nietzsche leaves behind Kant’s persistent pre-​critical presuppositions and takes further Kant’s technique of orientation for making distinctions. The focus of this chapter is on Kant’s technique of orientation concerning distinctions. By ‘revolution of the way of thinking’ Kant means a reorientation of traditional fundamental distinctions in European philosophy. Concepts rest upon distinctions, and reorientations of the latter bring with them reversals in the meaning of those concepts. In following what he called Kant’s ‘resolute reversals’ and taking further his technique of orientation for making distinctions, Nietzsche gives new, anti-​Kantian meanings to key concepts like of nature and reason. However, as a consequence of his scant knowledge of Kant and due to his neo-​Kantian sources, Nietzsche overlooked the way in which Kant had already pluralized and functionalized reason for the sake of orientation, anticipating much of Nietzsche’s thought in this regard. Tsarina Doyle (Chapter 9: ‘The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power’) argues that Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power emerges from his critical reflections on Kant’s epistemology. Does Kant’s account of synthesis succeed in establishing the empirical world as an object of knowledge? Does it really establish the objective applicability of the concept of causality, contrary to Hume’s scepticism? Nietzsche, disappointed by the shortcomings of Kant’s project, offers a naturalization with his will to power thesis. This thesis culminates in the view that the relational character of the empirical world is informed by intrinsic natures that secure the causal potency of empirical force and establish the mind-​ independent but knowable character of the world.

18

18

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

According to Luca Lupo (Chapter  11:  ‘Nietzsche, Kant and Self-​ Observation:  Dealing with the Risk of “Landing in Anticyra” ’), Nietzsche wants to show how Kant’s critical inquiry is essentially based on assumptions that derive from self-​observation. Even though moving from different perspectives, both Kant and Nietzsche show a critical attitude towards self-​observation, which they see as practice that produces a constitutively unstable knowledge. Nietzsche paradoxically directs this criticism at the heart of Kantianism, reducing the Kantian enterprise to a form of self-​observation, thereby turning against Kant his own arguments against self-​observation in the Anthropology. This critical attitude, however, does not prevent Nietzsche himself from practicing self-​ observation, and in his last book, Ecce homo, he reaches the extreme limits and seems to materialize the risk of madness evoked by Kant. The thread that ideally binds the two thinkers is grasped by Michel Foucault, with whom Lupo deals in the last part of his chapter. Kant and Nietzsche were both committed to answer the question of the nature of what is human:  Kant saw madness as a danger; Nietzsche experienced and expressed it; whereas for Foucault it becomes a heuristic opportunity. As we have tried to indicate, the authors of this volume thus take a variety of approaches. Whether investigating historical mediations, analyzing Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant, looking for critical developments and reformulations of Kantian, neo-​and post-​Kantian theses in Nietzsche’s philosophy or comparing the views of the two thinkers on relevant issues, the authors explore the complexities of Nietzsche’s relation to Kant and Kantianism in the domains of epistemology and metaphysics, and try to bring its distinctive features to light.

Notes 1 The three-​volume set was inspired by a series of international workshops and conferences on Nietzsche and Kant covering different areas of thought: Leiden 2011 (ethics), Queen Mary and Westfield 2011 (aesthetics), Lisbon 2012 (epistemology and metaphysics), Belo Horizonte 2012 (religion and ethics), Lecce 2013 (anthropology and history), Rome 2013 (politics) and Galway 2014 (religion). Many of the chapters in the set were presented in draft form at these workshops and revised in the light of our discussions. Other chapters have been commissioned for the set. 2 Letter to Wilhelm Vischer-​Bilfinger, January 1871, KSB 3.177.

  19

Introduction

19

3 Letter to H. Mushacke, November 1866; KSB 2.184. The name ‘Kant’ also occurs in an earlier letter to Mushacke, always in the connection ‘Kant and Schopenhauer’ (letter to H. Mushacke, 11.7.1866; KSB 2.142). Cf. also the letter to C. v. Gersdorff, 15.8.1866; KSB 2.152. 4 However, his friend Heinrich Romundt would probably have had many books by and about Kant in the flat they shared. For Nietzsche’s loans from the library in Basel, cf. Crescenzi (1994). For Nietzsche’s personal library, cf. Campioni et al. (2003). For Romundt’s loans, cf. Treiber (1994 and 1993). On Nietzsche’s reading of and about Kant, see Brobjer (2003: 60ff.; 2008: 36ff.); also Bailey (2013). 5 On 1867–​68, see p. 6f. In Chur, Nietzsche seems mainly to have reread Kuno Fischer’s Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre. The Kant excerpts in NL 1886–​87 7[4]‌, KSA 12.264ff. have been retraced to this book. KSA 14.739 (and in one case Brobjer (2008: 129, n. 87; 2001: 421)) gives the corresponding references in Kant’s texts. See Brobjer (2001) on the references to Fischer. On Nietzsche’s stay in Chur, see Benders and Ottermann (2000: 665ff.), and on his use of the library there: Brobjer (2008: 38). In the Preface of Daybreak (dated autumn 1886), Nietzsche quotes from the Rosenkranz edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. 6 ‘[T]‌hey have been cruel enough to have recently celebrated and published the remaining magnum opus of his nonsense [Blödsinns]’ (NL 1884 26[371], KSA 11.248); ‘Kant’s fame has nowadays been blown up out of all proportion [ins Unbillige hinaufgetrieben]’ (NL 1884 26[412], KSA 11.261). 7 Lehmann (1878). This book belongs to Nietzsche’s personal library (= BN). 8 Nietzsche mentions Kohl’s dissertation ‘Immanuel Kants Ansicht von der Willensfreiheit’ (Kohl 1868) in his letter to E. Rohde of 3 April 1868 and shortly before (KSB 2.265; cf. the Nachbericht in KGB I/4.491). Nietzsche does not comment on Kohl’s treatment of Kant, but only goes into the role of his beloved Schopenhauer in the dissertation. The mixed experience of reading Kohl’s dissertation leads Nietzsche to the ‘sudden idea of defending a philosophical PhD sometime’ (ibid.). For Nietzsche’s unrealized dissertation project, that will also be related to Kant, see p. 6f. 9 Cf. later n. 32 10 On ‘Zur Religionslehre’ (Mp V 33 [= GSA 71/​221]), see Figl 1984: 62ff. (see p. 391 for a facsimile of the first page of the manuscript); on the proofs for the existence of God, 66ff., where Figl gives the original German text of all the passages we have translated. Cf. also Broese (2005: 364). 11 Letter to Hermann Kletschke, 31 October 1864; KGB I/4.15 (Nachträge; translation from Brobjer 2008: 46). According to Brobjer (2008: 46, 49), who does not give evidential support, Nietzsche was using Karl Fortlage’s Genetische Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant (Leipzig 1852), which begins with a long chapter on ‘Kant’s life and writings’ (‘Kant’s Leben und Schriften’: Fortlage 1852: 10 –​84) and also deals

20

20

12 13

14 15

16

17 18

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens with Schopenhauer. In general, Fortlage’s book concentrates on the consequences of Kant’s thought for post-​Kantian philosophy. In March 1865 Nietzsche simply notes the name ‘Fortlage’ (cf. 28[1], KGW I/​4.50; March 1865), but this does not mean that he necessarily refers to his History of Philosophy since Kant. Cf. Figl 1991; Broese 2005: 364f. For a schematic outline of the manuscript in key words, cf. Figl (1989: 458f.). Already in April–​September 1863 Nietzsche claims that we ‘do not know things in and for themselves’ (NL 1863 15[34], KGW I/​3.177), but there is no sign that he is referring to Kant here. The founder of the jüngere Tübinger Schule, the protestant church and dogma historian Ferdinand Christian Baur, makes a peculiar use of the distinction between things in themselves and appearances. In a passage quoted by Nietzsche, Baur’s Manual of Christian Dogma History [Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte] distinguishes between ‘the purely empirical and the critical outlook [Betrachtungsweise]’: only the latter discriminates ‘between things as they are in themselves and as they appear to us’ (NL 1867–​8 56[6]‌, KGW I/​4.367; for the source, see Langbehn (2005: 111f., n. 319)). Whereas for Baur, the historian can go beyond appearances and ‘pierce [. . .] the thick and impenetrable skin in which things in themselves are shrouded’, Nietzsche remarks critically that ‘the things in themselves’ are ‘something quite unattainable’ (ibid.). For a transcription of the whole sheet, see Broese (2004: 29); for a commentary, Figl (1991: 97ff.). As do F. Gerratana and R. Müller-​Buck in their Nachbericht in KGB I/​4.357. See already Metterhausen (1942: 59, 94f.), Figl (1984: 114f.) and then Broese (2005 and 2004). In his study Figl (1991: 91, 96f.) leaves the question open. According to KGW I/​4.384, the official ‘discovery’ of Schopenhauer’s main work in Rohn’s antiquarian bookshop probably occurred at the beginning of November 1865. During his lifetime Nietzsche read the History of Materialism in different editions (e. g. 1866; 1887) more than once (for details, see Salaquarda (1978 and 1979); Stack (1983); Brobjer (2008: 33f.). However, we agree with Crawford (1988: 69, n. 7) and Ansell-​Pearson (1988) that scholars should not simply jump from the well-​ documented early reading of Lange in 1866–​68 to associative speculations about his persisting influence on Nietzsche’s mature thought. In Leipzig Nietzsche was only beginning to outline his own philosophy, and Lange’s History of Materialism belongs to his earliest readings in contemporary philosophy. As his thought progresses and his readings (in philosophy and in the natural sciences) multiply, Lange’s impact becomes much more difficult to assess. This passage from Nietzsche’s letter to Gersdorff is an (undeclared) literal quotation from Lange (1866: 493). See p. 12. Here Lange is referring to Hermann von Helmoltz (cf. Riccardi 2009: 57f.). There is a rich literature on ‘unconscious inferences’ (unbewußte Schlüsse), a central concept in Helmoltz’s ‘Kantian’ physiology of the senses (cf. Helmoltz 1867), and

  21

Introduction

21

on their substitution with ‘unconscious tropes’ in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies. On Helmoltz, cf. Beiser (2014: 196ff.); on Nietzsche’s reading of Helmoltz, cf. Treiber (1994); on the ‘unbewußte Schlüsse’, cf. Orsucci (1994), Reuter (2009) and Chapter 2 in this volume. 19 On Nietzsche and Haym’s Arthur Schopenhauer (Haym 1864), cf. Barbera (1995); Riccardi (2009: 32ff.). 20 According to Schlechta’s Nachbericht (BAW 3.452), Nietzsche’s criticism of Schopenhauer in BAW 3.118 (= KGW I/​4.418) goes back to Otto Liebmann’s Kant und die Epigonen (1865; BN). But this is doubtful: Nietzsche did read Liebmann, but only much later –​in a letter from 21 August 1881 (cf. KSB 6.117f.) Nietzsche asks Overbeck to buy Kant und die Epigonen for him, as well as Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit (Liebmann 1880; BN). 21 Ueberweg’s objection, which implies the so-​called two-​objects-​view of the thing in itself, is discussed by Lange (1866: 267 ff.). Ueberweg (1867: 242) formulates his objection in volume three of the Grundriß; cf. the commentary in Nietzsche (1993: 262, n. 78); Riccardi (2009: 39, n. 46). 22 The Nachbericht volume to KGW I has not been published yet. The commentary to BAW 3.371ff. in BAW 3.458ff. (on Fischer, see also BAW 3.442; on Ueberweg, (BN) BAW 3.446) and the philological apparatus/​commentary by the editors G. Campioni and F. Gerratana in Nietzsche (1993: 271ff.) (still) give some direct references to Kant. 23 Cf. Janz (1978, vol. I: 199, 504); Brobjer (2008: 36); cf. the criticism in Bailey (2013, n. 1). 24 For the general relevance of Fischer’s Kant book, actually volumes 3 and 4 of his Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, and for a brief outline of the content, see Beiser (2014: 240ff.). 25 This letter briefly outlines a quite radical blend of ‘Langeanism’. Nietzsche announces a closer discussion of the ‘limits of knowledge’ (Erkenntnißgrenzen) in the philosophical dissertation on ‘the Concept of the Organic since Kant’ (KSB 2.269) he intends to complete by the end of the year. The letter does not mention Lange, but Nietzsche agrees with his whole approach: the ‘course of the relevant research, primarily in physiology since Kant’ shows ‘definitely and infallibly’ the ‘limits’ (Grenzen) of human knowledge and the ‘extent of our cognitive faculty’. Following Lange, Nietzsche defines ‘metaphysics’ as ‘conceptual poetry’ (Begriffsdichtung): ‘The realm of metaphysics, and therewith the province of “absolute truth” has undeniably been placed on a line with poetry and religion. Whoever wants to know something nowadays contents himself with a conscious relativity of knowledge [Relativität des Wissens] –​like e.g. all reputable natural scientists. Metaphysics thus belongs for some people in the domain of emotional needs [Gemüthsbedürfnisse], is essentially edification [Erbauung]: on the other hand, it is art, namely the art of conceptual poetry [Begriffsdichtung]; what must be

22

22

26

27 28

29

30

31

32

33

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens maintained, however, is that neither as religion nor as art does metaphysics have anything to do with the so-​called “True in itself or being” ’ (KSB 2.269). ‘Individuation [Die individuatio] is in any case not the work of conscious knowledge, but rather of that primordial intellect. The Kantian–​Schopenhauerian idealists have not recognized this. Our intellect never takes us further than conscious knowing: but insofar as we are still intellectual instinct, we can still dare to say something about the primordial intellect. Beyond this, nothing will lead us’ (NL 1870–​1 5[79], KSA 7.111). On Hartmann, see besides Gerratana (1988) and Crawford (1988) also Thüring (1994) and Reuter (2009: 99ff.). See Crawford (1988: 17ff., 42ff., 51ff.). On Kant in Nietzsche’s lectures in the early 1870s, see also Brobjer (2008: 37f.). The late Nietzsche keeps on reading Schopenhauer and his criticism of Kant. In 1884, he works through Schopenhauer’s On the Basis of Morality (‘Über die Grundlage der Moral’), the second section of which is a critique of Kant’s foundation of ethics (‘Kritik des von Kant der Ethik gegebenen Fundaments’) (cf. Brobjer 2008: 32, 129, n. 89). In the 1880s, Nietzsche read Hartmann’s Phenomenology of Ethical Consciousness (1879). On Hartmann’s criticism of the sovereignty of the individual as a target of Nietzsche’s chapter in the Genealogy of Morality (GM II 2), see Chapter 8 by Brusotti in Volume II. Listing all works that may have contributed to Nietzsche’s reception of Kant goes well beyond the scope of the present introduction. We have been dealing only with the main inputs in the early years (Zöllner (cf. 1872) and others might also be added), and for the later period the task of reconstructing them would be even more difficult. On Spir, see Chapter 3 by Mattioli; on other authors, see Chapter 2 by Zavatta in this volume. For further suggestions, see besides Brobjer (2008: 129f., n. 89) and Bailey (2013) also, for example, Loukidelis (2013) and Riccardi (2009). Here we do not aim to list either the philosophers with whom Nietzsche became personally acquainted, or the people with whom he may have spoken about Kant, like, for example, the parson in Naumburg, Friedrich August ‘Wenkel, our tireless researcher in Kant und Schopenhauer’ (letter to Erwin Rohde, 8 October 1868, KSB 2.322). Like three of Romundt’s later writings on Kant (mostly with a personal dedication by the author), the ‘Habilitationsschrift’ (where the dedication is in print) belongs to Nietzsche’s personal library. During Nietzsche’s (conscious) lifetime, Romundt published, among others: 1882, BN (personal dedication: ‘To the physicist from the metaphysician as a sign of his deference [dem Physiker der Metaphysiker als Zeichen seiner Ergebenheit]’); 1883, BN; 1885a, BN; 1885b; 1886; 1887. On Nietzsche’s polemical remarks on Kant’s ‘radical evil’, see section 4 in Chapter 8 by Brusotti in Volume II: 229ff.

  23

Introduction

23

34 Sarah Kofman (cf. 1979) subsumes Nietzsche’s criticism of the philosophical tradition under the metaphor of the ‘philosophical scene’. 35 For these ‘logicians’ and for an extended analysis of JGB 17, see Loukidelis (2013). On BGE 17, see also Brusotti’s chapter in Volume II; on Drossbach, see Zavatta’s chapter in this volume. 36 On the relation to Lange in this aphorism, cf. Hussain (2004: 122f.). 37 The vicious circle Rudolf Haym ascribes to Schopenhauer resembles the one criticized in JGB 15. According to Haym, Schopenhauer’s intention to combine Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Cabanis’s physiology could only lead to contradiction: the intellect produces the intellect. On Haym’s objection, cf. Barbera (1995: 130). 38 Liebmann writes about ‘die preußische Armee’: ‘Es offenbart sich darin der Geist der Disziplin und Subordination, das Postulat uneigennütziger strenger, gewissenhafter Pflichterfüllung, das Bewußtsein der Pflicht zu völliger Selbstaufopferung gegenüber Gesetz und Staat. Der borstige Egoismus soll den Mund halten, der Einzelne sich fortwährend als subordiniertes Glied der Allgemeinheit fühlen. Es ist der Geist des kategorischen Imperativs. Dieser Geist, der in Preußen vom geringsten Trainknecht bis hinauf zum König herrscht, [. . .] ist der Geist der politischen Zucht und Ordnung. Er macht uns groß. Er durchdringt unsere Armee vom Wirbel bis zur Zehe. Möge er immer gehegt und gepflegt werden!’ (Liebmann 1871: 12f.; quoted by Köhnke 1986: 219f.).

References Ansell-​Pearson, K. (1988), ‘The Question of F. A. Lange’s Influence on Nietzsche: A Critique of Recent Research from the Standpoint of the Dionysian’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 539–​54. Bailey, T. (2013), ‘Nietzsche the Kantian’, in Ken Gemes and John Richardson (eds), The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche, 134–​59, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barbera, S. (1995), ‘Eine Quelle der frühen Schopenhauer-​Kritik Nietzsches: Rudolf Hayms Aufsatz “Arthur Schopenhauer” ’, Nietzsche Studien 24: 124–​36. Beiser, F. C. (2014), The Genesis of Neo-​Kantianism, 1796–​1880, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benders, R. J., and Ottermann, S. (2000), Friedrich Nietzsche. Chronik in Bildern und Texten, München/​Wien: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser/dtv. Brobjer, T. H. (2001), ‘Beiträge zur Quellenforschung’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 418–​21. Brobjer, T. H. (2003), ‘Nietzsche as German Philosopher: His Reading of the Classical German Philosophers’, in Nicholas Martin (ed.), Nietzsche and the German Tradition, Oxford e. a.: Peter Lang. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

24

24

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

Broese, K. (2004), ‘Nietzsches erste Begegnung mit Schopenhauer im Lichte eines bisher unveröffentlichten Manuskriptes aus seiner Bonner Studienzeit’, Schopenhauer-​ Jahrbuch 85: 13–​26. Broese, K. (2005), ‘Nietzsches frühe Auseinandersetzung mit Kants Kritizismus’, in B. Himmelmann (ed.), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, 364–​72, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Campioni, G., D’Iorio, P., Fornari, M. C., Fronterotta, F., and Orsucci, A. (2003), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2012), The Soul of Nietzsche’s beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crawford, C. (1988), The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Crescenzi, L. (1994), ‘Verzeichnis der von Nietzsche aus der Universitätsbibliothek in Basel entliehenen Bücher (1869–​1879)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 388–​442. Figl, J. (1984), Dialektik der Gewalt. Nietzsches hermeneutische Religionsphilosophie mit Berücksichtigung unveröffentlichter Manuskripte, Düsseldorf: Patmos. Figl, J. (1989), ‘Nietzsches frühe Begegnung mit dem Denken Indiens. Auf der Grundlage seiner unveröffentlichten Kollegnachschrift aus Philosophiegeschichte (1865)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 18: 455–​71. Figl, J. (1991), ‘Nietzsches Begegnung mit Schopenhauers Hauptwerk. Unter Heranziehung eines frühen unveröffentlichten Exzerptes’, in Wolfgang Schirmacher (ed.), Schopenhauer, Nietzsche und die Kunst (Schopenhauer-​Studien 4), Wien: Passagen Verlag. Fischer, K. (1860), Immanuel Kant. Entwicklungsgeschichte und System der kritischen Philosophie. Erster Band: Entstehung und Begründung der kritischen Philosophie. Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Zweiter Band: Das Lehrgebäude der kritischen Philosophie. Das System der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols [= Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. III, IV], Mannheim: Friedrich Bassermann. Fortlage, K. (1852), Genetische Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant, Leipzig: Brockhaus. Gerratana, F. (1988), ‘Der Wahn jenseits des Menschen. Zur frühen E. v. Hartmann-​ Rezeption Nietzsches (1869–​1874)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17 (1988): 391–​433. Hartmann, E. von (1869), Philosophie des Unbewußten. Versuch einer Weltanschauung, Berlin: Duncker. Hartmann, E. von (1879), Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. Prolegomena zu jeder künftigen Ethik, Berlin: Duncker. Haym, R. (1864), Arthur Schopenhauer, Berlin: Georg Reimer. Helmholtz, H. von (1867), Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, Leipzig: Voss. Hussain, N. J. Z. (2004), ‘Reading Nietzsche through Ernst Mach’, in G. Moore and T. H. Brobjer (Hg.), Nietzsche and Science, 111–​29, Aldershot/​Burlington: Ashgate. Janz, C. P. (1978), Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie in drei Bänden, München-​Wien: dtv.

  25

Introduction

25

Kant, I. (1838–​42), Immanuel Kant’s sämmtliche Werke, eds K. Rosenkranz and F. W. Schubert, 12 vols, Leipzig: Voss. Kofman, S. (1979), Nietzsche et la scène philosophique, Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions. Kohl, O. (1868), ‘Immanuel Kants Ansicht von der Willensfreiheit’, diss., Leipzig. Köhnke, K. C. (1986), Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus, Frankfurt/​ M.: Suhrkamp. Langbehn, C. (2005), Metaphysik der Erfahrung. Zur Grundlegung einer Philosophie der Rechtfertigung beim frühen Nietzsche, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: J. Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1873–​75), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, 2. verb. u. verm. Aufl., 2 vols., Iserlohn: J. Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1880), History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Present Importance, 3 vols, Boston: Houghton, Osgood. Lange, F. A. (1887), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, ed. H. Cohen (Wohlfeile Ausgabe, Zweites Tausend), Iserlohn, Leipzig: J. Baedeker. Lehmann, R. (1878), Kant’s Lehre vom Ding an sich. Ein Beitrag zur Kantphilologie, Berlin: J. Sittenfeld. Liebmann, O. (1865), Kant und die Epigonen, Stuttgart: C. Schober. Liebmann, O. [without author] (1871), Vier Monate vor Paris. 1870–​1871. Belagerungstagebuch eines Campagne-​Freiwilligen im K.Pr. Garde-​Fusilier-​Regiment, Stuttgart. Liebmann, O. (1880), Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit. Eine Erörterung der Grundprobleme der Philosophie, Zweite, beträchtlich vermehrte Auflage, Straßburg: K. J. Trübner. Loukidelis, N. (2013), Es denkt. Ein Kommentar zum Aphorismus 17 von Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Metterhausen, W. (1942), Friedrich Nietzsches Bonner Studentenzeit 1864/​1865, Kassel, unpublished manuscript. Nietzsche, F. (1993), Appunti filosofici. Omero e la filologia classica, eds G. Campioni and F. Gerratana, Milan: Adelphi. Orsucci, A. (1994), ‘Unbewußte Schlüsse, Anticipationen, Übertragungen. Über Nietzsches Verhältnis zu Karl Friedrich Zöllner und Gustav Gerber’, in T. Borsche, F. Gerratana and A. Venturelli (eds), ‘Centauren-​Geburten’. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, 193–​207, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Reuter, S. (2009), An der ‘Begräbnisstätte der Anschauung’, Nietzsches Bild-​und Wahrnehmungstheorie in Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne, Basel: Schwabe. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus’, Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe.

26

26

Marco Brusotti and Herman Siemens

Romundt, H. (1872), Die menschliche Erkenntniß und das Wesen der Dinge, Basel: Georg. Romundt, H. (1882), Antäus. Neuer Aufbau der Lehre Kants über Seele, Freiheit und Gott, Leipzig: Veit. Romundt, H. (1883), Die Herstellung der Lehre Jesu durch Kant’s Reform der Philosophie, Bremen: Roussell. Romundt, H. (1885a), Grundlegung zur Reform der Philosophie: vereinfachte und erweiterte Darstellung von Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1885b), Die Vollendung des Sokrates: Immanuel Kants Grundlegung zur Reform der Sittenlehre, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1886), Ein neuer Paulus: Immanuel Kants Grundlegung zu einer sicheren Lehre von der Religion, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1887), Die drei Fragen Kants, Berlin: Nicolai. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-​Studien 7: 236–​60. Salaquarda, J. (1979), ‘Der Standpunkt des Ideals bei Lange und Nietzsche’, Studi Tedeschi XXII, 1: 133–​70. Schaarschmidt, C. (1857), Der Entwicklungsgang der neueren Speculation als Einleitung in die Philosophie der Geschichte kritisch dargestellt von Dr. C. Schaarschmidt, Bonn: Marcus. Stack, G. J. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Thüring, H. (1994), ‘Beiträge zur Quellenforschung’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 480–​9. Timms, E. (1986), Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satyrist: The Postwar Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika, New Haven: Yale University Press. Treiber, H. (1993), ‘Zur Genealogie einer “science positive de la morale en Allemagne”. Die Geburt der „ré(e)alistischen Moralwissenschaft“ aus der Idee einer monistischen Naturkonzeption’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 165–​221. Treiber, H. (1994), ‘Zur “Logik des Traumes” bei Nietzsche. Anmerkungen zu den Traum-​Aphorismen aus Menschliches, Allzumenschliches’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 1–​41. Ueberweg, F. (1866–​67), Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart, 3rd edn, 3 vols, Berlin: Mittler. Zöllner, J. C. F. (1872), Über die Natur der Cometen. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntniss, 2 Aufl., Leipzig: Staackmann.

  27

1

Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject John Richardson

1.  Introduction Nietzsche is a frequent and emphatic critic of what he calls ‘the subject’. This is ‘the thing that thinks’, in the broad Cartesian sense, that it is the thing that ‘is conscious’ –​to whom conscious experience is (as it were) presented. Together with this Nietzsche is also a critic of what we (but not Nietzsche) call ‘the agent’. This is ‘the thing that acts’, in the sense that it steers (and so causes) its behaviour by choices and reasons. (Nietzsche attacks this, I suggest, when he attacks our usual notion of ‘will’.) He wants, it seems, to talk us out of both of these views of ourselves. But on the other hand, Nietzsche also sometimes suggests that it may be necessary for us to take ourselves to be subjects and agents in order to live our human lives. He judges that they may be indispensable self-​conceptions, false though they are. They constitute our human perspective, and hence have full title to be ‘true for us’. I want to examine the interplay between these two positions, which stand in certain tensions with one another. Nietzsche seems to give us reasons not to believe that we’re subjects or agents, but then to have the unsatisfying afterthought that we have to continue to believe these things about ourselves after all. Is this indeed his view? If yes, how are we to continue to believe after having had the error exposed? Now these juxtaposed positions, that belief in oneself as a subject or agent is strictly false, but unavoidable, put Nietzsche in Kantian territory. Kant agrees with much of Nietzsche’s scepticism regarding the subject. He takes from Hume

28

28

John Richardson

the lesson that we can never have evidence of a subject, and that it’s an error to treat this I as a substance. But he also agrees with Nietzsche’s (sometime) view that taking-​oneself-​to-​be a subject is necessary, since the ‘unity of apperception’ is a condition for any experience. Kant uses this necessity in his distinctive way, in a ‘transcendental argument’ that justifies what it shows to be a ‘condition of the possibility of experience’. ‘There must be a condition that precedes all experience and makes the latter itself possible, which should make such a transcendental presupposition valid’ (KrV A 107). In this case it justifies attributing all of one’s thoughts to an ‘I’. Nietzsche has, it seems, the ingredients for such a transcendental argument, but he mainly refuses to take this Kantian route. He insists relentlessly on the falsity of the subject and agent, and doesn’t meliorate it with the idea that it is after all true-​for-​us. I want to examine why he proceeds so –​and consider in what different direction he carries the originally Kantian points.

2.  Transcendental argument in Kant Kant’s use of transcendental arguments lies at the very crux of his great philosophical innovation, his ‘Copernican’ reversal. Familiarly, this reversal lies in his idea that ‘objects must conform to our cognition’ (KrV B xvi) –​not of course quite in general or completely, but for certain very basic structures of our cognition, in particular space, time and the categories. We impose these structures on the objects of experience, and this is necessary for –​is a ‘condition of the possibility’ of –​any experience. Here it’s important that ‘experience’ be meant in some minimal sense, such that it is quite indispensable for us: we wouldn’t recognize as ours a life –​it wouldn’t be a human life –​that lacked it. Those structures are preconditions for what we can’t do without. Kant uses these necessities to justify our belief in certain intuitions and concepts, as applying to things in our experience. Kant here means to answer the challenge of scepticism, of global doubt: the assertion that all we believe, even about the general character of things, either is or might be false. Kant takes it as settled that we are unable to answer such a doubt –​for example, Hume’s doubt against the I or subject –​by a straightforward proof of the belief. It’s this inability to prove directly (e.g. that I’m a subject) that dictates the transcendental form of argument that Kant innovates.1 We must employ those intuitions and concepts –​ for example, must think ourselves as subjects –​if we’re to have any experience of things at all.

  29



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

29

So the general schema for a transcendental argument is: i. we agree that X is indisputable/​indispensable, ii. but X is only possible on the basis of C (its condition), iii.  therefore we should accept C too. The argument purports to establish C on the basis of X.  Consider these elements. X is the starting point of transcendental argument, what we agree in/​about. This beginning must be something so minimal that any interlocutor will have to agree with it. (So in a way the argument tries to ‘start at the beginning’ as Descartes does.) The weaker and less disputable this starting point, the stronger the argument will be. I suggest that Kant’s principal starting point is (something like) ‘the having of experience’ –​where the latter is understood initially just by ostension to what we each know at first hand. (So our X stands for experience.) It is on the one hand apparently indisputable that we do have experience –​how could we be wrong? On the other hand it seems we wouldn’t or couldn’t dispense with having experience; to lose it would be to cease to be human. C is the condition we reason to, as what is required for X. It’s what the sceptic is shown he must accept, given that he already accepts that X. It should be noted that these are logical not causal conditions. Kant in fact produces chains of Cs: he argues that experience presupposes a C1, and that this in turn presupposes a C2 and so on. Indeed, conditions can even require one another, and so be jointly necessary for experience. In the Transcendental Deduction, C2 is a set of a priori concepts, the categories, including substance and cause. This condition is a condition for, first, being able to attribute all our thoughts to ourselves, that is, for the unity of apperception (C1). This unity is itself a more direct (and obvious) condition for experience (X). Only as organizing the world by the categories can we attribute all our thoughts to ourselves, and thereby have experience as we do and must. Now notice, about the C, that Kant takes it to have a different epistemic status from the X, at least initially. It is after all something one might try to deny. It’s something that sceptics do deny –​as Hume denies the I or subject. It’s not presumed that these sceptics must accept C by its own immediate claims; this is why the transcendental argument needs to reason them into it, from that firmer beginning they do accept (that they have experience). The argument shows that C is indispensable after all, though not as obviously or immediately as the X. There should even be a certain surprise (as not for the X) in being shown that C is necessary. The C’s necessity is hidden in a way the X’s is not.

30

30

John Richardson

Seen in this light, the argument looks odd. It tries to show that the belief in C is necessary, as a condition for X, which we all agree to. But it needs to show this precisely because C can be and indeed is doubted, by the sceptic in particular. Hume, for example, doubts whether he’s a subject, and yet it doesn’t prevent him from having experience of our typically human kind. How can belief in C be necessary for something we constantly do, yet it be possible to dispute it? The answer to this puzzle draws in another central feature of transcendental arguments  –​one that I  think deserves more attention. These arguments depend on a distinction of certain ‘levels’ at which a concept or principle can be employed. The ‘belief in C’ that’s claimed to be necessary for experience is not an overt belief episodically affirmed in conscious thoughts and assertions, but a ‘deep’ or ‘background’ belief that is claimed to structure our thinking continually. Such, for example, is how we rely on the concept ‘cause’ in all our tiniest expectations of how our bodies can act on things. I assume I can cause changes in things around me. It’s this pervasive structuring role of the concept ‘cause’ that we can’t dispense with, not those overt pronouncements –​the sceptic shows that these can be given up. The unity of apperception is something that happens at this deep or subliminal level. I  may not, until I  read Kant, notice myself attaching an ‘I’ to (my) thoughts in this way. I needn’t attribute (my) thoughts and actions to this I explicitly, and don’t need to affirm the proposition that they’re all my own. It is something of which I can become conscious, not something of which I always am aware. So KrV A 123: ‘the standing and lasting I (of pure apperceptions) constitutes the correlate of all of our representations, so far as it is merely possible to become conscious of them, and all consciousness belongs to an all-​ embracing pure apperception’. As I’ll put it, the unity of apperception plays a ‘structural’ role. Finally let’s notice a certain limitation to Kant’s transcendental arguments, which will be important to us later. This limitation was pointed out by Stroud (1968) in a well-​known paper. Stroud argues that transcendental argument is unable, on its own, to defeat external-​world scepticism, because the necessary condition it justifies is not the existence of external things, but our belief in their existence. Stroud suggests that a transcendental arguer can bridge the gap between belief and things only by a verificationism or an idealism. Kant’s way of bridging it is idealism: our deep beliefs structure the things we experience, so that the latter are phenomenal not noumenal:  they are ‘things of experience’.

  31



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

31

3.  Nietzsche against transcendental argument Nietzsche operates within a broadly Kantian framework. He is a modern, in the philosophical age founded by Kant. So he is constantly struck by how we ‘construct’ the things we experience and make theories about. Indeed Nietzsche is notable for how vastly he multiplies the respects in which we so make things. His wide-​ranging psychology diagnoses one after another way our conception of things has been steered by interests other than truth and objectivity. They suggest that in wide-​ranging respects our ‘truths’ are ‘for us’ or subjective. Pursuant to this, Nietzsche takes over Kant’s idea that there are deep structuring posits serving as ‘conditions’ for our human experience. (He also follows Kant in calling these posits the ‘synthetic a priori’.) Very importantly for our future purposes, he thinks of these structuring posits as having been ‘incorporated’ in us; incorporation consists precisely in a notion or judgement being pushed down into our body’s habitual, instinctive viewpoint. Those posits are built into us ‘before’ or independently of any overt thinking of them. Nietzsche often seems to accept Kant’s account of just what (some of) these posits are –​beliefs in substances and causality, and belief that one is oneself a conscious ‘I’. ‘Here is a limit: our thinking itself involves that belief [“in the I, as a substance, as the only reality” –​JR] (with its distinctions of substance-​accident, doing, doer, etc.), to let it go means no-​longer-​being-​able-​to-​think’ (NL 1886–​7 7[63], KSA 12.317). ‘ “Subject”:  interpreted from out of ourselves, so that the I counts as subject, as cause of all doing, as doer [Thäter]’ (NL 1887 9[98], KSA 12.391). Like Kant, Nietzsche thinks the crucial feature of these posits is the way they allow us to organize our experience in time. But Nietzsche transforms the status of these posits, above all by naturalizing them. This naturalizing has one central effect on transcendental argument:  it converts Kant’s possibility-​conditions into life-​conditions.2 Nietzsche makes this change with reference to some of those very categories that are Kant’s Cs: instead of being possibility-​conditions, beliefs in substances and causes are life-​or existence-​conditions for us. Instead of logical conditions, they are now causal conditions. He harps on this point so often that it’s a plausible sign of what he thinks his own innovation is. [P]‌reservation-​ and growth-​conditions [Erhaltungs-​und Wachsthums-​ Bedingungen] express themselves in valuations /​all of our knowledge-​organs and -​senses are developed only with regard to preservation-​and growth-​conditions /​ trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic, therefore the valuation of logic proves

32

32

John Richardson only their usefulness for life, proved through experience: not their ‘truth’. (NL 1887 9[38], KSA 12.352)3

Nietzsche has a number of terms for this idea; I  think they are for the most part interchangeable, though we’ll need to come back to talk about nuances. Let me list a few, with occurrences in his published works: Life-​condition (Lebens-​ Bedingung): BGE 188, KSA 5.110; AC 25, KSA 6.194. Lebensbedingung: GS 110, KSA 3.469; BGE 4, KSA 5.18; BGE 62, KSA 5.81; BGE 268, KSA 5.222; BGE 276, KSA 5.228. Bedingung des Lebens: GS 110, KSA 5.471. Existence-​condition (Existenz-​Bedingung): GS1, KSA 3.372; GS 7, KSA 3.379; GS 335, KSA 3.561; EH Destiny 4, KSA 6.368. Existenzbedingung: GM I 10, KSA 5.273; EH Destiny 4, KSA 6.368. Preservation-​condition (Erhaltungs-​Bedingung): AC 26, KSA 6.196; EH Books (BT) 3, KSA 6.312. Erhaltungsbedingung: AC 16, KSA 6.183. Growth-​ condition (Wachsthums-​Bedingung): BGE 188, KSA 5.110; AC 25, KSA 6.194. These uses of these terms in his books are the iceberg tip to a great many more uses in his notebooks.4 Now in what way is a life-​condition a ‘condition’? What is the nature of the step back from the X to this kind of C? The relation is not logical but biological, and Nietzsche understands this in broadly Darwinian terms. Life-​conditions are the drives and values that enable an organism to thrive, and they are there in the organism because they have so allowed it. Thus the relation is not just causal, but doubly causal: a. the condition tends to cause/​promote life; b. its causing/​promoting life has caused it to be there. That is, the C is a ‘function’ not just in the propensity (forward) sense, but in the etiological (backward) sense too: it explains why the feature is there.5 Nietzsche usually means that the drive or value evolved in order to play that role. With this notion of life-​conditions there is also a relativization to kinds of life. Every kind of life will count as an X with its own Cs, that is, the structural posits it must make in order to live that kind of life. Our interest is principally in the kind ‘human life’ (in general), but we should keep in mind that there are also such conditions for more particular types of persons, such as, for example, master or slave. In consequence of this, Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘synthetic a priori’ is much more diverse than Kant’s. Indeed, he thinks of our own structurings as standing in an evolutionary order within us: we have deeper structures that were deposited in our animal ancestry, and later, superimposed ones that turned us into humans.

  33



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

33

On first view the epistemic impact of Nietzsche’s change looks simple and obvious:  it’s to spoil Kant’s transcendental arguments, destroying their ability to justify those beliefs (e.g. in causation), at least as true. When possibility-​ conditions become life-​conditions, they are revealed as mere contingent causes of particular forms of life. The categories, for example, are just what we have had to believe in order to develop our distinctive human life. But, Nietzsche insists, this does not show these beliefs to be true.6 Life not an argument. –​We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we are able to live –​by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith no one could endure living! But that does not prove them. Life is not an argument; the conditions of life might include error. (GS 121, KSA 3.477f.)

Indeed, if anything, Nietzsche suggests, this conversion into life-​conditions reverses the argument’s force, making it count against the C’s truth. Diagnosing these beliefs as life-​conditions shows that we don’t hold them on epistemic grounds; it exposes our lack of reasons to believe them. The diagnosis explains these beliefs as established in us for quite non-​truth-​seeking motives; it would be mere accident if they were true. This critique of the Kantian argument-​form begins with Nietzsche’s recognition of Stroud’s point (from §1) that the argument can carry us only to belief: it shows we must believe in, for example, the categories, not that they’re true.7 It does nothing to prove them. ‘The law of causality a priori –​that it is believed, can be an existence-​condition of our kind; thereby it is not proved’ (NL 1884 26[74], KSA 11.168). [I]‌t is high time to replace the Kantian question, ‘How are synthetic judgements a priori possible?’ by another question, ‘Why is belief in such judgements necessary?’ –​and to comprehend that such judgements must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they might, of course, be false judgements for all that! Or, to speak more clearly and coarsely: synthetic judgements a priori should not ‘be possible’ at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgements. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as a foreground belief and visual evidence belonging to the perspective optics of life. (BGE 11, KSA 5.25f.)

Here the point is not that categorial judgements are false but that they might be, and hence are not known (are false ‘in our mouths’).

34

John Richardson

34

But Nietzsche further holds that these beliefs are not just unproven, they are indeed false. [W]‌e are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgements (which include the synthetic judgements a priori) are the most indispensable for us; that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-​identical, without a constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live –​that renouncing false judgements would mean renouncing life and a denial of life. To recognize untruth as life-​condition [. . .] (BGE 4, KSA 5.18)

Indeed Nietzsche gives a positive account of the true character of the world the categories are false about: it’s ‘becoming’ in such a way that it lacks the properties we project onto it. ‘[W]‌e have projected our preservation-​conditions as predicates of being in general /​because we need to be stable in our believing, in order to thrive, we have made the “real” world one not changing and becoming, but being’ (NL 1887 9[38], KSA 12.353). He purports to know this different character of the world on independent grounds. These points apply in particular to our posit of an I  or subject. Nietzsche sometimes says that this may be false: [T]‌hrough thinking the I is posited; but so far one believed as the people do, that in ‘I think’ there lay something immediately certain, and that this ‘I’ was the given cause of thinking, by analogy with which we understood all other causal relations. However habitual and indispensable this fiction may now be, –​this by itself proves nothing against its inventedness: a belief can be a life-​condition and nevertheless be false. (NL 1885 38[3], KSA 11.598–​9)

Elsewhere he says that it is false: Subject: this is the terminology for our belief in a unity among all the different moments of [the] highest feeling of reality. /​‘Subject’ is the fiction, as if many equal states of us were the effect of one substratum: but we have first created the ‘equality’ of these states; the setting equal and the making ready are the facts, not equality (–​this is much more to be denied –​). (NL 1887 10[19], KSA 12.465)

Now Nietzsche suggests in BGE 54 that Kant may have ‘seen through’ the subject: ‘Kant basically wanted to prove that [starting] from the subject the subject could not be proved,  –​nor the object either:  the possibility of an apparent existence of the subject, hence of “the soul”, may not always have remained foreign to him’ (BGE 54, KSA 5.73). Hill (2003: 181) points out the oddity to this, since Kant seems clearly to hold that ‘the self of apperception is only an

  35



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

35

apparent unity’. Hill suggests, plausibly, that Nietzsche hedges his compliment because he thinks that Kant still believes in a noumenal self that carries out the synthesis of the unity of apperception. This would give Kant a reason to think that the unity of apperception’s posit of a self is not just phenomenally but transcendentally true. Nietzsche claims to know the reality the I-​posit gets wrong. He stresses especially that the reality is something plural, lacking the unity the I-​posit claims. Note 40[42] puts the point tentatively: The assumption of one subject is perhaps not necessary; perhaps it is just as permitted to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the basis of our thinking and our consciousness generally? A kind of aristocracy of ‘cells’, in which mastery rests? To be sure, of equals [pares] which are accustomed to rule with one another and know how to command? /​My hypotheses: /​ the subject as multiplicity [. . .] (NL 1885 40[42], KSA 11.650)

Many other passages stress this multiplicity. These many attacks on unity seem to leave little of the Kantian argument still standing.

4.  Necessary perspectives Yet, as we’ve noticed, Nietzsche has all the ingredients for a Kantian justification of these posits –​strictly false though they are. For in agreeing them to be ‘conditions’ for human life he gives them the kind of credit that (it seems) should be important to him. If he makes truth itself perspectival, shouldn’t these Kantian posits count as true-​for our human perspective? Isn’t this the very kind of truth we should aspire to  –​given that Nietzsche denies the coherence of an objective truth about things in themselves? So he seems to have strong philosophical motives to take conditionality as justifying: strong reasons to recognize a kind of internal truth –​internal to the necessary human perspective –​and to be every bit as satisfied with such truth as Kant. Indeed, it might be argued that this is Nietzsche’s position, and that its real shape is merely disguised –​disguised by the far greater vehemence of his assertions that these necessary posits are (strictly, externally, transcendentally) false, than of his reminders that they have the only kind of truth we can achieve, a human truth. We might hear this position, for example, in the important note NL 1880 6[441], KSA 9.312: ‘There is “truth” really only in things that the human being invents e.g. number. He [the human] lays something in and then finds it again –​that is the kind of human truth [. . .] The world is thus for us the sum of

36

36

John Richardson

relations to a limited sphere of erroneous basic assumptions.’ On this reading Nietzsche’s position is deeply Kantian, the difference being just rhetorical.8 Clark’s (1990) well-​known reading is relevant here. (I will offer perhaps only a caricature of it in order to locate it quickly in my problematic.) She argues that Nietzsche abandons his early denial of truth because it has rested on a ‘metaphysical correspondence theory of truth’, which understands truth as correspondence to things in themselves. He gradually realizes that the very notion of a thing in itself is incoherent, and that truth is dependent on our ‘cognitive interests’. Clark (Clark 1990: 135) calls this Nietzsche’s ‘neo-​Kantian position on truth’, and thinks that he expresses it metaphorically in his so-​called perspectivism. Clark thus distinguishes two notions of truth which she claims Nietzsche holds in sequence. It’s a fatal problem for her reading that Nietzsche does not stop, at any point in his career, calling these categorial beliefs false. In Clark’s (2012:  82)  more recent book, co-​written with Dudrick, the suggestion is that when he does so (in BGE 11 at least) Nietzsche is speaking a ‘new language’ in which ‘false’ means ‘without outside or transcendent justification’, so that ‘[i]‌t is not an objection to [those founding judgements –​JR] precisely because it is not a claim that they are false’ (in the usual sense). Clark and Dudrick are forced into this unpersuasive reading9 by the guiding thesis that Nietzsche takes himself to see that without any ‘things in themselves’ there is no ‘standard beyond man’ that the humanly necessary beliefs fall short of, hence no reason for Nietzsche still to hold the ‘falsification thesis’. This compels them to read away the clear evidence that he does still hold that the categorial beliefs are false. I concur that there are two notions of truth, but I think that Nietzsche holds both in mind right to the end. Some posits are necessary for human’s perspective, and hence true for it. But these posits are nevertheless false by a higher standard –​and we can even know that they are. Nietzsche can hold these two points together by applying them (as we’ve seen) at different ‘levels’. We only need to believe in our unity as a subject ‘down’ at the level of our implicit and structuring ‘basic assumptions’; it’s there that it’s true for us. So BGE 11 says that ‘belief in their truth is necessary, as a foreground belief and visual appearance [Augenschein], which belongs to the perspective-​optics of life’ (BGE 11, KSA 5.26).10 When, however, we think explicitly about the claim, we find it false by a different standard –​the standard of our human ‘will to truth’, which simply sees better than our structuring processes do. Let’s call this reading ‘bifurcation’. We must worry whether this dichotomy is psychologically sustainable: won’t the theoretical truth about ourselves tend to seep into our subliminal viewpoint? Or does Nietzsche think that the latter operates so deeply and automatically in

  37



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

37

us that our conscious beliefs can have no force against it? ‘[T]‌the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth, but in its age, its embeddedness, its character as a condition of life [Lebensbedingung]’ (GS 110, KSA 3.469). The most deeply deposited posits –​laid down in our animal past –​will be the most unshakable in us. But to the extent that a posit is not immutable, but rather subject to erosion by contrary conscious thinking, it seems that we might –​if it’s indeed a life-​condition for us –​need to somehow forget and steer clear of the theoretical truths that could undermine it. Notice how Nietzsche’s view of the ‘death of morality’ is relevant here. The will to truth will undermine our moral values precisely insofar as certain theorized truths –​no God, no objective values –​will gradually work down into our valuing –​into that subliminal level of valuing that sets our everyday course. Finding the truth will sap our ability to care and strive for ‘higher values’ down among our drives and affects, where valuing is really effective. We are living through the long period –​nihilism –​in which the truth about morality is being incorporated. In this case, then, philosophical or scientific discoveries aren’t ‘insulated’ from an implicit valuing, but erode and ruin it. Does Nietzsche expect a similar effect on the faith that we’re subjects, or does this lie more deeply and fixedly in us? Morality can’t survive incorporation of the truth about itself; can the unity of apperception survive our insight that there is no subject? We should also notice how ‘bifurcation’ somewhat unravels the neo-​Kantian point. For it now appears that there are two ‘human truths’, one that it is necessary for us to believe subliminally, the other that we have reason to think consciously. But if in fact we can ‘see better’ in our conscious reflection, there’s less reason to call the necessary subliminal posits ‘true’ after all. Human is not limited to them, except in that implicit functioning. I think that bifurcation, with its variants and issues, is a live option for Nietzsche, but that he rates it a fallback position. It may prove necessary to sustain and defend our implicit faith in our subjectivity. But we don’t know yet –​ we have something better to try first. His ambition is to ‘experiment’ whether another and more satisfying strategy can succeed:  we should venture, courageously, as he thinks it, to incorporate more of the truth than we’ve so far been able to. We should aspire to believe in the truth that there is no subject not just in our episodic conscious thoughts, but in the implicit comportment that steers us all the time. If we fail, then we will find ourselves forced to explore bifurcation. Nietzsche’s stance towards these human-​making posits is not conservative but subversive. He tries to push the border, by experimenting ‘how far the truth can be incorporated’. To what extent can our implicit suppositions about ‘what

38

38

John Richardson

thinks/​acts’ be revised in the direction of truth? To what extent can this be done, that is, without damaging us? We find Nietzsche’s basis for this project by going back to his naturalization of the Kantian a priori posits. The latter are revealed to be selected as needed for the flourishing of particular kinds of life –​for the life of different species, or even of different kinds of human. However these kinds are not themselves fixed, but in flux. There are circumstances when one kind of life can or must evolve, by revising its structuring assumptions to serve as basis for a new kind of life. This has happened repeatedly in human and indeed animal history.11 This means that Nietzsche has no allegiance to a human ‘essence’ that must be defended from variation. He anticipates and hopes that human will develop into something else, something higher. So NL 1887 10[17], KSA 12.462 speaks of the aim ‘to bring to light a stronger species, a higher type that has different Entstehungs-​ and Erhaltungsbedingungen than the average-​human’. ‘That which partly necessity, partly chance has achieved here and there, the conditions for the production of a stronger type, we are now able to comprehend and consciously will: we are able to create the conditions under which such an elevation is possible’ (NL 1887 9[153], KSA 12.424). Here Nietzsche claims another difference from Kant: he creates new values and thereby a new kind of life, whereas Kant was only a ‘critic’ (BGE 210, KSA 5.144). Nietzsche’s most famous statement of this ambition is of course his reference to (the character) Übermensch, who again is imagined as an individual representative of the kind. Superhuman is most distinguished, I suggest, precisely by its incorporation, into background ‘operating assumptions’, of more of the truth about things –​and about its ‘self ’ in particular. Superhuman is higher than human by virtue of living (and not just consciously thinking) with more of the truth. GS 11 already states the challenge: ‘It is still a quite new task, just dawning on human eyes and hardly recognizable, to incorporate knowing and make it instinctive, –​a task only seen by those who have grasped that so far only our errors were incorporated and that all our consciousness relates to errors!’12 I suggest: this is the set of experiments Nietzsche calls his readers into –​investigating how much truth we can come to recognize in our bodies, that is, in our habitual and operative background structuring. Can we replace the ‘age-​old incorporated errors’ (GS 110) with (incorporated) truths? He most dramatically puts it: The thinker: this is now the creature in whom the drive to truth and those life-​preserving errors fight their first fight, once the drive to knowledge has proven itself a life-​preserving power. Compared to the importance of this fight

  39



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

39

every other is a matter of indifference: the final question about the condition of life is here posed, and the first attempt is here made, to answer the question through experiment. How far does the truth bear incorporation? –​that is the question, that is the experiment. (GS 110, KSA 3.471)13

It’s Nietzsche’s will to push us in this direction that sustains his insistence that our founding beliefs are false. He continues to press his attack because he is not content –​as he thinks Kant is –​with believing these falsehoods, believing them even in the implicit structuring of his experience. Can he not just think but live in the truth about himself? He may, to be sure, be ready to create new falsehoods there –​in new background assumptions –​but these will at least take account of the previous falsehoods, and thereby surpass the life lived under them. His new structuring posits at least see better than the old. Nietzsche encourages us to rate kinds of life by how much of the truth they can recognize in their conditioning beliefs. So EH Destiny 4 says that to evaluate a type of human one must know his Existenzbedingungen, but that a condition of the (morally) good is the lie. The strongest are those who are able to bear to see most clearly, and who are able to ‘incorporate’ these truths into their deep viewpoint. Of course Nietzsche also expects that there are limits to just how much of the truth can be thus incorporated. He speculates at times what truths might turn out not to ‘bear incorporation’.14 But quite generally he admires the effort to push up against these limits experimentally. Now what would it be like to incorporate the truth instead of our current lie about the I and subject, in particular? The reality about ‘me’, Nietzsche thinks, is the set of drives and affects that, with their shifting strengths, alliances and competitions, make me up. What would it be like to think of myself –​at that implicit and structural level –​as being this that I really am? Can we modify the unity of apperception to reflect this truth? The great challenge concerns, of course, the ‘unity’ in the unity of apperception. Nietzsche has a persistent suspicion against unities of all kinds. ‘Everything that enters consciousness as “unity” is already immensely complicated: we have always only an appearance of unity’ (NL 1886–​7 5[56], KSA 12.205). The challenge is to see whether there is any real unity ‘behind’ our thinking or doing –​ anything that can count as the one thing that carries them all out. Now on the one hand it may seem that such unity is not hard to find. When I ‘attach an I to all my thoughts’, when I attribute them all to myself, why can’t I just attribute them to that set of drives and affects? Why can’t I take this as ‘my I’? Nietzsche treats these drives and affects as just the willful and affective aspects

40

40

John Richardson

of my body, which seems a single enough thing. Isn’t it my body, according to Nietzsche, that ultimately does all my thinking? So why isn’t it just a matter of thinking of this body as the I that gives unity to my thoughts? In this case he would not be disputing the unity of apperception per se, just the way we identify this ‘I’. But clearly Nietzsche doesn’t think the problem can be solved so easily. He so often stresses the multiplicity of drives in each of us to suggest that the apparent unity of the body, just as that of consciousness, is misleading.15 These drives’ perspectives don’t combine into a single space and perspective that shares them. It may well be a different drive that thinks (occasions) different thoughts. Each of these drives would then appear to be a kind of subject in its own right; each would be the thinker of a subset of all the thoughts taken as ‘mine’. There would be many different subjects ‘in me’ –​and whatever single and encompassing ‘me’ the body could be, it would not be the thinker of the thoughts attributed to it.16 The problem goes still deeper than this. For specifying particular drives as the thinkers of thoughts, or doers of deeds, is a simplification. Nothing ever works in isolation, Nietzsche thinks; all effects issue from complex concatenations of forces. What thinks and acts ‘in me’ is never really a single drive, but a temporary synthesis of drives in relations to one another. ‘No subject-​“atoms”. The sphere of a subject constantly growing or shrinking –​the midpoint of the system as constantly shifting –​; in cases where it can’t organize the appropriate mass it decays into 2’ (NL 1887 9[98], KSA 12.391–​2). It is the momentary coming-​together into quite particular relations of command and obedience among a subset of drives that thinks ‘my’ thought or does ‘my’ deed. But such a passing coalescing of forces is not at all substance-​like, even to the extent that individual drives might be. There’s nothing that persists, from any one thinking or doing to another, that can count as the same source. This, I suggest, is Nietzsche’s principal ground for denying that there is any ‘doer behind the doing’.17 So the unity of apperception couldn’t accommodate the truth just by reidentifying the thing that thinks. Its faith in unity itself is under attack. It’s in a different direction, I suggest, that the unity of apperception mainly needs to be modified. It must be converted, above all, from a presumption to an aspiration. The thoughts thought in this body aren’t all thought by the same thing. But this body can acquire a will to think an ever-​greater share of its thoughts out of one drive –​or out of one stable synthesis of drives –​with its own perspective.

  41



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

41

This is Nietzsche’s principal lesson from his fragmentation of the self: not to give up on unity, but to work to make, so far as we can, a single thing out of our multiplicity. This must be the right kind of single thing. We must pursue a kind of unity we can have, which is unity under a single aim, the aim of a dominant drive, or of a stable synthesis of the drives. We must pursue a form of this unification that is ‘healthier’ –​more on the track of power or growth. This will come by a single aim that doesn’t deny and suppress other drives and interests, but gathers them into itself. This is a different model for unity than the subject’s, which pictures itself as a thing different in kind from the drives, and opposed to them. But, it should be asked, would we still be able to think if we deeply viewed ourselves in this way? If my thinking gives up that presumption of unity, it seems it might have to stop using ‘I’ –​and even need to invent some different grammar to speak in, which looks a hopeless task. How would the new thinking even think of that lesson I’ve said Nietzsche proposes  –​to work to make a single thing of oneself? Doesn’t ‘my’ thinking need to presume that there’s a single ‘I’ that now takes on the task? It might be doubted that thinking is possible at all in the absence of this presumption. Indeed we’ve already noted Nietzsche’s expression of this doubt in NL 1886–​7 7[63], KSA 12.317: ‘Here is a limit: our thinking itself involves that belief [“in the I, as a substance, as the only reality”] (with its distinctions of substance-​accident, doing, doer, etc.), to let it go means no-​longer-​being-​able-​to-​think.’ It’s clear that the task –​to incorporate the insight that there’s no subject –​is extremely difficult. As I’ve said Nietzsche offers it only as an ‘experiment’, and one that human will need to work at for a long time to come. The goal, I suggest, is something like this:  for one’s thinking to realize, at the implicit and background level, that it is in each case carried out not by anything that is already and automatically the same thing that thinks all the other thoughts that happen in this body. When this thinking says ‘I’, it does so without presumption that it is the same I as the one that does this body’s other thinking. Thinking learns a new modesty about itself –​not to claim to express an abiding subject. Instead of presuming that unity –​and taking it as something complete and inevitable –​this thinking aspires to express an I that gathers and unifies this body’s many particular I’s, the drives that have done its other thinking. A lot more would need to be said to make this new option concrete; I can’t attempt it here. I’ll conclude by quickly summarizing the overall line I’ve traced. Nietzsche shares Kant’s ingredients for his transcendental arguments: he agrees that our thinking depends upon structuring posits that cannot be justified and

42

42

John Richardson

are, strictly speaking, false. We must presume them not as theoretical positions or doctrines, but as implicit, background presumptions constantly at work. And yet Nietzsche doesn’t, despite his advocacy of truth’s perspectivity, affirm these grounding posits as ‘true for us’ (the Kantian turn). He rather insists on their falsity –​as, for example, with the posit of an abiding subject or I, as the thinker of all one’s thoughts. But he doesn’t do so with an eye to bifurcating us between deep belief and conscious scepticism. Rather he wants human to aspire to revise those structuring posits by learning to ‘incorporate’ the truth about itself into the very way it thinks and says ‘I’.

Notes 1 To ‘try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition’ (KrV B xvi). 2 Schacht (1983: 162) recognizes how Nietzsche diagnoses categories as ‘conditions of life for us’. See also Constâncio (2011: 113). 3 See NL 1881 11[262], KSA 9.541, on the ‘incorporation’ of ‘life-​conditions’. 4 There are over 50 occurrences of either Existenz-​Bedingung or Existenzbedingung in KSA volumes 9–​13. 5 See Richardson (2004: 26–​35) for a discussion of this distinction. 6 ‘The achieved similarity of experience (about space, or the feeling of time, or the feeling of large and small) has become a life-​condition of our genus, but it has nothing to do with the truth’ (NL 1881 11[156], KSA 9.501). ‘The categories are “truths” only in the sense that they are life-​conditioning [lebensbedingend] for us: as Euclidean space is a conditioning “truth”. (Between ourselves: since no one would maintain that there is any necessity for there to be humans, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncracy of a certain kind of animal, and one among many . . .)’ (NL 1888 14[152], KSA 13.334). 7 ‘[W]‌hat is needed is that something must be held to be true; not that something is true’ (NL 1887 9[38], KSA 12.352). ‘But that a belief, necessary as it may be to the preservation of a creature, has nothing to do with the truth, one knows e.g. from the fact we must believe in time space and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled [the rest of the text is illegible]’ (NL 1886–​7 7[63], KSA 12.318). 8 This would contradict Gardner’s (2009: 12) claim that Nietzsche seems to have ‘failed to absorb the Kantian lesson that there is a middle way between “soul-​ substratum” and Humean impersonalism’. 9 It attributes to Nietzsche a ‘new language’ that inexplicably keeps the old standard (correspondence to things in themselves) he now rejects.

  43



Nietzsche, Transcendental Argument and the Subject

43

10 Nietzsche here puts in the foreground what I would rather locate in the background. But in either case there is the contrast with a different ground or field of vision in which we can see things better. 11 The note NL 1886–​7 5[61], KSA 12.207, describes the change when humans acquired leisure to cultivate themselves into something higher: ‘[T]‌hen a host of virtues are superseded that had been existence-​conditions.’ 12 The note NL 1881 11[164], KSA 9.505, also connects incorporation with instinct. 13 Notice how the landmark note NL 188 11[141], KSA 9.495, in which Nietzsche expresses his first experience of eternal return (cited later in EH Books (Z) 1, KSA 6.335), speaks often of incorporation, including: ‘[I]‌n sum, to await how far knowing and the truth can be incorporated.’ The note NL 1881 11[143], KSA 9.496, makes it clear that the idea of eternal return is also to be ‘incorporated’, that is, thought habitually and implicitly. 14 ‘[T]‌his error cannot not be destroyed otherwise than with life [itself]: the final truth of the flux of things does not bear incorporation, our organs (for life) are erected on this error’ (NL 1881 11[162], KSA 9.504). 15 The note NL 1885–​6 2[91], KSA 12.106, says that, by contrast with our ‘perspectival illusion’ of unity, the ‘guide of the body shows a tremendous multiplicity’. 16 ‘Human as multiplicity: physiology gives only a hint of the wonderful interaction among this multiplicity and subordination and ordering of parts to one whole. But it would be false to conclude from one state to one absolute monarch (the unity of the subject)’ (NL 1884 27[8]‌, KSA 11.276–​7). 17 NL 1887–​8 11[113], KSA 13.54, says that both the doer and the deed are ‘faked’ [fingirt].

References Clark, M. (1990), Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2012), The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Constâncio, J. (2011), ‘Instinct and Language in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’, in J. Constâncio and M. Branco (eds), Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, Berlin: de Gruyter. Gardner, S. (2009), ‘Nietzsche, the Self, and the Disunity of Philosophical Reason’, in K. Gemes and S. May (eds), Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hill, R. K. (2003), Nietzsche’s Critiques; The Kantian Foundations of His Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

44

44

John Richardson

Richardson, J. (2004), Nietzsche’s New Darwinism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schacht, R. (1983), Nietzsche, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stroud, B. (1968), ‘Transcendental Arguments’, Journal of Philosophy LXV: 241–​56. Repr. in Kant on Pure Reason, ed. R. C. S. Walker, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

  45

2

From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge: Nietzsche’s (Virtual) Objections to Kant’s First Critique Benedetta Zavatta

1.  Introduction In a note from 1888 entitled ‘Theorie und Praxis’ Nietzsche criticizes Kant’s distinction between the ‘theoretical’ (theoretisch) and the ‘practical’ (praktisch). Kant seems to assume that theoretical problems can be solved by examining merely the purely mental (Geistigkeit), while practice has to be judged according to different criteria (NL 1888 14[107], KSA 13.285). Nietzsche objects to him claiming that all mental operations rely on physiology and what we consider to be the product of free thinking actually originated in instincts. His aim is to eliminate the very distinction between the theoretical and the practical on the strength of the argument that we never relate selflessly to the world.1 Our engagement with external reality is never contemplative, but always pragmatic. That is the reason why he rephrases the Kantian problem, ‘[H]‌ow are synthetic a priori judgements possible?’ as ‘[W]hy is belief in such judgements necessary?’ (BGE 11, KSA 5.24f.). While Kant aimed to legitimize the claims of universality and necessity made by the science of his time, Nietzsche was rather concerned with understanding the psychological type that made such a claim. Therefore his enquiry does not concern epistemology alone, but morality as well. The method of Nietzsche’s enquiry is also very different from the Kantian method, as he believes that historical knowledge is the only kind of knowledge we can rely on. Therefore, in Nietzsche’s view, we can better understand the way we think only by comparing the different forms of ‘regulative beliefs [regulative Glaubensartikel]’ (NL 1886 7[4]‌, KSA 12.266) that, from the dawn of humanity, have been needed for human beings to live. My aim

46

46

Benedetta Zavatta

is to examine some remarks Nietzsche made on the issues discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason, bearing in mind however that he did not have a first-​ hand acquaintance with this work.2 Nietzsche’s image of Kant’s philosophy is always mediated by his reading of Schopenhauer3 or other authors. As Tsarina Doyle (2004) underlines, when Nietzsche refers to Kant, he is mostly referring to a particular philosophical problem that he thinks originated in or is exemplified in Kantian philosophy. ‘Nietzsche is not so much interested in the historical Kant but rather with a set of philosophical difficulties that can be broadly termed Kantian in character’ (183). In the first part of my argument I will examine Nietzsche’s criticism of Kantian categories, that is, the pure concepts of the intellect. For this, I  will take into account Nietzsche’s writings from the period of Human, All too Human to the late 1980s. In the second part I will consider the problem of how the concepts of empirical objects are formed, pointing out the differences between Kant’s and Nietzsche’s approaches. While Kant uses the concept of ‘object of experience’ quite unproblematically, Nietzsche discusses the problem of (linguistic) categorization in great detail, drawing several hints from some neo-​Kantian authors of his time.

2.  Reason is a natural and historical product As Beatrix Himmelmann (2005:  29)  noticed, Nietzsche’s relation to Kant is ambivalent:  on the one hand he is praised for his victory over ‘Socratic optimism’ (BT 24) and the emphasis on the intrinsic limits of human knowledge. In the Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche describes Kant as a champion of courage and wisdom, in that he brought to light the constitutive gap between being and knowledge. Kant pointed out the constitutive human impossibility of grasping the essence of things and recognized that the knowing subject plays an active role in the knowledge process, insofar as sense-​and mind-​structures deeply affect the human world view. In this regard, Nietzsche’s philosophy can be considered as the prosecution and radicalization of Kant’s enterprise. On the other hand Nietzsche sharply criticizes Kant’s stance insofar as it is grounded on metaphysical assumptions. Nietzsche’s critical remarks on Kant in this regard helps us bring out the specific features of Nietzsche’s approach. Nietzsche’s criticism of Kant plays a particularly important role in the more general attack on Western metaphysics that Nietzsche carries out in the period

  47



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

47

of Human, All Too Human, while historicizing and naturalizing cognitive processes. In aph. 16 of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche polemically attacks those philosophers who regard the phenomenal world as a painting, and expect to be able to draw from it hints about its ‘author’. In other words, through the analysis of empirical phenomena they assume they have an insight into ‘things in themselves’, which are assumed to be their causes (HH 16, KSA 2.36). Actually, Nietzsche’s polemical attack here is not primarily directed against Kant, but rather against Schopenhauer. Nietzsche refutes Schopenhauer’s argument with the help of Spir’s theory of the thing in itself as ‘unconditioned and unable to condition anything’ (D’Iorio 1995:  248). Nietzsche states:  ‘From the unconditioned nothing conditioned can arise. Now, everything we know is conditioned. It follows that the unconditioned doesn’t exist. –​This is a superfluous hypothesis’ (NL 1884 26[429], KSA 11.265). Nietzsche’s further criticism of both Spir and Schopenhauer’s approaches in HH 16 is also interesting for our purposes, inasmuch as it could be extended to Kant as well. Nietzsche states: Both parties, however, overlook the possibility that this painting  –​what we humans call life and experience –​has gradually become, is indeed still fully in course of becoming, and should thus not be regarded as a fixed magnitude [feste Grösse]. (HH 16, KSA 2.36)

Nietzsche credits Kant with the merit of finding out that the laws that regulate phenomena are nothing but the way in which we think of them, that is, how we order them in time and space and link them using the categories of the intellect. However, Nietzsche objects against Kant that both the forms of pure intuition and the categories of intellect are not ‘fixed magnitudes’, but rather organizing forms that have developed historically. Our judgements are not made on the basis of inborn principles that precede experience and are independent of it, but are the products of ‘old-​age habits of sensation [uralter Gewohnheiten der Empfindung]’ (HH 16, KSA 2.37). Nietzsche concludes his argument looking forward to the day when, with the development of science, we shall be able to write a ‘history of the genesis of thought’ (HH 16, KSA 2.37), which will explain the origin and development of the forms by which we think. Before explaining what exactly Nietzsche means with the expression ‘habits of sensation’ we need to clarify his use of the word ‘sensation’ (Empfindung). This word commonly means both a sensory impression and the emotional/​affective investment made in it. In the Critique of Judgement (KU 205f.) Kant, however, strongly criticizes this double use of the term and suggests that it be applied only with reference to the ‘perception of an object of sense’ and its properties (like

48

48

Benedetta Zavatta

‘green’). In other words, in Kant’s view, ‘Empfindung’ is to be used as a synonym of ‘Sinnesempfindung’, and he suggests that the term ‘feeling’ (Gefühl) be used to refer to the inner affects (especially pleasure/​pain) produced by sensory objects, which are purely subjective and therefore void of cognitive value. Kant’s separation of ‘Sinnesempfindung’ from ‘innere Affizierung’ is rejected by Nietzsche as early as 1872–​73, when he identifies ‘feelings of pleasure and pain [Lust-​und Unlust-​ empfindungen]’ as ‘the actual material of all knowledge’ (NL 1872–​3 19[84], KSA 7.448; Siemens 2006: 147). In Human, All Too Human he then definitively replaces the Kantian notion of the ‘knowing subject’ with that of the organism or ‘Lebens-​ System’, whose reactions of pleasure and pain intervene in the constitution of mental representations of things. Nietzsche states: ‘In the first instance, any thing interests us organic beings solely in relation to pleasure and pain in us’ (HH 18, KSA 2.39). An organism senses (empfindet) external reality exclusively on the basis of the sensations of pleasure and pain that are generated through the interaction with it. Sensation therefore does not merely imply the passive reception of data (as in the Lockean or Kantian view), but involves interpretation and evaluation.4 As a consequence, the very distinction between pure cognitive data (e.g. green, round, etc.) and evaluative ones (useful/​harmful, pleasant/​unpleasant, etc.) is abolished. The traditional opposition of reason and instinct is abolished as well, together with the prejudice according to which instinct influences behaviour towards the satisfaction of needs, while reason has the power to release us from this dependence. Our instincts are the product of past judgement and, vice versa, our intellectual judgements are nothing but the development of instinctual judgement (Abel 2001).5 Nietzsche’s ‘habits of sensation’ (HH 16, KSA 2.37) can be thought of as recurrent patterns in processing nerve impulses, which ultimately lead to ‘sensations’. Such patterns are organizing principles that unconsciously and automatically direct our mental representation of reality, controlling how the brain elaborates incoming data. Once we are ‘accustomed’ to elaborating certain responses to external stimuli, cognitive routines consolidate in our mind, thus allowing us to save time and energy. Then instinctively we hypothesize the existence of a unitary, material object as the cause of the sensations we receive, and instinctively we place events along a timeline that allows only progression, not circularity.6 In HH 18 Nietzsche discusses the category of substance which, according to Spir, is the ‘original law’ of the knowing subject. Nietzsche maintains that even the category of substance, which seems to be a necessary condition for human beings to represent the world, has been formed over time.7 He states that this category originated in an ancient ‘habit of sensation’ that was not even specific of human beings, but manifested itself already in lower organisms: ‘the purblind

  49



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

49

mole’s eyes of this organisation at first never see anything but the same thing; [. . .] then, when the various pleasurable and unpleasurable stimuli become more noticeable, various different substances are gradually distinguished, but each of them with one attribute, that is to say a single relationship with such an organism’ (HH 18, KSA 2.39). With the progressive refinement of the perceptual apparatus the organism begins differentiating sensations and assumes them to be the effects of different substances. In other words, Nietzsche argues that, as our physiology evolves, our habits of sensation evolve too. Ultimately, he sees the Kantian categories of substance and causality,8 not as universal structures and distinctive features of human beings, but rather as ‘habits of sensation’, which have historically evolved from primordial forms. We are led to believe they are a priori since without them we cannot form any mental representation, but they have actually been adaptively selected among the many possible ones. We can therefore state that these organizing principles are ‘a priori for the individual, but a posteriori for the species or a type of culture’ (D’Iorio 1995: 246).9 In the 1880s Nietzsche further developed the research result from the years of Human, All Too Human and again tackled the idea that the principles through which we organize experience are not external to nature and history, but rather reflect our ‘conditions of existence’ and change along with them. In a posthumous note from 1881 he states: The life-​preserving principle [das lebenserhaltende Princip] must be sought in the way in which the first organic forms felt stimuli and judged what was outside themselves: that belief prevailed and preserved itself which made possible to go on living [bei dem das Fortleben möglich wurde]: not the truest, but the most useful belief. (NL 1881 11[270], KSA 9.545)

This view is further confirmed in a note from 1886: ‘Our conditions of existence prescribe the general rules by which we have to see forms, figures, rules’ (NL 1886 6[8]‌, KSA 12.236). Ultimately, Nietzsche considers Kantian categories as nothing but ‘means [. . .] by which we contrive the world according to utility-​ goals [Mittel [. . .] zum Zurechtmachen der Welt zu Nützlichkeits-​Zwecken]’ (NL 1888 14[153], KSA 13.336). Reiterating the thesis elaborated in Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche states that we ‘know’ (or better: we feel and judge) phenomena only in relation to ourselves, and instinctively classify them according to the use they may have for our existence. The properties of a thing arouse our sensations e.g. that it is grey, and the shape, the kind of movement, above all its presence as a body and substance –​everything is connected with feelings of pleasure and unpleasure and consequently

50

50

Benedetta Zavatta with trust, inclination, a pleasure in approximation or fear etc. [. . .]  –​so:  all properties of a thing are in truth stimuli in us, which partly increase the feeling of power, partly reduce it: every thing is a sum of judgements (fears, hopes, some things inspire trust, others do not). (NL 1880–​1 10[F100], KSA 9.437; see Siemens 2006: 148)

According to D’Iorio (1995), in the posthumous notes from 1881 onwards Nietzsche seems to suggest a triple stratification of the forms through which we organize experience. Each stratum has a different mobility. The oldest and most entrenched forms are those linked to our physiology, that is, to the physiology of human sensation. These forms are shared by all human beings. There is then a second level, which varies with culture. Usages and customs, laws, religious beliefs and moral codes determine certain ‘habits’ in representing the world –​ certain patterns for organizing our perceptions that change along with social practices. Finally, there is a third, purely individual level, which depends on one’s specific habits and tastes, which lead one to select from the data of experience those that most attract her attention. The assumption of such a stratification of the habits of sensations is confirmed by an analysis of the meanings which Nietzsche ascribes to the term ‘conditions of existence’ (Existenz-​Bedingungen). Nietzsche sometimes uses this expression to refer to the conditions of existence of the human species (see GS 1, KSA 3.372; NL 1881 11[330], KSA 9. 569; NL 1884 26[74], KSA 11.168), sometimes to the conditions of a certain group (NL 1883 24[15], KSA 10.651; NL 1885 34[57], KSA 11.438) and sometimes to the specific conditions of an individual (NL 1881 11[59], 9.463). The habits of sensations arose as a response to the environment or, in other words, to satisfy conditions of existence. Therefore some habits account for the conditions of existence shared by all humans (at the same stage of evolution)10; others are specific to a people (Volk); others again are characteristics of a specific person.11 Ultimately, the main differences between Kantian categories and Nietzsche’s habits of sensation can be summarized as follows. Kantian categories are eternal and immutable laws of the mind that precede experience and are independent of it. They are universal, that is, shared by all human beings, whatever their culture, and generate objective, that is, true knowledge. Nietzsche’s ‘habits of sensation’ are instead unconscious interpretative patterns that have been acquired (by the human species, by a people, by an individual) through interaction with the outside world, that is, through experience. Since they arose as a response to the external environment, they change along with it. None of these habits of sensations lead to universal and necessary knowledge, but only to contingent

  51



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

51

and mutable world views that, in turn, reflect the psycho-​physiological needs of their authors. The repercussions of these differences on the ontological and gnoseological positions of the two authors are striking. For both Kant and Nietzsche, the individual does not know things as they are in themselves, but only what appears to her as the result of her activity on what is given sensibly. Yet in Kant her world view is necessarily the same of any other human being, since the categories of the mind are universal forms. The novelty of Kant’s approach lies precisely in reformulating the traditional equation ‘subjective = arbitrary, objective = universal’. Mind categories are subjective universals that generate objectively valid knowledge. As a consequence, the world view that science gradually reconstructs is universally and objectively valid. In Nietzsche’s view, on the contrary, the fact that the vision of the world we live in is generally shared depends on the power of the social instinct, which leads us to standardize ‘habits of sensation’. In a note from 1881 he observes: When I go for a walk, I always marvel at the magnificent exactness with which everything acts on us, the forest like this, and also the mountain, and that there is no confusion, oversight or hesitation regarding all sensations [Empfindungen]. And yet, once there must have been enormous uncertainty and something chaotic; only after immense tracts of time was all this inherited in such a fixed manner; men who sensed distance, light, colour and so on in an essentially different way were marginalized and were barely able to reproduce. This way of sensing otherwise [anders zu empfinden] must have been felt to be ‘madness’ and shunned for centuries. One could no longer understand one another, the ‘exception’ was left aside and allowed to perish. An immense cruelty has existed since the beginning of all organic [life], excluding everything that ‘sensed otherwise’. Science is maybe only a continuation of this process of exclusion, it is completely impossible if it does not acknowledge ‘the normal human being’ [den Normalmenschen] as the highest ‘measure’, to be conserved by all means! (NL 1881 11[252], KSA 9.537)

According to Nietzsche, science, being complicit in the socialization process, pursues the uniformity of sensation (Empfindung) and makes of the ‘normal human being’ the ‘measure’ of reality. In other words, the generally shared world view that science provides is the result of a violent coercion systematically exercised on individual idiosyncratic taste. According to Nietzsche, knowledge does not progress by reinforcing the vision shared by the majority, but by collecting alternative interpretations of the world. Especially in his posthumous notes from

52

52

Benedetta Zavatta

the late 1880s and in On the Genealogy of Morals he points out that our knowledge of things will be all the richer, the more different points of view we are able to bring to them. It is thus only by considering different interpretations that we obtain an ‘objective’ vision of things (GM III 12, KSA 5.365).

3.  Reason is one and the same thing as language Nietzsche’s emphasis on the comparison among different points of view as the only way to achieve valuable knowledge leads us to a crucial point in his relation to Kant. Like Kant, Nietzsche aims at investigating the human mind or, more precisely, how we think about the world. However, whereas Kant derives his table of categories from Aristotle’s logic, Nietzsche considers history as the only reliable source of knowledge. In fact, Nietzsche realized that human criteria of representation are not absolute, but subject to historical development, by comparing different representations of the world: Error [Irrthum] is the basis of knowledge appearance, [that is,] semblance [Schein]. Only the comparison of many semblances can bring about verisimilitude [Wahrscheinlichkeit], that is, degrees of semblance. (NL 1880 6[441], KSA 9.311f.)12

However, the principles of organization for sense data cannot be observed directly. We cannot keep track of them so as to make a comparison. They must therefore be considered indirectly, in the mirror of language. My thesis is that it is mainly from the historical-​comparative study of languages that Nietzsche derived incontrovertible proofs of the evolution of what, following D’Iorio, we have called the second stratum of the organizing principles of perception (more flexible than the principles linked to physiology, and at the same time less volatile than those linked to temperament and individual habits). As Hamann and Herder pointed out, the weak point of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is the inadequate consideration of the role played by language in the transcendental synthesis. Hamann’s Metakritik (written in 1784 and published posthumously in 1800) defined as ‘naïve and impractical’ any analysis of reason that did not take into account the fact that reason is one and the same thing with language. Something like ‘pure’ reason can never be observed, because reasoning is always carried out in the historical form of language.13 Similarly, in his Metakritik (1799) Herder emphasized that every critique of reason should necessarily be complemented by a Sprachkritik, because language intervenes

  53



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

53

in any activity of the intellect.14 Humboldt continued in the direction set by Hamann and Herder, and added to their positions the claim that every language determines a particular vision of the world (Weltansicht), corresponding to its specific syntactic and semantic structure, which can then be further elaborated in a Weltanschauung. The possibility of intercultural communication is guaranteed by the substantial identity of human nature, both from a physical (phonetic apparatus) and psychic point of view (transcendental subjectivity). Humboldt’s aim was to use historical-​comparative linguistics to identify universal forms of language and then deduce from them corresponding universal forms of the human spirit. Such a project ran aground in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the study of non-​European languages brought to light how huge such differences can be. Steinthal, one of the few who undertook Humboldt’s task, realized at the end that it was unfeasible, since in non-​European languages some grammatical categories are not represented at all. Thus he concluded that there are no universal structures in language but, rather, that each language expresses its own psychology. Through the study of language we can thus aim to understand, not the universal ‘human mind’, but only the specific character of a people (Volksgeist). Steinthal thus turned Humboldt’s universal linguistic relativism (allgemeiner Sprachrelativismus) into a specific relativism (spezieller Sprachrelativismus) –​the theory that language constraints on thought are different from language to language –​and replaced the universal categories of logic with psychological principles. Nietzsche was acquainted with Steinthal’s works and ideas from 1869 (Zavatta 2009 and 2013). In particular, Nietzsche was struck by Steinthal’s criticism of an assumed ‘universal grammar’. The idea of ‘universal grammar’, very popular during the Enlightenment, was also part of Kant’s background in the Critique of Pure Reason. In fact, Kant deduced the table of judgements from the logical forms that judgement could assume, thus taking for granted the fact that the mental operation of judging is prior to and independent of its linguistic utterance. Nietzsche, on the contrary, regarded thinking and speaking as one single act. Already in Vom Ursprung der Sprache (1869), which he wrote immediately after his first reading of Steinthal,15 Nietzsche observed that our most common mental operations correspond to basic grammatical categories. A statement composed of ‘subject’ –​‘copula’ –​‘direct object’ corresponds to the mental operation of attributing a property to a substance. He states: ‘The most profound philosophical knowledge is already there in language . . . Think of subject and object; the concept of judgement is taken from the grammatical phrase. The categories of substance and accident are derived from subject and predicate’

54

54

Benedetta Zavatta

(KGW II/​2.185). Since in this text Nietzsche considers language to be the product of an unconscious artistic instinct or Spieltrieb, he concluded that linguistic forms determine conscious thought and not vice versa. At various points of his philosophical career Nietzsche then repeated the claim that the grammar of a language plays the role of a ‘Volks-​Metaphysik’ (GS 354, KSA 3.593), inasmuch as it suggests to people a vision of the world, which is then developed further by philosophers.16 Nietzsche’s endorsement of Steinthal’s ‘particular linguistic relativism [speziellen Sprachrelativismus]’ (Albrecht 1979: 228), according to which different languages exert different constraints on thought, emerges in exemplary fashion in BGE 20 (Albrecht 1979). After reiterating that all conscious thought simply fills in the grid that language makes available, Nietzsche claims that such a grid is different from one linguistic family to another. Indo-​European languages, whose syntax is based on predicative structure, provide the ideal conditions to develop metaphysical systems.17 When I say ‘The lightning flashes’ [Der Blitz leuchtet] I have posited the flashing [das Leuchten] first as an activity and then as subject:  thus to occurrence [Geschehen] a being [Sein] supplied which is not one with the occurrence, but rather remains [bleibt], is, and does not ‘become’. (NL 1885–​6, 2[84], KSA 12.103f.)

Formulating thoughts with this grammatical structure automatically evokes a hinterworld, which is assumed to be the real world:  something that remains while phenomena pass by. Ural-​Altaic languages, by contrast, where the predicative relation is less emphasized, support a different vision of the world (BGE 20).18 We can conclude that it was on the basis of the important results reached by historical-​comparative linguistics in the nineteenth century that Nietzsche formulated a theory according to which the key to reach ‘objectivity’ lies in the comparison between different world views. He opposed Kant’s assumption of a universal reason, following the path opened by Herder, Hamann, Humboldt and Steinthal. He then reformulated their considerations in the light of the most recent theories in the physiology of perception, which considered language not only in relation to thought but also to the body. According to Nietzsche’s theory, every people has a specific world view (Weltansicht), which is reflected in its language and originates in ‘physiological value judgements and racial conditions [physiologischer Werthurtheile und Rasse-​Bedingungen]’ (BGE 20, KSA 5.35). This view led Nietzsche to discuss issues that Kant had taken for granted, such as the categorization of empirical objects.

  55



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

55

4.  The formation of concepts of empirical objects Rorty (1979) claims that, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was not interested in the conditions of knowing objects (knowledge of), but rather in the possibility of founding the truth of our propositions concerning those objects (knowledge that). That is to say, Kant was more interested in justifying the proposition ‘bodies are heavy’ or ‘the sun warms the stone’ than in explaining by what right we speak of body, sun, stone and so on. Thus, for Rorty, the Critique of Pure Reason is much more about how humans link objects of experience with each other (e.g. through causal relations, etc.), thus forming a coherent image of the world, than about how they represent such objects. Kant intentionally avoids discussing the categorization of empirical objects. In the Preface to the second edition of the KrV he states explicitly that he will take into account just what is found in reason before and apart from experience. Concepts of empirical objects are excluded from his analysis, as the nature of things is inexhaustible and we will never know all the features of an object. Umberto Eco (1999: 71, 73–​74) observes polemically in Kant and the Platypus: According to a Kantian example (P §23),19 I can move from an uncoordinated succession of phenomena (there is a stone, it is struck by the sun’s rays, it is hot –​and, as we shall see, this is an example of perceptual judgement) to the proposition The sun heats the stone. If we suppose that the sun is A, the stone B, and the being hot C, we can say that A is the cause whereby B is C. [. . .] But, if I am unable to say not only that this A is the sun and this B is a stone but also that this B is at least a body, all the universal and necessary laws that the concepts of the pure intellect guarantee me are worth nothing, because they could refer to any datum of experience. Perhaps I could say that there is an A that heats everything, whatever empirical concept I may assign to B, but I wouldn’t know what this heating entity is, because I would not have assigned any empirical concept to A. Concepts of the pure intellect have need not only of sensible intuition but also of concepts of objects to which they may be applied.

For Nietzsche, on the contrary, the formation of empirical concepts was a quite problematic issue. At his time, various neo-​Kantian authors he was acquainted with had reinterpreted the Kantian doctrine on the conditions of knowledge in the light of the physiology of the senses (Sinnesphysiologie), explaining how we produce an ‘image of the world’ starting out from sense data. Helmholtz’s theory of perception in particular exerted an important influence on Nietzsche’s thought during his Basel years (Treiber 1994).20 In

56

56

Benedetta Zavatta

his Handbuch der Physiologischen pysiologischen Optik (1867), Helmholtz translated Kantian subjectivism into physiological terms and conceived the forms of the phenomenal world not as the product of mental categories, but rather as reflecting the structure and activity of the senses. Developing what he called the ‘logic of perception’ (Logik der Wahrnehmung), Helmholtz argues that we perceive only nerve stimuli, from which we then produce the image of an external object as the cause of such stimuli (430, 442f., 444, 453). Our representation of the world is thus the product of unconscious inferences or ‘Analogieschlüssen’ (430).21 The link between stimulus and image, even though neither natural nor necessary, becomes ‘stable and inescapable’ (fest und unausweichlich) through ‘repeated use’ (häufige Wiederholung) (430). In other words, after some time we no longer notice or take into account the fact that the images of our mind depend on the conformation of our sense organs. Basically endorsing Helmholtz’s theory, with which he also became acquainted by reading Gerber and Zoellner, in On Truth and Lie Nietzsche describes the process of perception as follows: a nerve stimulation (Nervenreiz) is transmitted to the brain, which in response elaborates a mental representation of the object (Anschauungsbild) and a sound (Lautbild) that allows one to recall the stimulation and refer to it. At the same time, a qualitas occulta (e.g. hardness, bitterness, etc.) is assumed as the cause of our sensation. Then this property is attributed to a supposed external object, which is thought of as a neutral substratum. Nietzsche additionally points out that this mental operation corresponds to the synthetic judgement A is B (e.g. the pencil is red). The essence of definition:  the pencil is an elongated, etc., body. A  is B.  That which is elongated is at the same time coloured. Properties [Eigenschaften] only contain relations. A specific body is exactly [or: equal to] so and so many relations. Relations can never be the essence [Wesen], they are only consequences of the essence. The synthetic judgement describes a thing according to its consequences [Folgen], that is, essence and consequence are identified, that is, a metonymy. Thus, in the essence [im Wesen] of synthetic judgement there lies a metonymy, that is, it is a false equation [eine falsche Gleichung]. That is, synthetic inferences are illogical [Synthetische Schlüsse sind unlogisch]. When we apply them, we presuppose the popular metaphysics, that is, one that sees effects as causes. The concept ‘pencil,’ is confused with the ‘thing’ pencil. The ‘is’ [Das ‘ist’] in the synthetic judgement is false, it contains a transference [Übertragung], two

  57



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

57

different spheres are placed next to each other, between which an equation [Gleichung] can never take place. (NL 1872–​3 19[242], KSA 7.495; see Spir 1877: 13 and D’Iorio 1993: 4–​5)

Traditionally, the concept of an empirical object (like a pencil) is explained by listing a set of traits, which are assumed as corresponding to qualities (what empiricists called primary and secondary qualities) that every object belonging to this category must possess. Such properties are assembled together inasmuch as they are attributed to the same object. The problem that Nietzsche points out is that the object to which we ascribe the aforementioned properties (that corresponds to the grammatical subject of a synthetic judgement) does not pre-​ exist the properties themselves. Nietzsche wrote in a fragment from the same period: ‘We produce essences and abstractions as bearers of qualities, as causes of these qualities’ (NL 1872–​3 19 [236], KSA 7.494), and do not notice that an object is no more than the sum of the properties we attribute to it. In later years, Nietzsche picks up this issue again and develops it as follows: If the thing ‘acts’ [i.e. has effects: wirkt], this means: we grasp all the other qualities, which otherwise are still present here and are momentarily latent, as cause of the fact that a single quality comes to the fore: that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities –​x as the cause of the quality x: which is after all utterly stupid and crazy! (NL 1885–​6 2[87], KSA 12.105)

Thus, when we say ‘The body is heavy’ we assume that the set of properties that define the object A, less the property we predicate of it (B), is the cause of the property B. Nietzsche points out the blatant absurdity of such a belief and claims that synthetic judgements are as empty as the analytical ones. In other words, synthetic judgements add nothing to what we already knew of the object. In saying ‘the body is heavy’ we simply extract one of the attributes that make up the concept of body and then we give it back to it through the operation of predication. Nietzsche concludes:  ‘Strictly speaking, knowing has only the form of a tautology, and is empty’ (NL 1872–​3 19[236], KSA 7.493). Although Nietzsche essentially uses Helmholtz’s argument to criticize the process by which we create concepts of empirical objects and assume them to be causes of our sensations,22 he goes one step further and points out the important role that language plays in the creation of linguistic categories. Actually, we inherit patterns for the organization of perceptions into concepts of empirical objects from the culture in which we are embedded. Indeed, inasmuch as we have grown up in a specific linguistic community, we are used to refer to certain groups of perceptions through a specific word, thus thinking of them as an object.

58

58

Benedetta Zavatta Our usual imprecise mode of observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls it a fact: between this fact and another fact it imagines in addition an empty space, it isolates every fact. But actually, all our doing and knowing is not a succession of facts and empty spaces but a continuous flux [. . .] Through words and concepts we are still continually misled into imagining things as being simpler than they are, separate from one another, indivisible, each existing in and for itself. A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language which breaks out again at every moment, however careful one may be otherwise. (WS 11, KSA 2.546f.)23

As João Constâncio (2009:  86)  rightly observes, ‘Words as signs that express concepts create a given form for the phenomena, a form that determines the way things appear to us’. This means that it is the concept-​word (Wort-​Begriff) or, better said, lexeme that leads us instinctively to group together a set of perceptions coming from different senses (form, weight, texture, odour, etc.) in the representation of an object. Nietzsche finds support for his argument in his reading of two authors who took Kant’s philosophy as their reference point: Friedrich Albert Lange and Max Müller. Basically, Lange (1887) states that human beings see ‘objects’ in the world since they cannot avoid representing reality anthropomorphically. By projecting human attributes onto nature they imagine physical processes as actions of bodies on other bodies and group the sense impressions into discrete units. ‘What we call a “thing” is a group of appearances [Erscheinungen], which we conceive as one irrespective of broader connections and inner modifications’ (2:  217). Therefore language or, to be precise, the process of ‘naming’ (nennen) plays a fundamental role in formation of concepts of empirical objects for Lange. While the influence of Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus (1866) on Nietzsche has been already studied in detail (see e.g. Salaquarda 1978; Stack 1983), Nietzsche’s reading of Max Müller is less known. Max Müller, Sanskritist and professor of comparative mythology at Oxford, was also the first translator of the Critique of Pure Reason into English.24 The influence of Müller on Nietzsche can be appreciated particularly in regard to the theory concerning the origin of lexical concepts, which Müller calls ‘word-​concepts’ (Wort-​Begriffen). According to Müller (1887), all lexical concepts originated from a relatively small number of verbal roots, that is, monosyllabic elements that could not be broken down any further. Roots express everyday actions such as ‘scraping, digging, striking, joining, cutting, eating, drinking, going, moving, standing, passing, feeling, shaking, seeing, hearing, etc.’ (215). Such actions, as they were socially shared, required vocal

  59



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

59

signs (i.e. sounds) to recall them univocally. In other words, Müller maintains that it was under the pressure of the need to communicate that language developed. At an early stage in the development of language, roots were used holophrastically, that is, as a sentence. Then concepts and verbs were drawn from them. For instance, from the root ‘to split’ the word ‘tree’ was drawn, which originally meant ‘what can be split’ (they were used to make spears or boats).25 Quite interestingly, Müller states that the concepts of empirical objects are formed on the basis of practical purposes, that is, they reflect the specific interaction that human beings establish with them in order to achieve some purpose. Such purposes, in their turn, depend on needs, which are different from people to people. We can image that a people that had no urgent need to split trees and make boats from them called them differently. This fact, for Müller, explains the amazing semantic diversity between languages. Even in the same culture, an object or phenomenon can be named according to different kinds of interaction. Müller (1866) points out the originary polysemy that characterizes every language in its initial stage. With the passing of time, thanks to a process of ‘natural selection’ or ‘natural elimination’, among the possible ‘apperceptions’ of the world, only those ‘that constantly return, the strongest, the most used’ survive (290–​ 1). Importantly enough, from Müller’s linguistic theory the consequence can be drawn that language does not reflect the essence of things and, what is more, that such an essence cannot be assumed at all. Nietzsche was well acquainted with Müller’s theory since his Basel years (see Zavatta 2013) and greatly appreciated his theory on the origin of language. Endorsing Müller’s viewpoint, Nietzsche traces back the origin of consciousness and language to the need to communicate. ‘As the most endangered animal, [man] needed help and protection, he needed his equals; he had to express his neediness and be able to make himself understood’ (GS 354, KSA 3.591). Both consciousness and language are to be considered as adaptive answers to endangering environmental stimuli. The concepts and words that have been formed in the course of time served in the sharing of purposes, which in their turn were formulated in response to specific needs. Nietzsche points out that the oldest concepts –​those that have been preserved for the longest period of time –​reflect human beings’ most basic conditions of existence, since they have guaranteed their survival on earth. Among these basic conditions, there is the assumption of a stable reality on which one can rely. The fact that the concepts of ‘substance’ or ‘being’ are so entrenched in the human mind thus does not mean that they are ‘truest’. Actually, they are ‘the most false’, since they falsify and negate becoming:

60

60

Benedetta Zavatta From etymology and the history of language we take all concepts as having become [geworden], and many as still becoming; and indeed in such a way that the most universal concepts, as the most false, must also be the oldest. ‘Being’, ‘substance’ and ‘unconditioned’, ‘likeness’ [or identity:  Gleichheit], ‘thing’ –:​ thinking invented these schemata for itself first and earliest, schemata that actually contradict most radically the world of becoming [. . .] (NL 1885 38[14], KSA 11.613)26

Ultimately, Nietzsche’s view can be summarized as follows: sense stimuli give rise to the mental representation of this or that object on the basis of our most recurrent interactions with the environment. In other words, the names that we inherit from our ancestors direct our organization of sense data into a mental image of reality. This is not at all negative. Indeed, the names that have been given to things recall to the mind not only a representation, but also a behavioural pattern that tells us the most successful interaction by far that has been established with the environment. Through language, as a repository of lexical meanings, one can exploit the knowledge matured by the species over centuries.27 However, the constraints imposed by language are sometimes perceived as a limitation on our freedom. Nietzsche observes that it seems as if ‘we cease thinking when we no longer want to think within the constraints of language’ (NL 1886–​7 5[22], KSA 12.110). Though recognizing the important role that language plays in determining the mental organization of experience, Nietzsche does not, however, defend a rigid linguistic determinism. Rather he sees a circular relation between language, thought and experience. The habit of collecting together a series of sense data in the mental representation of an object (that we call e.g. ‘leaf ’) clearly coerces our future perceptions. However, individuals with an idiosyncratic taste will experience things in ways that differ somewhat from the standard. These are the individuals that can become language-​innovators, that is, invent new words to name things, thereby highlighting new aspects of them (i.e. new possible interactions with them). These new words, insofar as they will prove useful and be shared by more and more persons, will then become new ‘habits of sensation’. In other words, these names then become the new matrix for the vision of the world shared by a certain linguistic community. Nietzsche concludes: ‘This has caused me the greatest trouble and still does always cause me the greatest trouble: to realize that what things are called is unspeakably more important than what they are. [. . .] But let also not forget that in the long run it is enough to create new names and valuations and appearances of truth in order to create new “things” ’ (GS 58, KSA 3.422).

  61



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

61

5.  Concluding remarks Nietzsche’s relation to Kant is mediated by his reading of many other authors that came after him, such as Schopenhauer, Spir, Helmholtz, Max Müller and so on. Nietzsche did not address the Critique of Pure Reason directly but dealt with later theories, which partly simplify and reduce the conceptual apparatus of Kantian philosophy, partly add considerations from different fields such as the physiology of the senses (Sinnesphysiologie) and linguistics (Sprachwissenschaft). This led Nietzsche to discuss issues that Kant could not have recognized as problematic, such as the image of the world (Weltansicht) on which reason (understood as conscious judgement) works. While Kant was concerned with the analysis of the concepts through which we work on that image, joining or separating phenomena in ‘judgements of experience’, Nietzsche aimed at understanding how we form the image of the world on which conscious reasoning works. In addition, Nietzsche criticized the Kantian ideal of ‘pure reason’ and regarded human thinking as a natural and historical product. He considered thinking as strictly dependent on physiology on the one hand, and on cultural processes on the other hand. As a consequence of his genealogical enquiries, Nietzsche eliminated the traditional distinction between reason and instinct. Reason, that is, conscious judgement, is actually preceded by a primary organic activity of interpreting and evaluating that does not differ ontologically from judging. Obviously these unconscious interpretations are not expressed propositionally, but are a set of chemical processes. However, they are much more ‘certain’ than those expressed consciously, since they contain the accumulated wisdom of the species over the centuries, which each individual has then to enrich through his personal experience. In addition, the Kantian separation of the theoretical from the practical is abolished by Nietzsche, who states: ‘Reason is [. . .] a support-​organ [. . .], it works in the service of the organic drives [. . .]’ (NL 1881 11[243], KSA 9.533). There is no such thing as a disinterested, universal, pure subject of knowledge, as Kant pretended, rather an all-​desiring self that is eager to appropriate more and more views on the same thing. Every one of these views is inevitably partial, of limited validity and is not at all ‘pure’, since it originates in specific needs or ‘conditions of existence’. Ultimately, Nietzsche replaces the Kantian ideal of transcendental, universal knowledge with a perspectivist theory of historical knowledge, according to which the more empirical views are taken into account, the more ‘complete’ and ‘objective’ our knowledge.

62

62

Benedetta Zavatta From now on, my philosophical colleagues, let us be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-​tale which has set up a ‘pure, will-​less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge’, let us be wary of the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason’, ‘absolute spirituality’, ‘knowledge in itself ’: –​here we are asked to think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-​something, so it is an absurdity and non-​concept of eye that is demanded. There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, different eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’. But to eliminate the will completely and turn off all the emotions without exception, assuming we could: what? would that not mean to castrate the intellect? . . . (GM III 12, KSA 5.365)

Notes 1 As Tsarina Doyle (2004: 180) underlines, Nietzsche abolished the Kantian distinction between the constitutive and regulative use of reason, because he rejected any constitutive account of knowledge. 2 Treiber (1994: 5) suggests that we also consider as relevant for Nietzsche’s education the books that his friend Romundt borrowed during the years 1872–​75 from Basel library and brought home to the flat they shared in Schützengraben. Romundt knew Kant’s work well. In 1872 he was promoted to professor with the habilitation treatise Die menschliche Erkenntniss und das Wesen der Dinge (Basel 1872) and in the years 1872–​74 he held a lecture series on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. His list of borrowed books highlights a strong interest both in Kantian philosophy and in the new theories of perception, that is, physiology of senses (Sinnesphysiologie). Romundt was for Nietzsche a very important speaking partner, as we read in the letter sent to Paul Deussen on 25 August 1869: ‘Dr. Heinrich Romundt, younger than me and therefore more in the position of a study companion: he is tremendously precious to me because of his like-​mindedness on philosophical questions; I like to discuss long and important things with nobody more than with him’ (To Deussen, 25 August 1869, KSB 3.46). 3 Even if we cannot rule out the possibility that Nietzsche had first-​hand knowledge of Kant’s works and we have firm proof that already in the Basel years he was acquainted with the theories of some neo-​Kantian authors (such as Helmholtz, Spir or Lange), it is nevertheless undeniable that Schopenhauer played a fundamental role in his appraisal of Kantian philosophy. This is also demonstrated by the fact that

  63



4

5

6

7 8

From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

63

as Nietzsche distanced himself from Schopenhauerian metaphysics, his view of Kant radically changed, becoming more and more critical. Nietzsche also departs from Schopenhauer’s view, according to which Empfindungen are mere data without spatial–​temporal determination. According to Schopenhauer, it is the understanding that transforms them into intuitions (Anschauungen) of determinate objects in space–​time through the application of the category of causality (see Böhning 1988: 17ff.). On the contrary, for Nietzsche Empfindung includes all these operations, which are performed unconsciously. As Siemens (2006: 152) notes, in later years, Nietzsche was to thematize interpretation and evaluation (Interpretation/​Auslegung and Wertschätzung) as pervasive and basic operations of life or Will to Power, to which ‘Empfindungen’ are subordinate as their instrument (Werkzeug: see e.g. NL 1885 40[61, 69], KSA 11.661, 668). Any conscious or unconscious effort of the human being is directed towards survival or, better, towards an increase in one’s power In this connection it is useful to recall Lupo’s (2006) distinction between drive (Trieb) and instinct (Instinkt). The drive determines the transmission of information coming in and out, so that it is the axis along which the stimulus travels from the sense organ to the brain and vice versa (57). The most useful drives (those that allow adequate and effective responses to the stimuli) are gradually consolidated into a more complex and structured apparatus of response that takes the name of ‘instinct’ (71). The distinction between drive and instinct is taken further by João Constâncio (2011: 96), who underlines the resemblance of the concept of instinct with that of ‘skill’: ‘We can add to this that, in some contexts, Nietzsche seems to follow Schopenhauer in understanding the instincts as skills. Instincts are akin to learned behavior but have goals that are not set by conscious mental states. As skills or “automatisms”, they are more permanent and complex processes than the drives. One drive is not a skill; only a consolidated relation of drives can be understood as a skill’. See NL 1881 11[329], KSA 9.569: ‘[R]‌epresenting and believing in what is identical to itself and permanent have to be grown together’. The fact that Nietzsche discusses only substance and causality confirms once more that his view on Kant is mediated by Schopenhauer. In the Appendix to World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer (2010) sharply criticizes the architecture of Kant’s thought and accuses him of creating ‘blind windows’ (i.e. unnecessary categories) simply to satisfy the desire to create a symmetrical design. ‘From this (table of judgements) he deduces twelve categories, an even dozen, symmetrically arranged under four headings, which later become a terrible Procrustean bed into which he violently forces everything in the world and everything that happens in human beings; he will recoil from no act of violence, he will scorn no sophism, just to keep repeating the symmetry of that table wherever he goes’ (457). At the end

64

64

9

10

11

12

13

Benedetta Zavatta of his argument Schopenhauer concludes that, of the twelve categories, only one –​ causality –​is really necessary, and he shows how the others can be derived from it. Space, time, substance and causality are the four factors Schopenhauer uses to explain the world as representation. Of note is also GS 110, KSA 3.469: ‘Origin of knowledge. –​Through immense periods of time, the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and species-​preserving; those who hit upon or inherited them fought their fight for themselves and their progeny with greater luck. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were passed on by inheritance further, and finally almost became part of the basic endowment of the species, are for example: that there are enduring things; that there are identical things; that there are things.’ See also NL 1881 11[262], KSA 9.540f. and NL 1881 11[335], KSA 9.572. As regards the transmission of such habits of sensation, Nietzsche contends that we should hypothesize a dual path: on the one hand habits that have become instincts are transmitted genetically. From his youth, Nietzsche endorsed Lamarck’s theory of inheriting acquired characteristics (see Campioni 2001: 32–​3). On the other hand they are implicitly and indirectly transmitted from one generation to another through culture. The ‘formidable consensus of men about things [ungeheure Consensus der Menschen über die Dinge]’ (NL 19[157] 1.468) is made possible primarily by the substantial uniformity of the human sense apparatus. For example, Nietzsche lists among these conditions the need to form a mental representation of reality (see NL 1884 26[58], KSA 11.163). ‘A person’s valuations reveal something about the structure of his soul and what the soul sees as its conditions of life, its genuine needs’ (BGE 268, KSA 5.222). Research in the field of cognitive linguistics over the past thirty years confirmed the fact that some basic cognitive schemas are shared by all human beings having the same physical structure and the same perceptual apparatus, while other cognitive schemas are strongly dependent on the praxis of a given culture. Among the ‘universal’ schemas we will find what Lakoff and Johnson call ‘primary metaphors’, that is, schemas which derive from the perception of the body as composed of parts, or from the experience of walking in an upright position and so on. Among the cultural schemas we find instead the metaphors created after the introduction of a certain forms of social praxis (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Grady 2007). Here Nietzsche is using the words ‘error’ and ‘semblance’ even if they are stripped of their traditional meaning, since there is no ‘truth’ or ‘essence’ of things against which they can be measured. They indicate rather the representations we believe in. For Nietzsche’s reception of Hamann, the mediation of Romundt proved to be decisive. Nietzsche began reading Hamann in March 1873, when he borrowed vols

  65



14

15

16

17

From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

65

1 and 2 of his Schriften und Briefe, edited by Petri. However, these books do not contain the Metakritik, which was published later in vol. 4. On 9 December 1874 Romundt borrowed an earlier edition of the Metakritik über den Purismus der reinen Vernunft (contained in Roth 1825) and brought it to the house he shared with Nietzsche (see Treiber 1994: 5 note 12). On the relation Nietzsche–​Herder, see Bertino (2011). Regarding the topic of language he remarks: ‘For Herder, reason and language are inseparable: “the simplest judgement of human awareness is (not) possible without a characteristic mark [Merkmal]”. Human reason develops along with language, i.e. by the use of acoustic signs as marks of sensations’ (6f.). In November 1869 Nietzsche borrowed from Basel University Library Steinthal’s Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Logik (1863) and, in the bibliography for his Encyclopädie der klassischen Philologie we find Steinthal’s Philosophie, Geschichte und Psychologie in ihren gegenseitigen Beziehungen (NL 1869 75[3]‌, KGW I/​5.197). The distinction made by Trabant (1992: 56) between Weltansicht and Weltanschauung in Humboldt’s thought can be profitably extended to Nietzsche. Weltansicht is the primary image of the world, which we inherit from culture and that we generally don’t question. Weltanschauung is instead the conception of the world which we elaborate on the basis of the Weltansicht. According to Luca Lupo (2006) Nietzsche theorizes a dual consciousness: (1) the primary consciousness, expressed by the habits of sensation which, once they have been consolidated, become instincts; (2) the secondary consciousness, or abstract rationality, with which we make deductions and inferences. Lupo calls the former ‘organic consciousness’ because it is not the exclusive property of human beings, but shared with other life forms. The world as we perceive it (our Weltansicht) is the result that the primary consciousness offers us. What characterizes the primary consciousness is the Ursachentrieb –​the instinct to put order into the chaos of sensations through procedures of transformation and simplification. The secondary consciousness, by contrast, is the one traditionally understood as such –​conscious thought about the objects that the primary consciousness offers us. The example of the lightning flash is used by Trendelenburg in his Logische Untersuchungen (Albrecht 1979: 239), but Nietzsche took it from Drossbach’s Ueber die scheinbaren und die wirklichen Ursachen des Geschehens in der Welt (1884) (see Orsucci 2001: 221). Nietzsche returns to the example of the lightening flash several times in the Nachlaß (1885–​86) (see e.g. NL 1885–​6 2[78], KSA 12.98; NL 1885–​6 2[193], KSA 12.162). Using the same argument in Zur Genealogie der Moral, he discusses how the strong man cannot be separated from his strength (GM I 13, KSA 5.279). Another important source for Nietzsche in this regard was Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher (1801) (see Stingelin 1996: 25).

66

66

Benedetta Zavatta

18 Andrea Orsucci (2006) suggests the possibility of an influence from Winckler, 1885. He discovered that the syntax of Indo-​Germanic languages emphasizes the subject who acts, while the syntax of Ural-​Altaic languages emphasizes the action performed by the subject. The syntax of Indo-​European languages treats subject and verb as two separate terms where the subject represents the author or cause of the action, which is expressed by the verb. On the contrary, in Ural-​Altaic languages subject and verb are conceived as one, and the phenomenon is expressed as a nounal phrase (instead of ‘I take’, they say ‘my taking’). 19 Eco refers to Prol 305f. 20 Both Nietzsche and his housemate in Basel, Heinrich Romundt, borrowed Helmholtz’s Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik (1867). Nietzsche additionally read several authors influenced by Helmholtz, such as Gerber, Lange and Zoellner. 21 Nietzsche found the word ‘Analogieschlüsse’ also in Zöllner’s treatise Ueber die Natur der Kometen. Following Helmholtz, Zöllner (1872: 201ss.) claims that perception is the result of unconscious processes of elaboration of sense data based on analogies (see Orsucci 1994: 199). This idea influenced Nietzsche strongly, as we can see from some notes from the winter of 1872–​73, where he conjectures that the action of ‘unbewusste Analogieschlüsse’ might be the basis of perception, moral judgements and, not least, the very impulse to knowledge (see NL 1872–​3 19 [93], KSA 7.450; NL 1872–​3 19 [97], KSA 7.451; NL 1872–​3 29 [16], KSA 7.632). After the reading of Gustav Gerber’s Die Sprache als Kunst (vol. 1, 1871), which occurred in September 1872 (see Meijers 1988; Meijers and Stingelin 1988), Nietzsche replaces the notion of ‘Analogieschlüsse’ with that of ‘tropes’. We read in a note from winter 1872–​73: ‘It is tropes, not unconscious inferences, on which our sense perceptions are based. To identify the similar with the similar [Ähnliches mit Ähnlichem identificieren] –​to make out one or other similarity in one and another thing is the primal process [Urprozeß]. Memory lives from this activity and practices continually. Misidentification [Verwechslung] is the primal phenomenon’ (NL 1872–​3 19 [217], KSA 7.487). 22 This process is an inversion of cause and effect, that is, a metonymy, as Nietzsche explains in more detail in his lectures on rhetoric (WS 1872–​73) and posthumous notes of the same period (see Zavatta 2013). 23 Constâncio quotes NL 24[14] KSA 10.651 ‘Man is a creature who constructs forms [ein formenbildendes Geschöpf]. Man believes in “being” and things because he is a creature who constructs forms and rhythms [ein formen-​und rhythmenbildendes Geschöpf]. /​The shapes and forms we see and in which we believe to have things do not exist [vorhanden]. We simplify ourselves and connect a number of “impressions” through shapes that we create. /​If someone closes his eyes, he realizes that a drive for the construction of forms [ein formenbildender Trieb] is constantly being exercised, and that innumerable things are attempted [versucht] to which no reality corresponds’ (cf. Constâncio 2011: 86; translation modified).

  67



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

67

24 Nietzsche’s personal library contains the second volume of Müller’s Essays, which comprises Beiträge zur vergleichenden Mythologie und Ethnologie (1869), and in Nietzsche’s annotations for the years 1869–​74 there are numerous references to the first volume of this work, including Beiträge zur vergleichenden Religionswissenschaft. On the subject of language, in November 1869 Nietzsche borrowed the Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache (1863–​66, 2 vols) and, in October 1875, the Einleitung in die vergleichende Religionswissenschaft, published together with Über falsche Analogien and Über Philosophie der Mythologie (see Zavatta 2013). 25 How this process works emerges in exemplary fashion from a passage of Max Müller’s (1892: 382–​3) essay Natural Religion: ‘Man discovered in a smaller or larger number of trees, before they were as yet trees to him, something which was interesting to him and which they all shared in common. Now trees were interesting to primitive man for various reasons, and they could have been named for every one of these reasons. For practical purposes, however, trees were particularly interesting to the primitive framers of language, because they could be split in two, cut, shaped into blocks and planks, shafts and boats. Hence from a root d a r, to tear, they called trees d r u or dȃru, lit. what can be split or torn or cut to pieces. From the same root they also called the skin δέρμα, because it was torn off, and a sack δορός, because it was made of leather (Sanskrit d r i t i), and a spear, δόρυ, because it was a tree, cut and shaped and planed.’ Natural Religion does not belong to Müller’s books which Nietzsche read. However, this theory of Müller’s can also be found in Ueber die Philosophie der Mythologie and in the Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache. 26 In The Surface and the Abyss (2010) Peter Bornedal criticizes Nietzsche because he uses the terms ‘word’ and ‘concept’ interchangeably, thus generating some confusion. Bornedal underscores that a word (e.g. ‘leaf ’) can be associated both with a specific representation of a leaf (this leaf) and with the general concept of leaf (the leaf), that is, to the Urform to which all the leaves in the world seem more or less to conform. In the first case, observes Bornedal, the sign ‘leaf ’ performs a nominal function, as it denotes an ‘ostensive’ referent, while in the second case it denotes an ‘extensive’ referent, which can never be exhaustively defined. Actually, according to the most recent theories in the field of cognitive linguistics (see Rosch 1973, 1975; and Taylor 1989) this contradiction does not exist. In order to create the concept of ‘leaf ’ there is no need to assume the existence of an Ur-​leaf. Quite simply, among the various representations of leaves that are gathered together under the same linguistic category, those that recur more frequently in our experience are assumed as the core, or ‘prototype’, of such a category. The ‘prototype’ of a category varies from one language to another. That is to say, for a people living at the equator the prototype of leaf will be different from that of a people living in Finland. In

68

68

Benedetta Zavatta

the first case it will be assumed as a prototype the representation of a banana leaf, while in the second case the leaf of a conifer. Using Nietzschean terminology, we can say that the representation of leaf that a people form most frequently will become the conceptual prototype of the category ‘leaf ’, that is, the cognitive schema on the basis of which one will judge any new phenomena as a leaf or not (perhaps with restrictions or specifications, to the extent that they differ from the first representation). 27 Lupo (2006: 77) points out: ‘Contrary to what we would expect, the so called instinct-​judgement is actually more elaborated and mediated, because it comes from the experience which the organism matured in the interaction with the external world over huge periods of time’.

References Abel, G. (2001), ‘Bewußtsein –​Sprache –​Natur. Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 1–​43. Albrecht, J. (1979), ‘Friedrich Nietzsche und das “sprachliche Relativitätsprinzip”’, Nietzsche-​Studien 8: 225–​44. Bertino, A. C. (2011), ‘Vernatürlichung’: Ursprünge von Friedrich Nietzsches Entidealisierung des Menschen, seiner Sprache und seiner Geschichte bei Johann Gottfried Herder, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Böhning, T. (1988), Metaphysik, Kunst und Sprache beim frühen Nietzsche, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Bornedal, P. (2010), The Surface and the Abyss. Nietzsche as Philosopher of Mind and Knowledge, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Campioni, G. (2001), Les lectures françaises de Nietzsche, Paris: PUF. Constâncio, J. (2011), ‘Instinct and Language in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. Mayer Branco (eds), Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, 80–​116, Berlin/​Boston, de Gruyter. D’Iorio, P. (1993), ‘La superstition des philosophes critiques: Nietzsche et Afrikan Spir’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 257–​94. D’Iorio, P. (1995), La linea e il circolo, Genova: Pantograf. Doyle, T. (2004), ‘Nietzsche’s Appropriation of Kant’, Nietzsche-​Studien 33: 180–​204. Eco, U. (1999), Kant and the Platypus. Essays on Language and Cognition, New York: Harcourt Brace. Grady, J. E. (2007), ‘Metaphor’, in D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, 188–​213, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamann, J. G., ([1784] 1951), ‘Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft’, in J. Nadler (ed.), Sämtliche Werke, vol. 3: Schriften uber Sprachen/​Mysterien/​Vernunft (1772–​1788), Wien: Herder.

  69



From Pure Reason to Historical Knowledge

69

Herder, J. G., (1799), ‘Verstand und Erfahrung, eine Metakritik zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” ’, vol. 1 Vernunft und Sprache, eine Metakritik zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”, mit einer Zugabe, betreffend ein kritisches Tribunal aller Facultäten, Regierungen und Geschäfte, Leipzig: Hartknoch. Helmholtz, H. von (1867), Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, Leipzig: Voss. Himmelmann, B. (2005), ‘Kant, Nietzsche und die Aufklärung’, in B. Himmelmann (ed.), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, 29–​46, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Lakoff, G. (1987), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lange, F. A. (1887), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn und Leipzig: J. Baedeker. Lupo, L. (2006), Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880–​1888, Pisa: ETS. Meijers, A. (1988), ‘Gustav Gerber und Friedrich Nietzsche. Zum historischen Hintergrund der sprachphilosophischen Auffassungen des frühen Nietzsche’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 369–​90. Meijers, A., and Stingelin, M. (1988), ‘Konkordanz zu den wörtlichen Abschriften und Übernahmen von Beispielen und Zitaten aus Gustav Gerber: Die Sprache als Kunst (Bromberg 1871) in Nietzsches Rhetorik-Vorlesung und in “Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne”’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 350–​68. Müller, F. M. (1866), Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache, Bd. 2, Leipzig: Mayer. Müller, F. M. (1887), The Science of Thought, London: Longmans. Müller, F. M. (1892), Natural Religion: The Gifford Lectures, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Orsucci, A. (1994), ‘Unbewußte Schlüsse, Anticipationen, Übertragungen. Über Nietzsches Verhältnis zu Karl Friedrich Zöllner’, in T. Borsche, F. Gerratana and A. Venturelli (eds), ‘Centauren-​Geburten’. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, 193–​207, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Orsucci, A. (2001), La genealogia della morale di Nietzsche, Roma: Carocci. Orsucci, A. (2006), ‘L’enciclopedia nietzscheana delle “scienze dello spirit” nelle discussioni del primo ‘900: alcune corrispondenze. Nuove prospettive storiografiche’, http://​www.hypernietzsche.org/​files/​aorsucci-​1,1/​aorsucci.html. Rorty, R. (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rosch, E. H. (1973), ‘Natural Categories’, Cognitive Psychology 4: 328–​50. Rosch, E. H. (1975), ‘Cognitive Representation of Semantic Categories’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 104 (3): 192–​233. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-​Studien 7: 236–​60. Schopenhauer, A. (2010), The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

70

70

Benedetta Zavatta

Siemens, H. (2006), ‘Nietzsche and the Empirical: Through the Eyes of the Term “Empfindung”’, South African Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 146–​58. Spir, A. (1873/1877), Denken und Wirklichkeit. Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie. Erster Band. Das Unbedingte. Zweite, umgearbeitete Auflage, Leipzig: J. G. Findel. Stack, G. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Stingelin, M. (1996), ‘Unsere ganze Philosophie ist Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs’. Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-​Rezeption im Spannungsfeld zwischen Sprachkritik (Rhetorik) und historischer Kritik (Genealogie), München: Fink. Taylor, J. R. (1989), Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Trabant, J. (1992), Humboldt ou le sens du langage, Liège: Madarga. Treiber, H. (1994), ‘Zur “Logik des Traumes” bei Nietzsche. Anmerkungen zu den Traum-​Aphorismen aus Menschliches, Allzumenschliches’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 1–​41. Zavatta, B. (2009), ‘Die in der Sprache versteckte Mythologie und ihre Folgen fürs Denken. Einige Quellen von Nietzsche: Max Müller, Gustav Gerber und Ludwig Noiré’, Nietzsche-​Studien 38: 269–​98. Zavatta, B. (2013), ‘Nietzsche and 19th Century Linguistics’, in H. Heit and L. Heller (eds), Nietzsche im 19. Jahrhundert. Natur-​, Geistes-​, und Sozialwissenschaftliche Kontexte, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Zöllner, J. C. F. (1872), Über die Natur der Cometen. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntnis, 2 Aufl., Leipzig: Staackmann.

  71

3

The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy: Some Aspects of Nietzsche’s Reception and Criticism of Transcendental Idealism via Afrikan Spir William Mattioli

1.  Introduction The second half of the nineteenth century in Germany was the stage for a major dispute between streams of thought concerning the conditions of legitimacy both of intellectual activity in general and of our cognitive endeavors in particular.1 The core of this dispute was the question about what would be the most legitimate and appropriate method for the search of truth. After the collapse of the great philosophical systems of idealism, particularly after the death of Hegel, the spotlight turned to the empirical sciences searching for the epistemic authority capable of sanctioning our cognitive enterprises, which made materialism the main stream of thought at the time.2 Philosophy thus saw itself faced with the daunting task of recovering its dignity by delimiting the object of its reflection and the specific method to be used in its analysis. In doing so, it could thereby ensure its place in the range of intellectual activity, a place that was visibly threatened by the relentless advance of the natural sciences. The major strategy of academic philosophy of the time was to revisit the philosophy of Kant –​whose critical nucleus had been obscured by the speculative shadows cast on it by the post-​Kantian idealism –​seeking thereby to establish a less hostile and healthier relationship between philosophical reflection and empirical research, since those speculative systems had created an almost unbridgeable gulf between philosophy and science. But the way back to Kant found bifurcations. If on the one hand there was a movement of reconciliation (almost hegemonic in the first

72

72

William Mattioli

decades of the second half of the nineteenth century) that sought to assimilate materialism to Kantianism through a naturalization of its transcendental aspects (a movement carried out not only by philosophers but also by scientists of the time), on the other hand there was an attempt at a renewal of transcendental philosophy that placed all its chips on the specificity of philosophical reflection and its method, in contrast to the methods of the natural sciences, and therefore sought not an assimilation of materialism, but a compartmentalization of knowledge that assigned to self-​reflexive analysis methodological priority in the context of epistemological investigations. However, this was not to maintain the hostile relationship that prevailed then between philosophy and science: once their fields were delimited, as well as their objects, they could complement rather than attack each other. This was the position sustained by the philosopher Afrikan Spir. The attempt at a reformulation and renewal of critical philosophy carried out by Afrikan Spir from a strictly transcendentalist perspective thus moved against the tide of that hegemonic tendency of naturalizing Kantian transcendental philosophy. As important representatives of this naturalistic trend one can name philosophers and scientists such as Friedrich Albert Lange and Hermann von Helmholtz, but it leads back in some measure to Schopenhauer’s reappropriation of Kant’s transcendental-​idealistic theses. One of the central aspects of this theoretical movement to naturalize the transcendental is the proposition of methodological continuity between scientific research and philosophical analysis that considers the first as the only suitable method for the discovery of the a priori elements of cognition. This means that the supporters of this movement, though embracing the Kantian thesis about the existence of a priori elements that condition experience, reject the method of transcendental analysis based on the self-​reflection of the subject. For Lange (1866: 248f.), the discovery and analysis of the elements that universally account for experience and do not derive from it can only occur via experience itself and based on current resources of science, especially of the physiology of perception. The latter represented one of the most important branches of empirical science of the time. The most influential theory in vogue in this context, defended especially by the aforementioned Kantian physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, was that the world we know, the world of phenomena, is the result of operations of an inferential nature carried out unconsciously by the sense organs. Known as the theory of unconscious inferences, this explanation of the cognitive processes underlying our perception of the world goes back to the Schopenhauerian thesis of the intellectual character of intuition. According to this explanation, sense perception

  73



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

73

is based on an unconscious operation that consists of inferring from the effect or stimulus perceived by sensory organs the cause of this sensation, which is associated with an object in the world. It is in this process that the object identified as the cause of the impressions is intuited as such. For Helmholtz (1925: 4), who defended this thesis based on a series of empirical experiments concerning the specific energy of each organ and its reaction to external stimuli, that operation is of the same kind as logical deduction ‘to the extent that we obtain from the observed effect on our senses a representation of a cause for this effect, while, as a matter of fact, it is invariably simply the nervous stimulations that are perceived directly, that is, the effects, but never the external objects themselves’. Thus, the physiological explanation of how we form an image of the empirical world refers to an unconscious application of the principle of causality based on which the sensitive organs trace all sensation back to an object, which is projected outwardly and then perceived as its cause. The thesis in question, therefore, assumes on the one hand the universal and a priori validity of the principle of causality, a mental principle understood as the logical fundament of perception; on the other hand, however, it converts this logical function into a psycho-​ physiological function. As a matter of fact, it is no longer, as in Kant, a pure understanding that spontaneously applies a concept to impressions passively received by sensitivity, but rather it is the sensory organs themselves and the psycho-​physical structure associated with them that operate in inferential mode interpreting the sensory impressions causally. Thus, the physiology of perception, insofar as it concerns itself with that psycho-​physical organization (Lange’s term: physisch-​psychische Organisation), would be the most appropriate route to the discovery of the a priori principles of cognition. In his attempt at a renewal of critical philosophy and at restoring a more robust transcendentalist perspective, Spir criticizes this thesis with three arguments: 1. First, this thesis is allegedly at odds with the sense of the causality principle itself. For Spir (1877), what is involved in the principle of causality is that no change can occur without another change precedent in time, which it follows according to a fixed law. That is, in establishing the cause of a change we will always face another change, never an object or substance (I: 133). In order to better understand this argument one must keep in mind the deduction of the concept of causality proposed by Spir. We can divide his argument into two steps: a. For Spir, the concept of causality is derived from the principle of identity. He understands this principle as a fundamental law of thought, as the

74

74

William Mattioli

single element of the knowing subject that can legitimately be considered a priori. According to this principle, ‘every object in itself is, in its essence, identical with itself ’. This concept of the ‘self-​identical’ coincides ultimately with the concept of the Unconditioned, which corresponds to the notions of Being and Substance. In this sense, in accordance with our concept of substance, ‘self-​identity’ would be the original, essential and unconditioned state of every object in itself. In turn, for Spir, change means ‘non-​identity or a lack of agreement of the changing thing with itself ’ (255). Therefore, it cannot belong to the unconditioned essence of the object, which must correspond to an absolute identity. Thus, any change must be conditioned, namely, by something outside the object, something that is not the object itself, ‘and this is exactly what the principle of causality states: no change without a cause’ (I: 256). So for Spir, as noted by Michael Steven Green (2002: 76), the concept of causality must be understood as ‘the result of the application of “the original a priori concept of the original essence of things, which finds its expression in the principle of identity’ upon ‘the fact of change, which can only be perceived in experience” ’.3 b. Therefore, since all change is conditioned, it is inconceivable that it can emerge from the state of rest that characterizes the unconditioned essence of each object. Accordingly, no substance, in its essence, can be cause, since all causation implies conditionality. Thus, for Spir, no change can emerge from the original state of self-​identity. It follows, in turn, that the cause of a change, that is, its conditional, can only be another change, not a substance or object. That is why Spir argues that the thesis of unconscious inferences, in explaining the perception of an empirical object as an act of intuition of an external cause of impressions, is at odds with the principle of causality itself. 2. Second, the theory of unconscious inferences is supposedly in contradiction with the immediate nature of the knowledge of bodies. Insofar as it explains our perception of empirical objects and thus our belief in the existence of the external world based on the application of an inferential rule of logical nature, this thesis would not be able to explain the persuasive force, the intuitive certainty and the immediacy of our apprehension of the phenomenal world. In other words, it would not be able to explain the fact that reality is represented in our consciousness in a thoroughly immediate way and with a phenomenologically irresistible power of persuasion. As a hypothetical rule, the principle of causality could only provide us

  75



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

75

with a theoretical-​discursive knowledge about the outer world –​as our knowledge about the causal relationships between phenomena –​never with an immediate intuitive knowledge of the phenomena themselves. The latter presupposes a categorical cognitive rule that affirms unconditionally the substantiality of the world by prescribing the application of the concept of object as a substance (derived from the logical principle of identity) to the sense impressions, interpreting these impressions as different qualities of the same ontologically autonomous object. In this sense, the principle of identity also acts as an ontological discriminant that sets the a priori norm for determining and fixing the factual content of the representation as an empirical object, thus granting objectivity to experience. The unconditional character of the knowing subject’s law and of its application is what for Spir explains the immediacy of our certainty of the existence of the outer world, so that the principle of causality is subordinate to it. 3. Finally, this physiological theory of perception, in reducing the cognitive principle determining our apprehension of the world to an organic function that can be studied by empirical science, is said to ignore the particular status of the affirmation involved in the process of representation, whose fundamentally logical nature cannot be explained by physical laws. For Spir, physical (physiological) laws may explain certain psychological operations of association, as well as the mechanical causes of cognition resulting from our bodily organization, but they are unable to account for the logical principles of knowledge. A principle or law of knowledge is an inner disposition of the subject to ‘refer to objects the content that is given to it’ and, according to the nature of this content, to form judgements about the existence and nature of objects. Spir defines the logical laws involved in cognition as ‘general principles of affirmations about objects, that is, an inner need to believe something of objects [etwas von Gegenständen zu glauben]’. Such a disposition could never be the product of physical causes: ‘[W]‌e call this kind of laws logical laws, and these are, in their innermost essence, distinct from the objective physical laws to which belong also the laws of association’ (Spir 1877 I: 76). Such laws of association are secondary to the judgemental logic involved in the application of the concept of substance to the sensations. While a process like that of unconscious inferences could be physically explained through recourse to a physiological vocabulary (including the psychological or associative), the fact of consciousness, which is accompanied by the phenomenological evidence for the existence of bodies outside us (or by the feeling of evidence, even if its objective

76

76

William Mattioli

correspondence is false), can only be explained by a logical–​judgemental scheme that transcends the biological constitution of man (Reuter 2009: 96). It is ultimately a logical–​metaphysical scheme from which Spir draws ontological implications. It is on this point in particular that Spir’s programme of a renewal of critical philosophy most distances itself from the hegemonic trend in the second half of the nineteenth century in Germany, which tended to naturalize the transcendental. Regarding the sphere of cognition, it safeguards a logical space that is irreducible to the scope of explanation of the models of natural science, thus conserving a specific investigational method for philosophy, applied to what we might today call the logical–​normative order of reasons, unlike the natural sciences, which deal with the physical–​descriptive order of causes (Clark and Dudrick 2006: 159f.). This results in an entirely different relationship between natural science and philosophy, in which both complement each other instead of attacking each other. For where the territory of one comes to an end, there only begins the territory of the other. Natural science does not ask, for example, why and how we extract from the contents of our own consciousness the knowledge of a corporeal world outside us. The science of nature cannot answer that question either, since it takes the knowledge of the corporeal world as its last and supreme assumption. Yet it is up to philosophy to answer this question, in that, for this purpose, it goes back to what is immediately certain. (Spir 1877 I: 32)

2.  Spir’s concept of identity and Nietzsche’s tropological model of cognition Spir’s influence on some of Nietzsche’s central epistemological theses is variegated, as well as his importance concerning Nietzsche’s reception and criticism of transcendental idealism. Nietzsche appropriated and reinterpreted many theses and themes that featured Spir’s reformulation of Kant’s theory of the transcendental. Some of the key aspects of this project of theoretical reworking are, first, the reduction of the a priori to a single constitutive element, the principle of identity, which provides us with the concept of Being and Unconditioned, and second, the assertion of an ontological extension of this concept. Moreover, Spir served Nietzsche as a gateway to a set of problems involving both the dialogue between the theory of knowledge and natural science, as well as the interfaces

  77



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

77

between epistemology, ontology and metaphysics. He supplied Nietzsche with a systematic analysis of the main scientific and epistemological theories of the time, while bringing to light a set of theoretical assumptions in transcendentalism that Nietzsche would critically associate with an ontological commitment to the normative concept of Being that goes back to Parmenides. Spir is, therefore, one of the philosophers who provided the basis for the young Nietzsche’s interpretation of the pre-​Socratics, which aimed to confront their thoughts with certain contemporary positions both from science and philosophy. It is above all his interpretation and criticism of Parmenides’ thinking, as opposed to Heraclitism, that owes most to the conceptual framework borrowed from Spir. Parmenides is identified by Nietzsche as the precursor of an ontology whose normative assumptions and theoretical consequences would lead to a radical epistemological critique, which in turn is said by Nietzsche to find its most complete expression in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. On the other hand, Heraclitus is seen as the precursor of a type of essentially anti-​transcendentalist historical philosophy that, once allied to the results of scientific research, would imply a more pessimistic point of view in the face of the problem of knowledge.4 But before we get into details on this discussion, which is presented especially in the text Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks from 1873 –​a text that anticipates some central aspects of Nietzsche’s later error theory (see Meyer 2012: 137–​42) –​it is useful to concentrate on the Nachlass note 19[242] from 1872. This is one of the first notes written under the influence of the reading of Spir’s work. In this text, Nietzsche takes up Spir’s discussion of synthetic judgements, reinterprets it and comes to the conclusion that the processes that underlie our cognition are illogical in nature and imply the fictional and anthropomorphic character of knowledge. In the passage taken up by Nietzsche in the note in question, Spir analyzes the nature of the judgements that underlie our representation and our knowledge of the empirical world. He argues that the representation we have of an external world populated by bodies is only possible through the application of an a priori cognitive principle that acts categorically on all sensible content, fixing it as identity and unity. This principle, identified by Spir with the principle of identity, is supposed to be the key element in the organization of experience, enabling us to establish and identify stable empirical objects as substances, having as our source the ever unstable data of sensations. As a constitutive element of representation, therefore, the principle of identity ensures the objectivity of experience, working as an ontological discriminant that establishes the a priori norm for determining the sensible content of the representation as an empirical object. However, taken in its merely logical

78

78

William Mattioli

expression, the principle of identity allows only tautological judgements of the type A = A, while the judgement that allows one to describe the representation of an empirical object, although containing in itself a categorical application of the principle of identity, is of another nature. Accordingly, in the passage taken up by Nietzsche in note 19[242] Spir writes: For example, what representation would someone have of the essence of a pencil if one said to him: a pencil is a pencil? Obviously none. In order to describe a pencil, one must say something like: a pencil is an extended thing, long, thin, cylindrical, colored, hard, heavy, etc. Thus here we see in a unity (in the pencil) an entire collection of qualities encompassed or embraced that are different from one another. The unity of the different is generally called synthesis, and the sentences in which the essence of such a unity is expressed are called synthetic sentences or judgements. The general formula of synthetic sentences, the general expression of a synthesis is the sentence: ‘A is B’.5

Here Spir understands synthesis as a constitutive moment of our apprehension of the empirical world, characterized by a plurality of objects that include a variety of qualities. It is only through an act of synthesis that we are able to perceive different qualities –​which correspond to a plurality of sense impressions in the subject –​as belonging to the same thing, understood as the unity of this diversity. On the basis of the passage quoted it is possible to discern what constitutes for Spir the condition under which it becomes possible for us to experience objects in general. The object as a unity of different qualities is the result of a synthetic judgement in which certain complexes of sensations are referred to a substrate. According to Spir, this judgement (or synthesis) is ultimately founded on the fundamental logical law of the knowing subject, which posits a substance identical to itself as support of the sensations given in the perception. Without the subjective need to postulate unconditioned objects that remain the same no experience of the world would be possible. What we really perceive of what we call ‘objects’ is merely a plurality of qualities and attributes linked by a certain law, in conformity with which they always appear together. However, we think an object or a body beyond these complexes of sensations ‘as an individual unity which is so to say the support of the qualities [. . .] Here, the effort of thought is clearly to apprehend the many qualities just as many sides of the one indivisible essence of the thing’ (Spir 1873 I:  321). Accordingly, between the concept of substance on the one hand, which is immediately and originally derived from the principle of identity, and the need to represent objects or things existing by themselves on the other, there must be a logical–​predicative relation, which in turn corresponds to the judgemental framework within which synthetic

  79



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

79

sentences are formed. In the note 19[242] from 1872, Nietzsche takes up the passage from Spir quoted earlier and writes: The essence of definition: the pencil is an elongated, etc., body. A is B. That which is elongated is at the same time colored. Qualities only contain relations. A certain body is simply so and so many relations. Relations can never be the essence, only the effects of the essence. The synthetic judgement describes a thing according to its effects, that is, essence and effect are identified, that is, a metonymy. Therefore, in the essence of a synthetic judgement we have a metonymy, that is, a false equation [Gleichung]. In other words, synthetic inferences are illogical. When we apply them, we presuppose the popular metaphysics, that is, one that sees effects as causes. The concept ‘pencil’ is confused with the ‘thing’ pencil. The ‘is’ in the synthetic judgement is false, it contains a transference [Übertragung], two different spheres are posited next to each other, between them equation [Gleichung] never can happen. We live and think amid nothing but effects of the illogical –​in ignorance and false knowledge. (NL 1872 19[242], KSA 7.495f.)

Engaging directly with a naturalistic model of cognition (the model of unconscious inferences6), Nietzsche makes an argumentative move that seems to point in a direction divergent from the theoretical intentions of Spir. Whereas Spir allocates synthetic judgements to a logical space whose basis is the law of identity, Nietzsche understands these judgements as the result of a semantic (metonymic) transference that corresponds to the confusion or inversion between essence and effect. Identifying this semantic operation as a false equation (Gleichung), Nietzsche concludes that synthetic inferences are illogical, and he does that, as it seems, for two reasons: (a) first because he does not believe that the physiological process of transference (Übertragung: also signifying metaphor) from the nerve stimulation into an image can be described in logical terms, since it occurs in a domain of cognition (from nerve stimulus to image) devoid of abstract signs and whose analogical (metaphorical) associations (Übertragung) do not have a deductive–​inferential or even predicative form, being prior to any logical or conceptual structure; (b) second because the confusion between cause and effect, described by Nietzsche as a metonymy, transgresses the logical and conceptual rules that structure our rational understanding of the world, thus constituting a misapplication of the principle of reason. Now, it is precisely in this way that the young Nietzsche, under the influence of the linguist and philosopher Gustav Gerber (Die Sprache als Kunst)7 understands the principle that operates unconsciously in cognition:  as an illogical (metaphorical or

80

80

William Mattioli

metonymic) transference, which confuses subjective impressions with objective qualities inherent in an object, and then falsely projects this complex of impressions as an object into the external world. Gerber’s influence is clear here. This is exactly the definition the author of Die Sprache als Kunst gives to the figure of metonymy: inversion of cause and effect, by associating this trope with our way of applying the principle of causality, as when we say, for example: ‘this drink is bitter, instead of: the drink arouses in us a sensation of that kind’, or ‘the stone is hard, as if the hardness was anything other than our own judgement’.8 Following this suggestion from Gerber, Nietzsche states in On Truth and Lie (TL): ‘to infer from the nerve stimulus a cause outside us, that is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of reason’. How could we dare to say ‘ “the stone is hard”, as if “hard” were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation!’ (TL, KSA 1.878). It is also in this context that he writes in the note 19[217] from 1872: ‘Our sensory perceptions are based on tropes, not on unconscious inferences’ (NL 1872 19[217], KSA 7.487). As we have seen, the model of unconscious inferences, which aimed to explain the physiological mechanisms that give rise to sensible perception, was in vogue in the second half of the nineteenth century in Germany, where the intellectual environment was characterized by a strong tendency to naturalize the transcendental, drawing on the empirical sciences for its methodological framework. Friedrich Albert Lange and the Kantian physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz were two of the main representatives of this movement. Afrikan Spir, by contrast, was a critic of this model and the trend it represented, since his project of a renewal of critical philosophy relied on the assumption that philosophy should make use of a distinct method of investigation based on a priori analysis of our cognitive functions. The tropological model developed by Nietzsche in the early 1870s under the influence of Gerber, in turn, aims to provide an alternative to the theory of unconscious inferences, but one that does not break with a certain vocabulary that is in large measure naturalistic. According to the hegemonic naturalization thesis, our image of the sensible world originates in a principle operating in sensory organs that is supposedly identical to the principle that governs our logical judgements. The explanation is based on the application of the category of causality to every sensation immediately given, so that we build a sensible picture of the world as phenomenon by referring all sensations to an object and interpreting it as their cause. So, given the assumption of the a priori and universal validity of the principle of causality, the organs responsible for the construction of the phenomenal world supposedly operate according to fixed and invariable laws, so that their operation is

  81



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

81

characterized by necessity and universality. Apparently, this is one of the central aspects of the theory of unconscious inferences against which Nietzsche asserts his tropological model. By claiming that what underlies our sensory perceptions are tropes, not unconscious inferences, he seems to want to emphasize that necessity, universality and logicality are interconnected conceptual characteristics that belong structurally to a level of abstraction, which does not correspond to the contingent dynamics of unconscious processes working in the background of cognition (see Mattioli 2010: 54f.). For the young Nietzsche, that conceptual columbarium is a late product of the formation of metaphors, which are the basis for the emergence of cognition and, as such, should be described as contingent, individual and illogical. Accordingly, Nietzsche understands our ‘inferential’ (projective) operations as illogical operations, or even as fallacies, because they are below the level of formal structure and are neither justified nor justifiable by conceptual rules of a logical nature –​on the contrary, due to their semantically arbitrary character, they violate those rules. That is why in note 19[242], in which Nietzsche takes up Spir’s discussion of synthetic judgements, he claims that we think and live constantly under the influence of the illogical, since we only build the phenomenal world on the basis of processes of metaphorization that carry with them an inevitable semantic arbitrariness. Within this context, the argumentative move made by Nietzsche in this and related notes follows a direction that diverges from Spir’s theoretical assumptions, in that the latter presupposes a formal structure, an a priori concept of Being –​of the ‘self-​identical’ –​in a sphere of cognition that, according to the position of the young Nietzsche, is prior to all logical–​predicative or conceptual form.9 This is the theoretical background that allows him to trace Spir’s explanation of synthetic judgements back to his tropological model. However, despite such fundamental difference between the positions of the two authors, an important point of convergence should be noted. This concerns the more general argument that our knowledge of the phenomenal world is marked by a contradiction or logical inconsistency. While for Nietzsche the falsehood and/​or the fallacious and illogical character of our knowledge are the result of a metonymic transference (Übertragung) in which two distinct spheres are equated –​the sphere of the ‘thing’ and the sphere of the qualities and relations –​so that cause and effect are confused and the thing is defined as the sum of its properties, for Spir, as Michael Green (2002: 62) puts it, synthetic judgement, in which various qualities are attributed to the same object, ‘is in conflict with the logical laws of self-​identity and non-​contradiction’. As we have seen, according to Spir, every empirical object, as a synthetic unity of a multiplicity

82

82

William Mattioli

of qualities, is the product of the application of our concept of substance to the complex of sensations, whereby the different sensations corresponding to qualities are attributed to a substrate. Our concept of substance, in turn, coincides with the concept of the Unconditioned, which is the most immediate expression of the epistemic norm governing our thinking: the principle of identity. But the Unconditioned, as such, cannot contain multiplicities, since multiplicity implies relation (the relation between the multiple qualities), and relation implies conditionality. Nietzsche seems to refer to this argument when he claims that qualities only contain relations and that relations can never be the essence, concluding that the ‘is’ in the synthetic judgement is false and/​or illogical, since it defines the ‘thing’ according to its properties, equating two distinct spheres between which there can never be an equation (NL 1872 19[242], KSA 7.496). Returning to Spir’s (1877 I: 190) argument, we can say that our knowledge of the empirical world, insofar as it is necessarily a product of synthetic judgements, is logically inconsistent, since it presupposes the application of the concept of Unconditioned (of the absolutely self-​identical) to the multiplicity of experience, in which it can never be fully instantiated: ‘If we conceive of an unconditioned object A, whose essence consists of two qualities a and b, then A is just as much a as b . . . But because a and b are different from one another, so it would follow that the object A, insofar as it is the quality a, is different from itself, insofar as it is the quality b’.10 Thus, the Unconditioned presupposed by the norm of thinking, the principle of identity in its purest form, must refer to an absolutely simple unity that could only be instantiated by an entity such as the Being of Parmenides. For Spir, such a Being actually exists. According to him, the disagreement between the concept of Unconditioned on the one hand, as expressed by the logical laws of identity and noncontradiction, and the empirical nature of bodies on the other, necessarily points to a side of reality beyond the sensible world in which this concept would be instantiated: this is what he identifies with the Kantian thing in itself, the very essence of things. Spir’s procedure can be seen as a sort of ‘inversion’ of the basic assumption of both the Kantian Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic, according to which pure concepts can only be legitimately applied to objects of experience, that is, to phenomena, never to the thing in itself. It is precisely through this limitation of the use of a priori concepts that Kant seeks to resolve the antinomies of reason. For Spir, on the contrary, the only legitimate application of the a priori concept of our thinking –​the concept of substance or the Unconditioned  –​is its application to the thing in itself, for when applied to the plurality and transitoriness of empirical objects it implies

  83



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

83

a logical contradiction with them (Riccardi 2009: 71f.). Spir (1877) hereby sustains a kind of Parmenidean ontology by identifying the thing in itself with the instantiation of our concept of Being. The a priori element of thinking, the logical principle of identity, has thus an ontological extension, so that the concept of the Unconditioned provides us with the only adequate representation of the essence of reality: ‘there can be no other legitimate order of thinking than that which enables and leads us to the correct knowledge of reality’ (I: 165).11

3.  Nietzsche’s Parmenides in the light of Spir’s ontology The proximity between the theoretical assumptions and consequences of Spir’s transcendental philosophy (as well as of Kant’s philosophy in some of its key aspects) on the one hand and Parmenides’ thought on the other did not go unnoticed by Nietzsche. That is why the discussions and arguments of the reformer of critical philosophy are taken as background for the presentation of Parmenides’ theses within the more or less implicit dialogue established by the young Nietzsche between the pre-​Socratics and his contemporaries. As suggested by Paolo D’Iorio (1993: 262f.), the first point of approximation between the two philosophers is the yearning for certainty. In the case of Parmenides, the search for certainty is alleged by Nietzsche to have led to a realm of logical abstractions entirely foreign to the Greek spirit (PTG 11, KSA 1.844f.). This is also a key theme in Spir (1877 I: 28–​30), who believes that every philosophy must take as its point of departure immediate certainties of a factual nature (that which is immediately given to consciousness as the immanent content of representation) and of a rational nature (that which is universally certain with respect to the general principles of knowledge). In Nietzsche’s interpretation, the ontology and criticism of our cognitive apparatus put forward by Parmenides are based on the same kind of ‘rational certainty’ vindicated by Spir, which concerns the general logical principles of knowledge. For Spir, the principle that satisfies the conditions for this rational certainty is the logical principle of identity (I: 30). With this in mind, Nietzsche writes about Parmenides: ‘the only single form of knowledge which we trust immediately and absolutely and whose denial amounts to insanity is the tautology A = A’ (PTG 10, KSA 1.841). Based on that logical certainty and truth, Parmenides came to the conclusion that only Being as pure identity, that is, that which can be expressed by a tautological proposition of the type A = A, really exists: Being is! Once we are forced to assign qualities to Being and to say something like ‘A = B (which is to say A = not A)’, we are in error. It is possible to recognize here Spir’s reflections

84

84

William Mattioli

on synthetic judgements discussed earlier and his conception of the illogical nature of our empirical knowledge. The diversity and the change of qualities comprise differences, that is, a denial of identity. That to which one can assign change and diversity, the whole sensible world, therefore, belongs to the realm of non-​Being, according to Nietzsche’s Parmenides: ‘Everything of which you can say “it has been” or “it will be” is not; of Being, however, you can never say “it is not” ’ (PTG 10, KSA 1.843). For Nietzsche, with that thought Parmenides made the first and most important criticism of our cognitive apparatus, thus splitting the domain of sensitivity (of temporality, change and diversity) and the domain of logical abstractions (of the logical principle of identity, the one eternal and timeless Being), a fission that would find its more precise formulation in Kant’s distinction between sensibility and pure understanding. The consequence of this ‘fatal criticism’ is the following: All sense perceptions, says Parmenides, yield but illusions [Täuschungen]. And their main illusoriness [Haupttäuschung] lies in their pretense that also non-​ Being is, that Becoming, too, has Being. All the manifold colourful world known to experience, all the transformations of its qualities, all the orderliness of its ups and downs, are cast aside mercilessly as mere appearance and illusion [Schein und Wahn]. (PTG 10, KSA 1.843f.)

Thus, Nietzsche sees in the philosophy of Parmenides the prelude to a radical epistemological critique and the birth of ontology. Since experience does not show us any entity that corresponds to our normative concept of Being, Parmenides has deduced that this concept, by being present in our thinking, must necessarily be capable of instantiation in an ontological dimension that lies beyond experience. Accordingly, the logical content of thought and its truth value have no reference to experience, but come from elsewhere, namely, from a supersensible world to which we are supposed to have a direct access by means of pure thinking (PTG 11, KSA 1.845). Here, the argument Nietzsche attributes to Parmenides is analogous to Spir’s argument that the disagreement between our concept of the Unconditioned and the empirical nature of the bodies necessarily points to a side of reality beyond the sensible world in which this concept would be instantiated.

4.  Nietzsche, Spir and the reality of time In the paragraphs that follow, Nietzsche mobilizes an important argument against the Parmenidean thesis of the identity between thinking and Being

  85



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

85

supposedly capable of assuring us of the existence of an essential and unconditioned ontological dimension beyond the sensible world. It is the argument (attributed by Nietzsche especially to Anaxagoras) concerning the mobility and temporal nature of thinking itself. If Being must be understood as an unconditioned, unchanging and timeless unity, then thinking, in order to be identical to that unity and to be able to truly grasp it, should have such characteristics. However, ‘it is quite impossible to designate thinking as a rigid persistence, as an eternally unmoved thinking-​in-​and-​on-​itself on the part of a unity’ (PTG 13, KSA 1.850). Thinking is always a movement of concepts and a succession of representations that occurs unavoidably in time. This is what the opponents of Parmenides could object against him, using an ad hominem argument and stating that in his own thinking there is succession and movement, which is why this thinking could not be real and therefore could prove nothing about the real. Using an argument that draws on some of the broad references to Kant’s transcendental philosophy featuring in his lectures on the Pre-​Platonic philosophers (KGW II/​4: 300f.), Nietzsche appeals to the Kantian thesis of the transcendental ideality of time and of the phenomenalism of inner experience to propose a solution to this philosophical perplexity into which the adversaries of Parmenides would have thrown him. To that objection Parmenides could answer, like Kant, as follows: ‘I can indeed say that my representations follow one another; but all that means is that I am conscious of them in terms of the succession in time, i.e., according to the form of inner sense. But this does not make time something in itself, nor a determination objectively inherent in things’ (PTG 15, KSA 1.857). This Kantian argument targets those who believe they have a privileged epistemic access to inner experience, to the inner facts and processes of our representational consciousness. The proponents of this internalist thesis would argue that, as much as we can and must be sceptical concerning external objects, nothing authorizes us to doubt the immanent content or the change of our own representations, which attests to the reality of time, since these representations occur necessarily in time. Kant claims that time does indeed have an empirical reality, in which all the changes we experience take place. However, we cannot avail ourselves of this argument to prove an alleged transcendental or absolute reality of time (see Small 2010: 21). The fact that the consciousness I have of my own representations disposes them in a temporal succession does not imply that time is a determination objectively inherent in things. Nietzsche observes in this respect that, according to the Kantian argument, it would be necessary to ‘distinguish between pure thinking, which would be timeless like the one Being of Parmenides, and the consciousness of this thinking, and the latter would already

86

86

William Mattioli

translate the thinking into the form of appearance, i.e., of succession, plurality and motion’ (PTG 15, KSA 1.857). What we have here is precisely the Kantian argument for the phenomenalism of inner experience. Against those who argue in favour of the thesis that we have a privileged access to the representations of inner sense, Kant asserts that inner experience, that is, the consciousness we have of ourselves in the flow of our representations, provides us only with a phenomenon of the same sort as those of the external world, which means that the content accessed by inner sense does not correspond to any reality that reaches beyond merely phenomenal reality. The central argument mobilized by Kant in this context is that of self-​affection, a notion that goes hand in hand with the thesis of the transcendental ideality of time (KrV B68–​9, B153–​4). Once the consciousness we have of ourselves and of our own representations emerges in the form of inner sense (time), it can give us nothing but a phenomenal subject, since the subject in its proper transcendental aspect must be located in a timeless dimension which is not conditioned by the forms of sensibility.12 In this sense, Parmenides could appeal to the Kantian thesis and say that the succession of our representations in consciousness is just a phenomenon, which does not correspond to the true nature of thinking, of the pure and self-​identical thinking located in a timeless dimension, like Being itself. In a second moment of his argument, Nietzsche then makes use of a decisive passage from Spir against the Kantian thesis. Taking up the core of the argument mentioned earlier, that the changes in our representations are real, Spir’s text develops this idea in a very sophisticated manner by making use of a phenomenology of representation inspired by Descartes: It is probable that this would have been Parmenides’ way out, although the counter-​argument would then be the same as A. Spir’s argument against Kant (in Denken und Wirklichkeit. 2nd ed. Vol. I, pp. 209f): Now in the first place it is clear that I can know nothing of succession as such if I do not hold its successive stages simultaneously in my consciousness. The representation of a succession, in other words, is not in itself successive; consequently it is completely different from the succession of representations. In the second place, Kant’s hypothesis implies such self-​evident absurdities that one can only wonder how he could have left them out of account. Caesar and Socrates, according to his hypothesis, are not really dead. They are just as alive as they were two thousand years ago and only appear to be dead due to an arrangement of my ‘inner sense’. Men as yet unborn are already alive, and if they have not yet appeared on the scene, this too is the fault of the arrangement of this

  87



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

87

inner sense. The main question is this: how can the beginning and the end of conscious life itself, together with all its inner and outer senses, exist only in the interpretation of the inner sense? The actual fact is that one absolutely cannot deny the reality of change. If you throw it out of the window it will slip back in through the keyhole. One can say ‘it merely appears to me that states and representations change’ –​but this appearance itself is something objectively given. Within it, succession indubitably has objective reality; within it something actually follows upon something else. –​Besides, it is necessary to note that the entire critique of reason can have its foundation and justification only in the presupposition that our representations appear to us as they are. For if they appeared to us as other than they really are, one could not make any valid assertions about them, hence produce no epistemology and no ‘transcendental’ examination of objective validity. And it is beyond all doubt that our representations appear to us as successive. (PTG 15, KSA 1.857f.)

If we abstract from some marginal details, the ad hominem argument and some rhetorical excesses in the text, we can say that the main philosophical argument in this passage is the following: if I say that my states of consciousness and my representations appear to me as successive and changing, then I am forced to accept that this appearance itself has an objective reality as a state of consciousness  –​reality from which we cannot dissociate temporality without radically contradicting the most basic phenomenological evidence of the representational process. In this sense, the structure of the argument in question is similar to the structure of the Cartesian cogito, and Spir’s incisive appeal to the factual content of representation as immediate certainties of consciousness, by analogy with Descartes’ philosophical method, is a proof of this similarity. Here there is an appeal to the radical phenomenality of representational consciousness, which is taken to its limits, and an appeal to the evidence of its constitutive form. Now, although Nietzsche (especially in his period of maturity) is usually deeply sceptical about the philosophical appeal to immediate certainties and facts of consciousness –​resulting in his incisive critique of both the Cartesian cogito (which resorts to the immediacy of thinking), as well as Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the will (which resorts to the immediacy of willing) –​this ‘minimal form’ of phenomenological argument in favour of the objective reality of time seems not to offend his cognitive prudence. It says nothing about a subject supposedly underlying the changes and offers the possibility of an ‘eliminative interpretation’ (Small 2010: 20) in favour of a thesis with which Nietzsche seems to agree very early on in his philosophical trajectory. What is considered in this argument is not the cogito as Nietzsche will understand it later, that is, the content of an act

88

88

William Mattioli

of consciousness understood as a thinking substance, but the form of cogitatio, namely, its temporal form as the immanent structure of every possible representation. According to this argument, the temporal modus of representations, the stream of consciousness, implies the objective reality of time. Thus, one finds here a phenomenological observation that time belongs to the essence of every cogitatio, a time that is constitutive of cogitatio itself and cannot be dissociated from it. Accordingly, temporality is not an accidental attribute of thinking and representation, which would be added to them insofar as they become phenomena for consciousness, but rather it is one of their most essential determinations. The successive appearing of immanent sensible data in the activity of representation, its constant change, is phenomenologically indubitable. Therefore, insofar as the succession and change of representations have objective reality, insofar as in the appearing of representations itself one thing really follows upon the other, we are not allowed to deny the reality of time.13 Kant’s thesis concerning the transcendental ideality of time would hereby be refuted. A deeper analysis of the argument shows the following: the first point of Spir’s critique cited by Nietzsche in the passage earlier –​namely, that we can know nothing of succession as such if we do not hold its successive stages simultaneously in our consciousness, and therefore, that the representation of a succession is not itself successive and is consequently completely different from the succession of representations  –​opposes Kant’s assertion that ‘the succession of representations is in no way different from our representation of succession’ (Spir 1873 I: 264). So, for Spir, the succession of representations cannot be identified with the representation of their succession. On the contrary, the representation of a succession is only possible once a succession of representations is given earlier in an objective manner, the reality of which one must affirm in the first place in order to be able to get an ulterior representation of the process, which means: if one does not affirm the existence of succession, that is, the existence of a real movement of one’s thinking, no representation of succession is possible. Furthermore, Spir claims that, in his fundamental distinction between thing in itself and phenomenon (representation), Kant has not made clear what he meant by phenomenon and what kind of reality he concedes to the world of phenomena. This is alleged to be his basic mistake, which led him to his false conception of the unreality of time. ‘He defined the phenomena everywhere as mere representations, but he did not distinguish these two completely heterogeneous things: “to be a representation” and “to be merely represented” or “to exist only in representation”. He did not distinguish the representation itself, as an objective process or object, from what is reproduced or represented in it’ (Spir

  89



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

89

1873 I: 266), This is a key point in Spir’s argument: to the extent that the existence of the representation itself, not of that which is represented in it, cannot be denied, we cannot deny the existence of an objective temporal succession either, for representations occur necessarily in time. That is to say: the temporality of the process of representation as an objective process cannot be ruled out. But Spir, moved perhaps by a certain ‘philosophical piety’ or simply by the principle of interpretive charity, acknowledges Kant’s reasons on two points regarding the thesis of the transcendental ideality of time: 1. The first is that Kant was right to say that ‘time in itself ’ is not something real, because it would be a mere abstraction of the successions that are actually given and it could not be represented without them. A ‘time in itself ’, in the sense of an empty time in which no change takes place, is a mere abstraction and thus unreal (Spir 1873 I: 265). This argument, which is found shortly after the passage taken by the young Nietzsche from the first volume of Spir’s work, anticipates a second critique by Spir directed against the Kantian understanding of time, which can be found in the second volume and concerns not the thesis of transcendental ideality, but the thesis of the a priori status of time. Nietzsche refers to this critique in the notes 35[56] and 35[61] from 1885, in which he quotes Spir: ‘time is not given a priori –​Spir 2, p. 7’ (NL 1885 35[56], KSA 11.537) and further: ‘so-​called time, a mere abstraction, neither objectively existing, nor a necessary and primal mode of representation of the subject” 2. p. 15’ (NL 1885 35[61], KSA 11.538). If not contextualized, these notes can lead to false interpretations of Nietzsche’s position on the issue. The inattentive reader can be misled by the impression that Nietzsche, here, uses a quotation from Spir to support the idea that time, in being a mere abstraction and existing neither objectively nor as a form of our cognitive faculty, has no reality that reaches beyond the realm of empirical consciousness. Hence, it would be not exactly a form of representation, but rather a product of it. However, this is a serious misreading.14 As mentioned, Nietzsche here refers to Spir’s criticism of the Kantian thesis of the a priori character of time. Spir admits that, if understood as empty time (and this is just the consequence of the Transcendental Aesthetic, which understands time as pure a priori form of phenomena), time cannot be real. What Nietzsche calls ‘time’, quoting Spir in the aforementioned note 35[61], is therefore not the time that is given to us in the experience of succession and change, but time as an abstract concept, as pure form, which is referred to by the expression ‘so-​called time’.

90

90

William Mattioli

This so-​called time is, in this context, the time of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics, from which one has detached all content, that is, all succession and all possible change. It is empty time. However, such an empty time, in which there is no succession or change, exists neither for Nietzsche nor for Spir. The crux of Spir’s argument can be summarized as follows:  Kant says that time is a necessary representation that underlies all intuition. Therefore, we could extract all phenomena given in intuition, and time would remain as a pure a priori form. We could abstract from all succession and all change in time, but the time itself could never be suppressed (KrV A31/​B46).15 According to Spir (1877), Kant’s error consists first in his attempt to establish a strict parallelism between the intuitions of time and space. For the reformer of critical philosophy, it is true that spatial things are given to us only through the form of outer sense, or to put it in another way: the representation of things in space is constituted by us. But this is by no means the case with respect to temporal successions. These are actually and immediately given to us and their objective reality cannot be denied, while the existence of things in space always remains doubtful (II: 5). Second, unlike space, time is not a general form of representation or even a general representation, from which one could abstract the content that is given in it. This seems to be the central point of the argument, to which we have referred earlier. According to Spir, we can indeed represent an empty space, but an empty time is, for him, something inconceivable: ‘An empty time, i.e., a time in which nothing happens, in which no event and no succession take place, cannot be represented.’ Such an empty time is unrepresentable because time is nothing but the succession of changes by means of which it can be measured: ‘Besides the successions, nothing can be conceived that could serve as a measure of time. For this reason, the time disappears completely if we abstract from the actual successions’ (II: 7f.). The passage quoted by Nietzsche in note 35[61] from 1885 refers to the conclusion of this argument, where Spir states that ‘so-​called time is a mere abstraction and cannot be seen either as something objectively existing or as a necessary and primal mode of representation in the subject’ (II: 15). 2. The second point on which Spir believes that the Kantian thesis of the unreality of time comes from a legitimate intuition concerns the fact that the concept we have of the unconditioned essence of the world does not admit the possibility of change and therefore does not admit the objective reality of time. (It is in this sense that, for Nietzsche, transcendental philosophy,

  91



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

91

asserting the purely phenomenal and in a sense ‘illusory’16 character of the world of experience, is a modern and renovated version of the Eleatic theses.) For Spir (1873), time cannot belong to the thing in itself, because the thing in itself, according to the concept we have of it (derived from the principle of identity), cannot be subject to change. What is allegedly missing in Kant’s analysis is the theoretical subtlety in drawing the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself. By assuming only two types of ‘objects’, corresponding to two different ontological levels –​the things in themselves on the one hand, which exist independently of representation, and the phenomenal things on the other, which exist in representation and therefore have no objective reality –​Kant has ignored a third ontological type or level: it is the representation itself which has an actual and objective existence, but is not a thing in itself. On this ontological level, to which also the knowing subject belongs, temporality has an objective existence and the reality of change cannot be denied (I: 266).

5.  The origin of representation from the becoming Although Nietzsche accepts Spir’s thesis of the reality of time and change, he rejects the assumption of a higher ontological level that would correspond to Parmenidean Being or the Kantian thing in itself and in which our concept of the Unconditioned could be objectively instantiated. Rather, he understands this concept as a necessary regulative fiction that responds to the vital interests of certain organic complexes aiming at the establishment and development of what we might call intentional operations and dispositions, which will enable the development of their cognitive–​adaptive capacities. Therefore, he has an ontological commitment concerning the temporal and changing character of immanent reality, which Spir refers to the intermediate ontological level of representational processes. In a series of Nachlass notes from 1881,17 in direct confrontation with Spir, Nietzsche seeks to understand the processes related to the intentional dimension of representation as something absolutely certain and essential in the universe. These notes appear to be sketches of what will be configured later as the hypothesis of will to power as processes of interpretation. In this series of notes, Nietzsche grants the status of a fundamental certainty (by analogy with the Cartesian cogito) to the (phenomenologically verifiable) fact that there are

92

92

William Mattioli

representations, and the representational capacity is seen as a primitive characteristic of Being itself. Hence, becoming and temporality, which are essential attributes of the operations related to representation, are considered as essential characteristics of Being in its global dimension, while permanence and identity are seen as fictions that are necessary for the representation to produce a cognitively determinable and therefore assimilable content. Without this fiction something like thinking could never arise: ‘thinking would be impossible if it did not fundamentally misconceive the essence of esse: it needs to affirm substance and the identical, for a knowledge of what is absolutely in flux is impossible’ (NL 1881 11[330], KSA 9.570).18 In this sense, according to Nietzsche, it is necessary that organic complexes create discontinuities in the continuous flow of events, so that they can perceive objects, substances, causal relationships; it is necessary that they be able to recognize the same over and against the non-​ identical, to abstract from singularity, plurality and change in order to identify phenomena and to adapt to the world, thus making possible their survival and evolution. This is allegedly an exigency for the conservation of life that could only take place with the emergence of a cognitive principle in an early phase of the development of organic complexes, a cognitive principle that acts in a regulative way, fixing as identity what is constantly changing, thus enabling the perception of the world as a world of stable ‘ideal’ objects. This thesis, which appears modestly in the published works and in more reckless statements in the posthumous notes, is developed more clearly mainly from the middle period on. It is in Human, All Too Human, with the programme of a historical philosophy allied to the empirical sciences, that Nietzsche for the first time clearly articulates his theory of becoming with his critique of transcendental philosophy, which culminates in an error theory according to which our concept of substance systematically falsifies the reality of becoming. His critique is targeted mainly at the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer, as well as at the programme of renewal of critical philosophy pursued by Spir. Especially the aphorisms 2 (‘Family failing of philosophers’), 16 (‘Phenomenon and thing in itself’) and 18 (‘Fundamental questions of metaphysics’) make clear Nietzsche’s intention of transforming transcendental concepts into historical, conditioning factors linked to the evolution of organic beings in general, of the human species in particular, and of its social and cultural institutions. But the central point regarding the criticism of Spir and his concept of the Unconditioned can be found in aphorism 18. This aphorism seeks to reinterpret the principle of identity, which in Spir assumes the role of an original law of the knowing subject (in a transcendental sense), as an organic function:

  93



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

93

When one day the history of the genesis of thought comes to be written, the following sentence by a distinguished logician will also stand revealed in a new light: ‘The primary universal law of the knowing subject consists in the inner necessity of recognizing every object in itself as being in its own essence something identical to itself, thus self-​existent and at bottom always the same and unchanging, in short as a substance’. This law, too, which is here called ‘primary’, has evolved: one day it will be shown how gradually, in the lower organisms, this tendency comes into being. (HH 18, KSA 2.38f.)

Seen as an atavistic inheritance of the primitive stages of evolution of organisms, and confronted with the thesis of universal becoming, the subjective necessity to identify empirical objects as discrete and self-​identical entities (which Nietzsche promptly recognizes as cognitively imperative) loses its objective validity, giving rise to a general fictionalism. In this theoretical scenario, the role of philosophy can no longer be defined in justificatory terms, in the sense that it is to establish the universal conditions for the truth and validity of our judgements. Neither can it continue to claim for itself the epistemic authority to legitimize any kind of a priori or metaphysical knowledge. Rather, its task must now include a programme of ‘deconstruction’ regarding the normative force of metaphysical beliefs through a genealogical investigation of its origin, its meaning and its vital function. By trying to show, with the aid of the empirical sciences, ‘that every concept of the Unconditioned corresponds to a regulative fiction that originated in primitive organic forms and was transmitted through the mechanisms of heredity’ (Lopes 2008: 280) Nietzsche’s historical philosophy is committed to a certain naturalism that denies the kind of robust transcendentalism Spir wanted to restore.

6.  The temporality of representation and the intentionality of drives Space does not permit a more detailed analysis of the general context of Human, All Too Human and its confrontation with transcendental philosophy, especially with Spir.19 Nevertheless, some remarks about Michel Steven Green’s noncognitivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s epistemology need to be made.20 Perhaps the most fundamental problem Green sees in taking Nietzsche’s error theory literally (in the sense that we falsify the world by means of conceptualization) is the problem of justification or, in other words, the problem of self-​reference. As a matter

94

94

William Mattioli

of fact, ‘one must know (and so have true beliefs concerning) a good deal about the world and ourselves to even begin to argue about our cognitive inadequacies’ (Green 2002: 20). For Green, this would per se undermine the alleged universality of the error theory and involve it in a series of paradoxes. This is one of the main reasons that leads him to consider Nietzsche’s claims about becoming as referring to our cognitive relation to the world and not to the world itself (51f.). I believe, however, that Nietzsche’s error theory is ontologically motivated, that is, that he claims to have at least one true insight into the world: that the world is flux. This knowledge is justified by a phenomenological argument concerning the reality of time, inspired by Descartes and borrowed initially from Spir. We have had occasion to discuss the first occurrence of this argument in Section 4 of this chapter, and I shall deal briefly with its second occurrence now. This phenomenological argument is complemented by a series of scientific hypotheses derived from the most recent results of the empirical science of the time, especially from biology and physics (Karl Ernst von Baer, Wilhelm Roux and Roger Boscovich are some of the names that inspired Nietzsche). This means that Nietzsche’s programme of historical philosophy is founded on a kind of moderate scientific realism. But this does not mean that Nietzsche considers the sciences to be able to offer us a real image or description of what the world is like, for they cannot detach themselves from our primitive habits of thinking. They can, however, approximate the truth by building increasingly dynamic explanatory models and by confronting the internal paradoxes of their own theories. In aphorism 16 from Human, All Too Human he says that science can, quite gradually and step by step, illuminate the history of the genesis of the world as representation and, ‘for brief periods at any rate, lift us up out of the entire process’ (HH 16, KSA 2.38). So it can provide us with an insight into the absolute character of becoming. The role of science in Nietzsche’s thinking is therefore ambiguous: ‘The establishment of conclusions in science always unavoidably involves us calculating with false magnitudes’, but that does not mean that science cannot provide us in some measure with an epistemically (and even ontologically) legitimate knowledge, even if this knowledge is acquired in a negative way, by means of the paradox: ‘[U]‌p to the final stage at which our erroneous basic assumptions, those constant errors, come to be incompatible with our conclusions, for example in the theory of atoms’ (HH 19, KSA 2.40f.). Nietzsche is here referring above all to the development of atomism that culminates in the theory of Boscovich, who understands the atom as an unextended point. Now, if the final scientific finding is that what was considered to be the fundament of matter must be regarded as something unextended, that is, immaterial, we come

  95



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

95

then to a valuable insight concerning the validity and the limits of our concepts, but at the same time and to some extent to a sort of ‘negative’ knowledge about the world: there is nothing in the world that corresponds to the immutability of the atom (it is worth remembering that Nietzsche sees the atom as the result of a pluralistic version of Parmenides’ ontology of Being). In this sense, the results of scientific findings point to a confirmation of the thesis of becoming, to the absence of anything absolutely permanent in the world. Thus, Nietzsche is committed to an ontology of becoming derived from his abandonment of the Kantian thesis of the transcendental ideality of time, justified by phenomenological observation and supported by empirical evidence provided by the latest results of the natural sciences. Now, the phenomenological angle is found (besides its first occurrence in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks) in a series of notes from 1881 (to which we referred earlier) that deal with the problem of representation. In note 11[330] we find the following argument: the existence of representation is a fact; representation has, as representation, an objective reality: ‘I represent, therefore there is a Being’; the only being we know is the representing Being; representation belongs to the constitution of Being itself; representation occurs in time and its essential characteristic is its becoming; so, the only Being that is assured to us is changing; but the act of representation asserts permanence, that is, the contrary of Being (NL 1881 11[330], KSA 9.569f.). Again, the fact that Nietzsche attributes the representational capacity to Being has to do with his thesis that the processes in the world of becoming should be understood as processes marked by a kind of intentionality, as processes of interpretation that must falsify the essential character of becoming. It is important to draw attention to this point because it is fundamentally associated with the Nietzschean hypothesis of wills to power and with his theory of affects. The thesis according to which the dynamics of the wills to power is marked by a kind of intentionality implies the existence of a cognitive aspect in the unconscious dimension of affects. One of Green’s main arguments in favour of his noncognitivist interpretation concerns the fact that Nietzsche traces all thinking and conceptualization back to the dynamics of drives. The entire chain of mental events that seem connected according to logical relations is actually determined by the relationships between the affects, which, according to Green (2002: 120f.), undermines the idea that our thoughts have content at all. This is what he associates with the psychological sense of the noncognitivist thesis. For him, if what takes us from one thought to another is only our affects, there is nothing here that could be in error, and, therefore, thoughts do not have truth values, once drives are not cognitively constrained. But the fact that what

96

96

William Mattioli

determines our thoughts are the relations between our affects does not mean that our thoughts are devoid of content and, therefore, that we do not think at all. If the dynamic of affects is determined by representational processes, then it is not only the thoughts that are guided by the affects, but the affects are also pervaded by cognition21 (unconscious representations).22 One of the main objections Nietzsche directs against Schopenhauer (already to be found in his first attempt at a criticism of the Schopenhauerian metaphysics of will from 186823), concerns the radical dissociation of will from representation in Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Nietzsche intends to restore to the will its cognitive counterpart,24 which is what motivates him to describe the volitional, affective and instinctual dimension of life forms using an intentional, agential and political vocabulary (see Lopes 2012). This aspect of his theory may also give us an answer to the question (also posed by Green (2002:  69)):  ‘[H]‌ow thought [which implies the concept of Being, W.M.] is possible at all in the world of becoming?’ What we can infer from Nietzsche’s hypothesis of wills to power is that the origin of the concept of Being within the world of becoming can only be explained on the basis of conflictual relations between the various wills (drive complexes) via a representational medium. Once an affect or drive establishes a relationship with another affect or drive, once it wants to overcome, master, incorporate or ally with the other affect, the active drive must be able to fix and individuate the target-​affect in some way, and this is only possible through a sort of intentional process, so that the affect can be taken as a target that offers resistance and must be overcome.25 In this sense, the intentional process of determining a target for domination, expansion or formation of alliances of power is concomitant with the emergence of representation: the directivity of the force corresponds ultimately to its representational character. It is a constant process of interpretation, of fixing (Fest-​stellen) within the world of becoming.26 Accordingly, the process of the falsification of becoming is immanent to the dynamics of the drives, since they need to fix becoming and individuate possible targets. So even though our thoughts are determined by the affects, it does not mean that they do not have any content or truth-​value, since the affects themselves have a representational content whose internal logic necessarily involves a falsification of becoming. I believe that Green does not pay adequate attention either to this particular aspect of Nietzsche’s psychology and ontology of affects or to his temporal realism,27 which leads him to an interpretation of Nietzsche’s error theory that does not seem to do justice either to his radical epistemological critique (which is ontologically motivated) or to the cognitive aspect of his theory of will to power.

  97



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

97

Notes 1 This chapter is based on a paper presented at the I International Congress Nietzsche and the Philosophical Tradition: Nietzsche and the Kantian Tradition, which took place at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto (Brazil) in October 2012 together with the IV International Workshop Nietzsche & Kant. I would like to thank Michael Steven Green and Mattia Riccardi for the fruitful discussions during the congress. I would also like to thank Herman Siemens and Marco Brusotti for the comments and suggestions on the English version of the paper. 2 See, for instance, Lange (1866: 279–​83; Lopes 2011: 313–​18). For a more detailed analysis of the context in question, see Köhnke (1986: especially chapters III and IV); and Gregory (1977: chapter VII). 3 See Spir (1877 I: 247f.). 4 Even though the programme of historical philosophy allied to the empirical sciences and its epistemological counterpart articulated around the so-​called error theory are made ​​public only with the release of Human, All Too Human in 1878, the fundamental philosophical position underlying this programme, which has its inspiration in the Heraclitean intuition of becoming and is supported by the results of the empirical sciences of the time, is already present in the first Nietzschean analysis of the pre-​Socratic philosophers, presented both in his lectures on the Pre-​ Platonic philosophers (VPP) and in the unpublished text on the philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks (PTG). 5 Spir, Forschug nach der Gewissheit, p. 13, apud Green (2002: 62). 6 For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Orsucci (1994), Reuter (2004: 370), Mattioli (2010: 45 and 51–​6). 7 See Meijers (1988), Meijers and Stingelin (1988). 8 Gustav Gerber, Die Sprache als Kunst. Erster Band. Bromberg 1871: 394, apud Meijers and Stingelin (1988: 357). 9 See, for instance, TL, KSA 1.881f.; note NL 1872 19[78], KSA 7.445. See also the passage concerning the origins of our concept of Being in PTG, KSA 1.847. 10 Translation by Green (2002: 63). Green makes use of this Spirean argument in order to explain Nietzsche’s error theory as a whole. For him, Nietzsche’s claims about becoming (which concern not only the temporal flow of things, but also the plurality of their qualities and relations) do not refer to what the world is like, but merely to our cognitive relation to the world. Once all empirical knowledge is contradictory due to its synthesis of being and becoming (conditioned and unconditioned), we are unable to make objectively valid judgements, and this would be Nietzsche’s (and Spir’s) reason to say that we falsify reality by means of conceptualization. Green’s conclusion amounts to what he calls the noncognitivist

98

98

William Mattioli thesis, according to which, after all, there is nothing we can call cognition and, therefore, nothing that would falsify the ‘world’. This approach to Nietzsche’s error theory offers a very sophisticated interpretation of it, but I see some problems in it. First, I think that there is a significant difference (not considered by Green) between Nietzsche’s first reflections about truth and knowledge in his early notes dealing with the notions of metaphor and metonymy, on the one hand, and his later error theory, on the other. This difference has to do both with a change in Nietzsche’s understanding of what kind of processes lie at the basis of our cognitive functions and with a radicalization of his conception of becoming. As we have seen, the young Nietzsche, unlike Spir, does not believe that we have something like an a priori concept of Being syntactically active prior to the semantic relations that shape our experience of the external world. According to him, these semantic relations are the basis of all cognitive processes, whereas the concept of Being and the syntactic framework that is proper to it are derived. This changes in the works of the middle and later periods, in which Nietzsche develops a syntactic theory of cognition which is closer to Spir’s conception (on this point, see Anderson (2002: 100f.), Mattioli (2012)). Parallel to the development of this syntactic conception of cognition, a more realistic theory of becoming emerges, arising from his abandonment of the Kantian thesis of the transcendental ideality of time. The combination of these two theoretical moves is what gives his error theory its final shape, according to which we are always obliged to employ the concept of Being to the absolute and universal becoming of the world, thus falsifying its very essence. Green argues insistently that the becoming Nietzsche refers to is the becoming of the world we experience through our cognitive apparatus. But it is clear in almost all the passages in which Nietzsche talks about becoming that he considers the world of experience as a world of ideal stable objects, so this phenomenological world of multiple qualities inherent in fixed external objects can never be the chaos Nietzsche wants us to envision when he refers to the ‘absolute becoming’ that cannot be perceived or incorporated (I try to deal more closely with this problem in Mattioli (2011)). Furthermore, Green argues that the conclusion of Nietzsche’s error theory (that all knowledge we have of the world is necessarily false) is the same conclusion to which Spir is led by his own conception. But Spir’s (1877) understanding of that ‘fundamental antinomy’ does not lead him to the rejection of all empirical knowledge as false. On the contrary, for him, empirical knowledge, despite its logical inconsistency, is ‘true and legitimate’ (I: 144). Green’s argument also assumes that, for Spir (as it is alleged to be for Nietzsche), sensations are fundamentally chaotic. But Spir does not say that our sensations are chaotic in the sense presupposed by Green. On the contrary, they must be by nature arranged in a way that enables them to be apprehended as external objects. So, the content of the sensations is determined

  99



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

99

by rules that make it possible for them to be articulated in perception. Arguments against these two assumptions of Green’s interpretation can be found in the following passages by Spir: 1877 I: 142–​7; 1877 II: 53, 66f., 74f., 81, 92, 99. At the end of this chapter I will come back to this point and raise what I consider to be some other problems of the noncognitivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s position proposed by Green. 11 Compare the following passage: ‚Ausserdem ist es klar, dass der Satz der Identität eine allgemeine Affirmation über die Natur wirklicher Gegenstände aussagt; also kann er auch nichts Anderes sein, als der Ausdruck eines allgemeinen Begriffs von dem Wesen der Objecte oder der Wirklichkeit. Ist diese nicht die empirische Wirklichkeit, so ist sie folglich eine andere. Und erweist es sich, dass der Begriff des Mitsichidentischen derselbe ist wie der Begriff des Unbedingten, des Selbstexistierenden, so bezieht sich also der Satz der Identität auf das Unbedingte, das Noumenon, das Ding an sich oder das transcendentale Object, welches unserer Erfahrung zu Grunde liegt‘ (Spir 1873 I: 198). 12 For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Mattioli (2011: 241 (note 13) and 242–​8). 13 The same argument will occur again later in Nietzsche’s work, initially in the context of the notes from 1881 that present an alternative version of the cogito in favour of the reality of change and the global nature of representation as an essential characteristic of Being (see especially NL 1881 11[330], KSA 9.569–​70, but also: NL 11[321], [324] and [325], KSA 9.566–​68). Later, this argument will occur in the context of one of the formulations of the eternal recurrence theory (see NL 1885 36[15], KSA 11.556; Small (1994: 100)). 14 In his book Nietzsches Theorie des Bewußtseins, Erwin Schlimgen offers just such an interpretation of the problem of time in Nietzsche (see Schlimgen 1999: 83). 15 See Spir (1877 II: 7). 16 The characterization of the world of experience in terms of ‘illusion’ as a consequence of its purely phenomenal nature is a reflex of the influence of Schopenhauer’s notion of Erscheinung on Nietzsche’s understanding of transcendental philosophy in this context. On this topic, see Rethy (1991: 60f.). 17 See NL 1881 11[321], [324], [325], [329], [330], KSA 9.566–​70. 18 For a more detailed analysis of the argument presented in these notes, see Mattioli (2011: 248–​54). 19 For a more detailed discussion of these points, see Lopes (2008: 269–​319) and D’Iorio (1993: 270–​6). 20 See note 10 here. 21 See, for instance, NL 1881 11[93], KSA 9.475; NL 1884 27[19], KSA 11.279f.; NL 1885 34[124], KSA 11.462; NL 1885 41[11], KSA 11.487f. Luca Lupo (2006: 49) calls this cognitive–​intentional structure on the subpersonal level ‘primary

100

100

22 23 24

25

26

27

William Mattioli

consciousness’ and distinguishes it from the ‘secondary consciousness’ which corresponds to the personal level, where the intentional contents are articulated in a reflexive awareness. On this topic, see also Lupo (2006: 85–​132), Abel (2001: 9), Schlimgen (1999: 49–​54). On the notion of unconscious representation in Nietzsche, see Anderson (2002), Mattioli (2012). See the series of notes assembled under the title: Zu Schopenhauer, in KGW I/​ 4: 418–​30, particularly 426. See especially NL 1888 14[121], KSA 13.301: ‘mein Satz ist: daß Wille der bisherigen Psychologie, eine ungerechtfertigte Verallgemeinerung ist, daß es diesen Willen gar nicht giebt, daß statt die Ausgestaltung Eines bestimmten Willens in viele Formen zu fassen, man den Charakter des Willens weggestrichen hat, indem man den Inhalt, das Wohin? heraus subtrahirt hat: das ist im höchsten Grade bei Schopenhauer der Fall: das ist ein bloßes leeres Wort, was er “Wille” nennt.’ See, for instance, N 1888 14[80], KSA 13.260: ‘es bedarf der Gegensätze, der Widerstände, also, relativ, der übergreifenden Einheiten. . . Lokalisirt [. . .] wenn A auf B wirkt, so ist A erst lokalisirt getrennt von B.’ ‚daß, damit dieser Wille zur Macht sich äußern könne, er jene Dinge wahrnehmen muß, welche er zieht, daß er fühlt, wenn sich ihm etwas nähert, das ihm assimilirbar ist’ (NL 1885 34[247], KSA 11.504); ‘die fingirte Welt von Subjekt, Substanz, “Vernunft” usw. ist nöthig –​: eine ordnende, vereinfachende, fälschende, künstlich-​trennende Macht ist in uns. [. . .] Erkenntniß und Werden schließt sich aus. Folglich muß “Erkenntniß” etwas anderes sein: es muß ein Wille zum Erkennbar-​machen vorangehn, eine Art Werden selbst muß die Täuschung des Seienden schaffen’ (NL 1887 9[89], KSA 12.382); ‘Der Wille zur Macht interpretirt: bei der Bildung eines Organs handelt es sich um eine Interpretation; er grenzt ab, bestimmt Grade, Machtverschiedenheiten. Bloße Machtverschiedenheiten könnten sich noch nicht als solche empfinden: es muß ein wachsen-​wollendes Etwas da sein, das jedes andere wachsen-​wollende Etwas auf seinen Werth hin interpretirt. [. . .] In Wahrheit ist Interpretation ein Mittel selbst, um Herr über etwas zu werden. (Der organische Prozess setzt fortwährendes Interpretiren voraus’ (NL 1885 2[148], KSA 12.139f.); ‘in einer Welt, wo es kein Sein giebt, muß durch den Schein erst eine gewisse berechenbare Welt identischer Fälle geschaffen werden: ein tempo, in dem Beobachtung und Vergleichung möglich ist usw’ (NL 1888 14[93], KSA 13.271). For a sophisticated analysis of the interdependence between the intentional aspect and the temporal structure of drives, which amounts to a temporal realism of the perspectives Nietzsche ascribes to the wills to power, see Richardson (2006). For a related discussion of this problem, see also Stegmaier (1987), Small (2010: especially ­chapter 2), Mattioli (2011), Nasser (2015).

  101



The Thought of Becoming and the Place of Philosophy

101

References Abel, G. (2001), ‘Bewußtsein –​Sprache –​Natur. Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 1–​43. Anderson, L. (2002), ‘Sensualism and Unconscious Representation in Nietzsche’s Theory of Knowledge’, International Studies in Philosophy 34: 95–​117. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2006), ‘The Naturalisms of Beyond Good and Evil’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, 148–​67, Oxford: Blackwell. D’Iorio, P. (1993), ‘La superstition des philosophes critiques. Nietzsche et Afrikan Spir’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 257–​94. Green, M. S. (2002), Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Gregory, F. (1977), Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany, Dordrecht/​ Boston: D. Reidel Publishing. Helmholtz, H. (1925), Treatise on Physiological Optics, trans. from the Third German Edition, ed. James P. C. Southall. Vol. III: The Perceptions of Vision. The Optical Society of America. Electronic edition (2001): University of Pennsylvania. URL: http://​psych.upenn.edu/​backuslab/​helmholtz. Köhnke, C. K. (1986), Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: J. Baedeker. Lopes, R. (2008), ‘Ceticismo e vida contemplativa em Nietzsche’, PhD thesis, Belo Horizonte, UFMG. Lopes, R. (2011), ‘ “A almejada assimilação do materialismo”: Nietzsche e o debate naturalista na filosofia alemã da segunda metade do século XIX’, Cadernos Nietzsche 29: 309–​52. Lopes, R. (2012), ‘Das politische Triebmodell Nietzsches als Gegenmodell zu Schopenhauers Metaphysik des blinden Willens’, in J. Georg and C. Zittel (eds), Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten, 147–​56, Berlin/​B oston: Walter de Gruyter. Lupo, L. (2006), Le colombe dello scetico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880–​1888, Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Mattioli, W. (2010), ‘Metáfora e ficcionalismo no jovem Nietzsche’, Revista Trágica 3 (2): 39–​60. URL: http://​www.tragica.org/​. Mattioli, W. (2011), ‘Do idealismo transcendental ao naturalismo: um salto ontológico no tempo a partir de uma fenomenologia da representação’, Cadernos Nietzsche 29: 221–​70. Mattioli, W. (2012), ‘Das Unbewusste als transzendentaler Raum perspektivistischer Weltbildung bei Nietzsche’, in J. Georg and C. Zittel (eds), Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten, 173–​82, Berlin/​Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

102

102

William Mattioli

Meijers, A. (1988), ‘Gustav Gerber und Friedrich Nietzsche. Zum historischen Hintergrund der sprachphilosophischen Auffassung des frühen Nietzsche’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 369–​90. Meijers, A., and Stingelin, M. (1988), ‘Konkordanz zu den wörtlichen Abschriften und Übernahmen von Beispielen und Zitaten aus Gustav Gerber: Die Sprache als Kunst (Bromberg 1871) in Nietzsches Rhetorik-​Vorlesung und in “Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne”’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 350–​68. Meyer, M. (2012), ‘Nietzsche’s Naturalism and the Falsification Thesis’, in H. Heit, G. Abel and M. Brusotti (eds), Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Hintergründe, Wirkungen und Aktualität, Berlin/​Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Nasser, E. (2015), Nietzsche e a ontologia do vir-​a-​ser, São Paulo: Loyola. Orsucci, A. (1994), ‘Unbewußte Schlüsse, Anticipationen, Übertragungen. Über Nietzsches Verhältnis zu Karl Friedrich Zöllner und Gustav Gerber’, in T. Borsche, F. Gerratana and A. Venturelli (eds), ‘Centauren-​Geburten’. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, 193–​207, Berlin/​New York: Walter de Gruyter. Rethy, R. (1991), ‘Schein in Nietzsche’s Philosophy’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, 59–​87, London/​New York: Routledge. Reuter, S. (2004), ‘Reiz. Bild. Unbewusste Anschauung. Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit Hermann Helmholtz’ Theorie der unbewussten Schlüsse in Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne’, Nietzsche-​Studien 33: 351–​72. Reuter, S. (2009), An der ‘Begräbnissstätte der Anschauung’. Nietzsches Bild- und Wahrnehmungstheorie in Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne’, Basel: Schwabe. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus’. Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe. Richardson, J. (2006), ‘Nietzsche on Time and Becoming’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, 208–​29, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Schlimgen, E. (1999), Nietzsches Theorie des Bewußtseins, Berlin/​New York: Walter de Gruyter. Small, R. (1994), ‘Nietzsche, Spir, and Time’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1): 85–​102. Small, R. (2010), Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought, London/​ New York: Continuum. Spir, A. (1873/​1877), Denken und Wirklichkeit. Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie, 2 Bände, Leipzig: J. G. Findel. Stegmaier, W. (1987), ‘Zeit der Vorstellung. Nietzsches Vorstellung der Zeit’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 41: 202–​28.

  103

4

The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique: Nietzsche on Truth and the Thing in Itself João Constâncio

1.  Introduction It is not clear whether Nietzsche ever read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but in the late 1860s he certainly became well acquainted with its basic claims and arguments by reading Schopenhauer and Lange, as well as Kuno Fischer, Otto Liebmann and a few other neo-​and post-​Kantians.1 I shall argue that his reflection on the ultimate consequences of Kant’s first Critique marks the whole corpus of his writings, and I  shall argue that his criticism of Kant, as well as his more general departure away from transcendental idealism, rests on Kantian premises, or is ‘post-​Kantian’ in the sense of presupposing basic results from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In specific, I shall claim that (a) Nietzsche’s rejection of Kant’s thing in itself is an immanent critique and belongs to a wider critique of Kant’s failure to see the ultimate consequences of his first Critique; (b) Nietzsche’s critique of truth is a version of Lange’s interpretation of Kant’s view of truth; (c) Nietzsche’s endorsement of a ‘falsification thesis’ also rests on premises drawn from Lange’s (Post-​)Kantianism; (d)  Nietzsche’s final view of the consequences of Kant’s first Critique is not a consistent and well worked-​out theory of knowledge and truth, but rather a paradoxical questioning of truth and the thing in itself motivated by normative (or evaluative, or perhaps one should simply say ‘moral’) considerations, not by merely epistemological ones. I shall begin by pinning down the main theses of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism. These are theses that I think Nietzsche holds from The Birth of Tragedy up to Twilight of the Idols. This is a controversial claim, particularly with regard to Nietzsche’s mature period, and so I shall also consider, in this first section, why

104

104

João Constâncio

many of his readers may doubt that his philosophy can really be classified as ‘Kantian’, or (more cautiously) ‘post-​Kantian’, in some relevant sense. I take Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism to comprise five main theses. 1. The first is that the basic categories of the world as it appears to us (i.e. of the ‘phenomena’) belong to our cognitive apparatus, not to things in themselves. This position is distinctively ‘Kantian’ (and not Humean, say) because it involves the claim that all our knowledge of the world is conditioned by a human cognitive apparatus (or a menschliche Organisation, as Lange famously put it) and, most importantly, that part of that apparatus is conceptual –​or, in other words, that not all of our basic categorizations are abstracted from experience (e.g. by way of ‘association’, ‘habit’ etc.). In an important aphorism from Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche quotes a passage from Kant’s Prolegomena (Prol §36 320) that expresses this view in a very clear formula: ‘the understanding does not draw its laws from nature, it prescribes them to nature’ (HH 19, KSA 2.41).2 Here in Human, All Too Human Nietzsche explicitly agrees with this thesis,3 and I shall try to show that he does nothing to retract from this agreement in his subsequent writings. 2. Second, Nietzsche holds the thesis that our prior categorizations, that is, the basic concepts and judgements that we do not draw from our experience (or from nature) but rather ‘put’ in our experience (or ‘prescribe to nature’), structure or give form to our world (‘the world we think we live in’, BGE 34, KSA 5.52). In Kant’s terms, they prescribe ‘laws’ to nature insofar as they are not only conditions of the possibility of our experience, but also ‘conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience’ (KrV A158/​B 197). However, we shall see that Nietzsche questions that such ‘laws’ have objective validity a priori in Kant’s sense. Nietzsche’s view is that insofar as our prior categorizations structure our world they are our most ‘indispensable’ judgements, but they are also ‘the falsest’ (BGE 4, KSA 5.18). 3. The second thesis of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism is that there is no knowledge of ‘things in themselves’, or of the ‘thing in itself ’. This is Nietzsche’s position in the unpublished essay, Truth and Lie in an Extra-​ moral Sense, but also in Human, All Too Human. As is well known, the mature Nietzsche claims that the ‘thing in itself ’ is a non-​concept, or a self-​contradictory and hence nonsensical concept, a ‘contradictio in adjecto’ (BGE 16, KSA 5.29); and this is, of course, a more radical claim than the claim that there is no knowledge of things in themselves. But the more

  105



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

105

radical claim also entails that the less radical one is valid: in saying that we shouldn’t even speak of a ‘thing in itself ’, Nietzsche is still also saying that, contrary to our expectation, we have no knowledge of things in themselves or, put differently, that none of our categorizations is ‘objectively valid’ in an absolute sense. 4. The fourth thesis of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism is that human subjects have no access to metaphysical truth, or that there is no truth if ‘truth’ means ‘metaphysical truth’, or ‘absolute truth’, or an ultimate, ontological truth –​ ‘the Truth’ about what reality ultimately is. This fourth thesis is in fact a reformulation of the second. To claim that there is no knowledge of things in themselves is tantamount to claiming that there is no access to absolute truth about things, or that that there is no metaphysical truth. It is crucial that we note that such a denial of absolute truth does not necessarily entail a denial of relative truth. In his History of Materialism, Lange argues precisely this point –​that Kant’s philosophy involves both a denial of absolute truth and an affirmation of ‘relative truth’.4 The ‘relative truth’ means, first of all, the ‘truth for us’, the plurality of ‘truths’ that can be found in scientific inquiry and, to some extent, also in everyday life (when we say things like ‘it’s raining’ or ‘I lost my ticket’). But the notion of relative truth that Lange attributes to Kant, and that he himself holds, is thicker than this. If, according to Kant, the reason why we have no access to absolute truth is that all we can know about reality is conditioned and made possible by our cognitive apparatus (i.e. by categorizations that this apparatus ‘prescribes’ to nature and does not draw from nature), then the relative truth, the truth ‘for us’, is precisely a truth conditioned and made possible by our cognitive apparatus, a ‘truth’ that is ‘for us’ insofar as it is relative to this apparatus. I shall consider this view of truth in more detail in what follows.5 At this stage of my argument, I believe we only need to take notice of two additional aspects. First, the relevance, for Nietzsche, of Lange’s view of truth –​that is, of Lange’s interpretation of Kant’s view of truth  –​is indicated by the fact that in Nietzsche’s lectures at Basel on pre-​Platonic philosophy throughout the 1870s (more precisely, from 1869–​70 to 1876), he explicitly defended that view, and in fact he formulated it in terms that made the connection with Lange’s Kantianism unequivocal. Materialism is absurd, Nietzsche wrote, if it fails to see that ‘everything objective is in many ways conditioned by the subject of knowledge’, but if materialism does not eliminate the role of the subject of knowledge, it can be a ‘salutary’ hypothesis which allows for the ‘relative truth’ to be sought in science; with materialism so

106

106

João Constâncio

understood, ‘all the results of science retain their truth for us, although not an absolute truth’ (Die vorplatonischen Philosophen, KGW II 4: 340). The second additional aspect to be noted at this stage is that if Nietzsche endorses Lange’s Kantian view of truth –​or, at least, a version of it –​then some light can perhaps be thrown on one of the most vexing textual puzzles offered by his writings. How can he claim that ‘there is no truth’ (as he famously does), and yet refer frequently to ‘his truth’ or ‘his truths’ or ‘the terrible truth’? How can he deny truth and still claim that his virtue as a free spirit is the truthfulness of ‘intellectual honesty’? How can he deny truth and, at the same time, praise the objectivity of science, as he so clearly does, for example, in The Antichrist? Could the solution of this puzzle be that he denies that there is absolute truth but acknowledges that there are relative truths? Note that this hypothesis presents a challenge for several types of common readings of Nietzsche. First, it challenges naturalist readings of Nietzsche because Lange’s Kantian view of truth involves a rejection of sensualism and attributes a very modest status to scientific truths. As Lange (1866: 234; 1875: 3) puts it, his view is that the point of Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’ is to show that ‘the whole of objectivity is precisely not absolute objectivity, but merely an objectivity for the human being’. But, second, this approach also presents a challenge for postmodern readings. One of the hallmarks of these readings is the claim that Nietzsche dispenses with any conception of truth. Postmodern fictionalists, in particular, argue that Nietzsche’s critique of truth radically redefines the task of philosophy as the task of inventing new fictions that can pass for ‘truths’.6 5. The fifth and final thesis of what I call Nietzsche’s ‘Post-​Kantianism’ is the claim that Kant’s theoretical philosophy has changed philosophy forever by showing that metaphysics is impossible. That metaphysics is impossible follows from the claim that there is no access to metaphysical truth. But the point, here, is, first, the acknowledgement that even if many of the details of Kant’s theoretical philosophy are questionable, there is something fundamentally sound about his arguments for denying access to things in themselves, and hence to metaphysical truth; and, second, the point is the acknowledgement that the consequences of Kant’s first Critique are drastic –​ that philosophy will never be the same after the first Critique, that perhaps philosophy has even come to an end with the first Critique, so that the ultimate consequences of the latter are simply the victory of philosophical nihilism. Nietzsche suggests all of this quite clearly in a posthumous note from 1871–​72:

  107



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

107

The position of philosophy altered since Kant. Metaphysics impossible. Self-​ castration. The tragic resignation, the end of philosophy. Only art is able to save us. (NL 1871–​2 19[319], KSA 7.517).

The last sentence of this note –​‘only art is able to save us’ –​seems to have nothing to do with Kantianism, but that is not quite so. Once again, it basically expresses the same view that was held by Lange, whom the young Nietzsche considered ‘an extremely enlightened Kantian and a natural scientist’.7 As is well known, in the same letter where Nietzsche wrote these words about Lange he also aligned himself with Lange’s view that ‘philosophy is art’ –​that is, that after Kant’s destruction of metaphysics, philosophy can only be art  –​and that what philosophy can do as ‘art’ is to ‘edify’, that is, to promote certain evaluations from the ‘Standpoint of the Ideal’. Ansell-​Pearson (1988: 539) has argued that Lange’s notion of the ‘Standpoint of the Ideal’ is too ascetic for Nietzsche and ‘cannot be simply applied to the fundamental ideas of the “mature” period (1883–​1888) of Nietzsche’s intellectual output without blurring the crucial differences that lie between the two thinkers’. Yet there is very good reason to think that Nietzsche never really abandoned the idea that philosophy is, at least in part, something like ‘art’ and, especially, that philosophy is about something like ‘edification’. In the mature period, this becomes the idea that philosophy is about ‘creating values’, or that the task of philosophers is a life-​affirming ‘transvaluation of values’. Given that Kant has shown that philosophy cannot do metaphysics  –​that is, cannot engage in establishing what there is –​what philosophy can still do is to develop evaluative judgements –​that is, engage in establishing what ought to be; and given that establishing what ought to be cannot be based on knowledge of what there is, such a task can only be a creative, that is, ‘artistic’, task. The ‘edifying’ nature of this task is quite clear in Beyond Good and Evil, which is arguably Nietzsche’s most important book. Here, the ‘creation’ of ‘new values’ (BGE 211, 253, KSA 5.144, 197) is presented as having the edifying aim of sustaining the ‘tension of the spirit’ and promoting ‘high spirituality’, ‘high culture’ and the form of life of ‘good Europeans’ and ‘free, very free spirits’.8 But let us consider why one might feel entitled to doubt that Nietzsche’s mature philosophy retains his early Post-​Kantianism, as well as to doubt that there is any ‘Kantian’ dimension in his thought. 1. First, there is the rejection of the very concept of ‘thing in itself ’ as a ‘contradictio in adjecto’ (BGE 16, KSA 5.29). This rejection occurs in Beyond Good and Evil, and it seems to entail a twofold break with Kantianism. It seems to entail that the most fundamental distinction that Kant wants to make in the

108

108

João Constâncio

Critique of Pure Reason –​the distinction between phenomenon and the thing in itself –​is spurious, and therefore to entail that philosophy should not use that distinction or occupy itself with the epistemological questions that follow from it. Nietzsche seems to spell this out quite clearly in Book V of The Gay Science: As one might guess, it is not the opposition between subject and object which concerns me here; I  leave that distinction to those epistemologists who have got tangled up in the snares of grammar (of folk metaphysics). Even less am I concerned with the opposition between ‘thing in itself ’ and appearance: for we ‘know’ far too little to even be entitled to make that distinction. We simply have no organ for knowing, for ‘truth’: we ‘know’ (or believe or imagine) exactly as much as is useful to the human herd, to the species: and even what is here called ‘usefulness’ is finally also just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps just that supremely fatal stupidity of which we some day will perish. (GS 354, KSA 3.593)

Moreover, as this passage also suggests, the rejection of the very concept of ‘thing in itself ’ seems to entail the collapse of the idea of truth. How could one still speak of the ‘relative truth’ if the concept of ‘absolute truth’ is a contradiction in terms? The ‘useful’ is all there is; what we ‘know’ does not exist  –​we ‘know’ nothing, for we have no ‘organ for knowing, for the “truth” ’ (GS 354, KSA 3.593), and hence it makes no sense for philosophy to persist in pursuing truth. Philosophy ought to become, for example, a pursuit of ‘health’ or ‘affirmation’ –​ in the full realization that there is no truth and every valuation and every picture of the world is only a ‘fiction’. If this is Nietzsche’s mature conception of philosophy, it could hardly be less Kantian. 2. The famous chapter of Twilight of the Idols on ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ is another crucial moment in which the mature Nietzsche seems to break with Kant and Kantianism in a decisive way. Here, he unequivocally equates ‘the truth’, or ‘the true world’, with Kant’s ‘thing in itself ’; in line with what he had written in §16 of Beyond Good and Evil and in §354 of The Gay Science, he claims that the idea of the thing in itself is now ‘an obsolete, superfluous idea, consequently a refuted idea: let’s get rid of it!’; and then he adds something apparently new, which seems to be the ultimate consequence of the rejection of the thing in itself as a contradictio in adjecto: now that the ‘true world’ is gone, the apparent or illusory world (die scheinbare Welt) is also gone: ‘[A]‌long with the true world we have also abolished the illusory world’ (TI Fable, KSA 6.81). There seem to be two ways of interpreting this. A fictionalist reading will tell us that in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche’s denial of truth reaches its climax. The

  109



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

109

abolishment not only of the true world but also of the illusory world is thus seen as the most radical expression of a ‘falsification thesis’. A ‘falsification thesis’ –​a useful formula created by Maudemarie Clark (1990: 105–​106, 124, 133 and passim) in her critique of postmodern interpretations of Nietzsche –​is the claim that human concepts falsify reality, such that ‘the application of any concept of a thing, and any notion of permanence or unity, involve lies or falsification’, and hence even ‘our best empirical theories can be radically false’ or, put differently, even our best empirical theories involve conceptualizations and other ‘subjective factors’ (e.g. practical interests) that have a ‘distorting influence’ on our view of reality. The fictionalist reading will see the abolishment of the illusory world as the abolishment of the last residue of the idea of truth, the final, anti-​Kantian abolishment of the theory that representations can correspond or fail to correspond to an independent reality. There are only representations, and these are anthropomorphisms, human ‘errors’. Clark, by contrast, sees the abolishment of the illusory world as a logical corollary of the thesis that the thing in itself is a contradictio in adjecto, and thus as a decisive move away from the falsification thesis. Her argument is very clear: after realizing that the notion of a thing in itself is self-​contradictory, Nietzsche finally understood that he had to abandon the falsification thesis, as this thesis presupposed that there was a thing in itself which could be ‘falsified’. As Clark (1990: 120) puts it: ‘[I]‌f there are only representations, to what could they fail to correspond? What is left to be falsified? When Nietzsche claims in GS and BGE that logic and science falsify reality, what does he believe they falsify?’ According to Clark, Nietzsche’s realization that the falsification thesis is untenable led him, in his mature period, to abandon his ‘representationalism’ and replace it with a non-​representationalist perspectivism. She concedes that Nietzsche’s non-​ representationalist perspectivism ‘denies metaphysical truth’ (135)  –​but her point is that such a non-​representationalist perspectivism is compatible with a ‘neo-​Kantian position on truth’, or, in other words, with a ‘minimal correspondence account of truth and therefore with granting that many human beliefs are true’ (135; see also Clark 1998). The problem with Clark’s reading, however, is that the philological and textual evidence speaks massively against the claim that the late Nietzsche abandons the falsification thesis –​if anything, the Nietzsche of 1887 and 1888 is bolder than ever in denying truth and claiming that everything is ‘error’, ‘a fiction’ and so on. However, the fact that Clark’s view is very logical should give us pause. I shall get back to it later. In sum: (1) Nietzsche seems to break with Kantianism by rejecting the concept of thing in itself as self-​contradictory; (2) Nietzsche seems to break with

110

110

João Constâncio

Kantianism by concluding that, since the thing in itself is self-​contradictory, the distinction between appearances and reality (or between an ‘illusory world’ and a ‘true world’) should also be rejected –​and the philological evidence suggests that in doing so he endorses a very un-​Kantian ‘falsification thesis’. My task in what follows will be to try to show why these are not really fatal objections to the claim that Nietzsche retains his basic Post-​Kantianism in his mature period. However, in order to do this I shall begin by highlighting a few crucial ways in which his assessment of the meaning and consequences of Kant’s first Critique develops in his published writings, from The Birth of Tragedy to Twilight of the Idols.

2.  Nietzsche on Kant’s first Critique: from The Birth of Tragedy to Human, All Too Human Schopenhauer’s reading of Kant plays an important role in Nietzsche’s interpretation of the consequences of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This is clear in The Birth of Tragedy. Particularly in §18, when Nietzsche quotes from Schopenhauer’s ‘Appendix on the Kantian Philosophy’, he uses the Schopenhauerian expressions ‘aeternae veritates’, ‘riddle of the world’ and ‘work of māyā’, and he presents Schopenhauer’s philosophy as having the same basic consequences as Kant’s by praising ‘the extraordinary courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer’ (BT 18, KSA 1.118). They both had the courage to show that there is no knowledge of things in themselves because the laws of space, time, causality (and inference) are not aeternae veritates concerning the innermost essence of reality, but only the form of human cognition (see, earlier, the first and the second theses of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism). This, Nietzsche claims, is a ‘victory over optimism’ (BT 18, KSA 1.118), which has drastic consequences. Such a victory unearths the forgotten basis of Greek pessimism, and in fact leads to the project of returning modern culture to the ‘tragic knowledge’ of the Greeks, the ‘wisdom of the sylvan god, Silenus’, the ‘tragic’ or ‘Dionysian’ wisdom (BT 3, 7, 15, KSA 1.35, 56–​7, 101). This wisdom gives ‘insight into the horrible truth’ (BT 7, KSA 1.57) by discovering that the world is a ‘riddle’ which reason cannot solve, and that human existence is purposeless, ‘absurd’ (BT 3, 7, 15, KSA 1.35, 56–​7, 101). These normative and cultural conclusions are absent from Human, All Too Human. Here, Nietzsche considers the fundamental themes of Kant’s first Critique and assesses its philosophical consequences from a more ‘naturalistic’ point of view (or a more ‘Langean’ one, as we shall see), and he develops at least three new ideas, which were completely absent from The Birth of Tragedy.

  111



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

111

First, he now emphasizes the fact that, since the laws we find in nature are not ‘aeternae veritates’, we must have the epistemic modesty of regarding them as historical principles of our cognition and conceive of philosophy as a historical discipline, a ‘historical philosophizing’ (HH 2, KSA 2.25, cf. 11, 16, 145, KSA 2.30–​1, 36–​8, 141). This already involves some sort of break not only with Kant, but also with Schopenhauer. Although both Kant and Schopenhauer believe that a law such as the principle of causality is not an eternal law of reality itself, they still believe that such a principle is an eternal law of our way of representing reality  –​of our cognitive apparatus, our ‘organization’ (to borrow again Lange’s favorite expression). But Nietzsche wants to claim that even as a mere principle of our cognitive apparatus the principle of causality is no more than a historical principle –​the provisional result of a given evolutionary process, and not an ‘eternal fact’ about the human understanding. Today, this may look like a very radical departure not only from Kant and Schopenhauer, but also from any recognizable form of Kantianism. However, it is very likely that Nietzsche did not see it that way. Although he was certainly aware that he was breaking with an important aspect of Schopenhauer’s Kantianism (viz. its ahistorical view of cognition), he had no reason to believe that his historicizing of human cognition and of philosophy in general was any different from what some of the most prominent neo-​Kantians of the 1860s and 1870s were doing. Lange seems, again, to be the most important influence here.9 But Kuno Fischer, too, thought that ‘transcendental philosophy was an investigation not into the logic of cognition but into its origins’ (Beiser 2014:  246). Fischer treats the forms of sensibility and understanding (space, time and the categories) naturalistically as facts of human nature, and he sees Kant’s epistemology as a naturalistic doctrine about the genesis and development of human knowledge or as ‘a genetic and historical method’ that exposes ‘the ahistorical illusions of philosophy’ (247). A naturalistic reading of Kant committed to naturalizing all aspects of his thought by means of internal critiques of his system is one of the main trends of neo-​ Kantianism in the nineteenth century.10 Lange and Fischer certainly belong to this trend, and they gave Nietzsche a picture of Kant that had little to do with the logicism and anti-​psychologism of later generations of neo-​Kantians (e.g. in the Marburg school). In fact, Schopenhauer’s influential reading of Kant was already strongly naturalistic, especially in volume II of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. It is likely that Nietzsche saw Fischer’s, Lange’s and his own historicization of Kant’s views on cognition as a development of Schopenhauer’s tendency to naturalize Kant.11

112

112

João Constâncio

The second main idea that Nietzsche adds to his interpretation of the consequences of Kant’s first Critique in Human, All Too Human is fundamentally a question of emphasis. Nietzsche now emphasizes the fact that the laws of human cognition are linguistic phenomena. It is by making use of language that human beings fall prey to the ‘transcendental illusion’ that consists in regarding rational principles as eternal truths about the innermost essence of things. Here, Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism was, to a great extent, influenced by his reading of Gustav Gerber, from whom he took the idea that language is creative and fundamentally figurative –​and, hence, anything but a copy of an independent reality, or anything but a mirror of a thing in itself.12 The limits of human reason are, thus, the limits of language, and this includes the limits of logic and mathematics, as HH 11, KSA 2.30–​1, makes explicit. The third new idea is perhaps the most important one –​it is the ‘falsification thesis’. According to Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant, the thesis that space, time and causality are the forms of our cognition implies that the ‘world is our representation’, or that what we mean by ‘world’ or ‘nature’ is in fact just the object of ‘experience in general’, the realm of human representation (WWV I §1). Nietzsche’s idea is that we should understand this as meaning that space, time and causality are errors, and the world as representation is the world as error. He writes: When Kant says ‘the understanding does not draw its laws from nature, it prescribes them to nature’, this is wholly true with regard to the concept of nature which we are obliged to attach to nature (nature = world as representation, that is as error), but which is the summation of a host of errors of the understanding. –​To a world which is not our representation the laws of numbers are wholly inapplicable: these are valid only in the human world. (HH 19, KSA 2.41)

The last sentence establishes a clear connection between the thesis that the world is error and what I earlier called the first main thesis of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism, that is, that last sentence shows that in Human, All Too Human Nietzsche sees the ‘falsification thesis’ as a consequence of the Kantian thesis that the basic categories of the world as it appears to us belong to our cognitive apparatus, the thesis that there are basic categorizations that our understanding does not draw from nature but prescribes to nature. If these categorizations (e.g. ‘the laws of numbers’) come ‘from us’, then surely they are valid ‘only in the human world’ (HH 19, KSA 2.41), only ‘for us’, that is, they are ‘errors’ in relation to reality itself. This may seem rather similar to what can be found in Schopenhauer. The latter draws the same conclusion –​namely, that if, as Kant has shown, the laws

  113



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

113

of space, time and causality are ‘subjective’ in origin, then their validity can only be ‘subjective’ as well –​and uses it as an argument for defending ‘idealism’ and claiming that the world as representation is ‘a semblance’, an ‘illusion’, or that Erscheinung is in fact Schein.13 But, there are two things to be noted here. 1. First, Schopenhauer’s idealism does not deny that the laws of space, time and causality are ‘objectively valid’ if this means (as it means for Kant) that they are valid for objects in space and time. There is no incompatibility between Schopenhauer’s metaphysical thesis that the world as representation is ‘illusory’, or mere Schein, and the Kantian thesis that there is objective knowledge of phenomena, particularly objective scientific knowledge of an empirical world. Schopenhauer himself sees no such incompatibility. His epistemology, no less than Kant’s, seeks to justify the possibility of knowledge (including a priori knowledge), so that he believes, no less than Kant, in the objectivity of scientific knowledge.14 The thesis that the world as representation is an illusion is, for him, a metaphysical thesis that asserts that the world as representation is not the world in itself (which leads to the claim that the world in itself, or the ‘thing in itself ’, is ‘will’, not ‘representation’). 2. Second, what Nietzsche writes in Human, All Too Human is not that the world as representation is ‘illusion’ (Schein) –​what he writes is that it is ‘error’ (Irrthum, HH 19, KSA 2.41; see also HH 16 and 29, KSA 2.36–​8 and 49–​50). He does not repeat or reiterate Schopenhauer’s metaphysical thesis –​instead, he puts forward a whole new thesis about the ‘world as representation’, the thesis that this world is ‘error’. The plausible reason for this is that now (by contrast with The Birth of Tragedy) he engages in a ‘historical philosophizing’ that fully rejects metaphysics and values science even above art. The rejection of metaphysics involves the rejection of any sort of speculation on, and even of any interest in, the ‘metaphysical world’ (HH 9, KSA 2.29), and so it also dispenses with the view that the empirical world, the ‘world as representation’, is a ‘semblance’, an ‘illusion’ (Schein), for not coinciding with the ‘metaphysical world’. In Schopenhauerian terms, what this implies is that Nietzsche’s philosophizing now aims to deal only with ‘relations’ and abstain from interpreting or giving any positive content to the ‘in-​itself ’ of things. The ‘thing in itself ’ becomes, at most, a heuristic concept that enables precisely the characterization of the empirical world as a world of mere relations and of knowledge, particularly of scientific knowledge, as knowledge of relations. That the empirical world is

114

114

João Constâncio

a world of relations is a crucial point that Kant makes in his Critique of Pure Reason. It means (i) that space and time (as ‘tota’) consist in spatial and temporal relations; (ii) that our knowledge of objects in terms of our categorizations is always knowledge of relations in space and time (e.g. of causal relations in space and time) –​that is, of relational properties; (iii) that all objects of our experience are ‘phenomena’ because all relations among them are ultimately a relation to a subject that has space, time and the categories as forms of cognition.15 In Schopenhauer’s system, this view –​the view that we can only know ‘relations of phenomena’ and that science is our exact, objective, but partial knowledge of how ‘the phenomena of the world’ relate to each other  –​is of paramount importance, not only because Schopenhauer takes it to be the most adequate characterization both of the empirical world and of science, but also because it reveals our need of metaphysics. This is a need to understand the world as whole and in itself, and not just in terms of ‘mere relations’ (lauter Relationen, bloße Verhältnisse).16 Thus, Nietzsche’s departure from Schopenhauer in Human, All Too Human amounts to the following: (a) he severs philosophy from any interest in metaphysics, that is, in the ‘thing in itself ’; (b) correspondingly, he now favors science over metaphysics, that is, knowledge of ‘mere relations’ over interpretation of the in-​itself of things; (c) he historicizes the Kantian/​Schopenhauerian a priori, that is, he argues that all our knowledge of ‘mere relations’ is historical and, therefore, revisable. But what this all means is that in Human, All Too Human Nietzsche’s view of knowledge and truth has become practically identical with Lange’s, that is, with the Langean version of Kantianism. That Nietzsche’s position on the thing in itself in Human, All Too Human is basically that of Lange –​sc. the position of the ‘ignoramus, ignorabimus’ –​is well known, and needs no further comment.17 That Lange greatly influenced Nietzsche’s naturalistic, evolutionary and historical conception of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is also well known.18 But does Nietzsche also accept the view that scientific knowledge is knowledge of a ‘relative truth’ in Lange’s sense? Most importantly, if he does, how could that square with the ‘falsification thesis’, the thesis that everything is error? First, it should be noted that Human, All Too Human combines the claim that the world as representation is the world as error (the first formulation of the falsification thesis in the published writings) with a whole series of passages where it is explicitly assumed that one can distinguish truth from untruth (HH 34, 225), that in everyday life it is perfectly possible either to ‘tell the truth’ or ‘lie’ (HH 54, 227, 506), that the sciences follow ‘the rigorous method of truth’ (HH

  115



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

115

109), that the truth can be searched for in science (HH 251, 257), that there are ‘important truths of science’ (HH 251) and that truths can be ‘known’ (HH 109), or that there can be ‘knowledge of truths’ (HH 146), especially with the aid of the special sciences (KSA 2.53–​5, 73–​4, 108, 142, 189, 191, 208–​209, 212, 321). This would be a serious contradiction were it not for the fact that these and other related passages involve the Langean claim that no human truths can ever be ‘absolute truths’, no matter how scientific they may be: ‘there are no absolute truths’ (HH 2, KSA 2.25), there are no ‘unqualified’ or ‘unconditional truths’ (HH 630–​6, KSA 2.356–​62). To some extent, this merely reiterates and reinforces the idea that human knowledge is historical and, therefore, radically revisable, or that ‘unimpeachable truths’ in science are just ‘truths [. . .] which have survived all the assaults of scepticism and disintegration’ (HH 22, KSA 2.43), For Lange, too, even the most well-​proven scientific truths have the modest status of provisional, hypothetical, heuristic, merely plausible or probable judgements.19 But the main point, both for Lange and for Nietzsche, is another one: that there are no absolute truths because our best judgements about the world are always relative to our cognitive apparatus –​relative to categorizations (‘laws’) that our ‘organization’ ‘prescribes’ to nature. We can only call them ‘truths’ if we understand them as ‘relative truths’ in Lange’s sense. Nietzsche thinks he is also entitled to call them ‘errors’, and the reason why he does is because he thinks he can claim that those prior categorizations are nothing more than the fundamental ‘errors’ that our species has developed in the course of its evolution: That which we now call the world is the outcome of a host of errors and fantasies which have gradually arisen and grown entwined with one another in the course of the overall evolution of the organic being, and are now inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past –​as treasure: for the value of our humanity depends upon it. Rigorous science is capable of detaching us from this world of representation only to a limited extent [. . .] (HH 16, KSA 2.37)

Scientific ‘truths’ are judgements resulting from these partial, imperfect detachments from error. Should we call them ‘relative truths’, or simply ‘errors’? Can we call them both things, as Nietzsche seems to assume we can? The starting point of Lange’s distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative truth’ is Kant’s assertion that ‘there is truth only in experience’ (Prol 374).20 There is truth in experience because the forms of our cognition are valid for experience (and not because all knowledge comes from experience, as a sensualist would claim).

116

116

João Constâncio

If what is given to us in experience accords with the form of our cognition, we have to accept it as ‘true’, although it is only true for us, not absolutely. As Stack (1983: 132) correctly explains, this is precisely Lange’s Kantian conception of ‘relative truth’: ‘We are only able to describe as “true” what necessarily appears so to our menschliche Organisation’. Experience gives a minimal criterion of truth, although only of relative truth. This might incline us to say that scientific judgements are ‘truths’ rather than ‘errors’. The problem, however, is that, as Lange himself was the first to see, if truth is ‘relative truth’, than truth can vary across knowers and over time: variations in the cognitive apparatus, as well as in experience, will determine variations in what should be accepted as ‘true’.21 This explains Nietzsche’s pluralistic view of truth, the view that there is no ‘truth in itself ’ (Wahrheit an sich) but there are innumerable relative truths.22 This view is implicit in Nietzsche’s frequent talk of ‘my truth’ (e.g. EH Destiny 1, KSA 6.365), ‘my truths’ (e.g. BGE 231, KSA 5.170) and so on. But it is more explicitly present when he writes, for example: ‘There are many eyes. The Sphinx also has eyes: and consequently there are many “truths”, and consequently there is no truth’ (NL 1885 34[230], KSA 11.498). This second ‘consequently’ is valid only if one assumes that ‘truth’ means ‘absolute truth’, and so the difference between the two formulas (‘there are many truths’ and ‘there is no truth’) is fundamentally nominal and rhetorical. Or, as Stack (1983: 147) shows, the difference between Lange and Nietzsche is just that ‘Lange hesitates to say what Nietzsche will dare to say: “there is no truth” ’ (318–​19). Let us now consider how Nietzsche’s position evolves from The Gay Science onwards.

3.  Nietzsche on Kant’s first Critique: from The Gay Science onwards In The Gay Science, the falsification thesis becomes of paramount importance. Space, time, causality and indeed the whole table of the Kantian categories, as well as all the transcendental principles that express them –​the principles that are presupposed not only in mathematics and physics, but even in our most immediate experience of nature –​become quite explicitly presented as ‘errors’ that have become ‘articles of faith’ for human cognition because they proved to be ‘useful and species-​preserving’ in the evolution of the human species (GS 110, cf. GS 110–​12, KSA 3.469–​73). The forms of human cognition, the ‘conditions of possibility’ of human experience, are ‘errors’, but as such they are also ‘conditions of life’ that structure our world:

  117



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

117

Life not an argument. –​We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we are able to live –​by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes, and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith no one could endure living! But that does not prove them. Life is not an argument; the conditions of life might include error. (GS 121, KSA 3.477–​8)

However, in The Gay Science Nietzsche also makes very clear that he sees the ultimate consequences of Kant’s first Critique as fundamentally normative and existential, and not just as theoretical. He claims that Kant’s relevance lies in the fact that it was his ‘strength and cleverness’ that broke open the ‘cage’ of Christian morality, indeed of the whole Christian Weltanschauung: And now don’t bring up the categorical imperative, my friend! The term tickles my ear and makes me laugh despite your very serious presence. I am reminded of old Kant, who helped himself to [erschlichen] the ‘thing in itself ’ –​another very ridiculous thing! –​and was punished for this when the ‘categorical imperative’ crept into [beschlichen] his heart and made him stray back to ‘God’, ‘soul’, ‘freedom’, ‘immortality’, like a fox who strays back into his cage. Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage! (GS 335, KSA 3. 562)

The first Critique destroyed the possibility of a rational belief in ‘ “God”, “soul”, “freedom”, “immortality” ’, and hence in the basis of Christian morality. The second Critique (and indeed the whole conception of ethics and the idea of a ‘metaphysics of customs’ as outlined already in the first Critique) was basically an attempt to restore what was already broken forever  –​and, personally, for Kant, an attempt to ‘stray back into his cage’. The thing in itself is ‘another very ridiculous thing’, presumably because it is a self-​contradictory concept, but it was Kant’s revolutionary approach to the distinction between appearance and thing in itself that made him destroy the foundations of the whole edifice of the Christian world view. In fact, what he destroyed was the rational basis of what Nietzsche calls, in the Genealogy of Morality, the ‘ascetic ideal’. As Paul van Tongeren puts it, by the ‘ascetic ideal’ Nietzsche means the ‘protective structure that was built to hide the absurdity of life and world’, and the ‘corrosion’ of that structure (with the ‘death of God’) is what now confronts the modern human being with its lack of goals, lack of value, lack of meaning.23 In other words, by ‘ascetic ideal’ Nietzsche means a structure of meaning that provided answers to the metaphysical why-​questions (e.g. ‘why the human being at all?’, ‘why do I suffer?’, GM III 28, KSA 5.411) by projecting the existence of an absolute normative truth capable of giving goals to human life. This projection enchanted the world with metaphysical values,

118

118

João Constâncio

which means that it masked the fundamental goallessness and meaninglessness of human life (and indeed of the universe). Or, put differently, the metaphysical interpretation of existence provided by the ascetic ideal was unconsciously devised to give purpose to human existence, and this means: devised to cover up the fundamental goallessness of human existence. That is why the ascetic ideal managed to save the human will from ‘suicidal nihilism’ (GM III 28, KSA 5.411).24 Thus, Kant’s first Critique is, for Nietzsche, a decisive moment for the corrosion of the ascetic ideal –​an extremely decisive contribution to the ‘death of God’ and the modern confrontation with the goallessness and meaninglessness of human life. Why is the concept of ‘thing in itself ’ important in this context? Nietzsche makes the point that the way for Kant to ‘stray back into the cage’ was to preserve a conception of the thing in itself thick enough to let him draw a picture of it. That is, the ascetic ideal has always depended on the conception of a thing in itself qua an absolute normative truth, and by allowing, in his philosophy, the conception of such a ‘thing’ to continue to be more than a heuristic device for the discovery of the limitation of human knowledge (by, as it were, reifying the thing in itself and interpreting it as a ‘supersensible substratum’ where ‘transcendental freedom’ is possible etc.) Kant was able to believe that he could restore the protective structure of the ascetic ideal –​the structure which he had in fact destroyed forever. What the apparent disparagement of the thing in itself as ‘a very ridiculous thing’ does is in fact to bring to the fore the relationship between the consequences of Kant’s first Critique and nihilism. It is certainly not by accident that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Genealogy of Morality the denial of truth will be expressed in the nihilistic formula, ‘nothing is true, everything is allowed’ (Z IV The Shadow, KSA 4.340, and GM III 24, KSA 5.399). But let us now consider Nietzsche’s approach to the first Critique in Beyond Good and Evil. This is the work where Nietzsche states the thesis that the thing in itself is a ‘contradictio in adjecto’ (BGE 16, KSA 5.29). I shall analyze this thesis in the next section. For now, let us just note that the fact the Nietzsche rejects the thing in itself, and hence also any form of ‘transcendental idealism’ based on the distinction between phenomena and noumena, does not, by itself, position him outside of Post-​Kantianism, or even of Neo-​Kantianism. The rejection of the thing in itself from Kantian premises is a common theme among nineteenth-​ century neo-​Kantians. Otto Liebmann (1865:  26), for example, dedicates an important part of his Kant und die Epigonen to the rejection of the thing in itself as a contradiction in terms, ‘ein hölzernes Eisen’, precisely the kind of immanent critique that we find in Nietzsche. But this does not preclude him from being a

  119



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

119

Kantian. On the contrary, his critical view of Kant played a crucial role within the ‘back to Kant’ movement.25 In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche also rejects the conception of philosophy as epistemology, or Erkenntnisstheorie. This might perhaps suggest that he is no longer interested in thinking along the lines of Kant’s first Critique. But, in fact, what he objects to is that philosophy be reduced to epistemology (‘Philosophie auf Erkenntnisstheorie reduziert’, BGE 204, KSA 5.131). Kant himself never reduced philosophy to epistemology, and even though this sort of reduction was an important tendency within Neo-​Kantianism, Fischer and Lange can hardly be accused of it, not to mention Schopenhauer. Note also that the reason why Nietzsche rejects the reduction of philosophy to epistemology in BGE 204 is just that it inverts the hierarchy between philosophy and science, that is, it reduces philosophy to a tool of science, while science ought in fact to be a mere tool of philosophy and help in the latter’s proper task, which is to ‘command’ and ‘legislate’ by creating new values. But Beyond Good and Evil is also the work where the falsification thesis gets one of its most forcible formulation: ‘the erroneousness of the world we think we live in is the most certain and solid fact that our eyes can still grab hold of ’ (BGE 34, KSA 5.52). Moreover, as in The Gay Science, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche connects the falsification thesis with the idea that error is a condition of life, and he does this most clearly in two very famous aphorisms about Kant and his synthetic judgements a priori (BGE 4 and BGE 11, KSA 5.18, 24–​6). BGE 4 is where Nietzsche claims that Kant’s ‘synthetic judgements a priori’ are at the same time ‘the falsest judgements’ and ‘the most indispensable to us’. Here, he must have in mind not only such judgements as ‘7+5=12’, but also, and above all, the synthetic judgements a priori of the ‘Analytic of Principles’, as, for example, ‘all intuitions are extensive magnitudes’ or ‘in all change of appearances substance persists’ or ‘everything that happens has its cause’.26 These are the judgements on the basis of which we ‘arrange for ourselves a world in which we are able to live’ (GS 120, KSA 3.477), what Nietzsche calls in Beyond Good and Evil ‘the world we think we live in’ or ‘the world that is relevant to us [die uns etwas angeht]’ (BGE 34, KSA 5.52). Such judgements are either implicitly or explicitly used in our ‘best science’ –​ and, as Nietzsche writes, ‘it is precisely the best science that will best know how to keep us in this simplified, utterly artificial, well-​invented, well-​falsified world’: ‘[S]‌cience loves error because, being alive, –​it loves life!’ (BGE 24, KSA 5.42). However, such judgements are also active in our everyday dealings with ‘the world we think we live in’, and they act as ‘conditions of life’, as ‘useful and

120

120

João Constâncio

species-​preserving’ judgements, even before we apply any science to our experience. They structure our world, they ‘arrange’ for us ‘a world in which we are able to live’ (GS 120, KSA 3.477) before being used in the development of our ‘best science’. In the terminology of The Gay Science, such judgements are the fundamental errors that have become ‘articles of faith’ for us humans insofar as they have been incorporated (einverleibt) into our organisms, that is, insofar as they have become instinctive in the life of the human species (see GS 11, 110, KSA 3.383, 469–​71). Thus, Nietzsche does not wholly reject the Schopenhauerian thesis that only space and time but also causality and the other categories are intuitions that may or may not be conceptualized and articulated in words (WWV I §3 ff.). For he wants to be able to say that judgements such as ‘in all change of appearances substance persists’, or ‘everything that happens has its cause’, are active within human organisms as instinctive judgements –​and not necessarily as intellectual judgements.27 Put differently, he wants to be able to say that even if it be true that such judgements are anthropomorphisms that could only have arisen in the evolution of our species because language and consciousness enabled us to formulate them, it is also true that they have since time immemorial become instinctive and therefore now live within us as immediate, unconscious and instinctive judgements. They are at bottom, as Nietzsche repeatedly says, ‘grammatical functions’ and ‘logical fictions’ –​and yet they are also able to build representations and interpretations of the world at the pre-​linguistic level of instinct and from within the unconscious depths of the human organism. Kant’s synthetic judgements a priori are false, but they function as the very structure or form of ‘the world we think we live in’, even when we don’t articulate them in words and are therefore not conscious of them (see, earlier, the second main thesis of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism). That is not to say that Nietzsche accepts that such judgements are really ‘a priori’ in Kant’s sense. For he does not accept that they are ‘necessarily and universally valid’, not even if this only means: ‘necessarily and universally valid for the phenomenal world’. We should try to understand this point as concretely as possible. When Nietzsche writes that we ‘have arranged for ourselves a world in which we are able to live –​by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes, and effects’ (GS 121, KSA 3.477–​8), he is basically agreeing with the first part of what Kant calls ‘the supreme principle of all synthetic judgements’, namely, that [t]‌he conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience [. . .] (KrV A158/​ B 197)

  121



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

121

But he rejects the second part, the part that states that they are necessarily and universally valid for every object of experience, or that ‘on this account [they] have objective validity in a synthetic judgement a priori’. (KrV B 197/​A 158). In other words, Nietzsche agrees that such principles as the principle of causality are ‘conditions of the possibility’ of the very objects of experience  –​that they constitute and structure the phenomenal world as such –​but he denies that the normativity implied in these principles should count as unconditional in any sense. In making this claim he seems to be making two different, though connected, points. (a) First, the implication is that the universality of those principles is merely historic, a product of human evolution and history: those principles structure the phenomenal world, but they are not an unchangeable structure of the phenomenal world. The structure of the phenomenal world can always be questioned, and is, therefore, always revisable. (b) Second, the implication is that, being historical and revisable, those principles are not really necessary. Since their ‘objective validity’ is, in fact, just intersubjective validity in a given historical context, they are not unconditionally binding. But the development of Nietzsche’s relationship with Kant’s first Critique and its consequences culminates in Twilight of the Idols. Pace Clark, the first thing to emphasize is that, here, Nietzsche presents one of his most clear and extended defenses of the falsification thesis, surely the most extended in the published writings. In the section ‘ “Reason” in Philosophy’, he writes: These days, on the other hand, we see ourselves mired in error, drawn necessarily into error, precisely to the extent that the prejudice of reason forces us to make use of unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, objectification, being; we have checked this through rigorously and are sure that this is where the error lies. (TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77)

His argument is quite clear: (a) as Kant has shown, our most basic conceptualizations –​what Nietzsche calls here ‘the categories of reason’ –​do not ‘come from the empirical world’ (‘aus der Empirie’, TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77) or, as the first main thesis of Nietzsche’s Post-​Kantianism holds, we do not ‘draw them from nature’, instead we ‘prescribe them to nature’ (HH 19, KSA 2.41); (b) and what this in fact means is that such categories (‘unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, objectification, being’) are human inventions, anthropomorphisms, ‘prejudices’ that we ‘use’ in order to make sense of reality, both in everyday life and in the sciences; (c) from which it follows that such categories, as well as the judgements that express them, are ‘lies’, ‘errors’, a ‘falsification’ of reality. Here as elsewhere, Nietzsche emphasizes the idea that these ‘categories of reason’, or ‘prejudices’

122

122

João Constâncio

and ‘presuppositions of reason’, are the most basic grammatical rules of human language, and that is why falsification is inevitable. Thinking presupposes language, and language presupposes the categories of reason, so that we cannot avoid making use of these categories. In fact, we cannot avoid making use of them not only as ‘the conditions of possibility of experience in general’, but also as ‘the conditions of possibility of the objects of experience’. If (to borrow Clark’s formulations) we attribute spatio-​temporal continuity under the same concept to (what we call) the ‘same thing’, such an attribution is just a species-​dependent conceptual construction and, in this sense, a ‘falsification’. Clark’s argument for denying that Nietzsche is really claiming any of this is that, throughout the section on ‘Reason’ in Philosophy, as well as in the title of the section, he places ‘reason’ in quotation marks. This, she argues, suggests that Nietzsche is attacking only those philosophers who believe in ‘pure reason’, that is, in the existence of a human faculty for a priori knowledge, or in a ‘non-​ natural faculty’ that could provide ‘knowledge uncontaminated by connection to the senses’ (Clark 1990: 106–​109). Falsification is inevitable if one ignores the ‘testimony of the senses’ and assumes that grammatical rules and basic epistemic norms reflect the structure of reality independently of any empirical evidence. But if one takes into account the way in which the senses show ‘becoming, passing away, and change’ (TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77), there is no reason to believe that conceptualization necessarily involves falsification. But it is quite hard to agree that this is what Nietzsche means. As just quoted, he writes vigorously and explicitly that just by making ‘use’ of unity, identity, permanence or being ‘we’ are ‘drawn necessarily into error’ (‘necessitirt zum Irrthum’, TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77; italics added). Moreover, in making the point that what makes falsification inevitable is the fact that the categories of reason have always been and remain today embedded in the structure of language Nietzsche explicitly claims that the development of language has always been based, and remains based today, on ‘the most rudimentary form of psychology’ (TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77), that is, in a false psychology (a psychology that posits elementary ‘unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, objectification, being’ in the psychological realm). Thus when Nietzsche asserts, in ‘Reason’ in Philosophy, that the categories of reason draw us ‘necessarily into error’, he is obviously attacking ‘pure reason’, as Clark claims, but he is attacking it precisely in the same sense in which he had already attacked it not only in Human, All Too Human but especially in Beyond Good Evil, where he argued that ‘synthetic judgements a priori do not have “to be possible” at all: we have no right to them, and in our mouths they are nothing but false judgements’ (BGE 11, KSA 5.25).

  123



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

123

There is no reason to doubt that Nietzsche’s claim in Twilight of the Idols is the very strong claim that language and the ‘categories of reason’ make falsification all-​pervasive and inevitable.28 Twilight of the Idols is also the book where Nietzsche writes that ‘along with the true world we have also abolished the world of appearances’ (or ‘the illusory world’, ‘die scheinbare Welt’,TI Fable, KSA 6.81). What is interesting to note is that both in the section where he writes this and in the preceding section where he explains his views more plainly, or less allegorically, he emphasizes that he sees the abolishment of the ‘true’ and of the ‘illusory’ (scheinbare) world as an abolishment which is very far from being essentially theoretical. He writes that the division of the world ‘into a “true” half and an “illusory” (scheinbare) one, whether in the manner of Christianity or in the manner of Kant (an underhanded Christian, at the end of the day), is just a sign of décadence,  –​it is a symptom of declining life’ (TI Reason 6, KSA 6.79). This is because the projection of the existence of a ‘true world’ beyond appearances expresses an instinctive need to devaluate this world, that is, to look down at this earthly world (the only one whose reality could ever be established, because ‘eine andre Art Realität ist absolut unnachweisbar’, TI Reason 6, KSA 6.78) as valueless in comparison and in opposition to another, better world: ‘It would not make any sense to fabricate a world “other” than this one unless we had a powerful instinct for libelling, belittling, and casting suspicion on life: in that case, we would be using the phantasmagoria of an “other”, a “better” life to avenge ourselves on life’ (TI Reason 6, KSA 6.78). This implies that the ‘true world’ is indeed much more than a theoretical positum –​it is, rather, ‘a moral–​ optical deception [Täuschung]’ (TI Reason 6, KSA 6.78). Thus the importance of Kant is not only that he showed the true world to be ‘unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable’ (TI Fable, KSA 6.80), but also, and crucially, that he unintentionally showed that the ‘true world’ was invented to give meaning to lives dominated by the instinctive devaluation of this earthly world. That is why Nietzsche can say that, with Kant, the ‘true world’ became ‘unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable, but the very thought of it a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (Basically the old sun but through fog and scepticism; the idea become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian)’ (TI Fable, KSA 6.80). The question had always been ‘the old sun’ (the old, Platonic sun, the ‘Good in itself ’), and this old sun had always provided some sort of ‘consolation’ by providing ‘an obligation, an imperative’, that is, an absolute normative truth. At the end of Section 1, I  enumerated two basic objections to the claim that Nietzsche retains a form of Post-​Kantianism up until the last phase of his

124

124

João Constâncio

thought. I shall now try to answer these objections in the light of what I have just tried to show about how Nietzsche’s approach to Kant’s first Critique evolved from The Birth of Tragedy to Twilight of the Idols.

4.  The thing in itself and the problem of truth Nietzsche’s claim that the thing in itself is a ‘contradictio in adjecto’ (BGE 16, KSA 5.29) has been very carefully analyzed by Mattia Riccardi (2010) in his excellent paper on ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself ’. Riccardi starts by establishing that the best interpretation of the meaning of Kant’s thing in itself is a ‘two-​aspect-​view’, according to which the appearance and the thing in itself are not two separate objects, but two ways of considering the same object: the thing in itself is X considered as what it is independently of any relation to something else (or qua tale, per se), the appearance (or phenomenon, Erscheinung) is the same X considered in relation to human cognition (or as it is ‘for us’, or as experienced by way of our cognitive apparatus). As Riccardi shows, both the ‘two-​aspect-​view’ and its alternative, the ‘two-​ objects-​view’, are interpretations with a long history and are discussed by Schopenhauer, Fischer and other sources of Nietzsche’s knowledge of Kant’s distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself. Following Rae Langton (1998), Riccardi (2010: 341–​2) (correctly) interprets the ‘two-​aspect-​view’ in terms of properties: As Kant puts it, the object as a phenomenon is defined only through its relations to other things. Its properties are therefore strictly relational ones. In contrast, when considering the object ‘in itself ’, we focus on its intrinsic, non-​relational constitution. This characterization follows directly from the concept of the ‘thing in itself ’, since to be ‘in itself ’ can in no way be determined from outside. As Kant points out, ‘through mere relations (bloße Verhältnisse) no thing in itself is cognized’ (CPR, B 67). The difference between ‘appearance’ and the ‘thing in itself ’ can therefore be explained as follows: – Appearance = object considered with regard to its relational properties – Thing in itself = object considered with regard to its non-​relational properties.

This way of understanding the distinction between thing in itself and appearance (or between thing in itself and its appearance in human experience and cognition) is not only the best interpretation (especially in the light of Kant’s own

  125



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

125

clarifications in the Opus postumum), but also very helpful, as Riccardi shows, for the interpretation of Nietzsche’s rejection of the concept of thing in itself as self-​contradictory. It must be said, however, that Kuno Fischer, Nietzsche’s main source on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, belongs to the school of thought that rejects the ‘two-​aspect-​view’ and sees the thing in itself as a thing numerically different from the phenomenon (Fischer 1860: 404 ff.). It must also be said that Nietzsche seems to have believed that Kant thought of the thing in itself as numerically different from the phenomenon, for he criticizes him for believing that he could present the thing in itself as a cause of the phenomena (NL 1886–​7, 5[4]‌, KSA 12.186). But there is also no doubt that, as Riccardi indicates, other passages from the Nachlass suggest that he did think of the thing in itself as a thing considered with regard to its non-​relational (or intrinsic) properties, and of the phenomenon as a thing considered with regard to its relational properties.29 It is very likely that Nietzsche is here following Schopenhauer, who criticized Kant for conceiving of the thing in itself as an object that could ‘cause’ an appearance to arise, and who was very clear (in volume II of The World as Will and Representation) in adopting a two-​aspect-​view and conceiving of the thing in itself as the same ‘thing’ as the empirical object, but considered independently of its appearance with relational properties in human experience and cognition.30 So, if we can assume that Nietzsche was aware (via Schopenhauer) that the real challenge is the critique of the thing in itself as another view of the same object and not as another object, we can follow Riccardi’s analysis and reconstruct Kant’s ‘contradictio in adjecto’ argument as follows: P1 The word ‘thing’ designates an object considered with regard to its relational properties. P2 Since the expression ‘thing in itself ’ includes the word ‘thing’, it designates an object considered with regard to its relational properties and, at the same, considers that object with regard to its non-​relational (or intrinsic) properties. C Ergo, the expression ‘thing in itself ’ is self-​contradictory. We can add that, as Riccardi argues, it was Kant himself who showed that our contentful, non-​empty conception of what a ‘thing’ is derived from our cognition of objects in space and time in accordance with the basic categories of our finite understanding. We know of ‘things’ because we know of relations of phenomena, that is, because we know objects qua phenomena, or objects with properties that they have only in relation to other objects in the context of being

126

126

João Constâncio

known in our representation of a spatio-​temporal reality ruled by the categories of our understanding. There is no doubt that, as Riccardi (2010:  342)  puts it, ‘Kant argues that we must also conceive of empirical objects “in themselves”, i.e. we must attribute to them some indefinable non-​relational nature, even if from the outset we are unable to know what it may look like’. But this is what involves the contradiction: the moment I say ‘thing’, or ‘object’, I am already conceiving of an X with relational properties; indeed, the moment I say ‘property’, I can only mean something if I am referring to a relational property. Kant fails to notice that the concept ‘thing’ excludes the conception of an ‘in-​itself ’. But if Nietzsche claims that nothing can have intrinsic properties, or that properties are always relational, then he surely develops an ontology of internal relations that matches such a claim? Does Nietzsche have such an ontology? Riccardi argues that the ‘will to power’ is precisely such an ontology, a theoretical account of what Nietzsche himself calls a ‘relation-​world’ (Relations-​Welt, NL 1888 14[93], KSA 13.272). The will to power accounts ‘for the strictly “relational” nature of reality, in which objects come to have the shape they actually have only by means of their reciprocal correlations: “there is no ‘essence in itself ’, relations first constitute essences” (NL 1888 14[122], KSA 13.303)’ (Riccardi 2010: 351). Nietzsche’s view, according to Riccardi, must be that this is true of phenomena, that is, of the ‘empirical world’ –​for there is no other world besides the phenomenal or empirical world, and hence the will to power is the essential feature of this world, not of things-​in-​themselves. But here, I think, we encounter a decisive problem. There is little doubt that the way in which Nietzsche develops the hypothesis of the will to power in the Nachlass involves a complex ontological theory of internal relations, and it may well be true that, as Riccardi (2010: 343) claims following Paul Guyer (1987: 350), Kant, by contrast, has a ‘prejudice against the ultimate reality of relations’. But Kant’s contention that empirical objects have relational properties involves the contention that they are representations and, hence, that their relational properties are also representational properties. Kant’s claim is that, for example, every object given in space has spatial properties which are relational because they would be nothing at all if it were not for their relations with the spatial properties of other objects –​but his claim is also that space is just a form of our faculty for representing intuitions (our ‘sensibility’) and, therefore, the properties of every object given in space are relational because they exist only ‘for us’, that is, in a relation to us –​to our cognitive faculties. The first problem that this creates is that it is not at all clear whether the hypothesis of the will to power implies that the relational properties which emerge from relations

  127



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

127

among wills to power are representational properties. Nietzsche does not really seem to put any effort into developing a theory of appearances, or a theory that explains how exactly we are supposed to conceive of represented objects in terms of internal relations. But, second, and most importantly, Kant has an argument for claiming that we cannot consistently think that representations can exist just by themselves. This is the argument that ‘we at least must be able to think’ the objects of our experience ‘as things in themselves’, because ‘otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is appearance without anything that appears’ (KrV B XXVI). In order to conceive of ‘appearances’, we have to conceive of something that appears –​even if this ‘something’, the ‘thing’ that appears, does not exist ‘in-​ itself ’ or cannot be known ‘in-​itself ’. It is ‘absurd’ (as Kant puts it) to think that ‘phenomena’ qua representations can subsist by themselves –​that is, the concept, the thought of a ‘thing in itself ’ is required for phenomena to be conceivable as representations. Thus, just as Nietzsche can say that Kant’s conception of a thing in itself is self-​contradictory, so Kant could retort that Nietzsche’s conception of the phenomenal world is the self-​contradictory conception of an appearance without anything that appears. Nietzsche’s claim to have abolished the ‘illusory world’ along with the ‘true world’ only makes this problem more acute. What does Nietzsche want to say with that claim? Given that, as I tried to show earlier, the claim is part of Nietzsche’s new formulation of the falsification thesis in Twilight of the idols, its point might simply be that ‘error’ (Irrthum), or ‘falsity’ (Falschheit) and ‘falsification’ (Fälschung), is not the same as ‘illusion’ (Schein, Illusion), and therefore we can conceive of empirical reality as constituted solely by ‘errors’ (or by the ‘falsifications’ that we have incorporated in the course of the evolution of our species etc.) without regarding such a world as an ‘illusory world’, a ‘scheinbare Welt’. The empirical world is Erscheinung, phenomenon, empirical appearance, but it is not Schein in the sense of ‘illusion’, or mere appearance. The phenomena become mere appearances, and error becomes illusion, only when opposed and contrasted to an absolute truth –​only when we regard the phenomena as a sort of imperfect copy or re-​presentation of the ‘true world’ of the ‘thing in itself ’. But if we abolish the true world, or if we abolish the ‘thing in itself ’ (by showing it is a self-​contradictory concept etc.),, then we no longer need to regard the phenomena as illusions or mere appearances: we can abolish the ‘illusory world’ along with the ‘true world’, and yet still hold that the empirical world is a world of error.

128

128

João Constâncio

According to Nietzsche’s claims in the section on ‘Why the “true world” finally became a fable’ in Twilight of the Idols, Kant’s distinction between appearance and thing in itself is a modern version of the Platonic interpretation of this earthly world as an illusion, a ‘cave’ in which there are only ‘copies’ of the ‘real world’ outside of it. (This results from the fact that one of the main ideas of the chapter as a whole is that only Nietzsche’s own philosophy abolishes the ‘illusory world’). But, to be fair to Kant, one has to say that he also distinguishes phenomenon from Schein qua illusion. Kant explicitly holds that Erscheinung is not Schein, that is, that the empirical world is not an ‘illusion’ (KrV B 349/​A 293 ff., also B70). Schopenhauer has disregarded this Kantian distinction, and insisted that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason implies that the world as representation is a world of illusion (see WWV I Appendix). Has Nietzsche been misled by Schopenhauer in his interpretation of Kant? If he believes Kant does not distinguish Erscheinung from Schein, he has. When, in Twilight of the Idols, he rejects the idea that the empirical world is an illusion, he is in fact being true, at least to some extent, to the spirit of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. However, he is, of course, not mistaken in understanding as a drastic radicalization of Kantianism his reiteration of what he had been claiming since Human, All Too Human: if the categories of reason are not drawn from nature, but rather prescribed to nature by our understanding, then they are ‘errors’, a ‘falsification’ of reality. The problem, however, is that there is no paradox-​free way of asserting the falsification thesis if one wholly rejects the notion of a thing in itself and abolishes both the ‘true’ and the ‘illusory’ world. How can the categories of reason be ‘errors’ if there is no truth? How can Nietzsche assert that the empirical world consists wholly of ‘errors’ or ‘falsifications’ without making some sort of distinction between illusion and reality? Clark’s (1990: 120) objection, already quoted once earlier, is perfectly cogent: ‘[I]‌f there are only representations, to what could they fail to correspond? What is left to be falsified? When Nietzsche claims in GS and BGE that logic and science falsify reality, what does he believe they falsify?’ It is possible that Nietzsche’s sharp logical eye saw a contradiction in the notion of a thing in itself, but failed to see a similar contradiction in the notion of an appearance in which nothing appears, or a representation which does not represent anything, or a falsification without anything to falsify, or an error which is not a failure to attain a possible truth. But there is another possibility: the possibility that Nietzsche was fully aware that he was expressing a self-​contradictory view, or, more precisely: the possibility that he wanted to formulate his view of the consequences of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in the radical form of paradox. Can we explain why he may have wanted to do this? What is the point of

  129



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

129

saying that there is no truth and everything is false if one knows that there is no way to say it without falling into paradox, or even contradiction? Ken Gemes (1992) has shown long ago that many of Nietzsche’s denials of truth have specific contexts and aim at attacking not truth itself, but rather ‘other (contingently, that is, historically) allied notions’, which Nietzsche considers worthy of attack ‘because of their contingent life-​destroying capabilities’ (64). For example, Nietzsche often seems to be putting forward a general denial of truth based on a new theory of truth when, in fact, he is only criticizing the Christian’s claim to base his/​her asceticism on truth, rather than on his/​her individual will. What looks like a theoretical attack on truth is fundamentally an attack on the use of truth for the ‘resignation of responsibility’ (49–​51). More generally, this indicates, according to Gemes, that (a)  Nietzsche has no theory of truth and, in fact, is not interested either in theories or definitions of truth; (b) what he is interested in is in showing, usually by rhetorical means that include the denial that truth exists, how human beings use the notion of truth ‘for promoting various forms of life’ rather than for progressing ‘towards the objective truth’ (65). There is much to be said for this view, and although my own view is not identical with it, I take the idea that Nietzsche’s denials of truth are more rhetorical than epistemological as an important clue to understanding Nietzsche’s decision to embrace the most paradoxical formulations of the falsification thesis, as well as of the denial of truth (which, pace Gemes, I think is really a general denial of truth, not just a contextual one). Nietzsche has no well-​worked-​out theory of truth (or of knowledge). He does present the outline of a theoretical critique of truth, but he does not develop, out of that critique, a coherent positive theory of truth (e.g. a sceptical theory of truth). At the theoretical level, his famous denial of truth is essentially based on three main ideas:  (a)  first, the realization that Kantianism entails a denial of metaphysical truth –​that is, that the Kantian view of empirical objects as somehow constructed by our cognitive apparatus (or by its prescription of a ‘law’ to nature) entails denying the possibility of knowledge of things in themselves; (b) second, as we just saw, the thesis that the very concept of the ‘thing in itself ’ –​and, hence, of metaphysical, absolute truth –​is self-​contradictory; (c)  finally, the idea that the concept of a metaphysical, absolute truth (or, as he puts it in BGE 4, ‘the wholly invented world of the unconditioned and self-​ identical’, KSA 5.18) is just one among other conceptual simplifications which, like the categories of reason, are useful for the species:  ‘truth’ belongs to the ‘conditions of life’ that make the preservation of the human species possible, and this means that ‘truth’ (as the famous posthumous note goes) is just ‘the

130

130

João Constâncio

type of error without which a certain species of living beings could not live’ (NL 1885 34[253], KSA 11.506). Being a contradiction in terms and, as such, nothing more than a simplification that is useful for the preservation of the human species, ‘truth’ is just one more falsification, and hence ‘there is no truth’, ‘truth does not exist’. But the rhetorical dimension of this conclusion should be clear. ‘Truth’ is here tantamount to ‘metaphysical truth’. An argument based on those three ideas may well warrant the conclusion that there is no metaphysical or absolute truth, but it does not warrant the conclusion that no legitimate concept of truth is possible. In specific, such an argument is not enough to rule out that there is a relative truth, a ‘truth of relations’ in Lange’s sense. As suggested earlier, nothing in the development of Nietzsche’s thought in the published writings indicates that he ever abandoned the Langean Kantianism of Human, All Too Human, particularly Lange’s distinction between ‘absolute truth’ and ‘relative truth’. On the contrary, there is an important fact that indicates that this distinction never ceased to be relevant for Nietzsche: until the end, he always combined the denial of truth with praise of scientific objectivity, with praise of ‘truthfulness’ and intellectual honesty (Redlichkeit), and especially with his pluralistic discourse on ‘truths’ that vary across knowers and over time (‘my truth’, ‘my truths’ etc.).31 Similarly, the claim that there is never a pure ‘will to truth’ –​because the ‘will to truth’ is, in fact, a ‘will to death’ (GS 344, KSA 3.576), a will which strives to promote life-​denying forms of life and not really a pure progress towards the objective truth  –​is much more restricted than Nietzsche’s rhetorical bravado sometimes suggests. Nietzsche’s real point is that philosophers are never motivated by a pure ‘will to truth’, because philosophy is, fundamentally, an evaluative activity, such that what real philosophers do is come up with new evaluative judgements, ‘new values’ (BGE 211, 253 5.144, 197): ‘true philosophers are commanders and legislators: they say “That is how it should be!” they are the ones who first determine the “where to?” and “what for?” of people’ (BGE 211, 5.145). But, unlike the philosophers, the true ‘scholars’ (broadly, the genuine ‘scientists’ of all fields, including the sciences of ‘spirit’) can easily be motivated by a pure ‘drive for knowledge’, that is, a pure ‘will to truth’: Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different –​ ‘better’ if you will –​, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar’s drives. [. . .] In contrast, there is absolutely nothing impersonal about the philosopher etc. (BGE 6, KSA 5.20)

  131



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

131

This way of differentiating between philosophers and scholars suggests that there is a serious motive behind the rhetorical bravado of claiming that ‘there is no truth’ and wanting to fall into paradox. Before Kant showed that the ‘true world’ –​that is, the world of metaphysical truth –​is in fact ‘unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable’ (TI Fable, KSA 6.80), philosophers (like the founders of religions and sects) relied on the idea of a ‘true world’ for accomplishing their task of ‘commanding and legislating’. Kant still tried to do this –​he tried, in his moral philosophy, to assure us that the thought of the ‘true world’ remained, at least, ‘a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (Basically the old sun but through fog and scepticism; the idea become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian)’ (TI Fable, KSA 6.80). But this is what Nietzsche considers to be lost forever. The idea that there is an absolute normative truth, the idea that there is a metaphysical truth which gives epistemic warrant to certain moral norms and ends rather than others, the idea that ‘the old sun’ (the Platonic ‘Good in itself ’, BGE Preface, KSA 5.12) is a truth, not a merely human evaluation –​this is what is lost forever, this is what has ‘died’ with the ‘death of God’. Nietzsche’s paradoxical denial of truth –​or, in other words, his paradoxical affirmation of the falsification thesis –​is his effort to find the most vivid and radical formulation of this crucial insight. Or, put differently, Nietzsche’s paradoxical denial of truth is in fact the strongest rhetorical expression of the most drastic consequence of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: the final corrosion of the protective shelter of the ‘ascetic ideal’ and the advent of an age in which human beings cannot pretend to be able to rely on ‘truth’ in order to set their goals, values and purposes.

5.  Conclusion If my interpretation of Nietzsche’s denial of truth is correct, then this denial is compatible with the acknowledgement of the possibility of relative truths. If his denial of absolute truth had led to a coherent epistemology, and not to a paradoxical (or even self-​contradictory) ‘falsification thesis’, perhaps the concept of a relative truth might also have had to fall. Perhaps the concept of a relative truth is just one more paradox –​for how can there be a relative truth if there is no absolute truth? But the fact is that Nietzsche does not tackle these and the other epistemological questions that his denial of truth raises. His mature perspectivism seems to involve an interpretation of the relative truth as a ‘perspectival’ truth, but since that perspectivism also involves the

132

132

João Constâncio

denial of absolute truth, it entails the same sort of paradoxes as the falsification thesis.32 Nietzsche seems to have left for future epistemologists the task of sorting out whether a post-Kantian critique of truth like the one he defended can be formulated without paradox. For, as I  suggested, that is not what interests him. What is really of importance for him is that even if a radical post-Kantian critique of truth still leaves room for something like a relative truth, this relative truth (a truth conditioned and made possible by our own cognitive apparatus) cannot function as the ultimate basis of a new system of values, that is, of a new normative or prescriptive ‘truth’. The (‘ascetic’ or ‘metaphysical’) idea of a normative or prescriptive truth depended on the idea of an absolute truth, or of truth as ‘divine’ and synonymous with ‘the Good in itself ’.33 That this idea is now ‘dead’ means that we now have to consider all our values as fundamentally fictitious and projected –​or as fundamentally based on our ‘will’ (i.e. as decisions). After the ‘death of God’, modern human beings are confronted with a naked nihilism, which shows human existence to be in itself goalless, valueless and meaningless.34 ‘Nothing is true, everything is allowed’ (Z IV The Shadow, KSA 4.340, and GM III 24, KSA 5.399) –​ could this be the ultimate consequence to be drawn from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason?

Notes 1 See Brobjer (2008: 36–​40, 104, 128–​30, 195, 229). 2 Kant’s original text reads: ‘der Verstand schöpft seine Gesetze (a priori) nicht aus der Natur, sondern schreibt sie dieser vor’ (Prol §36 230). Nietzsche’s quotation in HH 19 is precise, except that he deletes Kant’s ‘(a priori)’. 3 He writes: ‘so ist diess in Hinsicht auf den Begriff der Natur völlig wahr’ (HH 19, KSA 2.41); the title of §36 of the Prolegomena is: ‘Wie ist Natur selbst möglich?’ 4 See Lange (1866: 240–​1, 244, 249, 502; 1875: 10 ff., 14, 738). 5 See also Stack (1983: 132 ff., 146 ff., 197 ff., 318–​19), who argues that Nietzsche’s allegiance to Lange’s Kantian view of truth lasts until the end of his philosophical career. 6 The fictionalist reading of Nietzsche goes back to Vaihinger and is, I think, an important trend in continental Europe today: see, for example, Jacob Dellinger’s brilliant defence of the fictionalist approach in Dellinger (2013a, b), just to name two of his papers. For a recent exposition of and attack on a typical ‘postmodern’ reading of Nietzsche on truth and knowledge –​namely, Foucault’s (2011) reading

  133



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

133

in his Cours au Collège de France, 1970–​1971 –​see Bouveresse (2016). Clark (1990) was the book that launched what is now commonly known as the ‘naturalist’ reading of Nietzsche on truth and knowledge. The view that Nietzsche rejects the absolute truth while acknowledging the possibility of relative truths is held not only by Stack (1983), but also by Wilcox (1982) and Schacht (1983). Gemes (1992) argues that, in fact, Nietzsche has no theory of truth and his apparent denials of truth serve specific rhetorical purposes in specific contexts; he criticizes Wilcox’s and Schacht’s position by remarking that ‘it gives us a Nietzsche who is merely rehashing familiar Kantian themes, minus the rigor of Kant’s exposition’ (49). I shall come back to all of these positions later. 7 See the famous Letter to Carl von Gersdorff from late August 1866; translation by Brobjer (2008: 33). 8 See Branco and Constâncio (forthcoming). 9 See Salaquarda (1978) and Stack (1983: 195 ff.). 10 Beiser (2014) shows that this trend goes back to the very first generation of neo-​ Kantianism (Fries, Herbart and Beneke). 11 On Schopenhauer’s naturalism and its influence on Nietzsche, particularly on Nietzsche’s view of Kantianism, see Clark (1998), Constâncio (2011). Nietzsche’s copy of volume II of Schopenhauer’s major work is ‘fairly heavily annotated throughout’ (Brobjer 2008: 125, n. 58). 12 See Meijers (1988); see also Crawford (1988: 199 ff.), D’Iorio (1993: 259 ff.) and Guervós (2012: 71 ff.). The relationship between the categorizations that make cognition possible and language was already an important theme in TL, but it does not come up in the published writings before HH. 13 See, for example, WWV I Anhang and WWV II §1 12; see Rethy (1991: 60). 14 See WWV I §§1–​16, §17, §24. 15 See KrV B66–​7 and B72 (Anm.); see also: KrVA22/​B37–​A25/​B40, A26–​7/​B42–​3, A30/​B46–​A32/​B48, A265/​B321, A438/​B466, B522. In B66–​7, Kant writes ‘daß alles, was in unserem Erkenntnis zur Anschuung kommt [. . .] nichts als bloße Verhältnisse enthalte’; in B72: ‘Was gar nicht am Objecte an sich selbst, jederzeit aber im Verhältnisse desselben zum Subject anzutreffen und von der Vorstellung des letzteren unzertrennlich ist, ist Erscheinung.’ 16 See WWV I §4 10, §7 39, §24 95 (‘Was den Inhalt der Wissenschaften überhaupt betrifft, so ist dieser eigentlich immer das Verhältniß der Erscheinungen der Welt zu einander’), §24 97, §24 144 (‘zeigen uns diese Erkenntnisse [die gesammte reine Mathematik und die reine Naturwissenschaft] weiter nichts, als bloße Verhältnisse, Relationen einer Vorstellung zur andern), §34 210§38 208; Anhang 528. 17 See HH 1, 9, 10, 16–​19, KSA 2.23, 29–​30, 36–​41; see Salaquarda (1978: 246 ff.) and Stack (1983: 112 ff.) 18 See Salaquarda (1978: 246 ff.) and Stack (1983: 195 ff.).

134

134

João Constâncio

19 See Stack (1983: 146 ff.). 20 This quotation from Kant’s Prolegomena appears in Lange (1866: 241; 1875: 10); ‘Alles Erkenntniß von Dingen aus bloßem reinen Verstande oder reiner Vernunft ist nichts als lauter Schein, und nur in der Erfahrung ist Wahrheit’ (Prol 374). 21 See Stack (1983: 147). 22 The expression ‘Wahrheit and sich’ occurs in TL 1, KSA 1.883, NL 1873 29[8]‌, KSA 7. 625 and NL 1888 14[152], KSA 13.334. In this last note, Nietzsche writes that we can speak of the categories as ‘truths’ (‘Die Kategorien sind “Wahrheiten” ’), provided that we understand this only in the sense that they are ‘conditions of life for us’ (‘nur in dem Sinne, als sie lebenbedingend für uns sind’). See also Stack (1983: 220–​1). 23 See ­chapter 10 by van Tongeren in Volume II; see also van Tongeren (2012: 83–​133). 24 See Constâncio (2016a). 25 On Liebmann’s (bad) arguments against the thing in itself, see Beiser (2014: 289 ff.). 26 Kuno Fischer’s exposition of the Analytic of Principles (which Nietzsche certainly read) is quite detailed (see Fischer (1860: 352 ff.)). 27 Nietzsche distinguishes between ‘instinctive judgements’ and ‘intellectual judgements’, for example, in NL 1887 10[167], KSA 12. 554–​5. See Lupo (2012) and Constâncio (2016b). 28 Anderson (2005) gives a good detailed account of Nietzsche’s view of falsification in TI Reason. His previous account, as well as his previous critique of Clark, in Anderson (1996) was much less convincing. (See Brian Leiter’s criticism of Anderson and his defence of Clark in Leiter (2015: 14)). Nietzsche’s engagement with the post-​Kantianism of Afrikan Spir –​that is, his development of a strongly critical view of him –​had a very important role in the preparation of TI Reason, particularly in the version of the falsification thesis it includes: see D’Iorio (1993). Note also that the famous claim that ‘the senses do not lie at all’ (TI Reason 2, KSA 6.75) does not entail that the senses do not falsify. Lying involves judgement, and hence requires concepts. The senses cannot lie because they are preconceptual. But this claim is perfectly compatible with Nietzsche’s usual view of the senses, namely, that the senses are a ‘simplifying apparatus’ which ‘falsifies’ by simplifying the ‘chaos of sensations’ and so on. I owe this last remark to Pietro Gori. Note, finally, that Nietzsche’s falsification thesis includes the idea that self-​knowledge also falsifies, that is, the idea that concepts also falsify our subjective or first-​personal view of ourselves: see Katsafanas (2015), as well as the Introduction of Constâncio, Branco and Ryan (2015). 29 See NL 1887 10[202], KSA 12.580, and NL 1888 14[103], KSA 13.280, two passages in which this is clear, and which are both quoted by Riccardi (2010). 30 See WWV II, §17, §18; see Sousa (2012) and Constâncio (2013).

  135



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

135

31 The praise of intellectual honesty is particularly strong in The Gay Science; the praise of scientific objectivity is particularly strong in The Antichrist. (In fact, in The Antichrist Nietzsche’s view of science seems to be as positive as it was in HH, so that he identifies ‘reason, knowledge, research’ with ‘the way to truth’, AC 23, KSA 6.190). See, for example, Anderson (2005); see also Bouveresse (2016: 62 ff.). The following passages include examples of Nietzsche’s use of expressions and formulas that involve what I have been calling his ‘pluralistic’ view of truth: BGE 43, 202, 231, 253, 296, KSA 5.60, 124, 170, 196, 239; EH Books 1, EH (TI) 2, EH Destiny 1, KSA 6. 299, 354–​5, 365. 32 On ‘perspectival truth’ (i.e. a truth about perspectives, not about things in themselves), see Richardson (1996: 262–​80); on the paradoxes of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, see Stegmaier (2012: 130–​6). 33 See, for example, GS 344, KSA 3.576–​7, AC 10, KSA 6.176–​7 and NL 1887 10[192], KSA 12.571. AC 10, KSA 6.176, identifies ‘the concept “true world” ’ with ‘the concept of morality as essence of the world’. 34 I give my interpretation of this ‘naked nihilism’ –​and I distinguish it from what I call the ‘masked nihilism of the ascetic ideal’ (Constâncio 2016a).

References Anderson, R. L. (1996), ‘Overcoming Charity: The Case of Maudemarie Clark’s Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy’, Nietzsche-​Studien 25: 307–​41. Anderson, R. L. (2005), ‘Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption’, European Journal of Philosophy 13: 185–​225. Ansell-​Pearson, K. (1988), ‘The Question of F. A. Lange’s Influence on Nietzsche: A Critique of Recent Research from the Standpoint of the Dionysian’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 539–​54. Beiser, F. C. (2014), The Genesis of Neo-​Kantianism, 1796–​1880, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bouveresse, J. (2016), Nietzsche contre Foucault. Sur la vérité, la connaissance et le pouvoir, Marseille: Agone. Branco, M. J. M., and Constâncio, J. (forthcoming), ‘Philosophy as “Free-​ Spiritedness”: Philosophical Evaluative Judgments and Post-​Kantian Aesthetics in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’, in P. Katsafanas (ed.), Routledge Philosophy Minds: Nietzsche, London/​New York: Routledge. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Clark, M. (1990), Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

136

136

João Constâncio

Clark, M. (1998), ‘On Knowledge, Truth, and Value: Nietzsche’s Debt to Schopenhauer and the Development of His Empiricism’, in C. Janaway (ed.), Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer As Nietzsche’s Educator, 37–​78, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Constâncio, J. (2011), ‘On Consciousness. Nietzsche’s Departure From Schopenhauer’, Nietzsche-​Studien 40: 1–​42. Constâncio, J. (2013), ‘On Nietzsche’s Conception of Philosophy in Beyond Good and Evil: Reassessing Schopenhauer’s Relevance’, in M. E. Born and A. Pichler (eds), Texturen des Denkens: Nietzsches Inszenierung der Philosophie in ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, 145–​64, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2016a), ‘Nietzsche on Nihilism (eine unersättliche Diskussion?)’, in A. Bertino, E. Poljakova, A. Rupschus and B. Alberts (eds), Zur Philosophie der Orientierung, 83–​100, Berlin: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2016b), ‘ “Who Is Right, Kant or Stendhal?” On Nietzsche’s Kantian Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics’, in M. J. M. Branco and K. Hay (eds), Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology (Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy vol. III), London: Bloomsbury. Constâncio, J., Branco, M. J. M., and Ryan, B. (eds) (2015), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Crawford, C. (1988), The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Dellinger, J. (2013a), ‘Zwischen Selbstaufhebung und Gegenlehre. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer und die ‘Perversität der Gesinnung’, in D. Birnbacher and A. U. Sommer (Hrsg.), Moralkritik bei Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, 61–​98, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Dellinger, J. (2013b), ‘Vorspiel, Subversion und Schleife. Nietzsches Inszenierung des ‘Willens zur Macht’ in Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, in M. E. Born and A. Pichler (Hrsg. eds.), Texturen des Denkens: Nietzsches Inszenierung der Philosophie in ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, 165–​87, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. D’Iorio, P. (1993), ‘La superstition des philosophes critiques. Nietzsche et Afrikan Spir’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 257–​94. Fischer, K. (1860), Immanuel Kant. Entwicklungsgeschichte und System der kritischen Philosophie. Erster Band: Entstehung und Begründung der kritischen Philosophie. Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Zweiter Band: Das Lehrgebäude der kritischen Philosophie. Das System der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols [= Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. III, IV], Mannheim: Friedrich Bassermann. Foucault, M. (2011), Leçons sur la volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France, 1970–​ 1971, Paris: Seuil-​Gallimard. Gemes, K. (1992), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 47–​65. Guervós, L. E. de Santiago (2012), ‘Physiology and Language in Friedrich Nietzsche: “The Guiding Thread of the Body”’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco

  137



The Consequences of Kant’s First Critique

137

(eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language, 63–​88, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Guyer, P. (1987), Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katsafanas, P. (2015), ‘Kant and Nietzsche on Self-​Knowledge’, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds) (2015), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 110–​30, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1875), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Zweites Buch. Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant, Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage, Iserlohn: Baedeker. Langton, R. (1998), Kantian Humility. Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Leiter, B. (2015), Nietzsche on Morality, second edition, London and New York: Routledge. Liebmann, O. (1865), Kant und die Epigonen, Stuttgart: Carl Schoder. Lupo, L. (2012), ‘Drives, Instincts, Language, and Consciousness in Daybreak 119: “Erleben und Erdichten” ’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language, 179–​95, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Meijers, A. (1988), ‘Gustav Gerber und Friedrich Nietzsche. Zum historischen Hintergrund der sprachphilosophischen Auffassungen des frühen Nietzsche’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 369–​90. Rethy, R. (1991), ‘Schein in Nietzsche’s Philosophy’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, Routledge: London and New York. Riccardi, M. (2010), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 39: 333–​51. Richardson, J. (1996), Nietzsche’s System, Oxford/​New York: Oxford University Press. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-​Studien 7: 236–​60. Schacht, R. (1983), Nietzsche, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schopenhauer, A. (1949a), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, in A. Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1946–​1950, vol. 2 (quoted as WWV I). Schopenhauer, A. (1949b), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II, in A. Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1946–​1950, vol. 3 (quoted as WWV II). Sousa, Luís de (2012), ‘Knowledge, Truth, and the Thing in itself: The Presence of Schopenhauer’s Transcendental Idealism in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-​Moral sense (1873)’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and use of Language, 39–​61, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter.

138

138

João Constâncio

Stack, G. J. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2012), Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie, Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, Berlin: de Gruyter. van Tongeren, P. (2012), Het Europese nihilisme. Friedrich Nietzsche over een dreiging die niemand schijnt te deren, Nijmegen: Vantilt. Wilcox, J. (1982), Truth and Value in Nietzsche, Washington: University Press of America.

  139

5

Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself André Luís Mota Itaparica

1.  Introduction To look into Nietzsche’s criticisms of the notion of thing in itself means to return to a traditional problem in Kant and Nietzsche studies. In both cases, we are talking about a complex and multifaceted issue that is essential to Nietzsche’s philosophical work, but whose meaning has given rise to controversy among commentators. For this reason, the assessment of Nietzsche’s criticisms of the Kantian concept of the thing in itself presupposes, from a historical point of view, a prior understanding of these controversies and, from a systematic point of view, an account of the meaning of the notion of the thing in itself in both authors. Among the Kantian topics discussed by Nietzsche, the question of the status of the thing in itself is particularly relevant to the elaboration of his own philosophy. Generally speaking and with natural differences in emphasis, commentators tend to identify, in Nietzsche’s philosophy, a path that would lead him from the assumption of the thing in itself in his youth to a rejection of the thing in itself, regarded as a contradictory concept, in his late philosophy. The disagreement among them occurs when it is called into question whether the concept of the thing in itself that Nietzsche rejects is exactly what Kant understood by thing in itself.1 In order to address this question, I will first present the different ways in which one can understand the Kantian concept of thing in itself. Second, I will investigate how closely Nietzsche’s criticisms match some of those meanings. These tasks cannot be accomplished without reference to part of the vast and complex literature that this subject has left as an inheritance to Kant and Nietzsche studies.

140

140

André Luis Mota Itaparica

2.  Kant and the thing in itself The question of the thing in itself plays a fundamental role in Kant’s critical philosophy, since the distinction between the correlative terms appearance/​phenomenon and thing in itself/​noumenon/​transcendental object is an important distinction for determining the limits of knowledge and identifying transcendental illusions. For Kant, the main failure of the previous metaphysics has consisted in overlooking the distinction between thing in itself and appearance, their realms and the appropriateness of applying certain classes of concepts to these realms. Dogmatic metaphysics has not paid attention to the boundaries of human knowledge, which has led it into insoluble problems, so that it has not been able to establish itself as a reliable form of knowledge, something already accomplished by mathematics, logic and physics. Without an investigation of the realms and limits of knowledge, metaphysics will continue to transgress the boundaries of knowable objects illegitimately and pretend to know things in themselves (i.e. objects that transcend the realm of possible experience), ignoring the distinct realms in which pure concepts of understanding and ideas of reason respectively can be applied (Prol 339f.). The foregoing account can be regarded as an uncontroversial interpretation of Kant’s philosophy, but the same cannot be said about the meaning of the distinction between thing in itself and appearance. As a matter of fact, the relation between thing in itself and appearance can be understood in at least five ways: (1) As a distinction between ontologically distinct realms and objects: a sensible and an intelligible world, so that the latter would be cause or fundament of the former2; (2) as two kinds of distinct objects: things and representations of things3; (3)  as a semantic distinction between two concepts4; (4)  as two distinct transcendental reflections on the same object (when submitted to epistemic conditions and when these conditions are withdrawn)5; and (5) as a metaphysical distinction, in which the same object is considered with respect to the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of a substance.6 As all of these interpretations are, to different degrees, defensible in the context of Kant’s work itself, it is clear that each of them depends on an understanding of the critical project as a whole. Nevertheless, beyond these different ways of understanding the distinction between thing in itself and appearance, one can also retain three related general distinctions, which are important in order to assess Nietzsche’s account of the thing in itself, as well as the development in his understanding of it: (1) The distinction between a two-​worlds interpretation

  141



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

141

and a two-​aspects interpretation7; (2) the distinction between a positive and a negative meaning of ‘noumenon’8; and (3) the distinction between the thing in itself considered from a theoretical and a practical point of view.9 In my view, the dialogue between Nietzsche and Kant concerning the thing in itself depends on these further distinctions.

3.  Nietzsche’s criticisms of the thing in itself According to Clark, Nietzsche’s claims concerning the thing in itself can be periodized as follows: (1) The time of The Birth of Tragedy and ‘On Truth and Lies in an Extra-​moral Sense’, when Nietzsche presupposes the existence of the thing in itself; (2) between Human, All Too Human and The Gay Science, when Nietzsche assumes an agnosticism about the thing in itself; (3) the late period of Nietzsche’s philosophy, when he definitively refutes the thing in itself, regarding it as a contradictory concept.10 In this chapter, I will focus on the late period of Nietzsche’s work. In this context, it is important to see that Nietzsche is heir to an understanding of the thing in itself that presupposes the two-​worlds interpretation and the discussion of the problem of affection.11 Thus, his first objection to the thing in itself recalls a traditional criticism of Kant, according to which he did not have the right, from the point of view of critical philosophy itself, to maintain the existence of a thing in itself as cause of appearance, insofar as the category of causality has an application only to the realm of possible experience: Kant no longer has a right to his distinction ‘appearance’ and ‘thing-​in-​itself ’ –​ he had deprived himself of the right to go on distinguishing in this old familiar way, in so far as he rejected as impermissible making inferences from phenomena to a cause of phenomena  –​in accordance with his conception of causality and its purely intra-​phenomenal validity –​which conception, on the other hand, already anticipates this distinction, as if the ‘thing-​in-​itself ’ were not only inferred but given. (NL 1886–​7 5[4]‌, KSA 12.185f)

Kant has unjustifiably postulated a world of distinct entities apart from the phenomenal realm, the things in themselves, taking them as causes of appearances, after he has secured the impossibility of any knowledge that transcends the phenomenal realm. In order to do that, he has applied a category to the realm of the thing in itself. But this is not allowed, insofar as one of the most important theses

142

142

André Luis Mota Itaparica

of transcendental idealism consists in denying the application of the concepts of the understanding to objects that transcend the realm of experience. Besides, when Kant sees a relation of causality between thing in itself and appearance, he has not only considered the thing in itself as an inferential conclusion, but has also taken its existence for granted. At times Kant actually defines the thing in itself as cause or ground of appearances.12 He also implies that there is a realm of intelligible objects, an intelligible world, in contrast to the apparent world. But this interpretation, which presupposes the existence of two ontologically distinct entities, can be understood as an extremely literal reading of these passages. Moreover, it reveals a misunderstanding of subtle aspects of transcendental idealism. As a matter of fact, there are many passages, including in the Opus postumum, in which Kant explicitly rejects this interpretation and defends a two-​aspects interpretation, according to which thing in itself and appearance are two distinct ways of considering the same object: under the formal a priori conditions and without them.13 In these passages, Kant explains how one should understand the relation between thing in itself and appearance, as well as the statement that the thing in itself is the cause of appearances. It is absurd to speak of appearance without there being something that appears. A positive attribution of properties to that something is, however, prohibited. Therefore, the thing in itself is only a name that expresses a something  =  x. One cannot know anything about that thing, although one can think it, since, in order to do so, it is only necessary that one does not violate the principle of noncontradiction. That is then a logical possibility. In this sense, the thing in itself is an ens rationis, whose real existence is problematic, but which can be thought of without contradiction. Talking about things in themselves would not be a dogmatic point of view, contradictory to the spirit of transcendental idealism, but a consequence of this idealism itself. There is a difference between a category as a pure concept of understanding, which is the result of the unified function of a judgement (and therefore a concept empty of content), and the use of an already schematized category (and therefore applied to an intuition in the realm of experience). The categories have objective reference to appearances only at the level of empirical use, when they relate to intuitions that give content to representations. At a merely logical level, one can think about a thing in itself as cause or ground of appearances, insofar one cannot talk about an appearance without there being something that appears.14 Even if one presupposes the existence of such an object, this does not imply any knowledge of it. One can even affirm that the subject of knowledge, being the owner of a passive faculty (sensibility),

  143



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

143

has to presuppose the concept of an object that affects sensibility, producing representations. But nobody can affirm its objective reality.15 Although Kant actually asserts that the thing in itself is the cause or ground of appearance, one can maintain that he does not transcend the boundaries of experience and does not make an inconsistent use of the category of causality. The traditional objection repeated by Nietzsche here is not effective, because Kant’s talk of the thing in itself concerns the logical use of the concept and is not a case of applying a pure concept of the understanding to an object that transcends the limits of experience. Thus, in the passage quoted earlier, the more pertinent objection does not consist in calling into question the mistaken application of the category of causality, but in the criticism of Kant’s presupposition of the existence of the thing in itself, which will be developed further in Nietzsche’s second and third objections. The second objection that Nietzsche raises is that Kant transgresses the boundaries of transcendental idealism when he regards the thing in itself as the essence (Wesen) of appearance. In order to do it, Kant would have to justify the distinction between a thing and its essence16: It matters little to me whether someone says today with the modesty of philosophical scepticism or with religious submission: ‘The essence of things [Wesen der Dinge] is unknown to me’, or whether another, bolder man, who has not yet learned enough of criticism and mistrust, says: ‘The essence of things is to a large extent unknown to me.’ I maintain towards both of them that they certainly still pretend to know, or imagine they know, far too much, as if the distinction they both assume were justified: the distinction between an ‘essence of things’ [Wesen der Dinge] and a world of appearances [Erscheinungs-​Welt]. (NL 1886–​7 6[23], KSA 12. 240f.)

According to Nietzsche, one would need a point of view external to all perspectives in order to distinguish between the appearance and essence of things, because only from that point of view could one know whether there are intrinsic properties of things. A thing in itself is understood, in this way, as an absolute ‘constitution of things’ (Beschaffenheit der Dinge: NL 1887 9[40], KSA 12.353). But Kant himself already limited our knowledge to our faculties, so that to talk about things in themselves as the essence of things would be contradictory to the presuppositions of transcendental idealism: To make such a distinction, one would have to conceive of our intellect as afflicted with a contradictory character: on the one hand adapted to a perspectival way of seeing, as precisely creatures of our species must be to preserve their

144

144

André Luis Mota Itaparica

existence; on the other, capable of grasping this perspectival seeing as perspectival, the appearance as appearance. (NL 1886–​7 6[23], KSA 12.241)

To assert that there is an essence of an appearance means, for Nietzsche, to believe in the possibility of standing apart from all perspectives.17 But the essence of a thing cannot be isolated from its perspectives. A  thing can only be thought of as being made up of perspectives. A thing in itself is thought of, however, as a metaphysical substance, independent of any relations. One cannot, therefore, affirm the existence of a thing in itself, just as one cannot affirm the existence of a ‘meaning in itself ’, since every meaning is already a meaning posited by a perspective: ‘The “essence” [Essenz], the “essentiality” [Wesenheit] is a kind of perspective’ (NL 1885–​6 2[149], KSA 12.140). In his second objection, Nietzsche argues that one cannot suppose that, beyond the appearance, there is the possibility of thinking a something in itself, even less thinking about its intrinsic properties. When Kant postulated the possibility of things in themselves in contrast to appearances, he was presupposing knowledge of something that his own agnosticism could not permit: that there are things and that these things, considered in themselves, have essential properties. The understanding of the thing in itself as the essence of appearance is an interpretation that Nietzsche inherited, among others, from Schopenhauer and Lange. One can actually maintain that Kant understands the things in themselves as substances, considered from the point of view of their intrinsic proprieties. But, even in this case, Kant would not be transgressing the limits of transcendental idealism. Once again, the thing in itself can be thought without contradiction as a substance:  logically, as first subject of a predication; ontologically, as substrate of intrinsic properties. In neither case is it thought as the schematized category of substance.18 The core of Nietzsche’s second objection consists in showing that the thesis according to which things in themselves have intrinsic properties is a dogmatic one, since it presupposes a point of view apart from all perspectives. However, as we have seen, Kant could only be affirming a logical use of the category of substance, rather than its objective reality. Nevertheless, this second objection points to a crucial step to Nietzsche’s third objection, namely, that the thing in itself is a contradictory concept, because it presupposes the existence of something independent of any relations. For Nietzsche, a thing is constituted by relations. Thus, the concept of the thing in itself is a logical impossibility. In his third objection, Nietzsche adopts an unorthodox Kantian reading, when he advances a kind of inflated meaning of the negative concept of noumenon

  145



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

145

as a limit-​concept. He is drawing an extreme consequence from Kantian doctrine itself, according to which the negative concept of noumenon expresses the limit of what can be thought meaningfully. Kant attributes to the thing in itself the status of a problematic concept. But Nietzsche does not consider it merely problematic; he regards it as absurd, meaningless. Kant is censured for having accepted such an absurd concept, without having paid attention to his own presuppositions. Kant, for Nietzsche, has not seen that the conception of something, of which we know only that we know nothing, is an idea that contradicts reason itself: (By the way: even in the Kantian concept of ‘the intelligible character of things’, something of this lewd ascetic conflict [Zwiespältigkeit] still lingers, which likes to set reason against reason:  ‘intelligible character’ means, in Kant, a sort of quality of things about which all that the intellect can comprehend is that it is, for the intellect –​completely incomprehensible.) (GM III 12, KSA 5.364)

The main objections raised by Nietzsche to the Kantian concept of the thing in itself are, then: (1) that it involves a forbidden use of the category of causality; (2) that it is conceived, unjustifiably, as the metaphysical essence of appearances; and (3) that it is a contradictory concept, because it presupposes a thing that is independent of any relations. Insofar as any interpretation of the status of the thing in itself depends on a particular reading of transcendental idealism, Nietzsche’s interpretation is no exception. Hitherto, we have seen Nietzsche’s criticisms of the concept of the thing in itself from a theoretical point of view. But in order to understand the role played by the Kantian project in Nietzsche’s thought, it is necessary to take into consideration the three distinctions mentioned at the beginning: (1) between a two-​worlds interpretation and a two-​aspects interpretation; (2) between a positive and a negative meaning of noumenon; and (3)  between thing in itself considered from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. In the first case, Nietzsche interprets the relation between thing in itself and appearance as a relation between two distinct realms (an intelligible and a sensible world), thereby reproducing the metaphysical duality established since Plato. Nowadays, the two-​aspects interpretation has been gaining force in Kantian studies, which does not mean, however, that the two-​worlds interpretation is absurd or without textual basis. If we consider the thing in itself from a theoretical point of view, the two-​aspects interpretation seems to have more textual support; if we consider its practical meaning, the two-​worlds interpretation becomes more plausible. Nietzsche is explicit about this practical meaning:

146

146

André Luis Mota Itaparica

The true world, unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable, but the very thought of it a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (Basically the old sun, but through fog and scepticism; the idea become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian). (TI Fable 3, KSA 6.80)

In this passage, Nietzsche charges Kant with maintaining a Platonic distinction, when he establishes the possibility of distinguishing between phenomena (apparent entities, the ‘apparent world’) and noumena (intelligible entities, the ‘true world’). The distinction between what can be known and what can be thought is already, for Nietzsche, a split between two radically distinct realms. Nietzsche claims that Kant, facing the threat of scepticism and the need to preserve the practical realm, had to deny theoretical access to the ‘true world’ of the thing in itself, in order to make space for articles of faith in the practical realm, such as God, freedom and immortality of soul: ‘to create room for his “moral realm” he [Kant] saw himself obliged to posit an indemonstrable world, a logical “Beyond” –​it was for precisely that that he had need of his critique of pure reason!’ (D Preface 3, KSA 3.14). Because of this, Nietzsche denies the thing in itself as logical possibility: if this possibility were open, one would be allowed to think of a moral kingdom. Thus, even if the two-​worlds interpretation may not be entirely defensible theoretically, it points to an indisputable aspect of Kant’s work: the return of the noumenon in the practical realm. For instance, in the transition from the theoretical to the practical realm, Kant postulates, through the concept of transcendental freedom, a distinction between the intelligible and empirical character of an agent. In the practical realm itself, he presupposes a community of intelligible beings as the condition for realizing a moral action. Kant makes a distinction between the positive and negative meanings of noumenon and discards the former, since it would presuppose an intellectual intuition, reserving for the latter the meaning of mere logical possibility, as a warrant for the insuperable limits established by transcendental idealism. But, as we have seen, there is a third distinction at play in the broad conception of the thing in itself: between objects of knowledge (the realm where the negative meaning is applicable) and objects that do not have a phenomenal manifestation (but play a crucial role in the practical realm). These two meanings (theoretical and practical) are clearly distinguished in the second Critique. As a matter of fact, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant reveals that his objective in the first Critique had been to reserve a space for the noumenon, in order not to regard it as fictional, and so to give space for its legitimate use in the practical realm,

  147



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

147

in the second Critique, where the supersensible, forbidden in the first Critique, finally finds its own place: Here the critique’s puzzle as to how one can deny objective reality to the suprasensible use of the categories and yet grant them this reality in regard to the objects of pure practical reason is also for the first time explained. (Kant, KpV 8) For while that critique urged us to allow objects of experience taken as such  –​ including even our own subject –​to hold only as appearances, but yet to base them on things in themselves, and therefore not to regard everything suprasensible as invention and the concept of the suprasensible as empty of content, [practical reason now yields confirmation]:  practical reason, on its own and without having made an agreement with speculative reason, now provides a suprasensible object of the category of causality, namely freedom, with reality (although –​since this [freedom] is a practical concept –​it also does so only for practical use); thus it confirms by a fact what in the speculative critique could only be thought. (Kant, KpV 9)

Nietzsche does not accuse Kant of performing any kind of internal contradiction. He understands that the Ideas of reason are thought as practical concepts and therefore are limited to this realm. What he objects to is Kant’s postulation of a positive value to the thing in itself and the consequent adoption of traditional metaphysical conceptions. As such, Kant would have contributed to a strengthening of a kind of metaphysics that he himself had tried to overcome.19 On the one hand, that was the explicit objective of critical philosophy. Nietzsche recalls several times the famous passage from the Preface to the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant affirms that he ‘had to deny knowledge in order to make room to faith’ (KrV B XXX).20 On the other hand, Nietzsche is not original in making such a criticism of a practical aspect of the Kantian project, and its consequent return to metaphysics. However, the most important point for understanding this discussion is to realize that to some extent Nietzsche follows Kant’s negative concept of noumenon (as a limit-​concept). He distances himself from Kant by rejecting any positive reading of the thing in itself (theoretically or practically). In conclusion, in spite of his general criticism of the thing in itself, the central point of Nietzsche’s account resides in the practical use of this concept and the return to articles of faith. According to Nietzsche, Kant could have abandoned these if he had understood what a thing in itself is: a contradictory concept, whose only utility consists in serving as limit of what can be asserted meaningfully.

148

148

André Luis Mota Itaparica

Notes 1 2 3

4

5

6

7 8

A previous version of this chapter was published in Portuguese in: Kriterion, v. 4, n. 128, December 2013, 307–​20. Among others, the following authors have discussed this question: Riccardi (2009; 2010), Houlgate (1993), Salaquarda (1978) Stack (1983). The classical formulation of this understanding was given by F. H. Jacobi (1787). According to Paul Guyer (1987: 335): ‘Kant does not need to postulate a second set of objects beyond the ones we ordinarily refer to in order to strip space and time from things as they are in themselves, and not just from our concepts of them, because the ontology from which he begins already includes two classes of objects, namely things as tables and chairs and our representations of them’. Henry Allison (1983: 240) attributes that idea to Erich Adickes: ‘Other passages suggest that Kant’s claim is semantic. On this reading, Kant is affirming a relation of logical implication between the concept of an appearance and the concept of a thing as it is in itself, rather than a causal relation between the entities falling under these concepts’. This is Allison’s (1983: 241) interpretation: ‘To consider the things as they appear, or as appearing, is to consider them in their relation to sensible conditions under which they are given to the mind in intuition. Correlatively, to consider them as they are in themselves is to think them apart from all reference to these conditions’. The distinction defended by Rae Langton (1998: 20): ‘Considered this way, Kant’s distinction between phenomena and things in themselves is very far from being a phenomenalistic distinction between mental representations and things independent of the mind. It can be summarized thus. Distinction: Things in themselves are substances that have intrinsic properties; phenomena are relational properties of substances’. As we have seen, Jacobi defends a two-​worlds interpretation; Allison defends a two-​ aspects interpretation. I will not discuss the distinction, not always consistent even in Kant’s texts, between appearance (Erscheinung), phenomenon (Phaenomenon), on one hand, and thing in itself, noumenon and transcendental object, on the other hand, as Allison has. He understands appearance as an undetermined object of an intuition, and phenomenon as an object that is determined by formal transcendental conditions; he understands the thing in itself as an undetermined object that is withdrawn from formal transcendental conditions, the transcendental object as a something = x that is presupposed in all intuition and noumenon, in negative sense, as a limit-​concept (an entity thought of as not being an object of a sensible intuition), and, in positive sense, as an entity thought of as object of a non-​sensible intuition (cf. Allison 1983: 244f).

  149



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

149

9 Allison and Houlgate maintain that, at least in a practical sense, the ontological distinction between noumenon and phenomenon is important: ‘The conception of a noumenon as an ontologically distinct entity is required only in order to allow for the possibility of conceiving God (and perhaps rational souls). This conception is, therefore, important for Kant’s metaphysics, including his metaphysics of morals, but it does not enter directly into a transcendental account of the conditions of possibility of human knowledge’ (Allison 1983: 239). According to Houlgate (1993: 121): ‘Kant’s concept of the thing in itself, the “noumenon” or the “transcendental object” –​these terms are in effect interchangeable –​has two different functions. On the one hand, it permits Kant to draw a distinction between the finite objects which we experience, and the unconditioned, “infinite” objects, such as God or the soul, which, he maintains, we do not experience’. 10 Clark (1990). More precisely, Clark thinks that Nietzsche would have had grounds to overcome the concept of thing in itself since The Gay Science, but he only accomplishes this overcoming when he developed his perspectivism in On the Genealogy of Morals. For a detailed discussion about this issue, see Riccardi (2010). 11 Arthur Schopenhauer, Afrikan Spir, Otto Liebmann, Kuno Fischer and F. A. Lange are the authors whom Nietzsche used as the sources in his reading and appropriation of transcendental tradition (cf. Riccardi 2009). Lange played an important role in Nietzsche’s reading of the thing in itself. According to Lange (1974), given the impossibility of accessing the thing in itself, it can only be conceived as a problematic entity and a limit-​concept. 12 These passages are well known. For instance: KrV B xxvi, A 288; Prol 288f., 314f. 13 ‘We must, with respect of the intuition of an object in space or in time, at all times make the distinction between the representation of the thing in itself and that of the same thing as appearance –​although we can attribute to the former no predicates, but, as = x, can regard it only as a correlate for the pure understanding (as cogitabile, not dabile) in which concepts, not things, are contrasted with one another. The proposition: All sense-​objects are things in appearance (objecta phaenomena) to which a noumenon corresponds as the ground of their coordination; but no particular intuition (no noumenon aspectabile) corresponds to the latter, for that would be a contradiction with respect to the subjective element of the principle’ (AA 22:33). 14 The thing in itself would thus be a concept thought analytically: it only means the same object considered apart from the transcendental conditions. Again, knowledge of the thing in itself that would have caused appearance is not affirmed; what is thought is its possibility, through an analytic judgement. This is permitted, since it is thought without contradiction. 15 Cf. Allison (1983: 254). 16 According to Nietzsche, to talk about a thing is already to presuppose the idea of substance, which, in its turn, is a projection of the belief in a metaphysical

150

150

André Luis Mota Itaparica

subject: ‘It believes in the “I”, in the I as being, in the I as substance, and it projects this belief in the I-​substance onto all things –​this is how it creates the concept of “thing” in the first place’ (TI Errors 5, KSA 6.91). A thing in itself would be a substance conceived in its essential properties, other than as it appears to us, that is, it would be independent of all perspectives. 17 ‘The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be compared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know would be revealed only in the presence of “true reality”, i.e., because in order to criticize the intellect we would have to be a higher being with ‘absolute knowledge.’ This presupposes that, distinct from every perspectival kind of outlook or sensual–​spiritual appropriation, there is something, an ‘in-​itself.’ But the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of ‘things-​in-​themselves’ (NL 1886–​7 5[11], KSA 12.188). 18 This is Langton’s (1988) argument. Her interpretation is based on Kant’s discussion with Leibniz in the ‘Amphibology’ (KrV B324f). In many passages of this section of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant really seems to agree that the thing in itself might be identified with the metaphysical substantia noumenon, that is, a first subject of all predication, which, ontologically, would be the substrate of intrinsic proprieties, in contrast to extrinsic, relational, proprieties, which constitute appearances. Thus, Kant’s distinction between thing in itself and appearance would not be an epistemological or phenomenological one, but an eminently metaphysical one. Besides, it would not be a forbidden use of the category of substance, since he is not using the concept of substance from the ‘First Analogy’ here, which presupposes the schematized category of substance, the substantia phaenomenon (an appearance that only comparatively, and not absolutely, could be considered substance). He is making a logical use of this category. The metaphysical error would be to apply this concept to appearances. 19 Although recognizing that Kant does not want to make any metaphysical statement when he talks about a ‘noumenal world’, stressing that Kant does not postulate anything about its knowledge and existence, and concluding that Kant does not transfer the moral question to a transcendent realm, Allen Wood (2008: 138) is obligated to admit that Kant sometimes implies exactly this: ‘Unfortunately, in some places it appears that Kant himself wants to make positive use of noumenal freedom –​as yet another indirect proof of transcendental idealism (KpV 100–​3), or as some sort of intimation (or even cognition) of our membership in a supernatural world beyond the natural world of sense (G 451–​3, KpV 105). Apparently Kant also found it morally fitting that, as often as we think of human beings as ends in themselves having absolute worth or dignity, we must also think of them as having some supernatural (or noumenal) destiny, setting them apart from all those lesser beings whose fate is to be merely a part of nature.’ 20 D 197, KSA 3.172; NL 1872–​3 19[34], KSA 7.426f; BGE 2, KSA 5.16.

  151



Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself

151

References Allison, H. (1983), Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, New Haven: Yale University Press. Clark, M. (1990), Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, New York: Cambridge University Press. Guyer, P. (1987), Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Houlgate, S. (1993), ‘Kant, Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22. Jacobi, F. H. (1787), David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gespräch, Breslau: Gottlieb Löwe. Lange, F. A. (1974), Geschichte des Materialismus, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Langton, R. (1998), Kantian Humility. Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der faule Fleck des kantischen Kriticismus’. Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe. Riccardi, M. (2010), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 39. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’. Nietzsche-​Studien 7. Stack, G. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wood, A. W. (2008), Kantian Ethics, New York: Cambridge University Press.

152

  153

6

Nietzsche on Kant’s Distinction between Knowledge (Wissen) and Belief (Glaube) Mattia Riccardi

1.  Introduction Much ink has been spilled on Nietzsche’s relation to Kant, usually with the aim of showing how profoundly their philosophical projects differ. Yet attempts to bring Nietzsche closer to Kant have also regularly appeared in the literature.1 The one recently put forward by Clark and Dudrick (2012) clearly stands out for the philosophical sophistication of their case. Clark and Dudrick argue that –​however deep their differences –​Nietzsche’s project should be seen as taking up that of Kant. In their eyes, what grounds this alleged continuity is Nietzsche’s recognition that certain questions inhabit a normative realm which goes beyond that of the empirical sciences and thus constitutes an autonomous ‘space of reasons’.2 This is not to deny that Nietzsche defends a substantive version of naturalism. Rather, what Clark and Dudrick point out is that he is not a naturalist all the way up. His naturalism only has, and only aims at having, a certain reach. Beyond that, the domain of the normative –​most notably, that of our moral and aesthetic valuations –​opens up.3 There is no doubt that Kant admits of a normative domain which transcends the explanatory powers of the empirical sciences. Indeed, as long as he spells out the conditions under which alone empirical knowledge is possible, Kant takes himself to be uncovering its constitutive limits. As he writes in a famous passage from the ‘Preface’ to the Critique of Pure Reason, he ‘had to deny knowledge [Wissen], in order to make room for belief [Glaube]’ (KrV Bxxx, translation changed). This passage is important for a number of reasons. First, it offers a straightforward characterization of the strategy underlying Kant’s normative

154

154

Mattia Riccardi

project. Second, it qualifies the normative realm opposed to that of empirical knowledge as the realm of belief. (I shall go back in due course to the issue of what he might mean with this term.) Third, in a way more contingently related to the subject matter of this chapter, in his works and Nachlass Nietzsche repeatedly refers to the Kantian move described in the quoted passage (to be discussed in Sections 4 and 5 of this chapter). Thus, his reaction to this move is likely to provide a reliable clue as to whether, and to what extent, Nietzsche actually takes over Kant’s normative project. As the interpretive issue at stake runs very deep, Clark and Dudrick mount a powerful and multifaceted argument to substantiate it. The claim that Nietzsche, in some sense, takes over Kant’s own project is just a part of this complex strategy. More precisely, the holding of this specific claim is supposed to provide evidence in favour of their general normative reading. In this chapter I shall focus on the specific claim and question its cogency.4 Though no decisive rebuttal of the normative reading as such can be taken to follow from the argument I shall present in this chapter, if the points I raise hold, Clark and Dudrick would have one piece of evidence less to support it.5

2.  Kant’s realm of belief The general outline of the story Kant alludes to in the ‘Preface’ is well known. He argues that knowledge (Wissen) can only be of empirical objects, that is, objects of sensory awareness.6 So there can be no knowledge of things that transcend the reach of our senses, such as God or the soul. This means that we are in no position to know whether a certain proposition about God or the soul is or is not true. However, according to Kant we should not conclude that propositions of this kind are just meaningless. Quite to the contrary, he argues that they are the legitimate target of an epistemic attitude which, though distinct from knowledge, is nonetheless justified. Such epistemic attitude is belief (Glaube). Thus, for Kant, though we cannot know, say, that the soul is immortal, we are entitled to so believe. It is important to note that in the ‘Canon of Pure Reason’, a much later section of the Critique, Kant offers a precise characterization of knowledge and belief as distinct epistemic attitudes –​a characterization which is arguably reflected in his usage of the terms in the ‘Preface’. There, Kant distinguishes between opinion, belief and knowledge, which he defines as follows (KrV A822/​B850):

  155



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

155

i. opinion is ‘taking something to be true with the consciousness that it is subjectively as well as objectively insufficient’; ii. belief is ‘taking something to be true [which] is only subjectively sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient’; iii. knowledge is ‘taking something to be true [which] is both subjectively and objectively sufficient’. An important point that emerges from Kant’s discussion is that, in certain domains, only a specific epistemic attitude is allowed. For instance, he writes that ‘[i]‌n judging from pure reason, to have an opinion is not allowed at all. [. . .]. Hence it is absurd to have an opinion in pure mathematics: one must know, or else refrain from all judgement. It is just the same with the principles of morality’ (KrV A823/​B851). The claim, thus, is that only knowledge is the epistemic attitude permitted when it comes to a priori judgements. In the case of judgements about things that cannot be objects of sensory awareness, such as ‘God exists’ or ‘A future life exists’, belief is, in turn, the only appropriate attitude. As Kant notes, ‘[i]n the transcendental use of reason, on the contrary, to have an opinion is of course too little, but to know is also too much’ (KrV A823/​B851). So Kant tells us that knowledge is unattainable when it comes to objects that transcend the limits of sensory awareness. The epistemic attitude that remains open to us in such matters is, rather, belief. Though belief lacks the kind of strong evidence which supports knowledge –​it is ‘objectively insufficient’, as Kant puts it –​, it does not amount to the mere entertaining of an opinion either, which is ‘subjectively as well as objectively insufficient’. Moreover, whereas opinions are held with a low degree of confidence, belief is a matter of firm endorsement. But how is that possible, given that belief does not rest on the kind of objective grounds on which knowledge relies? Kant’s answer is that, in the case of belief, the firmness of one’s commitment is justified by the specific practical situation in which one finds oneself. Thus, as Andrew Chignell (2007: 333) puts it, belief is according to Kant an attitude which has ‘nonepistemic grounds or merits that are sufficient to make it rational in particular contexts, even if it doesn’t have sufficient objective grounds’. Now that we have a rough picture of Kant’s notion of belief, we can go back to the passage from the ‘Preface’ we started with. What is the subject matter of the belief Kant felt urged to make room for? The most natural answer is what Kant, later in the ‘Canon’, calls ‘moral belief ’. As we saw, a belief is an attitude that always relates to specific practical interests or goals. Though most of them are prompted by the concrete situations we happen to face and are therefore

156

156

Mattia Riccardi

contingent, for Kant a subset of our practical goals descend directly and necessarily from our very nature as moral beings. If the belief in a certain proposition  –​that God exists, for instance  –​fosters the pursuit of such goals, this constitutes a sufficient ‘nonepistemic merit’, to use Chignell’s terminology, for a resolute endorsement of it to be rational. Therefore, though we are in no position to claim to know that God exists, we are entitled to believe, and firmly so, that it does. To conclude, according to Kant, the normative realm that lies beyond that of empirical knowledge is the realm of belief –​more precisely, that of moral belief. Importantly, Kant stresses that the ‘language [. . .] of a firm belief’ which is left over even after one has ‘surrender[ed] that of knowledge’ is nonetheless ‘justified by the sharpest reason’ (KrV A745/​B773). As Chignell (2007: 325) again aptly notes, this means that Kant ‘is not a full-​blown subjectivist about leaps-​ of-​Belief:  he remains committed to the enlightenment dictum that we must think for ourselves and that this, in turn, requires that we somehow think from the point of view of every other rational agent’. The manner by which we gain access to and navigate Kant’s normative realm is therefore through an instance of rational reflection to be performed a priori and, consequently, equally available to every human being.

3.  Lange’s reshaping of Kant’s normative realm In this section I shall consider the way in which the neo-​Kantian philosopher Friedrich Albert Lange redefines Kant’s original conception of a normative realm that transcends the explanatory powers of the empirical sciences. This excursus is pertinent because, as I shall try to show in the next section, Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant’s move was profoundly shaped by his reading of Lange’s History of Materialism, at least in his young years.7 Lange believes the critical part of Kant’s philosophy to be his genuine achievement. He thus endorses the project of investigating the transcendental conditions governing our experience of the world and our knowledge of it. However, he holds Kant’s attempt to show that the assumption of a noumenal world is justified by rational demands intrinsic to our practical nature to be but an inconvenient concession to pre-​critical, that is, dogmatic metaphysics. His diagnosis is that ‘Kant refused to see, like already Plato before him, that the “intelligible world” is a world of poetry [Welt der Dichtung] and that it is precisely herein that

  157



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

157

its value and dignity lay’ (Lange 1887: 415). But what does it mean to say that the normative domain that transcends empirical knowledge is to be conceived as a ‘world of poetry’, rather than the Kantian realm of practically justified belief?8 The short answer to this question is that our normative commitments do not respond to demands of reason that are universal and accessible via a priori reflection. Rather, Lange suggests that something akin to artistic creativity is the source of such commitments. This clearly emerges in a passage from the first edition of the History of Materialism that much impressed the young Nietzsche. There, Lange (1866: 269) claims that the kind of ‘level-​headed scepticism [besonnene Skepsis]’ embodied by Kant’s critical project should serve the revelation of the Beautiful and of the Good, since it separates these domains [Gebiete] from that of the empirical truth and extirpates the bad weeds of dogmatism, so that knowledge [Erkennen] and creation [Schaffen] deliver their own fruits equally unconstrained.

There should be no doubt that Lange is here presenting ‘creation’ as an alternative to Kant’s ‘belief ’.9 This substitution has important consequences. First, as already noted, sensitivity to the normative –​Lange refers to the ‘revelation of the Beautiful and of the Good’ –​is no longer conceived as primarily dependent on some kind of transcendental exercise of reason. Second, in a very un-​Kantian fashion, he thinks of the normative realm separated from that of empirical knowledge as inhabited not only by moral values, but also by aesthetic ones. Indeed, the very notion of ‘creation’ enlisted by Lange stems, like that of poetry, from the domain of art. If our normative commitments are not primarily grounded in rationality, how are we then to conceive of them? Though this point is decisive, Lange remains somewhat elusive. He talks of ‘ideas’ and ‘ideals’, which, by exceeding the strict limits to which empirical knowledge is subjected, purport to provide orientation for our lives as agents. On the one hand, such ‘ideas’ and ‘ideals’, Lange seems to suggest, are typically conveyed through artistic means; at least, he repeatedly refers to Friedrich Schiller’s philosophical poems as an illustration of such a normatively driven creative force (see, for instance, Lange 1887: 828).10 On the other hand, it is not clear what, according to Lange, is supposed to ground one’s attachment to a given value. Why do we happen to be at all committed to moral and aesthetic ideals? Lange seems to take this to be a brute fact about our nature as human beings. He also seems to think that an individual is inclined towards this rather than that ideal by something like contingent psychological and historical factors.

158

158

Mattia Riccardi

Though Clark and Dudrick sometimes refer to Lange’s views in order to better illuminate some of Nietzsche’s own claims, they do not discuss specifically his revision of Kant’s normative approach. However, their few remarks seem to fit –​or, at least, not to contradict –​the picture I am here recommending, since they present Lange as pursuing the project of naturalizing Kant’s transcendental philosophy by, at the same time, rejecting any reductive form of materialism. More importantly, they also argue that the normative project defended by the late Nietzsche comes much closer to Kant’s original one than does Lange’s spurious variant (see Clark and Dudrick 2012:  73). This is so, they argue, because the late Nietzsche, like Kant, comes to see our normative commitments as essentially grounded in our rational capacities, though he does not conceive such capacities as universal and given a priori, but rather as emerging through cultural and historical processes. Hence, in virtue of this recognition, Nietzsche’s naturalism turns out to be more moderate than Lange’s. This is a reading I shall question by arguing that the late Nietzsche can be ascribed a position that is, at the very most, in the vicinity of Lange’s. Before that, however, we need to take a look at the earliest reaction to the Kantian move documented in his writings.

4.  Nietzsche’s early reaction Nietzsche’s first reference to the passage from the ‘Preface’ to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason occurs in a long and rather obscure Nachlass note from 1871. The note starts by quoting the passage, to which Nietzsche adds the following comments: Curious opposition, ‘knowledge and belief’! What would the Greeks have thought of this! Kant knew no other opposition! But we do! A cultural need [Kulturnoth] drives Kant: he wants to rescue one domain [Gebiet] from knowledge: this is where the roots of all that is highest and most profound, art and ethics, are set down –​by Schopenhauer [. . .] Taming [Bändigung] the drive for knowledge –​whether for the benefit of a religion? Or of an artistic culture? That is about to become evident; I  favour the second alternative. (NL 1872–​3 19[34], KSA 7.427)

These lines allude to a range of themes Nietzsche had long been reflecting on. I shall spell out those which prove relevant to our present discussion.

  159



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

159

A thing that immediately catches one’s eye is that Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant’s move seems to conform to Lange’s, rather than Kant’s own position. Consider, for instance, Nietzsche’s characterization of the domain Kant separates from knowledge as harbouring ‘the roots of all that highest and most profound, art and ethics’. As we have seen in the previous section, this by no means corresponds to Kant’s conception of moral belief, but rather to Lange’s aestheticist revision.11 That this is the case is also confirmed by some passages from the Birth of Tragedy where the same Langean distortion of Kant’s strategy is already at work: Let us recall, then, how Kant and Schopenhauer made it possible for the spirit of German philosophy [. . .] to destroy scientific Socratism’s contented pleasure in existence by demonstrating its limits, and how this demonstration ushered in an incomparably deeper and more serious consideration of ethical questions and art [. . .] (BT 19, KSA 1.128)

Equally noteworthy is that Nietzsche fully embraces the (in his eyes) Kantian move consisting in ‘taming the drive for knowledge’ in order to save ‘a domain [Gebiet] from knowledge’. What he challenges is, rather, the goal pursued by means of this move, which he identifies as the project to provide religion with a new footing. It is not clear to whom this disagreement is primarily directed. Of course, it may be easily targeting Kant’s original conception of ‘moral belief ’, since this amounts to the acceptance of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. However, it could also be directed at Lange’s own position, since he still presents the religious ideal as one of the most worthy and powerful. Be this as it may, Nietzsche opts for a different outcome by suggesting that Kant’s move should serve the quite different project of a spiritual renovation aiming at bringing about a new kind of artistic culture. This is, of course, still the project to which the Birth of Tragedy is devoted. In the series of Nachlass notes from which the previous passage is taken, Nietzsche emphasizes that philosophers are those saddled with the task of forging new ideals. A philosopher who is up to this ambitious enterprise is labelled by Nietzsche the ‘philosopher of tragic knowledge’ (der tragischen Erkenntnis): He tames the unleashed drive for knowledge, not by means of a new metaphysics. He does not establish a new belief. He feels [empfindet] it to be tragic that the ground of metaphysics has been cut away and can never be satisfied by the colourful kaleidoscope of the sciences. He works toward a new life: he returns to art its rights. (NL 1872–​3, 19[35], KSA 7.427f.)12

160

160

Mattia Riccardi

To summarize, Nietzsche’s early reaction to Kant’s move, when viewed through Langean lenses, is positive. Like Lange, he takes the project of harnessing the knowledge drive by showing its constitutive limitations to be the epochal achievement of critical philosophy. Of course, Nietzsche argues that this move should serve a quite different purpose, namely, the kind of cultural rejuvenation envisaged in the Birth of Tragedy. This departure from Kant’s original conception of the realm of belief is surely indebted to Lange’s own view that artistic or quasi-​artistic creation is the force that alone can produce normatively binding ideals. Let us now turn to what the late Nietzsche makes of Kant’s move.

5.  Nietzsche’s late reaction Since the aim of this section is to consider Nietzsche’s later reaction to Kant’s distinction between knowledge and belief, it will be instructive to first look at those passages where Kant’s move is directly addressed. This textual evidence compellingly shows that his judgement remains consistently dismissive. A first reference occurs in the second volume of Human, All Too Human: Ingenious metaphysicians who prepare the way for scepticism, and through their excessive acuteness invite mistrust of acuteness, are excellent instruments in the hands of a more refined obscurantism.  –​Is it possible that even Kant can be used to this end? that he himself, indeed, according to his own notorious declaration, desired something of the kind, at any rate for a time: to open a path for belief by showing knowledge its limitations [dem Glauben Bahn machen, dadurch, dass er dem Wissen seine Schranke wies]? (AOM 27, KSA 2.391f.)

Some years later and still in a similar fashion, Nietzsche writes that ‘the movement [German culture in the first half of the nineteenth century  –​MR] as a whole set knowledge in general below feeling and –​in the words Kant employed to designate his own task –​“again paved the way for belief by showing knowledge its limitations [Glauben wieder Bahn zu machen, indem man dem Wissen seine Gränzen wies]” ’ (D 197, KSA 3.172). Again, Nietzsche takes this movement to embody a dangerous ‘spirit of obscurantism and reaction’, which has been finally defeated by ‘that very Enlightenment’ based on the ‘study of history, understanding of origins and evolutions, empathy for the past’ and ‘a newly aroused passion for feeling and knowledge’ (ibid.). In the ‘Preface’ added in 1887 to the same work, Kant’s move is again ridiculed as motivated by his moral views: ‘to create

  161



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

161

room for his “moral realm” he saw himself obliged to posit an indemonstrable world, a logical “Beyond” –​it was for precisely that that he had need of his critique of pure reason!’ (D Preface 3, KSA 3.14). Finally, the same assessment is still voiced in a late Nachlass note, where Nietzsche argues that ‘the back-​to-​Kant movement in our century is a movement back to the 18th century: one wants to regain a right to the old ideals and to the old Schwärmerei  –​hence, a theory of knowledge that “sets limits [Grenze]”, i.e. allows one to posit at will a realm beyond reason [Jenseits der Vernunft] . . .’ (NL 1887 9[178], KSA 12.442f.).13 Now, this textual evidence seems to leave no doubt that the middle-​to-​late Nietzsche rejects Kant’s move altogether. One could however argue that Nietzsche still remains sympathetic, if not to its letter, at least to its spirit. After all, the young Nietzsche had already endorsed a version of the move –​Lange’s one –​ which substantially diverges from Kant’s original one. So perhaps Nietzsche’s target is just Kant’s appeal to the notion of moral belief and not the very idea of a normative realm separated from that of empirical knowledge. A suggestion along these lines may seem motivated by some claims Nietzsche makes in aphorism 10 from Beyond Good and Evil. There, he praises a group of contemporary philosophers labelled ‘anti-​realists and epistemo-​microscopists’ (BGE 10, KSA 5.24) for rejecting the crude positivism which had become the standard view of his time. As Clark and Dudrick (2012) rightly suggest, what Nietzsche seems to have in mind is a group of (in a somewhat loose sense) neo-​ Kantian philosophers, among whom Clark and Dudrick also count Lange himself (70). Of these philosophers, Nietzsche writes: By taking sides against semblance [Schein] and expressing the word ‘perspectival’ even with arrogance, by granting their own bodies about as little credibility as they grant the visual evidence [Anschein] that says that ‘the earth stand still’, and so, with seemingly [anscheinend] good spirit, relinquishing their most secure possession [. . .], who knows whether they are not at bottom trying to re-​ appropriate something that was once possessed even more securely, something from the old estate of a bygone belief [Glaube], perhaps the ‘immortal soul’ or perhaps ‘the old God’, in short, ideas that helped make life a bit better, which is to say stronger and more cheerful than ‘modern ideas’ can do? (BGE 10, KSA 5.23)

Though there is no doubt that this passage refers to philosophers like Afrikan Spir, Gustav Teichmüller and Maximilian Drossbach,14 it is less clear that Lange, too, is one of the ‘anti-​realists and epistemo-​microscopists’ Nietzsche has in mind here. After all, hostility towards modern ideas can hardly be attributed to the author of the Arbeiterfrage (1865). But even if we grant that Lange is among

162

162

Mattia Riccardi

the philosophers Nietzsche has in mind in BGE 10, the overall tone of the aphorism is nonetheless ambiguous. On the one hand, he praises them for assuming unfashionable attitudes. On the other hand, he stresses that they are thereby motivated by the project of securing a new grounding for the religious beliefs in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, which obviously looks very much like Kant’s notion of ‘moral belief ’. Now, it is clear that what Nietzsche finds praiseworthy about these philosophers is precisely not their attempt to restore the eroded faith in Christian values, but rather their ‘mistrust in [. . .] modern ideas’ and ‘disbelief in everything built yesterday and today’ (BGE 10, KSA 5.23). As he writes near the end of the aphorism, ‘[t]‌he essential things about them is not that they want to go “back”: but rather, that they want to get –​ away’ (BGE 10, KSA 5.24). Thus, given the peculiar stress of the aphorism, one can even bracket out their backward-​looking attitude: ‘what do we care for their retrograde shortcuts!’ (ibid.). But that is nonetheless what they do embody: a reactionary instance. When Nietzsche is concerned to draw our attention to this aspect of the strategy pursued by Kant and most of his followers, as the case in all the passages quoted at the beginning of this section, he indeed dismisses it as fuelled by obscurantism, moral prejudice and Schwärmerei. Hence, on closer scrutiny, no real sympathy for this feature of the Kant-​inspired tradition emerges from BGE 10. Nonetheless, it still seems that the late Nietzsche is attracted by at least some of the features of the Langean position he embraced when he was working on the Birth of Tragedy. In particular, Lange’s claim that normatively binding ideals are primarily the product of artistic or quasi-​artistic creation seems to echo in many of the claims we can find in Nietzsche’s writings from the 1880s. Thus, as this claim constitutes the core idea of Lange’s position, the fact that the late Nietzsche remains committed to it may be taken to indicate that his conception of normativity is still in the spirit of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. There is no reason to doubt that Nietzsche sticks to the view that values are a creative achievement: as Zarathustra succinctly puts it, ‘[e]‌steeming is creating’ (Z I Goals, KSA 4.75). Moreover, the late Nietzsche still believes that genuine philosophers are only those up to such a value-​forging enterprise (see BGE 211). At the same time, it seems hard to deny that Nietzsche’s repeated and harsh dismissal of Kant’s move as such expresses, indeed, a deep discontent with the very project of ‘taming the drive for knowledge’ in order to make room for a distinct, purely normative realm. My diagnosis is that he comes to believe that the only motivation for a strategy of this kind is one’s unwillingness to abandon one’s set

  163



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

163

of moral and religious beliefs. Once this rationale is put aside, the move becomes meaningless. This points to the conclusion that the attitude the late Nietzsche takes towards a Langean solution is somewhat ambiguous. The only Nachlass notes from this period in which he comments on Lange seem to confirm this impression. On the one hand, Nietzsche depicts Lange as an ‘honest animal which, in the absence of more honest ones, could even be recommended to the German youth’ (NL 1885 34[99], KSA 11.453). On the other hand, Lange is said to have the ‘instincts of frightened beings and of those who are still dominated by morals’ (NL 1884 25[318], KSA 11.94). In this respect, thus, Lange does not differ from the ‘anti-​realists and epistemo-​microscopists’ described in BGE 10. Though this provides good reasons to resist the conclusion that Nietzsche’s late view can still be considered a version of Langeanism, I  shall not further pursue the issue here. For, crucially, even if we were to grant this claim, no support in favour of the substantial normative reading proposed by Clark and Dudrick would derive from it. To appreciate this point, we need to consider in more detail how Lange answers the question of how evaluative commitments come about. As we saw, he firmly rejects Kant’s view, according to which they respond to universal demands of reason. Rather, he believes that our attachment to particular values and norms depends heavily on historical and psychological factors. In an important passage, Lange (1866: 276) puts forward a hypothesis about the relevant psychological process by considering the case of the moral law: We can treat the representation of the moral law [Sittengesetzes] only as an element of the process of thought as it occurs in experience, which has to fight against all other elements, such as drives, inclinations, habits, influences of the moment, and so on. And this fight, as well as its outcome –​the moral or immoral action –​follows in its entire course the universal laws of nature, to which the human, in this respect, is no exception at all.

At the psychological level, Lange thus takes the moral law –​the perhaps most paradigmatic case of a norm –​to be a representation that plays a certain role in the overall economy of our mind. Accordingly, norms are not essentially different from other psychological factors that also contribute to determining the course of one’s actions. Put differently, to make sense of the fact that some of our actions conform to certain norms we do not need to conceive of ourselves as agents inhabiting a ‘space or reasons’ constitutively irreducible to empirical

164

164

Mattia Riccardi

knowledge. The resources provided by standard psychological theorizing are enough for this task. To conclude, even if we grant that the late Nietzsche still holds a position akin to his early Langeanism, there is no reason to suppose he thereby accepts a Kantian conception of normativity. For it is precisely when it comes to the nature of the normative domain in which our values are rooted that Lange radically departs from Kant. On the one hand, Lange no longer believes that values are universal and accessible a priori, but takes them to be the product of artistic or quasi-​artistic creation. On the other hand, he argues that one’s coming to endorse and act in accordance with a certain norm is just a natural phenomenon suitable to standard psychological explanation. This indicates that Clark’s and Dudrick’s appeal to a separate ‘space of reasons’ is unwarranted even for a supposedly Langean Nietzsche.

6.  Conclusions The most Kantian view endorsed by Nietzsche lies somewhere in the vicinity of Lange’s position. Nonetheless, the Nietzsche who embraces it is not the late Nietzsche Clark and Dudrick are concerned with, but rather the young Nietzsche of the period (roughly) around the Birth of Tragedy. If we focus on the late Nietzsche, and in light of the textual evidence considered earlier, his rejection of Kant’s strategy should not be up for grabs. More plausibly, one could argue that his view still bears substantial similarities, if not to Kant’s original project, at least to Lange’s revisionary version of it. However, even this does not suffice to vindicate the substantive normative reading proposed by Clark and Dudrick, for Lange already abandons the full-​blooded Kantian conception of normativity they are after.

Notes 1 For a representative collection, see Himmelmann (2005). 2 Clark’s and Dudrick’s use of the expressions ‘space of reasons’ and ‘space of causes’ explicitly refers to Sellars (1991b). Though the original context in which Sellars introduced this distinction is epistemological (see § 36), he takes the general idea that normative facts cannot be reduced to non-​normative facts to have a broader scope. Elsewhere Sellars (1991a: 38) characterizes the contrast between the ‘space

  165



Nietzsche on Knowledge and Belief in Kant

165

of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’ as that between ‘categories pertaining to man as a person who finds himself confronted by standards (ethical, logical, etc.) [. . .] to which he may or may not conform’, and ‘the idea that man is what science says he is’. This is roughly what Clark and Dudrick also have in mind, as they contend that ‘to describe human beings using the language of agency (as acting, believing, knowing, etc.) is to see them in a network that is not merely causal but normative’ (Clark and Dudrick 2012: 131; see their discussion on pp. 124–​35 and p. 139). 3 The main target of Clark and Dudrick is the strong naturalist reading of Nietzsche’s philosophy defended by Leiter (2002). 4 Similar worries are also raised by Louden (2014), with whose insightful remarks I agree. 5 By commenting on Kant’s famous ‘Preface’ passage, Clark and Dudrick (2012: 76) admit that their reading would be weakened ‘if Nietzsche failed to recognize Kant as thus acknowledging the importance of the will to value’, that is, of a normative sphere irreducible to that of empirical explanations. As I shall try to show in Section 5, Nietzsche’s repeated references to the same passage suggest, rather, that he plainly rejects Kant’s move. 6 Strictly speaking, this description of Kant’s position is false, for he obviously allows for a priori knowledge that is not about empirical objects, like in the case of logics or mathematics, not to mention the a priori knowledge of the transcendental conditions of empirical knowledge itself. I shall qualify Kant’s position later. 7 Salaquarda (1978; 1979) and Stack (1983) are the classical studies on Nietzsche’s debts to Lange. 8 That Lange’s (1887: 829) ‘world of poetry’ constitutes a normative realm is confirmed, for instance, by a passage where he contrasts the ‘world of being’, that is, the empirical world, with the ‘world of values’. 9 Lange (1866: 276) explicitly states that Kant’s appeal to the notion of belief is here of no help: ‘This [critical philosophy –​MR] teaches us that all our knowledge based on the senses and the intellect shows us only one side of the truth. The other ones we cannot see, whether through science, or through belief, or through metaphysics, or through any other means whatsoever’. 10 Beethoven and Raphael are also cited as examples in the first edition of Lange’s History (see Lange 1866: 269). 11 It is fair to say that Nietzsche’s sympathy for Lange’s aestheticist twist on Kant’s original project depended on his previous Schopenhauerianism. This already transpires from Nietzsche’s early reaction to Lange’s book as documented by two letters he sent to his friend Carl von Gersdorff –​the first one at the end of August 1866 (KSB 2.159f.) and the second one on 16 February 1868 (KSB 2.57f). 12 See also note NL1872–​3 19[39], KSA 7.431. 13 See also D 544, KSA 3.314f. 14 On this, see Riccardi (2009: 207–​15).

166

166

Mattia Riccardi

References Chignell, A. (2007), ‘Belief in Kant’, Philosophical Review 116 (3): 323–​60. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2012), The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Himmelmann, B. (ed.) (2005), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Kant, I. ([1781/​1787] 1998), Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Woods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: J. Baedeker. Lange, F. Al. (1887), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, ed. H. Cohen (Wohlfeile Ausgabe, Zweites Tausend), Iserlohn, Leipzig: J. Baedeker. Leiter, B. (2002), Nietzsche on Morality, London: Routledge. Louden, R. B. (2014), ‘Nietzsche as Kant’s True Heir?’, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 45 (1): 22–​30. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der Faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus’. Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-​Studien 7: 236–​60. Salaquarda, J. (1979), ‘Der Standpunkt des Ideals bei Lange und Nietzsche’, Studi tedeschi 22 (1): 133–​60. Sellars, W. (1991a), ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’, in Science, Perception and Reality, 1–​40, Atascadero: Ridgeview. Sellars, W. (1991b), ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, in Science, Perception and Reality, 127–​96, Atascadero: Ridgeview. Stack, G. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

  167

7

On Teleological Judgement: A Debate between Kant and Nietzsche Beatrix Himmelmann

The problem of teleology was of utmost importance to both Kant and Nietzsche. Teleology is a theory claiming that télē or purposes orient processes of development and evolution. There are questions arising from this assumption: Are there final causes in nature? Are we allowed to extend judgements regarding purpose and meaning beyond the realm of human activity and its products? Even though Kant was dealing with issues of purpose and purposiveness at least since the Critique of Pure Reason, it was not until he had finished his first and second Critiques that he ‘discovered’, as he himself stated, a ‘new kind of a priori principles’ of human reason, namely, ‘purposiveness’ (Zweckmäßigkeit).1 Spelling out this principle in his third Critique, the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant aims at completing his project of founding a truly critical philosophy that escapes dogmatism as well as scepticism. Critical philosophy is a requirement of ‘self-​knowledge’, as Kant holds, affirming a Socratic understanding of philosophy (KrV AXI). For Kant, critical philosophy is established by instituting a ‘court of justice’ that allows for the examination of reason’s claims and pretensions ‘according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws’ (KrV AXI–​XII). The principle of purposiveness belongs to them and, moreover, plays a central role within the framework of Kant’s system, since it is supposed to provide for a ‘transition’ (Übergang) between the spheres of freedom and nature. We will be looking into the details of Kant’s argument later on. First and foremost, we have to see and to emphasize that one of the first philosophical topics occupying young Nietzsche was –​the question of teleology and purposiveness in and after Kant! It is well known that he wrote notes on this issue in April and May 1868.2 At that time, he was even planning to write a dissertation on the concept of the organic since Kant (‘der Begriff des Organischen

168

168

Beatrix Himmelmann

seit Kant’).3 Nietzsche’s comments clearly show that he hardly studied original Kantian texts, namely, the Critique of the Power of Judgement. Instead, he was much influenced by interpretations of Kant, for instance, the account of Kantian philosophy Kuno Fischer gives and, particularly, the naturalistic reading –​and criticism –​of Kant offered by Friedrich Albert Lange. Lange’s arguments which he expounded in his History of Materialism and the Critique of Its Present Importance (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart) set the stage for Nietzsche’s discussion of the question of teleology and purposiveness, not only when he started out thinking about this issue, but also later on when he developed his –​anti-​teleological –​theories of the will to power, of genealogy and eternal recurrence.

1.  Teleology vs. contingency In his most influential book on the History of Materialism, the first edition of which appeared in 1866, Lange criticizes materialistic conceptions for their shortcomings, for instance, their proneness towards concealed metaphysical assumptions (one example is their employment of the concept of ‘Kraft’, force). In this situation, he pleads for a return to Kant’s philosophy properly understood. The picture of Kant presented by Lange differs significantly from the understanding Kant’s early successors favoured. Lange cuts off Kant’s ambitions to establish critical metaphysics. According to Lange, Kant accepted only one kind of cognition: empirical knowledge which Lange classifies as ‘strictly rational’ and takes to entail a naturalistic view of the world.4 It should not come as a surprise, then, that Lange is sceptical towards the idea of teleology and towards several features of Kant’s practical philosophy as well. Since Nietzsche adopted Lange’s approach, so is he. They both embrace the position that Darwin’s theory on the origin of species had opened up only a few years before Lange’s book was published, and they both attack teleological arguments from this angle. Darwin famously deemed the struggle for existence and natural selection decisive for the survival  –​or extinction  –​of species. Both of these theorems seem to pose a serious, if not lethal, challenge to teleological accounts of natural history, a part of which is the genesis of human beings. It has to be considered contingent on Darwinian premises, since it is the result of variation in nature, which is not goal-​directed as is man-​made variation in domestication (in breeding and cultivating). Variation in nature appears to follow a process of

  169



On Teleological Judgement

169

accidental modification of organisms, which, over the course of time, turns out to be more or less favourable to the preservation of this or that particular organism. Apparently, variation in nature is produced by chance without following any telos, intention or plan. Lange observes along with Darwin that natural selection works on the basis of a tremendous amount of resources at its disposal. He mentions the immense waste of germ cells, thousandfold production of elements perishing in the same breath they emerge and the exercise of trial and error, showing the complete absence of any concern whatsoever with failure. Lange (1866: 403) presents an interesting analogy: Nature proceeds just like a man who, in order to shoot a hare, fires millions of guns or, in order to enter a locked room, buys ten thousand keys and tries them all out. The conclusion Lange draws and Nietzsche repeats is this: There is no purposiveness in nature as there is only blind chance (blindester Zufall) (402). Of course, among the infinite instances of natural events there will also be those that we consider purposive or favourable. What can be regarded purposive, Lange says, is but a special case amid an ocean of nothing more than birth and destruction, balancing each other.5 Nietzsche sums up: ‘The purposive is the exceptional case. The purposive is a result of chance. It reveals complete unreason.’6 But for both Nietzsche and Lange, placing emphasis on the accidental character of the purposive does not imply the claim that universal laws of nature might have ceased to be in force (404). Not at all! Nietzsche responds to this kind of misunderstanding by presenting an argument that is well known from Spinoza’s work: ‘We ascribe to chance those effects whose connection to their causes we do not see.’7 Kant, however, contended in Nietzsche’s view that there is a ‘compulsion’ (Nöthigung) to think of organisms (Naturkörper) according to concepts of purpose. But, Nietzsche objects, even if we allow for the method of arguing by analogy with human understanding –​and it is us who are aware of purposes because of our idea of human agency  –​we might just as well refer to what we have learned about the formation of so-​called purposive constellations from lucky coincidence. That is, we might refer to happy coincidences of talent and fortune, lucky lottery results and so on. From this Nietzsche, together with Lange, infers that the necessity of assuming purposiveness, allegedly supported by Kant, is hardly correct and still less at the present stage of the debate, informed as it is by Darwin’s discoveries.8 At least since Darwin, it seems clear that we should replace a teleological explanation of the purposive phenomena we encounter with a naturalistic picture, acknowledging that these phenomena emerge in a way which has

170

170

Beatrix Himmelmann

to be seen as intrinsically pointless and meaningless. If there is something we deem beautiful and good, it is not something aimed at but something that has come to light by accident, by a stroke of luck (cf. Lange 1866:  402). Its genesis suggests that it might disperse as haphazardly as it was produced. There is a note Nietzsche wrote in 1872/​73, which reads: ‘The dreadful consequence of Darwinism, which, after all, I  believe is true. All our veneration concerns qualities which we hold to be eternal: moral, artistic, religious etc.’9 Nietzsche is afraid that they are, in fact, not everlasting but might undergo change and variation. This is one of the reasons why he thinks we have to conceive of philosophy as a historical discipline; in Human, All Too Human, he explains his view in some detail: Now, everything essential in human development occurred in primeval times, long before those four thousand years with which we are more or less familiar. Man probably hasn’t changed much more in these years. But the philosopher sees ‘instincts’ in present-​day man, and assumes that they belong to the unchangeable facts of human nature, that they can, to that extent, provide a key to the understanding of the world in general. This entire teleology is predicated on the ability to speak about man of the last four thousand years as if he were eternal, being the natural direction of all things from the beginning. But everything has evolved; there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths. –​ Thus historical philosophizing is necessary henceforth, and the virtue of modesty as well. (MA 2, KSA 2.24f.)

Nietzsche’s speculations on the ‘future of man’10 and his call for living a life open to trial and experiment11 also belong in this context of historical philosophizing, informed and inspired by Darwin’s theory. But is it really inevitable that we have to bid farewell to the idea of teleology in the aftermath of Darwin?

2.  Purposiveness and self-​design To begin with, I would like to point out that teleological language is quite alive in modern biology. Biologists speak of the functions of biological traits or genetic programmes that control biological processes. They ask what a particular trait is for, or what purpose it has for the functioning of the organism as a whole (cf. Breitenbach 2009: 31). The mere fact that teleological vocabulary is still to be found in life sciences suggests that teleology’s explanatory power has not yet run out.

  171



On Teleological Judgement

171

For Kant, this kind of evidence would not come as a surprise. In science as well as everyday life we undoubtedly work with the notion of organic in contrast to inorganic being, thus discriminating between the two of them. Kant argues that we would not be able to understand the concept of an organism without explaining the interplay of its parts and the goal-​directed movements of the whole organization in terms of purposive interaction (KU 372–​6). Organisms are products of nature whose parts are thought of ‘as existing for the sake of the others and on account of the whole’ (KU 373). Yet Kant is exceedingly careful and conscientious when he delineates the epistemic status of teleological judgements. They are not to be regarded as determining judgements, resting on our capacity to subsume given instances under universal theoretical concepts of the understanding or universal practical concepts of reason. They have to be regarded as reflective judgements, assessing the particular according to the specific principle of the power of judgement, purposiveness, and thus only ‘with respect to itself ’.12 Therefore, Kant does not speak of ‘autonomy’ in this case but of ‘heautonomy’, legislation that does not prescribe laws to nature or freedom, but to the power of judgement ‘itself for reflection on nature’ (KU 185–​6). In sum, it can be said: The purposiveness of nature is thus a special a priori concept that has its origin strictly in the reflective power of judgement. For we cannot ascribe to the products of nature anything like a relation of nature in them to ends, but can only use this concept in order to reflect on the connection of appearances in nature that are given in accordance with empirical laws. This concept is also entirely distinct from that of practical purposiveness (of human art as well as of morals), although it is certainly conceived of in terms of an analogy with that. (KU 181)

We have to see now in what way Kant includes us, human beings who are part of nature and know about purposes, in the picture of nature set out in his third Critique. He distinguishes between ‘internal purposiveness’, the principle guiding our reflection on any individual living thing or organism, and ‘external purposiveness’, the principle guiding our reflection on their relations towards each other (KU §63 366f.). Obviously, all living things are connected and interrelated –​serving each other as sources of nourishment, providing a favourable habitat for each other and so on. Moreover, humans are clearly integrated into these correlations. What is special about them as a species and might –​in this respect –​distinguish them from all other species of which we know is a feature that is most thoroughly portrayed in Kant’s Anthropology. In this book, published in 1798 and presenting a mature version of the lectures on anthropology he gave at the

172

172

Beatrix Himmelmann

University of Königsberg, Kant deals with ‘the human being according to his species as an earthly being endowed with reason’ (Anth 119). The concluding chapter of the book discusses ‘the character of the (human) species’ (Anth 321–​33). Humans are, formally speaking, ‘terrestrial rational beings’. We cannot determine their character by comparing them to other rational beings, since we do not know of any apart from us. But we can say, Kant argues, and nothing else remains to us ‘in order to assign the human being his class in the system of animate nature’, that ‘he has a character, which he himself creates’ (Anth 321). In what sense does he or she do so? The human being is able to set himself ends. Hence, he is capable of creating a character for himself –​‘according to ends that he himself adopts’ (Anth 321). It is due to his endowment with practical reason that this possibility is open to him. Evolution13 has created him as an animal, but as an animal rationabile, and Kant himself translates: ‘an animal endowed with the capacity of reason’ (Anth 321). To this animal, not only do opportunities of self-​organization present themselves, a trait it shares with all the other organisms (cf. KU 374), but also the option of self-​design. Because of this peculiarity, no less a figure than Darwin ([1871] 2004: 170) stated: Human ‘civilization thus checks in many ways the action of natural selection’. The second protagonist of evolutionary theory beside him, Alfred Russel Wallace, declared with respect to the special position of the human being: ‘Man has [. . .] escaped “natural selection” ’ (Wallace 1864: clxviii).

3.  On the meaning of human existence The prospect  –​or even necessity  –​of human self-​design is certainly an idea that appealed to Nietzsche as well. His thoughts on the ‘future of man’ and his praise of individuals who gamble their lives through experiment and temptation have already been mentioned. As we will see, Kant gives a clear outline of what it means to develop from an animal rationabile towards an animal rationale, an educated and cultivated rational animal. Nietzsche, on the other hand, shies away from any fixation:  any purpose by which we should abide or any destination (Bestimmung). He relies on the creative potential of the will to power instead. Kant puts his faith in reason and its inherent end or purpose. Nature is perceived as supportive of reason’s purpose. Not least because of this link we are justified, on Kant’s view, in reflecting on nature as something purposive in itself and in relation to us.

  173



On Teleological Judgement

173

Before we analyze Kant’s ideas more closely, let’s consider one objection that may be raised at this point. We might ask: If we affirm purposiveness of nature, how shall we come to terms with what Darwin calls ‘struggle for existence’, or ‘struggle for life’ or, generally speaking, ‘the great and complex battle of life’?14 In his notes on teleology, Nietzsche rightly observes that it is only ‘viability’ (Existenzfähigkeit) that could be regarded as purposive according to the standards of evolutionary theory. His comment is: ‘That does not say anything about the degree of reason exhibited.’15 Kant, too, addresses this problem.16 Within species and between all of them we certainly see this struggle, this grand battle at any time, involving a great deal of destruction, suffering and annihilation. Moreover, the distinguishing mark of the human species in particular might be its extraordinary destructiveness.17 Nature and life will go on, at least for quite a while, despite those tendencies –​but in a way that can count as purposive? What looks like a fatal objection, though, will turn out to be a prerequisite for Kant’s argument. ‘Discord’ (Zwietracht) at all levels with which nature has imbued man at least as amply as other animals is, in Kant’s view, to be regarded as her means to enforce the establishment of concord through reason (Anth 322). Human beings, perhaps in contrast to all the other animals, are able to realize that life involves ‘great and complex battle’ and to take a stance towards this fact in some way or other. Their rationality allows them to be aware of the conditions of life. Another disposition that might be unique, the gift of freedom, allows the issue of conflict to be dealt with in a fashion that is appropriate to human self-​ understanding. There is a lucid passage from Kant’s Lectures on Ethics, where he spells out the idea of freedom: Freedom is a part of the capacity which gives all others their infinite usefulness, it is the highest degree of life, it is the property that is a necessary condition at the basis of all perfections. [. . .] If all creatures had a faculty of choice such that it is bound to sensuous drives [solche an sinnlichen Trieben gebundene Willkühr], the world would have no value; the inner value of the world, the summum bonum, is the freedom to act in accordance with a faculty of choice that is not necessitated. Freedom is therefore the inner value of the world. (V-​Mo/​Mron 1482)

Notably, purposiveness turns out to be linked to the inner value of the world, freedom. While recognizing that conflict is fruitful and, in fact, indispensable to nature’s and culture’s flourishing by providing necessary incentives, Kant holds that humans ought to pursue their possibly discordant ambitions according to the form freedom requires and, finally, cannot do otherwise. If freedom is a

174

174

Beatrix Himmelmann

property at least humans share, a capacity of choice that is not necessitated and, for this reason, bestows value on choice as well as its bearer, it is against humanity and against ‘the inner value of the world’ to hinder or harm or destroy the use of this faculty. Yet it will be hindered, harmed or destroyed if any exercise of individual freedom is not restricted in such a way that it can coexist with any other. This is only possible if there are laws regulating the use of freedom. Kant argues that there are such laws –​being, in fact, nothing apart from freedom but the form freedom calls for if it is to be preserved. Kant discriminates between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ legislation, between right and morality –​a distinction I won’t be able to discuss here. What is important is that the purpose of reason is to cultivate and civilize human struggle for life according to laws of freedom, thereby opening up the scope for aesthetic and contemplative attitudes towards the world, such as science, art, religion and so on, of which, as far as we know, no other animal is capable. In Kant’s view, nature is supportive of this end, particularly by providing man with the ambivalent and even contradictory trait of ‘unsocial sociability’ (ungesellige Geselligkeit) (IaG 20), thus compelling him to cope with this disruptive tension by means of the only natural weapon he possesses: reason (cf. Anth 322). Kant is confident that the ‘education of the human race, taking its species as a whole’ (die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts im Ganzen ihrer Gattung) (Anth 328) will be successful –​in spite of horrible setbacks which remain possible at any time. Nietzsche arrives at completely different conclusions. He takes up the issue of teleology in his mature writings after having initially discussed it against the background of Darwin’s theory of evolution, informed by Lange’s account. Later he develops a rather critical position towards Darwin (cf. Ansell-​ Pearson 1997; Moore 2009). He is sceptical of the view that self-​preservation is the goal of life. But so is Kant, as far as the self-​preservation of man as a natural being is concerned. The vocation of the human being (die Bestimmung des Menschen) is purely practical, argues Kant, and what is at stake is the cultivation of the exercise of human freedom.18 Nietzsche, however, does not put value on freedom and what might follow from its appropriate use, as Kant does –​or if so, in a quite different sense (cf. Siemens 2009; Acampora 2015). Accepting and affirming conflict as a means of flourishing, Nietzsche is rather concerned about restrictions that limit freedom, such as ‘states of legality’ (Rechtszustände) which, in his view, might hinder the ‘true will of life’ (eigentlicher Lebenswille).19 To be sure, he highlights the need for discipline (Zucht), mastery (Herrrschaft, Können) and self-​mastery (Selbstbeherrschung), virtues that help to confine and shape freedom (cf. Siemens 2009, 444–​51).

  175



On Teleological Judgement

175

Yet, Nietzsche certainly does not share Kant’s view (cf. IaG 22) according to which ‘the greatest freedom’ realized in a society, freedom that allows for a ‘thoroughgoing antagonism’ (einen durchgängigen Antagonismus) between the members of a society, needs to be accompanied by ‘the most precise determination and security of the boundaries of this freedom’ in the guise of universally binding laws of right. Far from agreeing with Kant on this point and seeing the institution of ‘a perfectly just civil constitution’ as ‘the supreme problem’ (die höchste Aufgabe) the human species has to solve (IaG 22), Nietzsche holds that laws, just like certain ways of understanding moral obligation, can prevent humans’ most active forces from being productive.20 Influenced by the work of Wilhelm Roux (cf. Roux 1881; cf. Müller-​Lauter 1999), Nietzsche emphasizes the significance of ‘formative forces’, creative forces, which shape an organism from within, and thus actively, as compared to the importance of ‘exogenous influences’, which give rise to an organism’s accomplishments merely re-​actively. It seems to Nietzsche that the latter were much overestimated by Darwin and Darwinism.21 It is the active ‘formative forces’ that Nietzsche perceives as the power source, driving forward not only biological processes but processes of evolution in general. These processes are and ought not to be guided by any predetermined purpose. As Nietzsche puts it in the second essay of his Genealogy of Morality: There is no more important proposition for all kinds of historical research than that which we arrive at only with great effort but which we really should reach, –​ namely, that the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends [ein System von Zwecken], are toto coelo separate; that anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it; that everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering [Überwältigen], dominating [Herrwerden], and in their turn, overpowering and domination consist of re-​interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ [‘Sinn’ und ‘Zweck’] must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated. (GM II 12, KSA 5.313–​14)

If there were any purpose in toto that Nietzsche might accept, it definitely would not be the survival of the fittest herds, which, Nietzsche thinks, Darwin’s theory suggests. It would be the appearance of strong, interesting, very special and lavishly gifted individuals, the higher types which squander themselves and their affluence, revealing the potential of nature and of life.22 Their emergence

176

176

Beatrix Himmelmann

is as unpredictable as it is rare and precious. It certainly does not fit in with any teleological scenario. There is no predetermined ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ of human existence according to Nietzsche. On the contrary:  Meaning and purpose may be bestowed upon human life when and if ‘the plant “man” [die Pflanze “Mensch”] has [. . .] grown [. . .] to a height’ (in die Höhe gewachsen ist) (JGB 44, KSA 5.61), thereby showing in an exemplary manner the possibilities inherent to human life. Unless specific conditions are in place, this kind of development will be unattainable though. In Nietzsche’s view, the struggle for life must not be structured and mitigated by laws, rules or institutions, in short: by any superordinate patterns. The late Nietzsche, however, sets out to complement this approach; he introduces and discusses the idea of strict obedience to a given set of laws such as the Hindu Law of Manu (cf. AC 57, KSA 6.241ff.). The objective is to aspire to ‘the highest art of life’ (die höchste Kunst des Lebens) by preventing ‘the continuation of the fluid state of values, the examining, selecting, practising of the criticism of values in infinitum’ (die Fortdauer des flüssigen Zustands der Werthe, das Prüfen, Wählen, Kritik-​Üben der Werthe in infinitum). Instead, the Manu Law summarizes and codifies, according to Nietzsche, ‘the experience, wisdom, and experiments in morality’ of many centuries, thus bringing things to a close (es schliesst ab) and contributing to the refinement of human life in this way.23 At all times, though, Nietzsche inveighs against the assignment of ‘equal rights’ (Gleichheit der Rechte) to human beings; instead, he insists on acknowledging their multifaceted differences and admitting a corresponding ‘order of rank’ (Rangordnung) for rights and values.24 Recognizing the conditions that might give rise to ‘the higher type of man’ (der höheren Art von Menschen), in contrast to those nourishing ‘the common man’ (de[n]‌gemeinen Mann) (JGB 30, KSA 5.48), requires understanding that there cannot be any enhancement of ‘the species “human” ’ (JGB 44, KSA 5.62) without the appreciation of what Nietzsche calls the ‘pathos of distance’ (Pathos der Distanz).25 What is at stake is an enhancement entirely different from the idea of ‘the universal, green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, contentment, and an easier life for all’ (JGB 44, KSA 5.61). For Nietzsche, the meaning and purpose of human existence is not, as it had been for Kant, a question to be solved by the species as a whole, but an issue to be finally settled by the courage, confidence, talent, imagination, perseverance, luck and solitude of truly great individuals. Contingency, which he thinks the strongest individuals are strong enough to accept after all,26 being able to comply with and gain from any course of things, contingency and not teleology, offering

  177



On Teleological Judgement

177

false promise, comfort and ease, is the framework that Nietzsche, unlike Kant, prefers for reflecting on the ‘last things’.

Notes I’d like to thank the editors of this volume for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of my chapter. 1 Cf. Kant’s letter to Carl Leonard Reinhold of 28 and 31 December 1787 (Br 10: 514). 2 NL 1868 62[1]‌–​[58], KGW I/​4.548–​78. 3 Cf. the letters Nietzsche wrote to Paul Deussen (end of April/​beginning of May 1868) and to Erwin Rohde (3./​4. May 1868), KSB 2.269f., 274. 4 Cf. Lange (1866): V: ‘Wohl aber ist sicher, dass Kant nur eine einzige Art der Erkenntnis gelten liess, die empirische und streng verstandesmässige, welche zu einer durchaus naturalistischen Weltauffassung führt.’ 5 Lange (1866: 404–​405). Cf. Nietzsche, NL 1868 62[3]‌, KGW I/​4.549. 6 NL 1868 62[5]‌, KGW I/​4.550: ‘Das Zweckmäßige ist der Ausnahmefall. Das Zweckmäßige ist zufällig. Es offenbart sich darin völlige Unvernunft.’ 7 NL 1868 62[19], KGW I/​4.555: ‘Wir schreiben dem Zufall die Wirkungen zu, deren Verknüpfungen mit den Ursachen wir nicht sehen.’ Cf. Spinoza ([1677] 2002): 238–​43 (= Part I, Appendix). 8 NL 1868 62[3]‌, KGW I/​4.549. 9 NL 1872–​3 19[132], KSA 7.461: ‘Die entsetzliche Consequenz des Darwinismus, den ich übrigens für wahr halte. Alle unsre Verehrung bezieht sich auf Qualitäten, die wir für ewig halten: moralisch, künstlerisch, religiös usw.’ 10 Cf., for instance, GM II 11, KSA 5.312–​13. 11 Cf. FW 324, KSA 3.552f.; NL 1883 7[261], KSA 10.321: ‘Experiment als wirklicher Charakter unseres Lebens und jeder Moral: etwas Willkürliches muß daran sein!’ 12 KU 169. For the whole argument, cf. KU 179–​81. 13 For an interpretation of Kant’s concept of evolution, cf. Roth (2008): 276–​81. 14 Cf. Darwin ([1859] 2008: 49–​51, 63). 15 NL 1868 62[43], KGW I/​4.566: ‘Nichts ist damit ausgesagt über den Grad der darin offenbarten Vernunft.’ 16 Cf. KU §82 427–​8. 17 Cf. IaG 17–​18. 18 Cf. KpV 146–​8; KU 261f.; KrV A840/​B868. 19 GM II 11, KSA 5.312–​13. 20 For a critical investigation into Nietzsche’s account, cf. Himmelmann (2014).

178

178

Beatrix Himmelmann

21 Cf. NL 1886–​7 7[25], KSA 12.304: ‘–​der Einfluß der “äußeren Umstände” ist bei Darwin ins Unsinnige überschätzt; das Wesentliche am Lebensprozeß ist gerade die ungeheure gestaltende, von Innen her formschaffende Gewalt, welche die “äußeren Umstände” ausnützt, ausbeutet.. . .’ 22 Nietzsche’s focus on the evolution of the individual is also emphasized by Gregory Moore (2009, 523–​9), who provides plenty of textual evidence. 23 For a critical discussion of Nietzsche’s suggestions regarding great legislation and great legislators, including Zarathustra, cf. Sommer (2015: 262–​4). 24 JGB 44, KSA 5.61f.; cf. JGB 30, KSA 5.48 et passim; cf. also AC 57, KSA 6.243. 25 Cf. GM I 2, KSA 5.259; JGB 257, KSA 5.205; AC 43, KSA 6.218 et passim. 26 Cf. NL 1887 N 5[71] (= Der europäische Nihilismus), KSA 12.212; cf. GD Streifzüge 49, KSA 6.152.

References Acampora, Ch. D. (2015), ‘Being Unattached: Freedom and Nietzsche’s Free Spirits’, in R. Bamford, Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy, 189–​206, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Ansell-​Pearson, K. (1997), ‘Nietzsche contra Darwin’, in K. Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition, 85–​122, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Breitenbach, A. (2009), ‘Teleology in Biology: A Kantian Perspective’, Teleology. Kant Yearbook 1: 31–​56. Darwin, Ch. ([1859] 2008), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, Ch. ([1871] 2004), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: Penguin. Himmelmann, B. (2014), ‘Nietzsches Philosophie der Macht als Philosophie der Endlichkeit’, in S. Dietzsch and C. Terne, Nietzsches Perspektiven, 15–​30, Berlin/​ Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: J. Baedeker. Moore, G. (2009), ‘Nietzsche and Evolutionary Theory’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson, A Companion to Nietzsche, 517–​31, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-​Blackwell. Müller-​Lauter, W. (1999), ‘Der Organismus als innerer Kampf. Der Einfluß von Wilhelm Roux auf Friedrich Nietzsche’, in W. Müller-​Lauter, Über Werden und Wille zur Macht. Nietzsche-​Interpretationen I, 97–​140, Berlin/​New York: Walter de Gruyter.

  179



On Teleological Judgement

179

Roth, S. (2008), ‘Kant und die Biologie seiner Zeit’, in O. Höffe, Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft (Klassiker Auslegen), 275–​87, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Roux, W. (1881), Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Ein Beitrag zur Vervollständigung der mechanischen Zweckmäßigkeitslehre. Leipzig: W. Engelmann. Siemens, H. (2009), ‘Nietzsche contra Liberalism on Freedom’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson, A Companion to Nietzsche, 437–​54, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-​Blackwell. Sommer, A. U. (2015), ‘Is There a Free Spirit in Nietzsche’s Late Writings?’, in R. Bamford, Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy, 253–​65, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Spinoza, B. ([1677] 2002), ‘Ethics’, trans. S. Shirley, in M. L. Morgan (ed.), Spinoza: Complete Works, 213–​404, Indianapolis/​Cambridge: Hackett. Wallace, A. R. (1864), ‘The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of “Natural Selection”’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of London 2: clviii–​clxx [followed by an account of related discussion on pp. clxx–​clxxxvii].

180

  181

8

‘Resolute Reversals’: Kant’s and Nietzsche’s Orienting Decisions Concerning the Distinction between Reason and Nature Werner Stegmaier

1.  Nietzsche’s esteem of Kant for his ‘resolute’ critical ‘reversal’ of the distinction between reason and nature Nietzsche’s most noteworthy evaluation of Kant comes from the third treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality, not from the part regarding the philosophers (§§ 6–​10), but from the part regarding the priests (§§ 11–​22). Since the priests were far more successful in asserting their distinctions, Nietzsche takes them far more seriously. But philosophers become priests at the moment when their distinctions are believed in and when their distinctions become so self-​evident that they appear to be predetermined and not undertaken. In § 12 of GM III, Nietzsche thanks Kant for his ‘resolute reversals’. In the preceding section, he dealt with the Indian ‘ascetic priests’ and their ‘evaluation of our life’ (GM III 11, KSA 5.362). He takes this theme further in GM III 12 and turns his attention entirely to Kant’s distinctions and his guiding concept of reason. The wellknown text of GM III 12, which we are going to interpret here, does not need to be quoted extensively. In a way that was decisive for European philosophy, Parmenides set out the concept of reason (noeîn, noûs) in such a way that it was to secure a single truth for everyone, the truth of being (eînai, ousía), against the perspectivism of the senses, in which everything always appears to be different to everyone. On this basis, Plato and Aristotle constructed the metaphysics and logic that were to dominate European philosophical thinking for millennia, as a constant opposition to the sensuousness and temporality of reality. When Kant in his KrV had this concept of reason exclude itself from the realm of the truth of being, as

182

182

Werner Stegmaier

he did, he drove it into self-​contradiction. At the same time, however, he created with the self-​limitation of reason a willingness (in Nietzsche‘s words) to ‘see differently, to want to see differently’ and, along with it, a new flexibility of the spirit that Hegel then made into method with his dialectical ‘movement of the concept’. But Hegel thereby prepared the way for evolutionary thinking, albeit unintentionally, for which Nietzsche appreciated him (‘without Hegel no Darwin’, FW 357; Stegmaier (1987, 1990, 1997a)). Perspectival and evolutionary thinking then enabled Nietzsche to conceive of ‘objectivity’ in a new way. Thus Nietzsche ascribes the decisive reorientation to Kant’s ‘resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations’. According to Kant, reason can no longer simply exclude sensuousness; for the senses ‘affect’ reason (affizieren), constantly unsettle it, irritate, fascinate and drive it each time in their direction. An unrestrained and unmastered nature speaks through them, against which reason must make an intense effort to remain ‘pure’, in order to hold on to a stable and universally valid lawfulness of nature. According to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’s most important philosophical teacher, reason is nonetheless driven on by the affects qua blind will, and for this reason Schopenhauer, still in debt to the Parmenidean tradition of European philosophy, wanted to ‘eliminate’ this will and find respite from it in art. Nietzsche resolutely reversed also Schopenhauer’s evaluation. He did not want to redeem reason from nature, but on the contrary to embed it as deeply as possible in nature, to ‘naturalize’ (vernatürlichen) it (FW 109, KSA 3.469). He thought of nature as radically lawless, as that in which ‘laws are lacking absolutely’ (JGB 22, KSA 5.37), as conceptually undefinable and capable only of symbolic designation as wills to power, which are constantly affecting each other (JGB 36, KSA 5.55). Despite the radical shift in meaning, Nietzsche held on to the concept of reason and its distinction from nature, giving them a plausible, easily accessible meaning. Unlike Kant, who in this respect has remained up till now an example, Nietzsche did not accomplish this by means of sharp and consistent definitions. Rather, it was by way of a new kind of perspectivism that he developed in a long chain of aphorisms running across his work, an ever richer and more manifold, and, as it is called today, ‘thick’ description of it (Geertz 1973) in ever new contexts (Stegmaier 2012: 86), without ever unifying it in a synoptic or at all systematic manner.1 While Kant reoriented the distinction between reason and nature, Nietzsche thought of reason itself as a comprehensive faculty of reorientation in a nature in which orientation is the only possibility. Both share the philosophical premise that human orientation has reality, however it may be constituted in itself, only in distinctions of its orientation, distinctions for which it however

  183



‘Resolute Reversals’

183

can decide, as Kant first showed and then Nietzsche did in a radicalized form. In this respect, Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be understood as a ‘radicalization of Kantianism’ (Ottmann 2000: 411).

2.  Kant’s orienting technique for making distinctions in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason In GM III 12, Nietzsche clearly alludes to the Preface of the second edition of the KrV, in which Kant tries once more to clarify the sense of his critical undertaking by comparing it to Copernicus’s ‘revolution of the way of thinking’ in the ‘explanation of celestial motion’.2 With the sentence, ‘ “intelligible character” means for Kant a way in which things are constituted of which the intellect comprehends just this much, that for the intellect it is –​completely incomprehensible’, Nietzsche is visibly targeting Kant’s hypothesis that reason is determined to grasp ‘the unconditioned’, but ‘not of things insofar as we do not know them, as things [Sachen] in themselves’ (KrV Vorrede B XX). Since things are given only perspectivally through our perception, ‘things in themselves’ are an unknowable X for reason. Nietzsche, who as we know had not read much of Kant, but who set about ‘making out of every U an X, [. . .] a real, proper X’ (FW Vorrede 3, KSA 3.350; Stegmaier 1999), was familiar with the Preface to the second edition of the KrV at least in parts, be it second-​ hand or through his own reading (Brobjer 2008: 36–​39, 129). In any case, he cited the (very popular) passage multiple times: ‘I had to deny knowledge [Wissen aufheben] in order to make room for faith’ (KrV Vorrede B XXX), even if only this passage.3 Here Kant is no longer concerned with things themselves, but with the way in which they are distinguished.4 In what follows, we will read the much studied text, especially its first half regarding ‘speculative reason,’ from Nietzsche’s perspective and with an eye on Kant’s technique for making distinctions. From the beginning, Kant is concerned with ‘discovering’ the right ‘path’ for the business of reason (‘Vernunftgeschäft’: KrV Vorrede B VII), that is, with an orientation of reason, after what he takes to be centuries of disorientation. Given the ‘endless controversies’ of metaphysics (KrV Vorrede A VIII), the only way left is ‘revolution’, ‘change’ (Umänderung), a ‘changed method’, in short: a ‘changed way of thinking’ (Veränderung der Denkart) (KrV Vorrede B XII, XVI, XVIII, XIX). Accordingly, ‘ways of thinking’ are paths on which one can ‘turn around’ or ‘reverse’ (umdrehen, umkehren) or reorient oneself in thought. They differ, not according to their logic, the ‘formal rules for all thought’ (KrV Vorrede B Xf.), but in their direction or precisely in the orientation of their distinctions. The

184

184

Werner Stegmaier

language of direction (des (Sich-​) Ausrichtens, (Sich-​) Richtens nach etwas) –​ one that Kant uses continuously in his text –​is foundational for the language of orientation (Stegmaier 2008: 191–​4). It thus makes a difference in which direction a distinction is used, in this case, if reason is understood from nature or nature from reason. Nietzsche calls this a reversal (Umkehrung) of ‘perspective’, but also of ‘evaluation’ (Werthung): The side of the distinction, from which the other side is understood, can be valued higher. This applies not only to reason over and against nature, but, for instance, also to the truth over and against untruth, morality over and against immorality, beauty over and against ugliness, determinacy over and against indeterminacy, the unconditioned over and against the conditioned, certainty over and against uncertainty and so on. Kant avails himself of theses orientating ‘perspectives and evaluations’ in making distinctions for the sake of his ‘reversals’ or ‘revolutions.’ Traditionally as well as in everyday language, reason has been understood on the basis of nature, as part of human nature. As part of nature, it is assumed that reason perceives and recognizes nature as it is given in itself. The so-​called natural attitude continuously reinforces this supposition. Here, the distinction between reason and nature still is reversible: nature leads to reason, reason leads to nature. Kant’s ‘revolution’ or ‘reversal’ reverses this and makes the distinction irreversible. His way of thinking about knowledge is such that reason does not read off the laws from nature, but rather dictates them to it (Prol § 36); going counter to appearances (‘Augenschein’), Kant calls it a ‘a manner that is counter-​ intuitive [widersinnisch], but true’ (KrV Vorrede B XXII Fn). This makes sense if like Kant one starts out from the view that nature, as it appears and as has been reinforced ever more by modern natural science, is fully regulated by laws, laws that in their universal and timeless validity are not given to individual and temporal perception, but can only be thought ‘purely’ by a ‘pure’ reason. Thus, if there are to be laws of nature at all, the counter-​intuitive claim (Widersinn) must be taken on that reason ‘dictates’ (vorschreibt) its laws to nature. In terms of the technique of distinction, reason must be removed from nature, if lawfulness is to be thought, and it must be assumed counter-​intuitively that ‘the objects must conform [sich richten] to our knowledge’, ‘before they are given to us’ (KrV Vorrede B XVI). One must orient oneself differently. That one can orient oneself in this way has until today been shown in the most trenchant and plausible manner by the example of Copernicus, according to whom ‘the observed movements are to be sought not in the heavenly bodies, but in their observer’ (KrV Vorrede B XXII Fn). With Thales in mind, Kant introduces the concept of construction. For Kant, Thales already recognized in

  185



‘Resolute Reversals’

185

antiquity that in geometry he ‘had to bring out what was necessarily implied in the concepts that he himself had formed a priori and had put into the figure through construction [durch Konstruktion], not that which he saw in the figure, or what he could discern in the bare concept of it, so as to read off its properties, so to speak’ (KrV Vorrede B XII). Though Kant himself reserves the concept of construction for mathematics (KrV A713/​B741), the twentieth-​century concept of constructivism was derived from it, in the general sense that ‘reason has insight only in that which it produces itself after a plan [Entwurf] of its own’ (KrV Vorrede B XIII). According to Kant, this becomes clear not only in the triumph of modern experimental natural sciences but also in the judiciary, when the judge ‘compels witnesses to answer those questions that he puts to them’ (KrV Vorrede B XIII). At the same time however, the judicial interrogation of witnesses shows that the constructivist way of thinking, as a reversal (Umkehrung) of the natural attitude, deepens the possibilities of knowledge, but also limits them. For with this way of thinking, one remains limited to the questions that one can raise from one’s own position: one remains captive to one’s perspective. Like a witness at court, nature cannot say anything about which she was not asked. Access to nature thereby becomes itself contingent  –​the interrogation of nature could always have run otherwise. So Kant himself designates his ‘revolution of the way of thinking’ as an ‘Einfall’ (KrV Vorrede B XIV), that is, as a contingent thought. Yet such ideas are not arbitrary. As in the case of Copernicus, they are evaluated according to whether they allow one to orient oneself better in thinking. That is to say, distinctions are not or not only made with regard to what appears to be given, but at least also with regard to their power of orientation. In this way and only in this way, can reason ‘learn’ something from nature (‘to seek in [nature], not fictitiously ascribe to it, what it must learn from it [nature], according to what reason itself puts in nature, and of which it could know nothing for itself ’, KrV Vorrede B XIV); not, however, about nature, as it might be in itself, but about reason’s own orientation about nature and in nature. The freely chosen, constructed or chanced-​ upon distinctions are tested in view of whether they disclose more of nature for orientation than others, even if nature as a whole remains unknown. It is for this purpose, Kant writes, that concepts are set up (‘eingerichtet’, KrV Vorrede B XVIII Fn); one experiments with them until the ‘corresponding objects given in experience are commensurate with them [the a priori concepts –​WS]’ (KrV Vorrede B XVIII), so that both fit together. Orientation proceeds experimentally. For this commensurability or fit, Kant himself appeals to an ‘experiment’ –​ namely, whether there is no conflict (‘Widerstreit’) of perspectives on the

186

186

Werner Stegmaier

concepts of reason under the ‘twofold point of view’ (doppelten Gesichtspunkt), that is, the point of view on themselves on the one hand, and the point of view on their disclosive power for experience on the other. If there is no conflict, ‘the experiment decides in favour of the correctness of that distinction’ (KrV Vorrede B XIX Fn). The Copernican Turn is an orientation-​experiment in the making of distinctions: the correctness (‘Richtigkeit’) of distinctions lies in their appropriateness for a sufficiently successful orientation. It is the business of reason, in turn, to decide on this correctness, and precisely this is its ‘critique’, literally the distinction (Unterscheidung) between reason itself and nature, as well as its decision (Entscheidung) concerning the appropriateness of this distinction (krinêin = to distinguish, to decide, to select, to judge). According to Kant, the experiment succeeds as desired (‘nach Wunsch’, KrV Vorrede B XIX): by means of these decisions of orientation, reason is able to preserve its unconditioned character free of contradiction (KrV Vorrede B XXI Fn). It orients itself in line with itself (Stegmaier 2016, chapter III). However, to this end its distinctions need to be conceived as ‘made’, constructed, since otherwise reason would have no scope for its decisions of orientation. Despite all the critique, all the polemic and all the ridicule of Kant’s philosophy that Nietzsche expressed in his late writings, he decidedly followed Kant’s ‘resolute reversals’ and took them further in his own way, without investigating further the architecture of Kant’s distinctions. What he learned from Kant was his new technique in making distinctions, the method of orienting and reorienting distinctions, so as to orient reason in line with itself. In general, Nietzsche no longer treated distinctions as distinctions of what is given, but rather as distinctions by means of which we first distinguish and decide what there is; as distinctions that could always be otherwise, that could always be made and oriented otherwise. It is in this way that his ‘transvaluation’ of ‘values’ first became possible. For their part, distinctions are then not in themselves given, not matters of fact, but instead they are actions, operations that are undertaken in changing situations for the sake of changing purposes. That in turn is how Kant understood them, namely, as ‘synthesis’ or formation following ‘forms’ (Formung nach ‘Formen’).

3.  Kant’s persistent uncritical presuppositions Kant also had a very critical awareness regarding his own ‘critical enterprise’ (KU 170). He presented his revolution of the way of thinking ‘only as a hypothesis’ (KrV Vorrede B XXII Fn) and designated the KrV as a whole as ‘a treatise

  187



‘Resolute Reversals’

187

on method, not a system of science itself ’ (KrV Vorrede B XXII). From the viewpoint of Nietzsche’s further reversals, as we know, Kant nevertheless held fast uncritically to presuppositions at key points in his writings, which Nietzsche then dismissed. For the distinction between reason and nature the following points are decisive: 1. The auto-​presupposition of reason: If reason constructs its concepts by itself, this goes also for its concept of itself. Reason can, then, no longer presuppose that it is given as such. Insofar as that which is real (wirklich) must also be given sensuously, yet reason itself cannot be given sensuously, it follows, according to the criteria of the KrV, that reason itself is not real. Yet Kant never puts the existence of pure reason seriously in question in the KrV. It is only for practical philosophy that he raises the question. But in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten Kant writes: ‘Now, a human being really finds in himself a capacity by which he distinguishes himself from all other things, even from himself insofar as he is affected by objects, and that is reason’ (GMS 452). From the viewpoint of the ‘distinction of a world of the senses [Sinnenwelt] from a world of understanding [Verstandeswelt]’, reason can be found in the latter, in the ‘intellectual world [intellektuellen Welt]’ (GMS 451). In fact, the intellectual world again is just a mere construction of reason itself and therefore there is nothing to be ‘found’. Kant also admits this to be ‘a kind of circle’ (GMS 450). His solution then is to introduce a ‘Factum’ of a special kind for the reality of reason (KpV 31), a fact that is indeed not given sensuously, but expresses itself under ‘necessitation’ (Nöthigung, KpV 20) by the categorical imperative for the testing of its moral maxims. 2. The presupposition that reason has a ‘nature’: Of the reason that he discovers, Kant writes that it is an ‘organised body’ (organisierter Körper), in which all limbs have their precisely determined sense (Sinn) for one another (KrV Vorrede B XXIII and XXXVIIf.). He thereby presupposes for reason itself a well-​ordered and therefore completely cognizable nature already, which is not constructed, but only needs to be reconstructed, a ‘glorious order, beauty and [providential] care [Fürsorge] everywhere displayed by nature’. This ‘possession’ remains ‘undisturbed’ by the critique (KrV Vorrede B XXXIII). It is this ‘nature’ which ‘our reason stalks with its restless striving’ to find itself on ‘the secure path of science’ (KrV Vorrede B XV) and thereby to secure the ‘completeness’ (Vollständigkeit) of its self-​knowledge (KrV Vorrede B XXIIIf.). At the same time, Kant takes this ‘totality of pure reason’

188

188

Werner Stegmaier

as ‘human reason in general’ (allgemeine Menschenvernunft, KrV Vorrede B XXXVIII). The presupposition of a well-​ordered, beautiful and caring nature was made obsolete by evolutionary thought. 3. The presupposition of the Aristotelian distinction between form and content: For Kant, the a priori ‘forms’ of intuition and of the understanding belong to the nature of reason (in the widest sense, encompassing all the intellectual faculties of knowledge), and he says of them that they lie ‘ready a priori in the mind’ (im Gemüte]) (KrV A20/​B 34; Röttges 1999: 265ff.). However, they too are not given, but obviously constructed –​for the declared purpose of making the possibility of a pure natural science conceivable. Kant does not reflect critically on the distinction between form and content either, adopting them instead from Aristotle’s metaphysics as self-​evident. There, the distinction has the function of making it possible to think the essence (Wesen, ousía) as timeless, even of that which becomes (Werdendes), especially of living beings (Lebendiges). The timeless form is supposed to take up changing, material content, without itself thereby changing. To suppose something timeless in nature, be it in the nature of reason, be it in nature outside reason, was, as we can see today, precipitate and became untenable from the point of view of evolutionary thinking. Nietzsche explicitly overcame the presupposition of fixed forms in GM II 12 (‘The form is fluid, the “meaning” even more so . . .’; Stegmaier 1994: 70–​ 88). Furthermore, the forms of intuition in Kant’s construction of pure knowledge become paradoxical: the forms of intuition are at the same time content for the forms of understanding (Stegmaier 1997b: 61–​94). 4. The presupposition of the necessity of an unconditioned for everything conditioned: For Kant a series of conditions continuing to the infinite cannot be thought; it must be closed off with an unconditioned and grounded in the latter. For Nietzsche it definitely can: He explicitly called for it (FW 374). Thus, for Kant it was a ‘necessary idea of reason’ (KrV Vorrede B XXI Fn) to assume a ‘Ding an sich’ for knowledge, even though it was not knowable; and it was all the more necessary to understand reason itself, which recognizes this, as a ‘Ding an sich’ too. Nietzsche considered himself to be free from both. 5. The presupposition that philosophy is a rigorous science: In Nietzsche’s view, it was no longer a binding presupposition for a critical philosophy to conceptualize it as a rigorous science, in which every step of thought ought to be demonstrable to everyone in equal measure. For Kant, this was his main goal, the actual task. At the same time, Kant thereby laid down reason

  189



‘Resolute Reversals’

189

in terms of certainty, truth and unity; presuppositions that Nietzsche equally put in question and have become ever more questionable until today. Nowadays, there is no significant philosophy that would affirm pure reason in order to become a rigorous science and that would have the prospect of being generally recognized as such. 6. The presupposition of the certainty of Aristotelian logic: Finally, Kant could still rely on Aristotelian logic as a formal condition for a rigorous science, and he grounded transcendental philosophy to a considerable extent on it, beginning with the derivation of the categories of the understanding from the ‘logical function of the understanding in judgements’ (KrV A70/​B95). Aristotelian logic also appeared to Kant to be given and not (in the main, at least) to be something constructed. Nietzsche, on the contrary, was ready to go so far as to understand even that as only ‘an art of schematization and abbreviation, a mastery of multiplicity through an art of expression [. . .] for the purpose of communicative understanding [Verständigung]’ (NL 1886 5[16], KSA 12.190).

4.  Nietzsche’s ‘revolution of the way of thinking’ regarding the distinction between reason and nature: Pluralization and functionalization of reason for orientation I Nietzsche’s goals in philosophy were no longer to ground the objectivity of the pure natural sciences through theoretical reason, nor to test personal maxims of agency against a universal norm of moral legislation, nor to think aesthetic and teleological judgements as claiming universal validity. For him, universalization as such had become questionable and this required him to come to a new understanding of reality from separate, perspectival orientations taking into account their evolutionary changes, that is, time. Reason hereby lost the functions that Kant ascribed to it, and so reason no longer needed to be presupposed as unconditional. Precisely this unconditional presupposition of reason was the target of Nietzsche’s well-​known criticism (Müller 2011); in the end, Nietzsche liked to put ‘reason’ in quotation marks as in the relevant section of TI ‘Reason’ in Philosophy. However, as mentioned, his critique remains very global and hardly takes into account the constructive function that Kant ascribed to the concept of reason. Kant’s idealization of reason, according to which reason is a faculty

190

190

Werner Stegmaier

of thinking the unconditioned for everything conditioned, is generalized and criticized by Nietzsche: ll

ll

ll

ll

ll

ll

ll

as a habitual defence against vitality, sensuousness, corporeality, temporality and historicity on the part of philosophers who believe in reason (GD Vernunft 1); as a fearful impulse towards unity, reification (Dinglichkeit), substance, permanence (GD Vernunft 2); as getting reality wrong out of contempt for the senses (GD Vernunft 3); as an insistence on the most general and hence emptiest concepts and on their claim to be self-​originating (God), so as to preclude their external origins and thereby their becoming (GD Vernunft 4); as remaining attached to the ‘metaphysics of language’ and its suggestion of a ‘doer and deed’ and of the ‘I as being’, ‘I as substance’ (GD Vernunft 5); as a ‘moral-​optical illusion’ (moralisch-​optische Täuschung) born of a revenge against life through the invention of an ‘other kind of reality’ (GD Vernunft 6); and in general as mere ‘idiosyncrasies’ of philosophers who had become hostile to life.

Nietzsche for his part presents these accusations in an unmistakably idiosyncratic way, as agitated ripostes in a fictional dialogue (‘You ask me about the idiosyncrasies of the philosophers? . . .’, GD Vernunft 1). He does not simply argue logically, he does not ‘refute’ (widerlegen) where strong convictions of belief are at issue, such as ‘being in possession of the unconditional truth on one or other matter of knowledge’; believers are not open to refutation (MA 630, KSA 2.356).5 Instead, through the literary form of his critique of reason, his conscious polemic and hence personal tone, he makes known a ‘state of emergency’ (Nothlage) he himself is in; a new kind of emergency, replacing that of Socrates (cf. GD Sokrates 10, KSA 6.72).6 In the latter case, Socrates had the ‘need’ (nöthig) ‘to make a tyrant of reason’ –​so as to escape other tyrannies, Nietzsche surmises, especially the tyranny of the senses and the ‘dark desires’. It was necessary to be ‘clever, clear, lucid at any cost [. . .]: any surrender to the instincts, to the unconscious leads downwards . . .’ (GD Sokrates 10). In the meantime, the state of emergency appeared to Nietzsche reversed: philosophers had become so obsessed with their idealized and idealizing reason that they could no longer hear ‘the music of life’; their idealism made them deaf to its reason (FW 372; Stegmaier 2004a). For in no way did Nietzsche dispense with the concept of reason. He used it continuously to counter its idealistic constriction. Reason retained a decisive

  191



‘Resolute Reversals’

191

orienting function for him, only it is another function, harder to grasp, yet everywhere evinced. For Nietzsche, it is still reason alone that can observe this orienting function, but now it is a reason freed from idealistic restraints. In what follows, we will sketch in broad strokes the picture that Nietzsche gives of this notion of reason, drawing on a selection first of notes, then of aphorisms that follow one another in his work. A clear starting point can be found in a note from 1875, where Nietzsche compiled ‘everything I no longer believe [glaube] –​and also what I do believe.’ He begins by stating that the human ‘stands in the great maelstrom [Strudel] of forces’ and imagines that maelstrom to be rational and to have a rational purpose: error! /​The only rational thing that we know is the bit of reason humans have:  he must really strain it, and it always ends in his ruin if he wanted to surrender to something like ‘providence’. /​The only happiness lies in reason, the rest of the world is a sad affair. But I see the highest reason in the work of the artist, and he can feel it as such; there may be something that, if it could be produced with consciousness, would yield a yet greater feeling of reason and happiness; e.g. the course of the solar system, the begetting and formation [Bildung] of a human being. (NL 1875 3[75], KSA 8.36)

This is high praise indeed for reason –​especially coming from Nietzsche. He still understands it constructivistically, as reason that creates out of itself a rational environment, not only in the shape of a knower, but also and even more so in the shape of an artist or an educator. Reason is situated on both sides: that of the knower, artist or educator on the one side and in their respective works on the other. For Nietzsche now draws boundaries differently:  reason drifts in a maelstrom of the irrational and can create only little islands of happiness and rationality. It belongs to a nature that as a whole is irrational, and this nature, on the one hand, renders it possible and, on the other, challenges it continuously to assert itself by suffusing it with rationality. It is as if reason has nature not only in front of, but also next to, and behind it. So in terms of the technique for making distinctions, one can no longer work with simple oppositions (Gegensätze). According to another note that follows shortly thereafter, ‘[t]‌hat which is good and rational in the human being’ is ‘a matter of chance or semblance [scheinbar] or the flip side of something very irrational’ (NL 1875 5[20], KSA 8.45). It is a contingency among contingencies and it changes contingently7; it is the result of a natural evolution and therefore itself temporal. This will be Nietzsche’s view till the end.

192

192

Werner Stegmaier

That is how Nietzsche, after his break with Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, opens his first book of aphorisms, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (MA 1, KSA 2.23–​4:  ‘Chemistry of Concepts and Sensations’), and then again his second, Morgenröthe (M 1, KSA 3.19:  ‘Deferred Rationality’). In both cases, he poses the question concerning the ‘emergence’ (Entstehung) of ‘the rational out of the irrational’, of ‘logic out of the illogical’ and of ‘truth out of errors’, rejecting all manner of ‘miraculous origins [. . .] directly out of the core and essence of the “thing in itself ” ’ (MA 1, KSA 2.23). He argues in evolutionary terms that the rational must have resulted from a quasi-​chemical combination of heterogeneous elements, which allowed stable structures to arise at a certain point. Such chance combinations could be successful or not, and they were successful when they continued to stabilize themselves further. Nowadays, this is called the emergence of autonomy, understood as freedom to make one’s own decisions (Entscheidungen) in enduring dependency on one’s conditions of possibility. The rational that gives form to itself in this way out of nature is, to put it paradoxically, at the same time conditioned and unconditioned, or only conditionally unconditioned. Kant’s simple opposition between the conditioned and the unconditioned becomes obsolete. The function of reason, to bring rationality to nature, issues from nature itself. But the more autonomy in this sense stabilizes its conditioned unconditionality, the better it maintains itself under its conditions of possibility, the more easily it forgets these conditions  –​or interprets them for its part as already rational: ‘All things that live long are gradually so infused with reason that their provenance [Abkunft] in Unreason [Unvernunft] thereby becomes improbable’ (M 1, KSA 3.19). Yet, the more reason, emerging in this way out of nature, runs up against limits in suffusing nature with rationality or discerning a logic in nature, the more it also sees that much remains irrational and also how, as irrational, it is necessary for reason: The illogical necessary. –​Among the things that can reduce a thinker to despair is the knowledge that the illogical is a necessity for humans, and that much good proceeds from the illogical. It is implanted so firmly in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and in general in everything that lends value to life, that one cannot pull it out of these fair things without mortally injuring them. Only very naive people are capable of believing that the nature of human beings could be transformed into a purely logical one; but if there should be degrees of approximation to this end, what would not have to be lost if this course were taken! Even the most rational human from time to time is in need of nature, that is to say, of its illogical fundamental relation [Grundstellung] to all things. (MA 31, KSA 2.51)

  193



‘Resolute Reversals’

193

Here, the ‘the nature of human beings’ (Natur des Menschen) is still reason, only now it is fortuitous, temporal, capable of transformation, alive; one that can only maintain itself as such in nature, which for its part is fortuitous, temporal, capable of transformation, alive and conditions it. Reason is neither fixed nor can it be assumed to be equal in all. When Socrates and Plato claimed that ‘whatever the human does, he always does what is good’ (MA 102, KSA 2.99) and reason tells the human what the good thing is, Nietzsche was in complete agreement with them. Yet everyone of course does ‘what appears to him to be good (useful), according to the degree of his intellect, the standard of his rationality’ (MA 102, KSA 2.99). From an evolutionary and realistic point of view, ‘rationality’ is not only individual, but can also be different in changing situations for the same individuals. Nietzsche hereby reoriented Kant’s concept of reason in a radical way. Reason, when seen as individual and temporal in this way, can only be grasped and surveyed in a very limited way, even by rational beings; inevitably, it is exhibited only in manifold differences and nuances. Its apparent uniformity (Einheitlichkeit), upon which its apparent equality among all human beings rests in philosophy, was only formed historically by consistent schooling, especially in Europe, where reason became an educational programme (Bildungsprogramm: cf. MA 265, KSA 2.220: ‘Reason in School’). By way of millennia-​long cultivation, it became the model of ‘rigorous thinking, cautious judging, consistent reasoning’, of a ‘tight’, ‘consistent and critical’ and in the end logically ‘correct thinking’ that could be handed down through schooling. Finally, in modernity it developed in a novel manner into a ‘scientific sense’ (wissenschaftlichen Sinn), which was given a permanent organization at the universities. The ‘reason’ that we know and value, and to which we are fond of appealing, is the product of a millennia-​ long education or, as Nietzsche preferred to call it, ‘Züchtung’, but is therefore no reason ‘in itself ’. In a whole series of aphorisms that follow, Nietzsche takes issue with the belief in such a reason in itself –​through the technique of exposing it as paradoxical. The title ‘Rational Unreason’ (Vernünftige Unvernunft, MA 386, KSA 2.266) expressly announces this. The aphorism, or rather maxim (Sentenz) in its brevity, poses a riddle: ‘In the maturity of life and the understanding the human being is overcome by the feeling that his father was not in the right to beget him.’ That is irrational, insofar as being born is the presupposition for being able to speak in this way about being born. It is rational in the sense of Silenus’s dictum that it is better not to have been born, or at least to die soon, that is, according to the ‘tragic knowledge’ (GT 15, KSA 1.101) Nietzsche gave such importance to in

194

194

Werner Stegmaier

GT. In Nietzsche’s understanding, the rational irrationality of this knowledge lay in the fact that it was precisely its portrayal in tragedy that enabled the Greeks to live on –​until Socrates brought reason into stark opposition to unreason and tragedy died. Thereafter, the merely rational reason, detached from life, relegated the tragic and life-​embracing rational unreason to the status of irrational ‘feeling’. In order to return to life-​embracing (un-​)reason, one has again to reverse and to withdraw from the life-​detached concept of reason its timelessness and claim to equal validity for all –​to become, in Nietzsche’s image, a solitary wanderer for some time (MA 638: ‘The Wanderer’). Now, Nietzsche calls that ‘to approach to some extent freedom of reason’ (‘einigermaassen zur Freiheit der Vernunft kommen’) –​no longer by way of simply declaring the status of the unconditioned à la Kant, but through extreme experiences without any pregiven goal. Nietzsche sketches on the one side the experience of nocturnal deserts, his image for the hollowing out of all reason; on the other side the experience of ‘only good and bright things’, of a ‘pure, translucent, transfigured and cheerful face’ (ibid.) on a bright morning, his image for a well turned-​out rationality. Through such experiences, one can gain something, only something of ‘freedom of reason’, freedom not in the sense of an allegedly unconditional and only fictional freedom of the will, but in the sense of ‘spaces’ or ‘playing fields’ (Spielräumen) that reason acquires through its wanderings step by step, but which can also be lost again. Reason has and does not need a fixed concept of itself, but rather mistrusts every such concept. Nietzsche consequently thinks ‘Reason in the World’ (WS 2, KSA 2.540) from the viewpoint of this contingent, individual, temporal reason as well, which acquires and loses gradually its ‘spaces’ and which, therefore, is ‘not too rational’. From this perspective, ‘the world’ in which this reason is enmeshed is ‘not the epitome of an eternal rationality’. Paradoxically, this is exactly what Nietzsche wants to ‘demonstrate once and for all’, yet in so doing seems to presuppose an equal reason in all humans. However, this apparent equal reason is, as one already knows (MA 265: ‘Reason in School’), just the sign of an intensive schooling to respect demonstrative proof (Beweise). There is still the individual freedom to respect such proofs or not. Nietzsche challenges this freedom in the face of proof, by way of further demonstrative proofs that openly intend paradoxes, initially to demonstrate the paradoxes of the doctrine of free will (WS 23, KSA 2.557–​8): ‘Whether the adherents of the doctrine of free will are permitted to punish?’ According to the ‘prevailing view’, which is also presupposed in criminal law, someone is capable of

  195



‘Resolute Reversals’

195

action, guilt and punishment if he or she ‘applies reason’. Here this means ‘acting from reasons’ that are also comprehensible to the judges. Thus, one is penalized for the ‘intentional denial of better reasoning [besseren Vernunft]’ in accordance with which, in the opinion of the judges, one could and should have acted. Now the moment of paradox: ‘But how can anyone intentionally be less rational than he must be?’ Consequence: If that defies thought, reason cannot ‘be the cause, since it cannot decide against the better reasons’. Way out: If one calls on the ‘free will’ for help, one concedes that one can act without any reasons whatsoever; in that case, however, one is not permitted to punish. Or –​something that Nietzsche here does not consider any more  –​one already binds the free will to something universally rational and good, like Kant, while indicating that otherwise the will is basically evil. Nietzsche’s approach opens up a third way to unravel the paradox: It would be possible to think of a ‘deed without a “wherefore”, without a motive, without a provenance [Herkunft], [as] something without purpose or reason [Vernunftloses]’, which Nietzsche later has Zarathustra address in his speech ‘On the Pale Criminal’. Such a deed would merely testify to a ‘poor reason’ (Z I Verbrecher, KSA 4.45–​7). Something that is happily suppressed in democratic or democratizing times: reason (Vernunft), as the capacity to give reasons (Gründe), can have different degrees in different people, it can be or become more or less rational or irrational.8 In WS 185 (KSA 2.632–​3: ‘On the rational death’) Nietzsche takes up once more the becoming-​irrational of reason (MA 386, KSA 2.266) in relation to the topic of death. There, he opposes ‘involuntary (natural)’ death to ‘voluntary (rational)’ death and considers the human being in deliberately non-​idealistic terms as a machine that is only meaningful as long as its ‘maintenance costs’ do not exceed its utility. At that point in time, voluntary death, that is, suicide, is rational; involuntary, natural death, by contrast, is ‘the suicide of nature, that is, the destruction of the rational being by the irrational, which is bound to the former’. It is irrational for the human body, which needs reason in order to live, to ‘murder[.]‌’ this reason. This paradox can only be whitewashed by appealing to ‘the higher reason (of God)’, ‘to which the low reason has to accommodate itself ’. But suicide –​Nietzsche again does not say this explicitly –​in the normal sense is also paradoxical, insofar as it bereaves reason of the possibility continuing to being rational. The opposition between reason and nature, rationality and unreason, becomes paradoxical in both directions. The opposition cannot be maintained as an opposition. Like Kant before him, Nietzsche therefore moves from the opposition between reason and nature to the self-​relation of reason, but here again in a new

196

196

Werner Stegmaier

way. In WS 189 (KSA 2.635–​6: ‘The Tree of Humanity and Reason’) Nietzsche talks about ‘a task for reason given by reason’, namely, ‘to prepare the earth for a growth of the greatest and most joyful fertility’. Reason should become a manifold reason of manifold people who, each in their own way, test new ways of living and growing and thereby challenge each other unremittingly through an evolutionary competition. As a consequence, the fertility of ‘the whole fruit-​tree of humanity’ will increase overall. According to Nietzsche, at a higher stage of evolution ‘instinct’ no longer suffices for this task. Instead, reason, now become autonomous, must ‘confront the task face to face’ and take it on consciously. But then again, this reason can only be a single reason with its degree of influence on others. Its self-​relation now includes the relation to the other reason of many others. Equally, it is no longer a ‘pure’ reason, but a self-​relation that continually enriches itself with relations to others (Stegmaier 2016, Einleitung). In this way, Nietzsche restricts and extends the concept of reason at the same time. He restricts it to individuals, each in its different way rational, and extends its modes of operation through them. Nietzsche deals with this in Morgenröthe. Once something has started out as rational and proven itself, it becomes routine, passes into ‘feeling’ and goes on operating in an unknown and unconscious way: ‘How we are all irrational. –​We still draw the conclusions from judgements, which we hold to be false, from teachings, in which we no longer believe  –​ through our feelings’ (M 99, KSA 3.89). Nietzsche can thus posit reason already in dreams, as a ‘poetizing [dichtende] reason’. Accordingly, drives that cannot act out in the waking state can get their ‘nourishment’ in dreams (M 119, KSA 3.111: ‘Experiencing [Erleben] and Poetizing’). The apparently irrational, random connections of dreaming reason do not differ in principle from the poetized forms of waking reason. In a dream, reason just has a greater ‘freedom of interpretation’. One must be all the more on one’s guard (sich hüten) not to attribute one’s own reason, one’s own limited interpretations, to nature itself. ‘Rationality or Irrationality are no predicates for totality’ (NL 1881 11[157], KSA 9.502). All orders that we attribute to nature are shadows of the old God, who is supposed to have created them following rational plans. Thus, one has to make the effort to ‘de-​divinize’ nature and ‘naturalize ourselves as humans with the pure, newly found, newly redeemed nature!’ (FW 109, KSA 3.469; Bertino 2011). Neither in reason nor in nature, then, can a pregiven and unified nature be presupposed. Instead, what must be presupposed is that the complexity of nature, out of which reason emerges and of which it is a part, still is more comprehensive than reason can disclose. Later, Nietzsche will note that ‘the true world of causes is hidden from us: it is unutterably more complex’ than ‘the

  197



‘Resolute Reversals’

197

intellect and senses can grasp’; these are ‘above all a simplifying apparatus. Our false, diminished, logicized world of causes is the world in which we can live. We are “knowing” as far as we are able to satisfy our needs’. Nowadays, one speaks of a reduction of complexity. Nietzsche adds: ‘The study of the body gives [us] an idea of the unutterable complications’ (NL 1885 34[46], KSA 11.434). The body can serve as ‘guiding thread for understanding the poorer’ phenomenon, namely, reason which still shows ‘an immense manifoldness [Vielfachheit]’ (NL 1885, 2[91], KSA 12.106). Nietzsche’s Zarathustra addresses this in the famous speech On the Despisers of the Body (KSA 4.39–​41). Here, reason becomes a ‘tool and plaything’ of the body. The highly complex organization of the body, not even remotely transparent to reason, guides the human’s orientation in its world in a way that is more complex, precise and prompt than traditional reason believes it can. The ‘reason’ of the body is therefore greater and more comprehensive. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra also presents this difference in degree as an opposition, namely, between a ‘small reason’ of the intellect and a ‘great reason’ of the body. At the same time, the extension of the concept of reason given here shows what he means by ‘reason’: less an order-​creating, much less a law-​giving reason, than an orientating reason. In German, ‘Sinn’ in the phrase ‘a multiplicity with one sense [Sinn]’ is the direction that the body gives to the plurality of its organs and organizations, including the intellect; the directedness towards a certain form of behaviour in the given situation. Whereas Kant wanted to orientate reason anew, Nietzsche understands reason itself as orientating. Further, when Zarathustra claims the great reason of the body to be ‘a war and peace, a herd and a shepherd’, this is also about orientation, about orientating the orientation of organs and organizations, affects, instincts, drives and so on in relation to each other. According to Nietzsche, they can compete with each other and occasionally fight each other, but also reach a settlement with each other. Where they orientate themselves in relation to each other as animals do in a herd, they need a shepherd for the sake of a common orientation. By no means need this be the intellect or the ‘small reason’ which says ‘I’. On the contrary, Nietzsche introduces a new concept, the ‘self ’, in order to designate the self-​relation or the self-​organization of the body itself, which, with the help of its great reason, makes all the pluralities of the body into functions of the common orientation. To this end, this self or its orientation (Stegmaier 2008: 293–​302) must continuously scan the constantly changing situations for promising forms of behaviour so as to exclude impending dangers. (‘The self always listens and seeks: it compares, coerces, conquers, destroys. It is also the I’s ruler.’) The self-​organizing self of orientation acts in

198

198

Werner Stegmaier

an inconspicuous and largely unknown way ‘wisely’, that is, with a combination of circumspection (Umsicht), far-​sightedness (Weitsicht) and consideration (Rücksicht) towards the conditions and consequences of a given mode of behaviour and when necessary, with caution (Vorsicht). These are the classical virtues of orientation over which great reason disposes much more than small reason and which it can deploy very quickly. Small reason, by contrast, does not even see its own function (‘There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows then to what end your body requires precisely your best wisdom?’), and that is why it is small. In the end, it cannot see why it uses certain concepts or why it decides for certain distinctions. (‘Your self laughs at your ego and its proud leaps.’ ‘What are these leaps and flights of thought to me?’ it says to itself. ‘A detour to my purpose. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts.’) For instance, the self, the self-​organization of the body with its outstanding power of orientation, makes the I, consciousness, the intellect, feel pain only at certain points, namely, at such points, where conscious thinking can help to prevent bodily handicaps. (‘The self says to the ego: “Feel pain here!” And then it suffers and reflects on how it might suffer no more –​and just for that purpose it is supposed to think.’) In sum, the traditional, so-​called reason has only a limited function of orientation within the far more comprehensive orientation of the body in its natural environment, whose complexity remains largely unknown. In the less emotive language of the aphorism-​books, in which Nietzsche also uses foreign words, unlike in Z, he takes this up with the distinction between ‘instinct and reason’ and summarizes both under the formula ‘evaluation of things’. Reason, which ‘wants some ground or “what for?”, some purpose or utility behind our values and actions’, functions also here as a ‘tool’ of instinct: ‘we have to follow our instincts but persuade reason to come to their aid with good motives’ (JGB 191, KSA 5.112). By leaving reason on one side of the distinction, Nietzsche can again intensify it gradually to a ‘great reason’ with a superior power of orientation. This ‘great reason’ then stands out as an ‘elevated, independent spirituality’, a ‘will to stand alone’, an ‘elevated and hard nobility and self-​responsibility’ above the mediocrity of the reason of the herd (JGB 201, KSA 5.123). Finally, Nietzsche assigns this great reason –​understood as the ‘semiotic of being well turned out, of ascending life, of the will to power as the principle of life’, as ‘self-​affirmation, self-​glorification of life’ –​not to epistemology, but to aesthetics. To this end, he creates a new word, the verb ‘vernünftigen’ (to make rational), and puts it on a line with ‘verklären’ (to transfigure) and ‘verschönen’ (to beautify:  WA Epilog, KSA 6.51). Accordingly, reason, like art, makes the

  199



‘Resolute Reversals’

199

world ‘endurable’, it does not justify it –​Nietzsche silently, but clearly corrected the famous formulation from GT 5 in FW 107 (KSA 3.464). Reason shows itself ‘in reality’, which it construes in such a way that one can orientate oneself sufficiently in it, ‘not in “reason” ’, which was isolated from and opposed to it in the European tradition of philosophy (GD Alten 2, KSA 6.155–​6).

5.  Kant’s far-​reaching critical premises: Pluralization and functionalization of reason for orientation II Yet, as is well known, Kant did not restrict his distinction between reason and nature to the critique of pure theoretical reason. He also pluralized and functionalized reason, and his technique for making distinctions reached further than Nietzsche suspected on the basis of his limited textual knowledge. Kant-​ scholarship itself has only become aware of this in the past decades, in particular through the Kant-​interpretations of Friedrich Kaulbach (1990) and Josef Simon (2003), who themselves read Kant from a Nietzschean viewpoint. Within Anglo-​ American Kant-​and Nietzsche-​scholarship this has gone virtually unnoticed, as have the consequences that the philosophy of orientation has drawn from it. To conclude, I would therefore like to draw attention to some of the most important points: 1. First, there is Kant’s sustained talk of the ‘use of reason’ (Gebrauch der Vernunft). Not only does he distinguish its ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’, its ‘dogmatic’ and ‘regulative’ uses and so on, but also its ‘appropriate’ (angemessenen), its ‘free’, its ‘instrumental’, ‘natural’ and ‘technical’ (technischen) uses –​to name a few of the 60-​odd adjectival qualifications employed just for the use of reason, not to mention the many more employed for the use of the understanding (Schlicht von Rabenau 2014: 106). Hence, reason appears differently in different functions. However, since the reality of reason cannot, according to the criteria of the KrV, be fixed, it appears only in such functions. 2. Kant also seems to have conceded this without further ado. In the introduction to his regularly held Logic course, he naturally followed the perspectivism of the Leibniz school (without thereby taking over the rational ontology, psychology and theology of Wolff). There, he linked the differential use of reason to ‘horizons’ and thereby to ‘standpoints’, from which such horizons open up, and treated these horizons of knowledge

200

200

Werner Stegmaier

prior to the ‘formal criteria of truth’, such as the law of non-​contradiction (Log 51ff.; cf. Stegmaier 2004b: 258f.). He placed the ‘capabilities and ends of the subject’ for disclosing the world, always limited, under the concept of horizon (Log 40). No one, Kant says, can think beyond his horizons and it is ‘reckless’ (verwegen) ‘to want to determine the horizon of others, partly because one does not know their capabilities, and partly because one does not know their intentions [Absichten] sufficiently’ (Log 43). The horizons of reason can be as manifold as its uses. Kant distinguished explicitly a logical, an aesthetic and a practical horizon, an historical and a rational horizon, a universal and an absolute horizon, a particular and a conditioned, a private horizon, a horizon of common sense (or ‘healthy reason’: gesunde Vernunft) and a horizon of science (Log 40–​4). Horizons and standpoints can exist next to each other and be changed over time without the necessity of grounding them in a common principle: Kant does not indicate such a principle for his distinction of horizons, nor does he integrate them into a system, but leaves them in their contingency. This obtains especially for the ‘determination of the private horizon’, which, according to Kant,   depends upon various empirical conditions and special considerations, e.g., age, sex, station, mode of life, etc. Every particular class of men has its particular horizon in relation to its special powers of cognition, ends, and standpoints, every mind its own horizon according to the standard of the individuality of its powers and its standpoint. (Log 41)

To these individual powers belong also the ‘mental endowments’ (Gemütsgaben: Anth 197), the understanding, judgement-​power and reason. In the Anthropologie Kant makes extensive ‘observations’ concerning ‘how one differs from another in these mental endowments or in their habitual use or misuse’ (Anth 197). The ‘rational horizon’ (rationale Horizont) is distinguished by the fact (among other things) that it ‘can be fixed’ in view of ‘how far reason can go here a priori without any experience’. Accordingly, even the KrV stands within a particular horizon, namely, the ‘horizon of science’ (Horizont der Wissenschaft: Log 41). 3. Within the horizon of science, Kant distinguished again one’s ‘own’ reason and an ‘other’s reason’ (fremde Vernunft). Even though he often appears to, Kant does not simply assume one unitary reason. He used the formula ‘fremde Vernunft’ time and again,9 most conspicuously in his essay Was ist Aufklärung? The maxim ‘Have courage to use your own understanding!’ (WA 35) only makes sense if reason is not already assumed to be universal

  201



‘Resolute Reversals’

201

and common.10 The formula also comes up in KrV, in the decisive but less considered ‘Transcendental Doctrine of Method’. According to this, one cannot judge from one’s own standpoint the extent to which one’s own judgements has ‘only private validity’ (Privatgültigkeit: KrV A820/​ B848). Therefore, we ought always to make the ‘experiment’ (Versuch) of communicating our judgements to others ‘with the grounds that are valid for us’ and to see ‘if they have the effect on the reason of others [fremde Vernunft] as they do on our own’ (KrV A821/​B849). But even this does not secure the objectivity of the judgement (Simon and Stegmaier 1998). According to Kant’s three maxims of Enlightenment,11 the first demands that ‘one use [sich bedienen] one’s own reason’ and not ‘follow someone else’s reason [fremder Vernunft folgen]’ (Anth 200); the second that ‘one put oneself in viewpoint [Gesichtspunkte] of others’ (Log 57), so as not to become a ‘logical egoist’ (Anth 128); but the third is that one ‘always think consistently with oneself [mit sich selbst einstimmig]’. According to this third maxim, everyone has in the end to decide (entscheiden) for themselves which judgement they want to take as correct, after having weighed up the judgements of the others. Even after taking the reason of others into consideration, no one can get beyond their own reason. Nietzsche’s perspectivism claimed nothing else. In the KrV Kant formulated it as ‘universal human reason, in which everyone has his voice’ (jeder seine Stimme hat), which is unmistakably his own (KrV A752/​B780). Accordingly, the unity and universality of reason is already for Kant not a fact, but a norm. 4. Finally, it was Kant who gave the concept of orientation a home in philosophy with his essay Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren?12 There is no need to present its meaning for Kant at length here (see Stegmaier 2008: 78–​96), but with this concept, Kant already went beyond the concept of reason, without intending to or even admitting it to himself. He was also forced to do so by a situation of need, a ‘lack’ (Mangel: WDO 139) that reason itself can see but cannot make good: the fact that, at the moment when reason, ‘purified’ of relations to the world and nature, wants to engage with the world in order to know something in it and to act in it, it needs orientation. As Kant had already discovered early on, this begins with the right–​left distinction or the distinction between ‘region[s]‌of the world’ (Weltgegend), which are neither given to the senses nor determinable by the understanding. It extends to moral agency, in which reason must be permitted to ‘believe’ (glauben) what it cannot ‘know’ (wissen), namely,

202

202

Werner Stegmaier

that God will one day reward actions worthy of happiness with a happy life. Such orientations are ‘a need of reason itself ’ (‘der Vernunft eigenes Bedürfniß’: WDO 136). According to Kant, with the ‘right’ conferred by this need, reason is allowed ‘to assume something and to accept what it cannot presume to know through objective reasons, in thinking’ (WDO 137). In the case of the need of reason for orientation, ‘need’ is equivalent to ‘insight’ (Bedürfnis für Einsicht: WDO 138 Fn), or orientation prevails over thought. It is a natural need, a need which constantly keeps us alive to the situatedness of human reason in a body and its environment; for Nietzsche, it is the need of a reason of the body as well, of a great reason. Already with Kant, reason becomes a function of orientation. Translated by Herman Siemens

Notes 1 I owe the selection of texts cited in large part to Hakaru Kodama, who is working in Greifswald on a thesis on Nietzsche’s concept of reason. Like him, I focus mainly on published texts or texts prepared for publication and thus authorized by Nietzsche himself. The interpretations are my own. 2 GM III 12 has mostly been interpreted in relation to Nietzsche’s perspectivism. Cf. recently Dellinger (2016). Here, I relate GM III 12 to the KrV, especially to the Preface of the second edition. For the relations to the KpV and the KU, see Gentili (2015). 3 NL 1872–​3 19[34], KSA 7.426 f. (literal and extensive rendering), VM 27, KSA 2.392 and M 197, KSA 3.172 (very free paraphrase). 4 On this point, Kant had written in the first edition of the KrV the following (taken up in the second edition): ‘Das, was hierbei streitig wird, ist nicht die Sache, sondern der Ton. Denn es bleibt euch noch genug übrig, um die vor der schärfsten Vernunft gerechtfertigte Sprache eines festen Glaubens zu sprechen, wenn ihr gleich die des Wissens habt aufgeben müssen’ (KrV A744f./​B772f.). 5 On the limited leeway on the one hand and the manifold varieties of refutation on the other hand, cf. MA II WS 211, KSA 2.644; M 95, KSA 3.86f.; FW 39, KSA 3.406f.; FW 84, KSA 3.439ff.; FW 106, KSA 3.463f.; FW 260, KSA 3.517; FW 347, KSA 3.581ff.; GM Vorrede 4, KSA 5.250f.; GM III 11, KSA 5.361ff.; WA Nachschrift, KSA 6.40ff.; WA Epilog, KSA 6.50ff.; GD Sokrates 3, KSA 6.68f.; GD Fabel, KSA 6.80; AC 10, KSA 6.176f.; AC 45, KSA 6.221ff.; AC 53, KSA 6.234f.; EH Vorwort 3, KSA 6.257ff.; EH (GT) 2, KSA 6.311f.; EH Schicksal 3, KSA 6.367. 6 On Nietzsche’s heuristic of Not, cf. Stegmaier (2013: 154–​6).

  203



‘Resolute Reversals’

203

7 Cf. M 123, KSA 3.116: ‘Reason –​How reason came into the world? In an irrational way of course, by chance. One will have to divine it [errathen], like a riddle [Räthsel].’ 8 On Nietzsche’s new teaching concerning free will, rationality as the feeling of freedom, see M 544, KSA 3.314–​15, and FW 76, KSA 3.431–​2. 9 See above all (following the compilation by Simon (2003: 22, Fn. 21)) TG 349; KrV A821/​B849; KrV A836/​B864; Anth 200 and 202; ÜGTP 182; Log 22; Päd 441. Simon develops his overall interpretation of Kant from the topos of the fremde Vernunft. 10 Cf. also WDO 146: ‘Selbstdenken heißt den obersten Probierstein der Wahrheit in sich selbst (d.i. in seiner eigenen Vernunft) suchen, und die Maxime, jederzeit selbst zu denken, ist die Aufklärung.’ 11 Log 57. Kant repeats and varies the maxims in Anth 200 und in KU §40 294. According to the Introduction to the Log, it is about ‘allgemeine Regeln und Bedingungen der Vermeidung des Irrthums überhaupt’; according to Anth, about ‘Maximen’ of the ‘Vorschrift’ to attain ‘Weisheit’; according to the KU, about ‘Maximen des gemeinen Menschenverstandes’. 12 With this essay, Kant came to the support of Moses Mendelssohn in the Pantheismus-​Streit, who first transposed the concept of orientation from geography to philosophy (Stegmaier 2008: 62–​77). Despite his commitment to perspectivism (FW 354, KSA 3.593), Nietzsche, on the contrary, avoided the concept of orientation; probably because Eugen Dühring, with whom he did not want to get confused, used it extensively.

References Bertino, A. C. (2011), ‘Vernatürlichung’. Ursprünge von Friedrich Nietzsches Entidealisierung des Menschen, seiner Sprache und seiner Geschichte bei Johann Gottfried Herder, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context. An Intellectual Biography, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Dellinger, J. (2016), ‘Aufklärung über Perspektiven. Eine Lektüreversuch zum zwölften Abschnitt der dritten Abhandlung von Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral’, in H. Feger, (ed.), Nietzsche und die Aufklärung in Deutschland und China, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter. Geertz, C. (1973), ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, 3–​30, New York: Basic Books. Gentili, C. (2015), ‘Prospettiva e ascetismo’, in B. Giacomini, P. Gori and G. Grigenti (eds), La ‘Genealogia della morale’. Letture e interpretazioni, 211–​38, Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

204

204

Werner Stegmaier

Kaulbach, F. (1990), Philosophie des Perspektivismus. 1. Teil: Wahrheit und Perspektive bei Kant, Hegel und Nietzsche, Tübingen: Siebeck/​Mohr. Müller, E. (2011), ‘Vernunft’, in C. Niemeyer (ed.), Nietzsche-​Lexikon, 2nd ed., 399–​401, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Ottmann, H. (2000), ‘Immanuel Kant’, in H. Ottmann (ed.), Nietzsche-​Handbuch. Leben –​ Werk –​ Wirkung, 411f., Stuttgart/​Weimar: Metzler. Röttges, H. (1999), Das Problem der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Philosophie, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Schlicht von Rabenau, M. (2014), Der philosophische Begriff des Gebrauchs. Platon, Kant, Wittgenstein, Münster: Mentis. Simon, J. (2003), Kant. Die fremde Vernunft und die Sprache der Philosophie, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Simon, J., and Stegmaier, W. (1998), ‘Einleitung zu’, J. Simon and W. Stegmaier (eds), Fremde Vernunft. Zeichen und Interpretation IV, 7–​22, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Stegmaier, W. (1987), ‘Darwin, Darwinismus, Nietzsche. Zum Problem der Evolution’, Nietzsche-​Studien 16: 264–​87. Stegmaier, W. (1990), ‘Die Zeitlichkeit des Lebendigen. Kant, Hegel und die Prinzipien von Darwins Evolutionstheorie’, in H. Busche, G. Heffernan and D. Lohmar (eds), Bewußtsein und Zeitlichkeit. Ein Problemschnitt durch die Philosophie der Neuzeit, 75–​87, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Stegmaier, W. (1994), Nietzsches ‘Genealogie der Moral’. Werkinterpretation, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Stegmaier, W. (1997a), ‘Geist. Hegel, Nietzsche und die Gegenwart’, Nietzsche-​Studien 26: 300–​18. Stegmaier, W. (1997b), ‘Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft’, in W. Stegmaier (with the collaboration of Hartwig Frank), Hauptwerke der Philosophie. Von Kant bis Nietzsche, Stuttgart: Reclam. Stegmaier, W. (1999), ‘Das Zeichen X in der Philosophie der Moderne’, in W. Stegmaier (ed.), Zeichen-​Kunst. Zeichen und Interpretation V, 231–​56, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Stegmaier, W. (2004a), ‘ “Philosophischer Idealismus” und die “Musik des Lebens”. Zu Nietzsches Umgang mit Paradoxien. Eine kontextuelle Interpretation des Aphorismus Nr. 372 der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft’, Nietzsche-​Studien 33: 90–​128. Stegmaier, W. (2004b), ‘Orientierung zum Handeln in wechselnden Horizonten’, in R. Elm (ed.), Horizonte des Horizontbegriffs. Hermeneutische, phänomenologische und interkulturelle Studien, 251–​66, Sankt Augustin: Academia. Stegmaier, W. (2008), Philosophie der Orientierung, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2012), Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie. Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der ‘Fröhlichen Wissenschaft’, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2013), Friedrich Nietzsche zur Einführung, 2nd ed., Hamburg: Junius. Stegmaier, W. (2016), Orientierung im Nihilismus –​Luhmann meets Nietzsche, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter.

  205

9

The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power Tsarina Doyle

1.  Introduction This chapter examines how Nietzsche’s will to power thesis emerges from his engagement with Kant’s epistemology. Although some commentators have disputed the extent to which Nietzsche in fact read Kant, arguing that his understanding of Kant is second-​hand,1 it cannot be disputed that the figure of Kant looms large in Nietzsche’s intellectual background and thematically informs many of his philosophical stances. As Nietzsche himself tells us in a letter, three figures cast their shadow over his thought. These are Kant, Lange and Schopenhauer, with Kant heading the list of this threefold influence.2 Nietzsche employs the figure of Kant, as he employs all historical and philosophical figures, as a representative of arguments or ways of thinking that he endorses or rejects.3 The figure of Kant serves to focus Nietzsche’s thought on both theoretical –​epistemic and metaphysical –​concerns, and on practical, evaluative, ones. However, as his denial that theory can be meaningfully divorced from practice testifies (NL 1888 14[107], KSA 13.285–​6), Nietzsche is sensitive to the manner in which theoretical questions inform and shape practical issues. It is with some justification, therefore, that I will focus on how Nietzsche’s metaphysics of the will to power emerges from his critical reflections on Kant’s epistemology. Since my aim here is to excavate the logic of Nietzsche’s theoretical philosophy, I use Nietzsche’s reflections on Kant and Kantian themes to understand, not Kant per se or even whether Nietzsche interprets him charitably, but rather, the philosophical rationale that informs the proposal of the will to power thesis. The chapter will be structured in three parts. The first (Section 2) focuses on Nietzsche’s assessment of both the merits and demerits of Kant’s project and, in particular, the success of Kant’s account of synthesis in establishing the empirical world as an object of knowledge. Nietzsche praises Kant’s aim to establish the

206

206

Tsarina Doyle

objective applicability of the concept of causality, contrary to Hume’s scepticism, but is disappointed that Kant, in his view, falls short of bringing this aim to a successful resolution, despite a promising stance adopted in his pre-​critical writings in response to the vis viva debate. Section 3 assesses how Nietzsche’s will to power thesis responds to the shortcomings of Kant’s project by offering a naturalization of Kantian synthesis. Nietzsche puts forward an argument, contrary to Kant, as he sees it, in favour of the mind-​independent but knowable character of the world, an argument that culminates in the thesis that the fundamental constituents of reality, relational powers, are also intrinsic. Finally, I  consider potential objections to these arguments and suggest, in reply, that Nietzsche’s response to Kantian synthesis in the guise of the will to power carries with it important existential implications.

2.  Nietzsche’s appraisal of Kant That Nietzsche is engaging with Kantian themes is evident from his earliest to his late writings. In particular, he singles out for praise what he sees as Kant’s efforts to overcome rationalist dogmatism by restricting our knowledge to the empirical world of space, time and causality and denying the possibility of pure conceptual access to things as they are in themselves. This is evident, for example, in BT, where he writes: The hardest-​fought victory of all was won by the enormous courage and wisdom of Kant and Schopenhauer, a victory over the optimism which lies hidden in the nature of logic and which in turn is the hidden foundation of our culture. Whereas this optimism once believed in our ability to grasp and solve, with the help of the seemingly reliable aeternae veritates, all the puzzles of the universe, and treated space, time, and causality as entirely unconditional laws of the most general validity, Kant showed that these things actually only served to raise mere appearance, the work of maya, to the status of the sole and supreme reality [. . .] (BT 18, KSA 1.118)

Although this passage is taken from Nietzsche’s first published book, he praises Kant’s efforts to render the empirical world an object of knowledge in both his early and late writings. But there is a difference in his praise across these periods. In some of the early writings, he not only endorses Kant’s aims but also his method. Thus we find him embracing a constitutive account of mind, arguing

  207



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

207

that the relation between the mind and the empirical world must be understood in terms of the dependency of the latter on the former. In these writings, though, Nietzsche wavers between different accounts of the constitutive mind. In the unpublished On Truth and Lie in an Extra-​Moral Sense (TL, KSA 1.875–​90), for example, he adopts, what he takes to be, a faithful Kantian idealist position, holding that the empirical world is constituted through the imposition of human cognitive forms on the data of sense. While in BT, Nietzsche endorses the idea that the empirical world is mind-​correlative, the mind which is responsible for its constitution is not a human mind but rather a quasi-​divine world artist that projects the forms of the empirical world.4 Despite these differences in the description of the constitutive account of mind in the two texts, Nietzsche agrees that the world of our empirical experience is dependent on mind and divorced from the intrinsic, mind-​independent, character of things in themselves.5 In his later writings of the 1880s he continues to praise Kant’s efforts to render the empirical world an object of knowledge. However, here the focus is on Kant’s response to the dangers of empiricism rather than rationalism. Thus we find that in GS Nietzsche’s commendation comes in the guise of his approval of Kant’s rejection of Humean scepticism. In particular, Nietzsche praises Kant’s argument, contrary to Hume, in favour of the objective applicability of the concept of causality: Let us recall [. . .] Kant’s tremendous question mark that he placed after the concept of ‘causality’ –​without, like Hume, doubting its legitimacy altogether. Rather, Kant began cautiously to delimit the realm within which this concept makes sense (and to this day we are not done with this fixing of limits). (GS 357, KSA 3.598)6

According to Hume, although we possess the concept of causality, the objective applicability of this concept in a judgement cannot be rationally justified. The reason for this is that while the imagination encourages our assent to beliefs and renders us psychologically disposed to believe that the world operates according to necessary causal laws, it operates independently of rational constraints. Devoid of these constraints, we cannot justifiably be assured that the concept of causality is objectively applicable. Central to Kant’s response to Hume’s challenge is his account of synthesis in the Transcendental Deduction section of his Critique of Pure Reason (KrV). Although Kant wrote two versions of the Deduction, Nietzsche doesn’t explicitly distinguish between them and instead stresses the role of the psychological faculties in Kant’s efforts to demonstrate the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge generally. He writes:

208

208

Tsarina Doyle

But let’s think about it, it is high time. ‘How are synthetic a priori judgements possible?’ wondered Kant, and what did he answer? They are facilitated by a faculty: unfortunately, however, he did not say this in four words, but so cumbersomely, so venerably, and with such an expense of German profundity and ornateness that people misheard the comical niaiserie allemande in such an answer. (BGE 11, KSA 5.24)

However, despite the fact that Nietzsche doesn’t distinguish between the A and B versions of the Deduction, it is in the A version that Kant formulates his account of synthesis in terms of psychological faculties most strongly. According to Kant, synthesis takes place in three logically separable but practically inseparable stages, where each stage is attributed to a distinct mental faculty. The three stages  –​apprehension in intuition, reproduction in imagination and recognition in a concept  –​are performed by the faculties of sensibility, imagination and understanding, respectively. Appealing to synthesis, Kant argues, contrary to Hume, that our beliefs about the world are rationally justified because the imagination’s contribution to cognition operates under the rule-​governed guidance of the concepts of understanding. However, while in some of the early writings Nietzsche endorses Kant’s method of restricting our knowledge to that of the empirical world, in the later writings he becomes increasingly critical of this methodology. Nietzsche still praises Kant’s aims of rendering the empirical world an object of knowledge, central to which is his need to establish the objectivity of causality, but he maintains that Kant’s account of synthesis is flawed and prevents him from successfully executing these aims. Consequently, Nietzsche argues that Kant’s project has yet to be brought to fruition. Although he is not explicit about the reasons for Kant’s failure, we can reconstruct his argument by piecing together remarks that he makes about Kant. When we do this we find that Nietzsche detects three problems in Kant’s efforts to make the empirical world an object of knowledge and to establish the objectivity of causality. The first sees Kant guilty of psychologism and the genetic fallacy. The second sees Nietzsche turn his back on his own early Kantian position to criticize what he sees as Kant’s argument in favour of the existential dependency of empirical objects of knowledge on human minds. Finally, the third focuses on the sceptical implications of the mind-​dependency of objects in the context of Kant’s reference to the thing in itself. According to Nietzsche, these problems must be overcome if the true aims of Kant’s project are to be successfully achieved. I  will reconstruct Nietzsche’s three criticisms before turning to his response.

  209



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

209

Nietzsche contends that Kant mistakes the psychological origin of our beliefs for a rational justification of them. In response to Kant’s argument in favour of the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, Nietzsche writes: ‘But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and a very narrow and limited experience often produces such a belief!’ (NL 1886 7[4]‌, KSA 12.265).7 He also writes that ‘ “[f]acilitated by a faculty” –​that’s what he had said, or at least that’s what he had meant. But what kind of an answer is that? What kind of explanation? Isn’t it rather simply repeating the question?’ (BGE 11, KSA 5.25). One might attempt to defend Kant here by pointing out that Nietzsche misunderstands Kant’s argument and that, in particular, he fails to appreciate the constraining role of transcendental apperception, which as non-​empirical and a necessary presupposition for the application of a priori concepts saves Kant from the charge of the genetic fallacy.8 Although Nietzsche does not offer a direct response to this criticism, we can nonetheless see that, for him, the transcendental self cannot provide the much needed constraint. The reason for this is that, in Nietzsche’s view, the transcendental self is an empty notion. Nietzsche agrees with Kant’s argument against rational psychology in the Paralogisms section of KrV but maintains that its scope should be extended to include a rejection of all non-​empirical accounts of the self (BGE 54, KSA 5.73). However, rather than abandon the meaningfulness of the concept of self altogether, he contends that we should replace the contentless notion of a non-​empirical self with the contentful notion of the ‘mortal’ self, constituted by hierarchical relations between drives and affects (BGE 12, KSA 5.27). Within the context of Kant’s account of synthesis, such a view of the self is incompatible with the need for a rational constraint. That is, within the context of Kant’s understanding of the relation between mind and world as one where the former constitutes the latter by imposing its cognitive structures on the ‘given’ data of sense, the empirical self is unable to supply the requisite ingredients of universality and necessity. Although Nietzsche does not overtly address the matter, he appears to be sensitive to an ambiguity between the different levels, empirical and transcendental, on which Kant’s account of synthesis is operating and which Kant does not make explicit. Nietzsche’s sensitivity to the issue is manifested in his interpretation of Kantian synthesis as empirical rather than transcendental but in his awareness that it is supposed to deliver a type of knowledge that is more than contingent (he acknowledges that it is supposed to be synthetic a priori in BGE 11, KSA 5.24). The basis for his interpretation can be found in the A Deduction where Kant emphasizes the reproductive role of the imagination, although he replaces the account of threefold synthesis in the B Deduction with figurative synthesis

210

210

Tsarina Doyle

that emphasizes the a priori and transcendental role of the productive imagination. Transcendental synthesis entails the synthesis of both empirical objects and the empirical self. Empirical synthesis, however, entails that the empirical objects of the spatio-​temporal world both affect and are combined by the empirical self.9 Although a charitable interpretation might take the distinction between transcendental and empirical synthesis as justification of Kant’s claim that empirical objects are mind-​independent but that the conditions of their knowability are mind-​dependent,10 Nietzsche does not interpret it in this way. Rather, he points to what he thinks is the vacuous character of Kant’s appeal to transcendental conditions, and emphasizing the empirical account of mind as the only contentful account of mind available to us, he commits Kant to the view that the mind-​dependency of objects derives from an empirical account of synthesis. This brings us to the second difficulty that Nietzsche detects in Kant. This problem pertains to the constitutive role that Kant assigns to the mind and which results, in Nietzsche’s mature view, in an illegitimate reduction of the empirical objects of our knowledge to mind-​dependent representations. According to Nietzsche, Kant’s efforts to harmonize our knowledge with the world results in the view that the objects of our knowledge must conform to the conditions of human understanding. In line with his interpretation of synthesis as empirical, Nietzsche interprets transcendental idealism as a form of Berkelian empirical idealism. This means that the empirical objects of our knowledge must be understood as constituted by and existentially dependent on the human mind. Thus, in Nietzsche’s view, Kant runs together the epistemic conditions of knowing an object with the existential conditions of its existence.11 Nietzsche’s interpretation of Kant’s idealism can be accounted for when we consider that its formulation is heavily influenced by Schopenhauer who interprets Kantian idealism as entailing the existential dependency of empirical objects on the human mind.12 Although Nietzsche endorsed such idealism in some of his early writings, he was nonetheless aware of its sceptical implications in a Kantian context. For example, in ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, he writes, ‘If Kant ever should begin to exercise any wide influence we shall be aware of it in the form of a gnawing and disintegrating scepticism and relativism [. . .]’ (SE 3, KSA 1.355). This sceptical threat is to be initially detected, in Nietzsche’s view, in the relativized account of objectivity implied by Kant’s argument that the world as it is known by us is constituted by the human mind. In this context the empirical world of our knowledge is reduced to a mere ‘appearance’ and our knowledge is relativized to our human point of view. In his defence it may be argued that relativized objectivity is unproblematic for Kant on the grounds that his constitutive

  211



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

211

account of mind secures universal and necessary knowledge and that such hallmarks secure the intersubjective validity of human knowledge. As long as we combine this with metaphysical indifferentism,13 it might be suggested, we need not worry about whether our experience of the world fulfils the non-​relative standard of metaphysical correspondence.14 One might go so far in support of this argument to point out that Nietzsche himself seems to propose a version of it in HH. There he argues that metaphysical knowledge, to the extent that it cannot make a practical difference to us, should not be allowed to interfere with our empirical knowledge. As long as our empirical experience is coherent, uniform and intersubjectively testable, the additional question of whether it fulfills the requirements of metaphysical correspondence is superfluous (HH 9, KSA 2.29–​ 30).15 Although this argument might have some merit, both philosophically and textually, it is ultimately unsatisfactory when we consider its proposals in the light of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Kant. This interpretation, as we have seen, downplays the significance of Kant’s appeal to the universality and necessity of our intersubjective empirical knowledge on the grounds that such universality and necessity cannot be secured by the empirical level on which Kant’s account of synthesis operates. Although Kant appeals to transcendental levels of both the self and its activity in synthesis, for Nietzsche the transcendental self is an empty concept and is therefore unable to offer the rational constraints and guarantees needed to secure the argument in favour of relative, but intersubjectively valid, objectivity. Moreover, the problem of scepticism and relativism is compounded, in Nietzsche’s view, by the third problem that he detects in Kant. This is the problem surrounding Kant’s combination of empirical idealism with a reference to the thing in itself. According to Kant, the empirical objects of our knowledge belong to the world of space and time, which is a world of external relations. This means that the properties of an empirical object are not intrinsic to it but are characterized by its spatial relation to other objects. However, in Kant’s view, these relations, constituted by the human mind, are ‘only the relation of an object to a subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself ’ (KrV B67).16 That is, these relations, constituted by the human mind, are not ultimately real and therefore require ontological support from intrinsic properties or mind-​independent properties considered ‘in themselves’ and apart from all relations (KrV B67). For Kant, although the thought of such a thing in itself is implied by the argument of the Transcendental Deduction and its appeal to the relative objectivity of the phenomenal world of our experience, it is nonetheless a ‘problematic’ (KrV A255) idea in that we cannot know it to actually obtain. However, although

212

212

Tsarina Doyle

there is evidence that Kant intended the distinction between phenomena and noumena to be a distinction between two ways of knowing one and the same object rather than two ontological spheres (KrV Bxxvii), Nietzsche interprets his reference to the thing in itself as a reference to a numerically distinct world that lies beyond our cognitive reach.17 Moreover, Kant’s reference to it, in Nietzsche’s view, carries with it sceptical implications that undermine his efforts to establish the empirical world as an object of knowledge and to establish the objective applicability of the concept of causality, contrary to Hume. When these factors are taken into consideration, according to Nietzsche, it becomes impossible to be indifferent to Kant’s thing in itself.18 This is made particularly evident when we consider that Kant’s transcendental project, which culminates in the argument of the Transcendental Deduction and its account of synthesis, is a product of his ongoing preoccupation with the metaphysical status of ‘force’ in the vis viva debate between the Cartesians and the Leibnizeans. Nietzsche seems to have been aware of this and his understanding of how Kant responds to it bears consequences for his estimation of the success of synthesis as a response to Humean scepticism and the issue of causality, in addition to forming the background to Nietzsche’s own response to Kant in the guise of his proposal of the will to power thesis. It is therefore worth the effort to now turn to a brief rehearsal of Kant’s pre-​critical and critical response to the vis viva issue by way of leading into Nietzsche’s proposed alternative to Kant’s account of synthesis. The central issue under discussion in the vis viva debate, which began with Leibniz’s The Memorable Errors of Descartes and Others (1686), was whether we can intelligibly speak of internal ‘living force’ in nature distinct from external mechanical force and whether such living force can be measured. The possibility of mathematical quantification was identified with the empirical reality of force. According to Descartes, empirical force is reducible to external dead pressure whose effects are mathematically quantifiable as the product of the quantity of matter and velocity. Force, therefore, for Descartes, must be understood in terms of external motion and motion is to be measured in terms of spatial transfer. Leibniz, however, objected that material substance cannot be defined in terms of extension because it is unable to explain inertia or the resistance of bodies to motion. Rather, Leibniz contends that force is the dynamic essence of matter. However, he argues that while the effects of empirical force can be measured as the product of the quantity of matter and the square of velocities, it is reducible to a more primitive internal force which constitutes the substantial form of monadic, non-​empirical substances and whose metaphysical reality cannot be empirically instantiated.

  213



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

213

Throughout his career Kant struggled to reconcile the relational character of the scientific empirical world operating according to mechanical force with its metaphysical reality or intrinsic nature. In an early essay, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTG, 1873, KSA 1.801–​72), Nietzsche indicates in his praise for Kant’s pre-​critical text Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (NTH) that he is aware of Kant’s struggle with the concept of force. Although he endorses Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves in some other writings of the same early period, in this particular text Nietzsche praises Kant’s pre-​critical efforts in NTH to capture within one ontological domain the necessary and intrinsic status of mechanical empirical force: Is it not a sublime thought, to derive the magnificence of the cosmos and the marvellous arrangements of the stellar orbits wholly from a single, simple, purely mechanical movement, from a mathematical figure in motion, as it were! Instead of seeing in it the intentions and the intervening hands of a machine-​ god, he derived it from a type of oscillation which, once having begun, is necessary and predictable in its course and attains effects which are the equal of the wisest calculations of ratiocination; and of the utmost planning of purposiveness –​but without being them. (PTG 17, KSA 1.866–​7)

Kant’s argument in NTH that empirical mechanical force is the medium for the self-​organizing character of nature differs from his earlier stance on this issue. In 1749 he had attempted to combine the Cartesian and Leibnizean views of force by arguing in favour of the need for both external and internal force. External force, he argues, is required to set a body in motion but internal force is required to preserve it in motion.19 However, Kant changed his mind on this issue when he discovered Newton and the law of inertia. This discovery taught Kant that internal force was no longer required to explain how a body continues in uniform motion despite the fact that no continuous external force is applied. This discovery informs Kant’s position in NTH where he appeals to only one type of force and where the Leibnizean notion of internal force is abandoned and external forces become the vehicles for the self-​organizing character of mechanical nature. According to Kant in NTH, complex systems evolve from the operations of mechanical forces. Here, for Kant, the empirical and the metaphysical go hand in hand. However, in his critical writings Kant denies that mechanical nature can be known to be self-​organizing. To claim that the operations of mechanical nature are governed by a self-​organizing principle, Kant argues, still involves

214

214

Tsarina Doyle

an illegitimate attempt to capture the inner or intrinsic character of things by dogmatically bypassing the empirical conditions of knowledge and presupposing direct insight into things in themselves. Thus, in the ‘Amphiboly’ section of KrV, he argues that empirical substance is constituted by external relations in space, and since we would be guilty of an amphiboly, that is, the illegitimate ‘confounding of an object of pure understanding with appearance’, if we were to claim knowledge of things in themselves, our knowledge must, accordingly, be restricted to that of external spatial relations (KrV A270/​B326). Rejecting Leibniz’s non-​relational noumenal substance, Kant concludes that ‘substantia phaenomenon in space’ is ‘nothing but relations, and it itself is entirely made up of mere relations’ (KrV A265/​B321).20 If intrinsic natures obtain at all, according to Kant, they must do so at the level of non-​empirical and mind-​independent things in themselves. Although Nietzsche praises Kant’s argument in NTH, he is ultimately less satisfied with Kant’s critical position.21 Once again, we must engage in a degree of reconstruction to formulate the reasons why. When we do, we find that the reasons relate to Nietzsche’s dissatisfaction with Kant’s idealism and his account of synthesis. According to Nietzsche, Kant’s mature writings understand force as a mental projection (hineingedichtet) (NL 1884 24[13], KSA 10.650; BGE 21, KSA 5.35–​6). Indeed Kant himself writes that the form of intuition or appearance ‘does not represent anything save in so far as something is posited in the mind’ (KrV B67). As such, empirical force captures only external spatial relations that are constituted by the human mind. In so doing, Kant, in Nietzsche’s view, fails to capture the intrinsic quality of force. We can appreciate why this might be important to Nietzsche when we consider that Kant refers to this intrinsic quality as the ‘causality of the cause’ in the Third Antinomy. We can surmise that the failure to capture the causal impetus informing causal relations influences Nietzsche’s assessment of Kant’s ability to respond to Hume on the causal question. That this is so can be discerned from Nietzsche’s suggestion that Kant’s view that causal relations must be understood in terms of spatial and temporal succession constituted by the human mind fails to contentfully capture the objectivity of real causal relations: Causalism.  –​It is obvious that things in themselves cannot be related to one another as ‘cause and effect’, nor can appearance be so related to appearance; from which it follows that in a philosophy that believes in things in themselves and appearances the concept ‘cause and effect’ cannot be applied. Kant’s mistakes. (NL 1885 2[139], KSA 12.135)22

  215



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

215

Moreover, Nietzsche concludes that despite Kant’s efforts to save the legitimacy of the concept of causality, his reference to mind-​independent things-​in-​ themselves ultimately underestimates the ‘validity of the knowledge attained by the natural sciences and altogether everything that can be known causaliter’ (GS 357, KSA 3.599). From this we can see that Kant, according to Nietzsche, renders force empirically ideal. This charge obviously sits uncomfortably with Kant’s view that force is constituted by spatial relations and that spatiality is the marker of the empirically real. Nevertheless, Nietzsche suggests that the fact that spatiality, for Kant, is imposed by the human mind belies this claim and deprives force of genuine causal power. For Nietzsche, if force is to be causally efficacious we must understand it to be both empirically and metaphysically real. That is, even if we can show that space is not just a cognitive structure of the mind but rather is characteristic of mind-​independent reality, empirical force must not be reducible to mere relations in space. Rather, causal relations must be relations of powers in space. Accordingly, force must be informed by an inner intrinsic nature. Nietzsche sets out here what is required for Kant to successfully complete the project of establishing the empirical world as an object of knowledge. However, the problems that, in his view, beset Kant’s account of synthesis and causal relations ultimately preclude the completion of the project. Therefore Nietzsche proposes an alternative account of synthesis, central to which is a non-​impositionist account of mind and an argument in favour of empirically real relations that are informed by intrinsic natures. This alternative account comes in the guise of the will to power thesis, to which I now turn.

3.  The will to power: An alternative to Kant’s synthesis Nietzsche proposes the will to power as an alternative to Kantian synthesis. His alternative holds that the relational character of the empirical world is informed by intrinsic natures that secure the mind-​independence and causal potency of empirical force. According to Nietzsche, the will to power captures the intelligible character of fundamental power-​wills that although ‘synthetically related to one another’ are not ‘a delusion in the Berkelian or Schopenhauerian sense’ (BGE 36, KSA 5.54).23 The transition from Kantian synthesis to the will to power is mediated by Nietzsche’s critical reflection on Kant’s account of self-​consciousness, which

216

216

Tsarina Doyle

arises, according to the argument of the Transcendental Deduction, as a result of the activity of the self in synthesis. The active self that accompanies my representations but that cannot be known to be a substance culminates in Kant’s rejection of the traditional substantialist and introspective view of the self in the ‘Paralogisms’. Nietzsche thinks that this move on Kant’s part is significant, not simply for its own sake but also because it ultimately serves to undermine the very idea of a non-​empirical self whose role is to constitute objects. In earlier times people believed in the ‘soul’ just as they believed in grammar and the grammatical subject. They said that ‘I’ is a condition, that ‘think’ is a predicate and thus conditioned: thinking is an activity for which a causal subject must be thought. And then, with admirable tenacity and cunning, people tried to see whether perhaps the reverse was true: that ‘think’ was the condition, and ‘I’ the conditioned; ‘I’ would thus be a synthesis, which was made through the thinking itself. Basically, Kant wanted to prove that the subject could not be proved by means of the subject, nor could the object be proved either. Perhaps he was already familiar with the possibility of an apparent existence of the subject (that is, the soul), this thought that was once present on earth, tremendously powerful, in the philosophy of Vedanta. (BGE 54, KSA 5.73; cf. BGE 17, KSA 5.31)

According to Nietzsche, the removal of the idea of a substantialist self undermines the distinction between non-​empirical selves and objects that they constitute. It is a short step from here, he contends, to his own position that the ordering synthetic principle of reality is to be found immanently situated within reality rather than imposed by the cognitive structures of the human mind. This is because idealism, the claim that the objects of our knowledge can be reduced to mind-​dependent representations, is defensible only if we can intelligibly appeal to an immaterial substantial self upon which the empirical world, including the human brain and sense organs, existentially depend. Without an immaterial substantial self, idealism, Nietzsche maintains, must collapse into a reductio ad absurdum that holds that the empirical self in the form of the brain is both an object in the natural world and cause of the natural world (BGE 15, KSA 5.29).24 It follows from this, Nietzsche contends, that if Kant is to reject the self of rational psychology in the Paralogisms then he must, if he is to avoid such a reductio, accept that synthesis operates independently of human minds in the natural world. Nietzsche sees himself as bringing Kant’s argument to its logical conclusion. He maintains that once we reject Kant’s constitutive account of mind that holds that the empirical world of our experience is constituted by forms imposed by the mind, we can understand the relation between mind and world

  217



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

217

naturalistically. Thus, Nietzsche proposes, contrary to Kant, that the human mind and its forms of cognition emerge through interaction with the world. This amounts to the view that mind and world are continuous and that while the forms of space, time and causality, for example, are forms of human cognition, they also belong to the structure of mind-​independent reality. This conclusion follows directly from Nietzsche’s translation of the human mind back into nature (BGE 230, KSA 5.169) and it entails that the world of our experience is empirically accessible to but ontologically independent of human minds.25 Nietzsche’s view that synthesis operates immanently within the world, rather than being understood as an imposition of the human mind, culminates in his claim that the empirical world must be understood in both relational and intrinsic terms. He contends that once we relinquish the distinction between immaterialist substantialist selves and the objects that they constitute, we see that the empirical world must be understood in terms of complexes of relational powers: If we give up the effective subject, we also give up the object upon which effects are produced. Duration, identity with itself, being are inherent neither in that which is called subject nor in that which is called object: they are complexes of events apparently durable in comparison with other complexes –​e.g., through the difference in tempo of the event (rest –​motion, form –​loose: opposites that do not exist in themselves and that actually express only variations in degree that from a certain perspective appear to be opposites. There are no opposites: only from those of logic do we derive the concept of opposites –​and falsely transfer it to things). (NL 1887 9[91], KSA 12.384)

This conclusion follows from Nietzsche’s interactionist account of mind, which establishes that mind-​independent reality must have a causal structure in addition to causality being a form of our cognition. Our understanding of this causal structure can take various forms but, he argues, the best empirical evidence points to a Boscovichean account of causality as action at a distance rather than a mechanical account of causal relations in terms of contact (BGE 12, KSA 5.26). Moreover, allowing for the possibility of objective knowledge that he thinks is missing in Kant, Nietzsche proposes that we can contentfully conceive the intrinsic nature of the relational forces that make up nature analogously to our own experiences of willing and desiring (BGE 36, KSA 5.54). Arguing that a ‘force we cannot imagine is an empty word’, Nietzsche maintains that the ‘victorious concept “force” [. . .] still needs to be completed:  an inner world [eine innere Welt] must be ascribed to it, which I designate as “will to power” ’ (NL 1885 36[31], KSA 11.563). Consequently, he proposes that we can capture the

218

218

Tsarina Doyle

‘intelligible character’ (BGE 36, KSA 5.55) of the relational powers that make up the empirical world without collapsing into dogmatism.26 Nevertheless, given Nietzsche’s charge that Kantian synthesis is guilty of the genetic fallacy one cannot help but wonder whether Nietzsche is not similarly guilty. This concern is heightened by the fact that in BGE Nietzsche maintains that psychology is the key to the basic issues (BGE 23, KSA 5.39). However, his rejection of Kant’s and indeed his own earlier impositionist account of mind in favour of an interactionist account of the relation between mind and world indicates that he must be able to differentiate his own appeal to psychology from that of Kant’s. By understanding the forms of our psychology as ‘provisional assumptions’ (‘Annahmen bis auf Weiteres’) (NL 1884 26[12], KSA 11.152) through which we understand the world, Nietzsche holds that our interests guide our investigation of nature but he does not attempt to guarantee, contrary to Kant as he sees it, that our interests will be instantiated in the empirical world from the outset. Rather as heuristic maxims for investigating the world, the forms of our psychology are capable of evolving and refinement over time.27 The forms of our cognition have, in Nietzsche’s view, an important historical dimension that they lack in Kant. Since the forms of our knowledge evolve and develop through interaction with reality, Nietzsche allows for the continuous refinement of our knowledge over time.28 Thus, in response to possible objections to Nietzsche’s use of analogy and indeed objections that Nietzsche himself levies at illegitimate uses of this method independently of his engagement with Kant,29 it must be stressed that, in the context of my interpretation of him, Nietzsche is not guilty of presupposing the transparency of the mind to itself and then using such supposed psychological ‘facts’ as a foundation for understanding mind-​independent reality. This is because, for him, although our understanding of the world must always be coloured by our specifically human point of view, our proposals must be treated as provisional conjectures that are deemed warranted, or not, through a process of subjecting these conjectures to critical scrutiny. Only those that can be supported by strong reasons in their favour, he contends, can be accepted as rationally justified (GS 2, 319, KSA 3.373, 2.550–​1).30 But, even assuming that the proposal of the will to power can avoid the charge of the genetic fallacy and that it is justifiable on the grounds outlined earlier, what does Nietzsche mean when he appeals to the intelligible character of things and is this appeal consistent with his other claim that the empirical world is relationally structured? On my understanding of Nietzsche’s proposal, to say that force operates according to an intrinsic nature is not to deny the relationality of force but rather it is to say that its relationality, contrary to Kant, emanates from its internal

  219



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

219

nature rather than from mind-​imposed relations and that its obtaining is mind-​ independent. Thus, Nietzsche’s argument is that force is metaphysically real and not just relative to us. However, if he is to avoid the charge that Kant levies at Leibniz, Nietzsche must show that the metaphysically real is physical and that the metaphysical reality of causal powers is compatible with their physical instantiation. To be physically instantiated force must be spatially located and, for Nietzsche, such spatial location cannot be constituted by the human mind as it is in Kant. Unfortunately, Nietzsche does not address this issue explicitly. Moreover, the spatial location of causal powers is a contentious issue, independently of the Kantian–​Nietzschean context under discussion here. The contention surrounding the issue impacts on Nietzsche’s response to Kant because it implies that the concept of spatiality, even if it is not considered to be an imposition of the human mind nevertheless presupposes a fundamentally un-​Nietzschean idea. That is, spatiality presupposes non-​relational material substances. According to this argument, causal powers can be considered to be spatially located only if they are grounded in a non-​relational substance, which itself has a non-​power nature (Foster 1982: 67–​9).31 However, there is a counterargument available, which can facilitate the spatial location of powers without committing Nietzsche to the idea that they must be grounded in a power-​less substrate. George Molnar provides us with such an argument. He probes what we mean by a substantial object and contends that our common understanding of such objects is that they are bulky or voluminous objects. He argues that although bulky or voluminous objects must have size and shape, it is more correct to say that such objects fill rather than occupy space. On this basis, he contends that only sub-​microscopic objects, such as powers, can be properly said to occupy a space, and they do so by being located at mathematical points. Moreover, while our common understanding takes these objects to have an intrinsic nature, he argues, it is not ultimately prescriptive about whether this intrinsic nature must have a non-​power character. Consequently, he proposes that we should adopt a position that he calls ‘moderate dispositionalism’, which holds that objects have extrinsic and intrinsic properties. Its intrinsic properties have a power nature while spatial location is an extrinsic property. This means that an object can change its spatial location with its intrinsic, power-ful, nature intact (Molnar 2006:  175–​9).32 Nietzsche’s description of the world as will to power as ‘a firm, iron magnitude of force set in a definite space as a definite force [sondern als bestimmte Kraft einem bestimmten Raum eingelegt]’ (NL 1885 38[12], KSA 11.610) fits with Molnar’s argument.33 However, even so, the fact

220

220

Tsarina Doyle

that it does raises a question of its own in addition to doing nothing to alleviate further possible concerns. It is to these potential problems that I now turn in Section 4.

4.  Objections and replies In this final section I will address four possible and interrelated objections to my reconstructed interpretation of Nietzsche’s engagement with Kant. All four objections, in different ways, serve to question Nietzsche’s commitment to the will to power thesis as I have presented it, in addition to casting doubt upon the Kantian influence to the thesis. The first objection questions the consistency of my interpretation of the will to power with its emphasis on relations. The second and third question the Kantian context to the argument, while the fourth casts doubt upon Nietzsche’s commitment to the will to power thesis, even if it transpires that it is an internally consistent proposal. In addition to indicating how these objections can be alleviated, I  will also offer reflections on the ultimate significance of Nietzsche’s proposal of the will to power thesis as an alternative to Kantian synthesis. The first possible objection is that, even if the argument in favour of the spatial location of causal powers succeeds, its location of powers at points, in something reminiscent of Boscovich’s appeal to mathematical points, runs the danger of understanding powers as discrete and atomistic. Although we have seen that this position is logically defensible in its own right, it nonetheless poses a problem for Nietzsche’s understanding of the relational character of powers. Nietzsche often understands this relational character in terms of the existential dependency of powers on one another rather than their dependency on human minds. He takes this proposal to be an anti-​essentialist one that entails that what something is is determined by its relations to other ‘things’ (NL 1885 2[85], KSA 12.104). But, relationality, understood in terms of non-​essentialism and mutual existential dependence, is philosophically problematic. The difficulty here is that the ‘things’ upon which a non-​essentialist power depends have no essence, since they too are defined in terms of their relations. Consequently, the anti-​ essentialist position succumbs to the problem of an infinite regress of existential dependency and collapses Nietzsche’s relational metaphysics into incoherency.34 Molnar’s argument in favour of the spatial location of powers allows Nietzsche to avoid this problem because it understands powers to be spatially discrete and therefore existentially independent of one another.35 However, endorsement of

  221



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

221

this option does not require Nietzsche to give up on the relationality of powers. Rather, he can continue to claim that all things are relational. But, on my interpretation, the relationality of powers is manifested in a process of agonistic competition for expression of their intrinsic natures rather than through their existential dependency on one another. The strength of this interpretation is that relationality and intrinsicality are no longer mutually exclusive. Also, it moves powers, in Nietzsche’s view, from their former Kantian home in the thing in itself and provides them instead with an empirical address. However, the resolution of one potential difficulty leads to another. This one calls into question not just my interpretation of Nietzsche but also my interpretation of Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant. Thus the second possible objection that I want to consider is that my interpretation of Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant is a reconstruction and, more than that, it is a reconstruction founded on remarks that Nietzsche makes that add up to a rather uncharitable interpretation of Kant. Informing this objection might be the claim that Kant is not guilty of making causal powers mind-​dependent in an existential sense and therefore that Nietzsche’s attempt to ‘trump’ Kant on this issue as presented here is misguided. To these possible objections I offer the following responses. Yes, my presentation of Nietzsche’s understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Kant’s theoretical philosophy is reconstructed from comments, often scattered, that Nietzsche makes about Kant. But, what else is one to do? Nietzsche does not offer a sustained examination of the arguments of any one philosopher in any one place. Rather, what motivates Nietzsche’s thinking is not so much particular philosophers but rather the issues that reflection on those philosophers highlights. Thus, Nietzsche tells us that he uses particular figures to highlight specific philosophical issues (EH Wise 7, KSA 6.274). Therefore, my presentation must necessarily be an active reconstruction, and, for as long as that reconstruction helps to make sense of the logic of Nietzsche’s own philosophical thinking then it is, in my view, entirely justified. To the issue that the reconstruction presents an uncharitable interpretation of Kant, I  can only respond that the interpretation has been dictated by what Nietzsche actually says about Kant. While this may be a reason to be critical of Nietzsche as a Kantian commentator, it is not a reason to reject Nietzsche’s own naturalized version of synthesis in his account of the will to power. If we take Nietzsche seriously when he says that he refers to particular philosophical figures as a way of drawing our attention to specific philosophical issues, then it is Nietzsche’s own philosophical position that is of the utmost significance to us here. The extent to which Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant sheds light on Nietzsche’s own

222

222

Tsarina Doyle

philosophical project should, therefore, override concerns about whether his understanding of Kant is a faithful one or not. Still, unless a response is offered, my interpretation of the Kantian context to Nietzsche’s proposal of the will to power thesis might be called into question from another angle. That is, it might be objected that Nietzsche is neither offering a limited endorsement of Kant nor attempting to complete his supposedly unfinished project of securing the objective applicability of the concept of causality. The reason that will be produced here is the claim that, rather than applauding Kant’s efforts to respond to Hume, Nietzsche in fact endorses a Humean account of causality, with all the scepticism that this account entails. Thus, the third possible objection questions Nietzsche’s interest in establishing the objectivity of causality by arguing that he adopts a Humean stance on this issue. The Humean interpretation holds that, for Nietzsche, the idea of causal power is an anthropomorphic projection with no objective correlates in the world, a fact that renders the concept of causality a fiction, even if it is a useful one. It might also be argued by proponents of the Humean interpretation that, in Nietzsche’s view, we are acquainted with effects rather than causes. The Humean objection is particularly challenging because, at least on the face of it, it is not without textual support. For example, in BGE 21 Nietzsche seems to deny that our appeal to causality is anything more than a useful projection: One should not make the mistake of concretizing ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ as do the natural scientists (and whoever else today naturalizes in their thinking), in conformity with the prevalent mechanistic foolishness that pushes and tugs at the cause until ‘it has an effect’; ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ should be used only as pure concepts, as conventional fictions for the purpose of description or communication, and not for explanation. (BGE 21, KSA 5.35–​6)

The Humean idea that we are acquainted with effects rather than causes is suggested by Nietzsche’s anti-​essentialism, for example, when he writes that ‘the properties of a thing are effects on other “things” [. . .] i.e. there is no thing without other things’ (NL 1885 2[85], KSA 12.104). However, when we look at Nietzsche’s claim that the concept of causality is a useful fiction rather than objectively applicable to the world more closely, we find that it is not the applicability of the concept of causality per se that he rejects, but rather a particular account of causal relations. In particular, he argues that the mechanistic account of causality as spatial transfer through impact is philosophically dubious on the grounds that its appeal to bulky material substances takes the evidence of the senses at face value rather than offering a refined interpretation of them (BGE

  223



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

223

12, KSA 5.26). But, just like his rejection of a substantialist self (BGE 12, KSA 5.27), he maintains that our rejection of a particular model of causality does not warrant the rejection of causality as an objective phenomenon tout court.36 Thus Nietzsche argues that the mechanistic account of causality through impact can be replaced with an account of causality as action at a distance where the ‘actors’ are not material substances but rather relational and intrinsically constituted causal forces. The appeal to intrinsically constituted force is clearly incompatible with the anti-​essentialist suggestion that we are acquainted with effects rather than causes. However, there are both philosophical and textual reasons to undercut the anti-​essentialist position. In addition to the fact that anti-​essentialism, as Nietzsche presents it, succumbs to the charge of incoherence as a result of the threat of an infinite regress of existential dependency, it is obviously inconsistent with his appeal to the intelligible character of synthetic relations in BGE 36 (KSA 5.55) and with his praise for Kant’s efforts at overcoming Humean scepticism in GS. Nietzsche’s anti-​essentialist denial of causal power is also inconsistent with his attempt, under the influence of Boscovich, to offer a non-​mechanistic model of causality (BGE 12, KSA 5.26; GS 112, KSA 3.473). However, as a corollary to the Humean interpretation of Nietzsche and objection to my argument, some commentators may argue instead that Nietzsche is critical of the concept of force. For example, in GM I 13 Nietzsche criticizes the natural scientist’s claim that ‘force moves, force causes’ (GM I 13, KSA 5.279). However, Nietzsche is not rejecting the concept of causal power or force per se here. Rather, he is rejecting a particular concept of force. The concept that he rejects is one based on the idea of force being grounded in a neutral or property-​less substrate such that we can separate the doer from the deed. By rejecting this model of force, Nietzsche claims that force is essentially powerful where power comes in degrees of weakness and strength. Consequently, he writes: A quantum of power [Kraft] is just such a quantum of drive, will, effect –​more precisely, it is nothing other than this very driving, willing, effecting, and only through the seduction of language (and the basic errors of reason petrified therein), which understands and misunderstands all effecting as conditioned by an effecting something, by a subject, can it appear otherwise. (GM I  13, KSA 5.279)

Elsewhere in the same book he stresses ‘the essential pre-​eminence of the spontaneous, attacking, infringing, reinterpreting, reordering and formative forces [Kräfte]’ (GM II 12, KSA 5.316). Nietzsche’s arguments here are perfectly

224

224

Tsarina Doyle

consonant with his arguments in GS 112 (KSA 3.473), where he rejects the mechanical event model of causality in favour of understanding causality as a continuum and in BGE 22 (KSA 5.37), where he rejects the Humean appeal to general laws of nature based on observed correlations of events in favour of understanding causality as the operation of the will to power. But, in order to fully secure this anti-​Humean stance, my interpretation of Nietzsche’s response to Kant must be robust enough to resist a further objection. The fourth possible objection, if successful, would undermine my argument that Nietzsche appeals to intrinsically constituted causal powers by arguing that he is not fully committed to the will to power thesis. Nietzsche’s commitment to the thesis has been called into question by appealing to the suppositional manner in which he presents it in BGE 36. To this I should respond that the suppositional character of Nietzsche’s presentation in this passage is not, in itself, an objection. In fact, it fits nicely with his view that philosophical thinking must take the form of experiments that are afterwards supported by reasons (BGE 210, KSA 5.142–​ 3). This, however, brings us to the nub of the problem. That is, if it transpires that Nietzsche does not support the thesis with reasons, then we will fall prey to the objection that he does not seriously propose the will to power thesis. The supposition in BGE 36 is that the will is causal. From this Nietzsche purports to derive the conclusion that all things can be explained in causal terms. While it has been suggested by some that Nietzsche rejects the causal capacity of the will, this is, arguably, not always the case. For example, in BGE 19 (KSA 5.31–​3) he rejects not the causal power of the will but rather an argument that holds that its causal power has been misunderstood in terms of a simple relation between wills and deeds rather than a relation between, what he refers to as, strong and weak wills (BGE 21, KSA 5.36). In fact, rather than reject the causality of the will, Nietzsche suggests that it is supported by the demand for economy of principles (BGE 13, KSA 5.28). According to him, once the human mind has been translated back into nature (BGE 230, KSA 5.169), mind and nature must be understood as metaphysically continuous, such that explanations in the natural sciences must suffice as explanations in the human sciences, and vice versa. The appeal to the causality of the will, Nietzsche suggests, is supported by the fact that it has, in his view, such explanatory scope. In the natural sciences, it fits with Boscovich’s rejection of mechanical atomism’s account of causality as contact of material bodies in favour of understanding causality as action at a distance. And, in the human sciences it allows us to reconfigure the self as a non-​substantial bundle of drives contrary to the idea that the self is a non-​relational substance (BGE 12, KSA 5.27). Since Nietzsche can support the

  225



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

225

supposition with reasons he can derive the conclusion in favour of a genuine causal understanding of reality. Having disarmed the aforementioned objections, I am now in a position to reassert my claim that Nietzsche’s will to power thesis can be fruitfully understood as offering a naturalized version of Kantian synthesis and that Nietzsche’s reformulation appeals to empirically instantiated causal powers that are both relational and intrinsic. This allows him to describe the will to power as the causal ‘essence’ of the world (BGE 186, KSA 5.107). However, the real cash-​ value of my interpretation lies not in its ability to ward off potential interpretive threats but rather in its capacity to shed light on Nietzsche’s more practical concerns. Although I have insufficient scope to fully develop the issue here, it seems to me that an understanding of the will to power as a metaphysics of empirically instantiated intrinsic natures is important for making sense of Nietzsche’s philosophy of value. This can be seen in his response to the issues of nihilism and freedom. According to Nietzsche, the nihilist is ‘a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist’ (NL 1887 9[60], KSA 12.366). Appealing to his account of empirically instantiated intrinsic natures we find that the Nietzschean response to the crisis of values brought about by nihilism is ‘amor fati’. That is, genuine affirmation of life entails affirming that the world cannot be other than it is and that it is as it is by necessity. Rather than appealing to a non-​empirical noumenal realm to account for how things ‘ought’ to be, for Nietzsche we overcome nihilism when we come to realize that the world is as it ought to be. This has repercussions for his account of freedom. For Nietzsche, individuals can be described in terms of particular psycho-​physical types. Individuals, just like the natural world that they inhabit, can be understood in causal essentialist terms. But, for him, this realization does not preclude the possibility of freedom. Rather, genuine freedom does not entail acting contrary to our natures but rather it now entails the unimpeded expression of these natures. This is important for Nietzsche’s response to Christianity and the manner in which it has, in his view, shaped Western culture. According to him, the Christian character of Western culture, which is manifested even in its secular values and beliefs, has been responsible for the imposition of impediments to the expression of those natures that Nietzsche calls ‘noble’. It does this by appealing to the principle of equality that tells us that all human natures are alike and that a universal set of values applies to all. It is only by appealing to the idea of intrinsic natures that are irreducibly particular, as proposed in Nietzsche’s account of the will to power, that we can begin to reverse this cultural situation. Although it is beyond the remit of the

226

226

Tsarina Doyle

current chapter to examine this issue further, we can nonetheless conclude that even if Nietzsche’s interpretation of Kant is philologically incorrect, it is significant in forming the necessary background for understanding his diagnosis of and existential response to problems of value and culture.

Notes 1 There is a distinct divergence of opinion on this issue. For example, R. Kevin Hill argues that Nietzsche read Kant’s texts directly. His evidence for this is the fact that Nietzsche cites all three of Kant’s Critiques in addition to a pre-​critical text, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, at various points throughout his writings (Hill 2003: 20). Thomas Brobjer (2008) makes a similar claim in relation to Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant’s third Critique. He contends that Nietzsche read Kant’s Critique of Judgement in 1868 in preparation for a dissertation On the Concept of the Organic Since Kant (36–​9, 48, 195, 202, 226–​7). Tom Bailey (2013: 134–​59), however, pointing to the fact that Nietzsche seems never to have owned or borrowed a copy of any of Kant’s texts, suggests that Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant was mediated through secondary sources, such as Kuno Fischer’s commentary on Kant, Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre. Thus, the fact that Nietzsche quotes from Kant’s texts does not support the view that Nietzsche actually read those texts directly. However, since my aim is to examine how Nietzsche’s understanding of Kant influences his proposal of the metaphysics of the will to power, my argument does not rest on whether Nietzsche’s acquaintance with Kant’s texts is first-​hand or second-​hand. 2 Nietzsche, Letter to Mushacke, November 1866 (KSB 2.184). 3 He writes that his aim is never to ‘attack persons’, but rather to use those persons ‘as a strong magnifying glass with which one can make visible a general but furtive state of distress which is hard to get hold of ’ (EH Wise 7, KSA 6.274). 4 In BT 4, KSA 1.38 Nietzsche refers to ‘that mysterious ground of our being of which we are an appearance’ and in BT 5, KSA 1.48 he writes of ‘that original artist of the world’. 5 It is to be noted that Nietzsche does not consistently endorse Kant’s idealistically informed distinction between appearance and reality. For example, in early unpublished notes On Schopenhauer (Zu Schopenhauer) (NL 1867–​8, 57[55], KGW I/​4: 421–​7), he is critical of the idea of the thing in itself, and in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (PTG, KSA 1.801–​72) his endorsement of Kant’s critical writings pertains to the latter’s rejection of philosophical dogmatism rather than being an endorsement of his idealism.

  227



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

227

6 See also BGE 209, 210 and 252, KSA 5.140–​2; 142–​4; 195–​6. It is to be noticed that in GS 346, KSA 3.598, Nietzsche speaks of Hegel in approving terms suggesting perhaps that he thinks that Hegel’s answer to the relationship between self and world is more satisfactory than Kant’s. However, Nietzsche thinks that neither the Kantian approach nor the Hegelian is ultimately satisfactory. Thus Nietzsche writes, alluding to Hegel, that ‘[w]‌e have become cold, hard, and tough in the realization that the way of the world is anything but divine; even by human standards it is not rational, merciful, or just’ (GS 346, KSA 3.580). 7 In BGE 21, KSA 5.36, Nietzsche contends that recent attempts to establish the necessity of causal laws have revealed more about the psychology and preference of the author than the world. In BGE 22 he indicates that necessity does not entail conformity to extrinsic nomological impositions. That Kant’s transcendental account of our knowledge is concerned with origins can be seen from his claim that ‘what can alone be entitled transcendental is the knowledge that these representations are not of empirical origin’ (Kant, KrV A56/​B81). 8 One might object here and hold that it is the a priori character of concepts of the understanding that rationally constrains our judgements rather than transcendental apperception per se. However, Nietzsche’s criticism of apperception, if correct, would arguably apply to the application of the concepts because Kant writes in a footnote to KrV B134 that ‘[i]‌ndeed this faculty of apperception is the understanding itself ’. 9 See Wolff (1973: 168–​70). 10 Ibid. 11 For example, Nietzsche describes the status of Kant’s empirical world as a ball tossed about in the heads of men (NL 1872 19[153], KSA 7.467). 12 Schopenhauer (1966: 418). Nietzsche’s thinking on idealism was also influenced by Lange. For discussions of Lange and Nietzsche, see, for example, Stack (1983); Crawford (1988: chapter 6); Hill (2003: 13–​19; 80–​4). 13 This is Peter Poellner’s term as used in Poellner (2001: 111). 14 Han-​Pile (2009) interprets Nietzsche’s early writings in this way. 15 In GS 54, KSA 3.417, Nietzsche contends that our empirical experience may be compared to a uniform and coherent dream but denies that this experience may legitimately be contrasted with the notion of a thing in itself. 16 Kant writes: ‘What it is that is present in this or that location, or what it is that is operative in the things themselves apart from change of location, is not given through intuition’ (KrV B67). 17 That Nietzsche understands the Kantian thing in itself in this way is evident from TI Fable, KSA 6.80–​1, where Nietzsche includes the Kantian thing in itself in his history of metaphysical dualism.

228

228

Tsarina Doyle

18 Indifference also proves to be impossible for Nietzsche because Kant’s reference to the thing in itself is not just employed negatively but it also plays a positive role in acting as a basis for universal and, in Nietzsche’s view, life-​denying moral values. See, for example, BGE 215, KSA 5.152. 19 GSK §§ 1–​11 and 114–​15 17–​25 and 139–​40. 20 This has the consequence for Kant that ‘matter has no absolutely internal determinations and grounds of determination’ (MAN 543). 21 Nietzsche praises Kant’s argument in NTH in PTG, KSA 1.801–​72, in 1873, the same year in which he subscribes to Kantian idealism, interpreted as subjective idealism, in TL. Yet, in PTG, Nietzsche is critical of the mature Kant’s idealism as a result of, what he takes to be, its dualistic distinction between Becoming and Being. Although Nietzsche praises the mature Kant’s criticism of dogmatism and the idea that pure thought can access a sphere of non-​empirical reality independently of sense-​experience (PTG 11, KSA 1.846–​7), he nevertheless doesn’t subscribe to what he takes to be Kant’s appeal to the mind-​dependency of reality, and he is also critical of Kant’s appeal to a featureless and indeterminate concept of the thing in itself. The latter criticism is evident in his discussion of Anaximander’s appeal to Being as the ‘indefinite’, which Nietzsche compares to Kant’s thing in itself (PTG 4, KSA 1.819) and, which, he argues, can be defined only negatively. Moreover, Nietzsche argues in this text that such a reference to the thing in itself serves to undermine the ontological status of the empirical world of our experience, which is rendered a semblance and ontologically unreal (PTG 15, KSA 1.857). In response, Nietzsche traces the arguments of the pre-​Socratics as far as Anaxagoras to assess how we might intelligibly go about establishing the reality of the empirical world and avoid ontological dualism generally by domesticating the thing in itself and instantiating intrinsic natures at the level of empirical relations. It is in relation to this project that Nietzsche finds Kant’s pre-​critical argument in NTH more satisfactory than his mature position. Although Nietzsche doesn’t develop a detailed discussion of Kant’s pre-​critical writings but rather embeds it in a discussion of Anaxagoras’s account of the source of motion, there is nonetheless sufficient evidence in the text to suggest that Nietzsche sees Kant’s pre-​critical position in NTH as more satisfactory than his critical position. Nevertheless, one might wonder why Nietzsche presents a position in PTG that is seemingly at odds with and critical of his own endorsement of Kant’s idealism in TL, written in the same year as PTG. Although a definite answer cannot be given to this question, it should be noted that it is not unusual to find multiple and sometimes conflicting positions in Nietzsche’s early unpublished thought, especially in relation to his appropriation of Kant. For example, despite his references to the Kantian distinction between appearances and things in themselves in both TL and BT, in On Schopenhauer, dated 1868, Nietzsche levies a criticism of the notion of the thing in itself that closely resembles his negative appraisal of the

  229



22

23

24

25

26

The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

229

idea in PTG. Similarly to the latter text, Nietzsche argues in On Schopenhauer that the notion of the thing in itself can be defined only negatively in terms of what it cannot be known to be (NL 1867–​8, 57[55], KGW I/​4: 423). Although Nietzsche’s mature criticism of Kant is prefigured in PTG, the text was never completed. Consequently, I will focus on Nietzsche’s criticisms of Kant as they are articulated in his mature writings and mention PTG only to the extent that it sheds light on Nietzsche’s praise for Kant’s pre-​critical thought. This strategy is consonant with my aim to focus on the logic of Nietzsche’s arguments rather than to engage in textual exegesis. For an account of how Nietzsche thinks that the critical Kant reduces intrinsic natures to the purposive intentions of a supersensible designer, see Doyle (2009: 150–​61). It is to be noted that Kant stresses that although our knowledge is restricted to mind-​dependent appearances, appearances are not illusions (KrV B67). Of course Nietzsche equates delusion here with mind-​dependency. It may be argued that Nietzsche’s argument in BGE 15, KSA 5.29, is directed at Schopenhauer rather than at Kant. The passage in question is certainly a response to those that Nietzsche calls the ‘sensualists’. But, although Nietzsche’s claim in BGE 11, KSA 5.26, that Kantian philosophy and German idealism in general ‘offered an antidote to the still overpowering sensualism pouring into this century from the previous one’ indicates that he does not count Kant among the sensualists, the argument of BGE 15, KSA 5.29, can still be understood as a response to Kant. This is because the argument is that idealism is a coherent philosophical position only if we presuppose an extra-​natural and substantial ‘I’. Nietzsche indicates that he targets here not just Berkeley and Schopenhauer but also Kant when in BGE 17, KSA 5.31, he rehearses an argument similar to Kant’s in the Paralogisms against the traditionalist substantialist account of the self. Nietzsche proposes a version of this view in his early unpublished notes (NL 1872 19[153], KSA 7.467). For a discussion of the development of Nietzsche’s thought on the issue of space and time, see Hill (2003: 123–​41). According to Hill, Nietzsche’s naturalism entails that all things that exist do so in space and time. Hill’s Nietzsche distinguishes between phenomenal and physical space: the space produced by our minds when organizing sense-​data and space as described by our best empirical theories. It should be noted that Nietzsche’s appeal to an inner world or will is quite different from Schopenhauer’s view that the body can be known both as an object among other objects in the empirical world and as will or thing in itself. First, Nietzsche rejects Schopenhauer’s empirical idealist account of the status of empirical objects when he states that ‘I do not mean the material world as a delusion, as “appearance” or “representation” (in the Berkeleian or Schopenhauerian sense)’ (BGE 36,

230

230

27

28 29 30

31 32 33 34

Tsarina Doyle

KSA 5.54). Second, he rejects the Schopenhauerian idea that the will is simple and immediately known (BGE 16, KSA 5.29–​30). Third, he rejects what he calls Schopenhauer’s ‘denial of will as an “efficient force” [die Leugnung des Willens als ‘wirkende Ursache’]’ (NL 1887 9[178], KSA 12.442) when he identifies force with efficient causality at BGE 36, KSA 5.55. For further discussion on this latter issue, see Doyle (2012). Nietzsche’s description of the forms of our cognition as emerging from interaction with reality is compatible with his description of these forms as provisional assumptions. Their emergence through interaction with reality entails that the forms of our cognition also belong to the structure of reality. However, since he does not mean that the latter is reducible to the former in an existential sense, he leaves room for the development and refinement of our knowledge. Thus, for Nietzsche, we might have to, by virtue of the interactionist account of mind, think of the world in causal terms. However, what we mean by causality is subject to change. In BGE 12 KSA 5.26, he suggests that the mechanical atomist account is a simple abbreviated understanding of causal relations that, while having a ‘handy everyday usefulness’ can be replaced with the more refined account of action at a distance. This latter account is arrived at, he contends, by interpreting the senses rather than taking them at face value. See also GS 112, KSA 3.473. Nietzsche praises the anti-​sceptical import of Hegel’s notion of the development of species concepts in GS 357, KSA 3.598. See, for example, TI Errors 3, KSA 6.90–​1. Rational thinking, for Nietzsche, entails relations between the multiple drives that constitute the self (GS 333, KSA 3.559). Rational justification thus entails, for him, the consideration of multiple perspectives –​reasons for and against –​an issue (GS 2, 319, KSA 3.373, 551). The criteria of rational acceptability for Nietzsche are aesthetic and include frugality and simplicity of explanatory principles (BGE 13, KSA 5.27–​8) in addition to comprehensiveness and ease of fit with our other judgements (GM III 12, KSA 5.364–​5). See GM I 13, KSA 5.279, for Nietzsche’s denial that force is grounded in a property-​ less substrate. Molnar (2006: 175–​9). See also NL 1885 36[25], KSA 11.561, where Nietzsche describes space as the ‘substratum’ of force while also rejecting the notion of space ‘in itself ’. Peter Poellner (1995: 283) diagnoses this problem. An interpretation put forward by Mattia Riccardi (2010) argues that Nietzsche understands the reality of relations to entail their reciprocal dependence on one another. Although he does not propose this interpretation to circumvent Poellner’s diagnosis, it might nonetheless be interpreted to do so by holding that the dependence of powers on one another is a conceptual–​formal dependence rather than an existential one (333–​51). However,

  231



The Kantian Roots of Nietzsche’s Will to Power

231

even interpreted thus, Riccardi’s proposal succumbs to a number of difficulties. First, even if appeal to reciprocity is an appeal to the formal or logical structure of relations, it, as such, arguably fails to capture the actual causal efficacy of force. This criticism is suggested by Nietzsche in BGE 21, KSA 5.36, where he dismisses the notion of reciprocal causation as a formal imposition and a fiction. Nietzsche’s dismissal of reciprocal causality may have been influenced by Schopenhauer (1966: 459 ff.) who contended that its incoherency resides in the fact that A, for example, is simultaneously held to be both cause and effect of B. 35 The relational character of powers for Nietzsche, unlike Kant, is not defined by their spatial location. While spatial location must be the mark of their existential independence –​of each other and human minds –​their relational character emanates from their active striving to overcome resistance to the expression of their intrinsic natures. If they were to be defined by spatial location, it follows from the terms of the vis viva debate that genuine causal power cannot be empirically instantiated. Kant holds that the ‘causality of their cause’ (KrV A544/​B572) belongs to a thing’s intrinsic character but is not spatially located. By holding that spatial location is an extrinsic property of powers my interpretation of Nietzsche allows him to combine the empirical instantiation of powers with their causal potency. 36 See TI Errors 5, KSA 6.93. Here Nietzsche tells us that it is the most ‘common explanations’ that he rejects.

References Bailey, T. (2013), ‘Nietzsche the Kantian’, in Ken Gemes and John Richardson (eds), The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche, 134–​59, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Crawford, C. (1988), The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language, New York: De Gruyter. Doyle, T. (2009), Nietzsche on Epistemology and Metaphysics: The World in View, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Doyle, T. (2012), ‘The Kantian Background to Nietzsche’s Views on Causality’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 43 (1): 44–​56. Foster, J. (1982), The Case for Idealism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Han-​Pile, B. (2009) ‘Transcendental Aspects: Naturalistic Elements and Ontological Commitments in Nietzsche’s Thought’, Inquiry 52 (2): 179–​214. Hill, K. R. (2003), Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought, Oxford; Clarendon Press. Molnar, G. (2006), Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, ed. Stephen Mumford, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

232

232

Tsarina Doyle

Poellner, P. (1995), Nietzsche and Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poellner, P. (2001). ‘Perspectival Truth’, in John Richardson and Brian Leiter (eds), Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riccardi, M. (2010), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 39 (1): 333–​51. Schopenhauer, A. (1966), The World as Will and Representation, vol. I, trans. E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover. Stack, G. J. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, New York: De Gruyter. Wolff, R. P. (1973), Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.

  233

10

‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’: Meaning and Function of the Type ‘Kant’ and his Philosophy in Twilight of the Idols* Axel Pichler

1.  Text and intertext The starting point of this chapter is a single text by Nietzsche, which he1 as well as his readers attributed the status of a ‘work’. I am talking here about Twilight of the Idols, which, although it was first made available for a wider public after Nietzsche’s breakdown, was completed and sent to print by the author himself. Such a text –​perceived as a work –​differs in its linguistic character from everyday conversation on the one hand by its literacy, that is to say, its specific linguistic materiality, and on the other hand by its ‘abstraction from a given situation’ or –​as Siegfried J. Schmidt called it –​its ‘Situationsabstraktheit’,2 that is to say, its spatio-​temporal separation from any disambiguating context. At the same time, texts that are considered as works raise –​at least since the beginning of the eighteenth century –​a strong claim to autonomy. As a result, works constitute their content primarily from themselves, which precludes attributing the content to an author’s intentions.3 Rather, the content is created out of the interplay of the semantic options given by the text itself and the contextual options introduced by its reader, whereby the semantic options offered by the text itself have to be prioritized over extra-​textual alternatives. The latter include –​in addition to the historical horizon, that is, the episteme, in which the text is embedded and which at the same time is co-​constituted by this text –​different ‘inter-​’ and ‘hypotexts’. In the case of Nietzsche, this means the content of the books he read and partly integrated into his own writings.4

234

234

Axel Pichler

This is not the place to give a detailed account of the existing and highly divergent concepts of intratextuality. From the above, however, it should be clear that I am following a conception of intertextuality that emanates from the understanding of a single text as a structural unit (entity), and thereby follows the tradition of literary scholars such as Gerard Genette and Manfred Pfister. Genette distinguishes five types of so-​called transtextual relationships, of which only ‘hypertextuality’ is of interest here. Genette considers as a hypertext ‘any text derived from a previous text, either through simple transformation [. . .], or through indirect transformation, which [. . . Genette  –​AP] label[s]‌imitation’.5 These previous texts are termed ‘hypotexts’. In the case of Twilight of the Idols, among such hypotexts rank –​besides the already clarified source texts by authors such as Victor Brochard, Desprez, Féré, Galton, Goncourt, Höffding, Rolph and Arnobius6  –​the preliminary stages of the finally published text, which can now be found in KGW IX’s diplomatic transcription of Nietzsche’s later notebooks.7 With regard to hypertextuality, one has to pay particular attention to the following two points. The first point involves a more general problem. As the historiography of the methods of literary theory has rightly pointed out, the concept of ‘hypertext’ has not yet resolved ‘what [. . .] the boundaries [are] in which the presence of an intertext in a text actually becomes manifest, that is, where a structural latency becomes an interpretative valence’.8 The second point is more Nietzsche-​specific: As the work on the Nietzsche Dictionary (Nietzsche-​ Wörterbuch) has brought to light, his writing practices are characterized in particular by the creation of a plurality of meanings: ‘Not only does the meaning of certain words change with the development of his thought; more than most philosophers, he consciously works with the possibility of ascribing different meanings to the same words through differing contextualizations and the deployment of various optics.’9 Because of these problems I will henceforth only consider those passages of TI as a reference to Kant in which his name or any of his key terms are directly mentioned. Based on these methodological reflections, the approach of this chapter will be as follows: In a first step, I will turn to those passages in TI where Nietzsche mentions Kant directly; from this, I will render a first sketch of Kant’s appearance in the text, attempting hereby to determine the ‘intensity’ of the intertextual references to Kant. In a second step, this sketch will be fleshed out in more detail by analyzing a specific chapter of TI: ‘ “Reason” in Philosophy.’ In a third and final step, I will then provide a brief summary of the results of this analysis.

  235



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

235

2.  Philosophy as ‘symptomatology’: ‘Kant’ in Twilight of the Idols If one casts a first glance at TI, equipped with the recently developed tools, and looks for passages that mention Kant, one sees that the number of these passages is relatively low compared to other important personalities: while the ever-​ present Socrates is mentioned thirty-​four times, his pupil Plato is mentioned only twenty-​three times, Goethe as well as Christianity are mentioned sixteen times and Kant only adds up to seven entries (cf. TI Reason 6, KSA 6.79; TI Errors 8, KSA 6.96; TI Germans 7, KSA 6.110; TI Skirmishes 1, 29, 49, KSA 6.111, 6.130, 6.151). Hence Kant is mentioned more often than Wagner, who appears twice, but is still less mentioned than Schopenhauer, whose name can be found thirteen times in TI. Leaving a potential analysis of these quantities aside and turning to the passages themselves, the following picture is revealed: Already in the first appearance of Kant in TI Reason 6, the direct confrontation with Kant himself is limited to one single sentence. Since I will deal later in more detail with TI Reason, it suffices initially only to quote this sentence, a sentence that marks the beginning of the final of the four theses presented at the end of TI Reason. It reads: To divide the world into a ‘true’ half and an ‘illusory’ [scheinbare] one, whether in the manner of Christianity or in the manner of Kant (an underhanded Christian, at the end of the day), is just a sign of décadence, –​it is a symptom of life in decline . . . (TI Reason 6, KSA 6.79)

Here a rather general ontological problem is interpreted as a consequence of ‘décadence’ –​the original German text speaks of a ‘Suggestion der décadence’ –​ and is thus understood as a symptom. According to TI Reason 6, this symptom is not only exhibited by Kant, but also by Christianity. What does it mean that Kant’s thought is marked as a ‘symptom’? According to TI Morality 2 (KSA 6.83), such ‘symptoms’ allow for ‘conjectures about the overall state’ (Vermuthungen über den Gesammt-​Zustand) of a person. According to TI Socrates 2 such ‘symptoms’ can particularly be found in ‘value judgements on life’, which ‘can ultimately never be true’.10 As symptoms, such judgements are at the same time the subject of a specific practice of investigation, which is articulated in TI Improvers: [M]‌oral judgements should never be taken literally:  on their own, they are just absurdities. But semiotically, they are invaluable: if you know what to look for, moral judgements reveal the most valuable realities of the cultures and

236

236

Axel Pichler

interiorities that did not know enough to ‘understand’ themselves. Morality is just a sign language, just a symptomatology: you have to know what it means in order to take advantage of it. (TI Improvers 2, KSA 6.98)

The understanding of philosophy as a symptom and a mere sum of moral judgements, suggested here, as well as the reduction of such judgements to the ‘reality’ of a certain cultural era, raises the question whether TI reduces not only Kant’s, but the whole of philosophy to an expression of the moral status of a certain person in a certain historical period, thereby inverting the traditional structure of justification in philosophy. Without going into this question here, the given junction of symptomatology and semiotics gives a first hint as to how TI deals with Kant. Already the first time Kant is mentioned in the book, his philosophy is seen as a sign and symptom, thereby stripped of its unconditional nature and so removed from its original context. The richly faceted thought of this German philosopher is hereby reduced to the expression of a certain way of life and attention is shifted away from the actual content of Kant’s thought to its potential causes: not the alleged intertext –​Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason –​ but rather, the philosopher and his conditionality themselves are made into the focus of interest. In this literary manoeuver, one can recognize a widespread practice in Nietzsche’s (late) writings of turning personalities he is dealing with into types (characterizations). As Andrea Bertino has recently shown, Nietzsche seeks ‘by outlining types (characters) [. . .] an alternative to the traditionally generalizing form of philosophizing’.11 These types are characterized in particular by the fact that they are not timeless, ‘but arise and change [. . .] in the course of cultural processes’.12 This tendency to typify also becomes obvious in another passage of TI, in which Kant plays an important role:  TI Skirmishes 16, which questions the German’s capacity for dealing with such characterizations in a psychologically adequate way. The relevant first half of this text, in which Kant is characterized ex negativo as a certain type, reads: The psychological tact of the Germans seems to be called into question by a whole range of cases that I am too modest to list. I won’t miss a great opportunity for defending my thesis in one case. I hold it against the Germans that they were wrong about Kant and his ‘backdoor philosophy’ [Philosophie der Hinterthüren], as I call it, –​this was not a type of intellectual integrity [Rechtschaffenheit]. –​ (TI Skirmishes 16, KSA 6.121)

The lack of intellectual integrity of the type Kant is thus revealed through his ‘backdoor philosophy’. A  philosopher’s ‘backdoor’, as Nietzsche understands

  237



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

237

it –​as can be shown through comparison with other passages in his writings (cf. VM 33)13 –​is her tendentious solution to complex philosophical problems such as the question of the free will by allegedly resorting to sophistry. TI presents us with Kant as exactly such a ‘backdoor’-​thinker and philosopher of ‘hinterworlds’ (‘Hinterwelten’) on three further occasions, the most famous one being probably TI Skirmishes 1. In this text, entitled ‘My Impossible Ones’, one finds the following description of Kant: ‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’ (TI Skirmishes 1, KSA 6.111). ‘Cant’, which in English stands for ‘hypocrisy’, ‘dissimulation’ and ‘false virtue’, is used preferentially by Nietzsche to denote the nature and thinking of contemporary Englishmen, as can be shown by parallel passages from his published (cf. TI Skirmishes 12, KSA 6.119) and unpublished writings (cf. NL 1884 25[225], KSA 11.73). It is more clearly characterized as ‘moral tartufferie’ in two further instances (cf. BGE 228, KSA 5.163–​5 and KGW IX/​4, W I 3.110–​13 = NL 1885 35[34], KSA 11.523–​6). This last dimension of meaning (dishonesty, pretence), which shares much of its semantic content with ‘hypocrisy’, also seems to be the one which stands out in TI Skirmishes 1. Accordingly, the concise comparison given there of Kant’s ‘intelligible character’ with the British ‘cant’ can be understood as an attempt to unmask Kant’s thought, as well as a refutation of the concept of an ‘intelligible character’. As the earlier versions of TI Skirmishes 1 shows (to be found in the notebook W II 7 in KGW IX/​9), this equation of ‘cant’ with the ‘intelligible character’ emerged in the process of the final revision of at least three versions. Preliminary drafts in W II 7 offer three different readings, which differ from the finally published version by not mentioning any terms of Kant’s critical philosophy. They are, in order of their revisions: ‘Kant: or the most hidden “cant” ’ (‘Kant: oder der verborgenste “cant” ’) –​‘Kant: or the virtuous “cant” ’ (‘Kant: oder der tugendhafte “cant” ’) –​ ‘Kant: or the unnoticed “cant” ’ (‘Kant: oder der unvermerkte “cant” ’; KGW IX/​ 9, W II 7.13). These three readings show that the semantic field of a hypocritically presented dissimulation was shaping Nietzsche’s poetic picture from the beginning. Yet, the actual positioning of this hypocrisy in Kant’s philosophy is clearly revealed as ‘intelligible character’ only in the final, published version. This process of revision, as much as the continuity it shows of the semantic dimension of ‘hypocrisy’ attributed to Kant, corresponds to TI’s tendency to characterize (typify) the philosophers dealt within the book by recontextualizing them, instead of actually dealing with the content of their thought. While this characterization tendency is also shown in the mention of Kant in TI Germans 7, in which the philosopher

238

238

Axel Pichler

from Königsberg is maligned as a ‘deformed concept-​cripple’ (TI Germans 7, KSA 6.110), TI Errors 8 seems to offer a different view. This passage, which also opens the final part of the chapter ‘The Four Great Errors’, reads as follows: What can our teaching [Lehre] be simply? –​That no one gives people their qualities, not God or society, parents or ancestors, not even people themselves (–​this final bit of nonsense was circulated by Kant –​and maybe even by Plato –​under the rubric of ‘intelligible freedom’). Nobody is responsible for people existing in the first place, or for the state or circumstances or environment they are in. The fatality of human existence cannot be extricated from the fatality of everything that was and will be. (TI Errors 8, KSA 6. 96)

The ubiquitous theme of free will and the mention of Kant at the beginning of this text, which acts as the conclusion of the entire chapter, both seem to suggest that this has to be understood as a direct response to Kant’s dissolution of the Third Antinomy of Reason in his Critique of Pure Reason. If one reads more closely, though, one sees that, except for the allusion to Kant in parenthesis, there is no phrase in the entire passage that refers directly to Kant’s own terminology. This even applies to the term ‘intelligible freedom’, which is not used by Kant in this specific linguistic form: as an attributively determined noun. This conspicuous terminological distance to the assumed interlocutor Kant goes so far, that on the basis of TI Errors 8, it is difficult to determine if Nietzsche read Kant’s differentiation between ‘appearance’ and ‘thing-​in-​itself ’ ontologically –​in the sense of a doctrine of ‘two-​worlds’ –​or ‘transcendentally’, as two different aspects.14 Although the general tendency of the text suggests the first option,15 this assumption cannot be grounded in the text itself. Considering TI Errors 8, the potential astonishment about this fact quickly dissolves if one examines the earlier versions of this paragraph, which Nietzsche ‘took from an extensive text in the notebook W II 6’ (KSA 14.418) and copied onto a still blank ‘page of the notebook W II 3, which he already used in winter 1887/​88’ (KSA 14.418) and then revised it (cf. KSA 14.418). One possible reading of the final version of this annotation, following the diplomatic transcription of KGW IX, reads as follows: see figures 10.1–10.3. In this draft, one looks in vain for Kant and ‘intelligible freedom’. Instead, one is confronted with an allusion to a well-​known narrative from On the Genealogy of Morals on the important role priests and theologians played in the development of certain ideas about guilt and justice. In this version, freedom is clearly linked to the ascetic ideal of the priest, as well as the resulting necessity to develop out of such an instance the right ‘to take revenge’ (‘Rache zu nehmen’, KGW IX/​7,

  239



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

239

Figure 10.116 W II 3.129). Against this text-​genetic background, it seems that Nietzsche projected the idea of freedom developed here into the ‘Kantian’-​coloured term ‘intelligible freedom’, which would mean its complete decontextualization. From this it follows that TI makes use of ‘intelligible freedom’/‘intelligible character’ as

240

240

Axel Pichler

Figure 10.2  This figure is reprinted with the permission of De Gruyter.

  241



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

Figure 10.3  This figure is reprinted with the permission of De Gruyter.

241

242

242

Axel Pichler

a re-​semantized catchphrase, whose original meaning in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is, for strategic reasons, not substantiated in a philologically adequate examination of the original text, but serves, in accordance with TI’s general personalizing and characterizing tendencies, as a vessel for a certain thinking practice  –​that of the ascetic ideal  –​and its leading moral propositions. Such a re-​semanticized use also supports the hypothesis that the explicitly Kantian terminology was only added very late to TI Skirmishes 1 and TI Errors 8. This assumption is further substantiated by the fact that the nomination of Kant in TI Errors 8 is placed in parentheses. If the very nature of the insertion of Kant and his terminology in Twilight of the Idols is merely a caricature of the philosopher and his thinking, this would mean from an intertextual perspective that for any interpretation, Nietzsche’s text should always take precedence over the potential inter-​or hypo-​text –​in this case, the Critique of Pure Reason. Under this assumption, Nietzsche’s book –​at least in the passages alluding to Kant –​should be self-​explanatory without constant reference to the hypotext, because in these passages, Kantian vessels were filled with Nietzschean wine. Accordingly, these have to be interpreted according to their new ‘filling’, meaning their immediate context. If you follow these contexts, the ‘intelligible character’ becomes without any further substantive determination the epitome of a certain philosophical way of thinking, which, guided by certain moral and metaphysical needs –​that is to say, secretly driven by an ‘instinct for revenge’ (see earlier) –​attempts to salvage moral responsibility and holiness. It is exactly in this underlying moral fanaticism that its hypocrisy lies. This hypothesis is also substantiated by the fact that Nietzsche’s last documented intensive study of Kant, from mid-​May to June 1887, was only carried out indirectly, namely, by reading Kuno Fischer’s Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre at the library in Chur.17 Even the records and commentaries written in the same autumn for the book project, ‘Will to Power’, which are located in the notebook W II 2, already show many of the previously described characterizations (typifications).18 In what follows, the hypothesis just proposed will be tested through a close reading of TI’s ‘ “Reason” in Philosophy’.19

3.  ‘Reason’ in philosophy TI Reason, which is readily understood as a synopsis of Nietzsche’s late epistemological views,20 opens with the following sentence: ‘You ask me, what are

  243



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

243

the philosophers’ idiosyncrasies?’ (‘Sie fragen mich, was Alles Idiosynkrasie bei den Philosophen ist? . . .’; TI Reason 1, KSA 6.74). This opening question, at first sight quite inconspicuous, already embodies the radical break with theories of knowledge at that time, which runs through the entire chapter, and backs up the preceding considerations: Instead of asking the traditional transcendental question of the conditions of possibility of knowledge, TI Reason presents in this question a dialog between the voice of an intratextual ‘I’, which will dominate the entire chapter, and a plural ‘you’, which is not further specified. The topic of this dialogue, which almost immediately turns into an inner monologue, is the idiosyncrasies of philosophers. Both the coupling of responses to a question raised by an intratextual ‘I’ and the question itself, with its focus on philosophers’ highly individual modes of thinking and responding, runs counter to the usual writing and communicative practices of Nietzsche’s contemporaries, who sought the universal and objective conditions of knowledge. By replacing the traditional epistemological question with the genealogical question about the idiosyncrasies of philosophers, this passage also pursues TI’s general mode of investigation, which has already been described as ‘symptomatological’. As has been shown, such a strategy of investigation always interprets the philosophers’ propositions as symptoms and signs of a person’s general condition. The resulting personification of the argumentation leads to the characterization (typification) already described earlier here21:  no longer universally valid propositions and arguments based on these, but rather symptomatological readings of philosophers who become characterized through these readings by an intratextual ‘I’, which itself might be as idiosyncratic as its subjects of interest; such readings define the rest of the chapter.22 In this way, the subsequent critique of the traditional conception of reason is already integrated into TI Reason’s manner of presentation from its very first sentence, which complicates the task –​if not making it impossible –​of reintegrating the critique given there into more traditional forms of interpretation and argumentation.23 In this context it is important to notice that by looking at the genesis of TI Reason, one can demonstrate that these literary practices are not purely arbitrary, but obviously follow an ‘aesthetic calculus’.24 An earlier stage of TI Reason 1 can be found on the pages 72–​3 of the notebook W II 5, which Nietzsche used during spring 1888 and filled from back to front, which was not unusual for him. The first relevant page is entitled:  ‘the true world and the apparent world’ (‘die wahre Welt und die scheinbare Welt’: KGW IX/​8, W II 5.72). After this text, whose double framing indicates its status as a title, a short paragraph

244

244

Axel Pichler

follows which deals with Heraclitus and the Eleatics. This passage is crossed out and parts of it can be found in a revised version in TI Reason 2.  Above this paragraph one can see four different lines, which are underlined as well and therefore can be understood as titles or headlines. They read as follows: ‘The idiosyncrasy of the philosophers –​they even have two. The first one is their’ (‘Die Idiosynkrasie der Philosophen  –​sie haben sogar zwei. Die erste ist ihr’). The next line, which is underlined and crossed out reads: ‘The philosophers = idiosyncrasy’ (‘Die Philosophen = Idiosynkrasie’); the line below this one, which this time is not underlined but is also crossed out:  ‘Cardinal mistakes of the philosophers’ (‘Cardinalfehler der Philosophen’); and finally the fourth line  –​ underlined but not crossed out:  ‘What are the philosophers’ idiosyncrasies’ (‘Was Alles Idiosynkrasie bei den Philosophen ist’). Only after these four lines does the actual running text of the note begin, which also can be found in a slightly revised version in TI Reason 1: ‘Above all, their lack of historical sense’ (‘Vor allem ihr Mangel an historischem Sinn’). The cited passages show that the earlier version and its four title revisions speak more generally, and without any refraction through a narrative ‘I’, of the idiosyncrasies of the philosophers. This general way of speaking applies to the entire page 72 of the notebook. Unless one makes the absurd assumption that the revisions made in the finally published version were a mere whim of the author, the differences between the previous text stages found in the notebook and the published version have to be of semantic value for understanding the ‘final’ text. As has already been shown at the beginning of this section, the meaning of the opening question of TI Reason, which is not contained in the previous versions, lies in the connection of everything that follows to a highly individual intratextual ‘I’, which reveals its own idiosyncrasies. Because of these linguistic features in the text, it seems problematic to read this text –​as it has been done for example by Kevin Hill in his book Nietzsche’s Critique –​as if it were Nietzsche’s final epistemological position: not ‘rational’ metaphysics, but the almost ‘irrational’ belief in reason on the part of these philosophers is the central subject of the text. Under these conditions, a reading of the entire chapter of TI Reason has to follow the very specific perspective of the questioning intratextual ‘I’. This intratextual voice dedicates itself in the first three sections of the ­chapter –​TI Reason 1, 2 and 3 –​to the first idiosyncrasy of the philosophers, ‘[t]‌heir lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticity’ (‘ihr[em] Mangel an historischem Sinn, ihr[em] Hass gegen die Vorstellung selbst des Werdens, ihr[em] Ägypticismus’; TI Reason 1, KSA 6.74). The topic is thereby

  245



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

245

outlined in three obvious steps:  While TI Reason 1 in part deals in a highly ironic way with the disguised morality of ‘monotono-​theism’ and its predominant practice of creating ‘mummified concepts’, TI Reason 2, through the mention of the starkly characterized Heraclitus, makes an alternative proposal for how one could deal with the problems discussed, and sets up the sensualistic antithesis which is then articulated in TI Reason 3. TI Reason 2 closes with the famous sentences: ‘ “Reason” makes us falsify the testimony of the senses. The senses are not lying when they show becoming, passing away, and change . . . But Heraclitus will always be right in thinking that being is an empty fiction. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true world” is just a lie added on to it . . .’ (TI Reason 2, KSA 6.75). Here the text arrives at a clear confrontation between the senses and reason, which is preferred by the idiosyncratic philosophers and is made responsible for the falsification of sensations. Exactly how this conflict can be resolved, and particularly how the senses, which indicate change, can convey it, is not explained. This is not unimportant, given what the chapter goes on to discuss. TI Reason 3 then grants –​continuing the inner monologue of the intratextual ‘I’ –​praise to the senses, and so finally places the intratextual voice in irrevocable opposition to contemporary philosophy: We possess science these days precisely to the extent that we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses,  –​to the extent that we have learned to sharpen them, arm them, and think them through to the end. Everything else is a deformity and pre-​science: I mean metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology. Or formal science, semiotics: such as logic and the application of logic, mathematics. (TI Reason 3, KSA 6.76)

In this passage, the intratextual ‘I’ denigrates epistemology while it is simultaneously speaking epistemologically, propagating a sensualism, which –​as has been claimed by recent Nietzsche scholars  –​should neither be read as ‘naturalistic non-​cognitivism,’ particularly as it was catalyzed by Afrikan Spir in books as HH, nor as Kantian idealism.25 Apart from that, one has to ask how one should deal with the obviously paradoxical way this perspective is presented by the intratextual ‘I’. One can find a potential answer to this important question in TI Reason 5.  After TI Reason 4 disclosed the second idiosyncrasy of the philosophers, which is ‘to confuse what comes first with what comes last’ (TI Reason 4, KSA 6.76), TI Reason 5 sums up the discussion of the chapter and in that respect can be understood as its centrepiece.

246

246

Axel Pichler

In its first sentence, TI Reason 5 once again emphasizes the ‘point of view’ of the intratextual ‘I’, which dominates the entire chapter. The sentence reads: ‘(–​Finally, let us contrast this with the very different way that we (–​I say “we” to be polite) envisage the problem of error and illusory appearances’ (‘(–​Stellen wir endlich dagegen, auf welche verschiedne Art wir (–​ich sage höflicher Weise wir. . .) das Problem des Irrthums und der Scheinbarkeit in’s Auge fassen’; TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77). The following sentence offers a micro-​genealogy of this problem: People used to consider change, variation, and becoming in general as proof that appearances where illusory, as a sign that something must be misleading us. These days, conversely, we see ourselves mired in error, drawn necessarily into error, precisely to the extent that the prejudice of reason forces us to make use of unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, objectification, being; we have checked this through rigorously and are sure that this is where the error lies. This is no different than the movement of the sun; there, our eye is a constant advocate for error, here it is language. (TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77)

In this passage, which is of central importance for the entire chapter, one is once again confronted –​now bluntly and unambiguously –​with the problem of the self-​referential status of the views endorsed by the intratextual ‘I’: if one is ‘drawn necessarily’ into error by our given language, as is claimed here, one is obliged to ask what the logical status of this claim itself is. Since the intratextual ‘I’ that is articulating this perspective does so through language, does this mean that this perspective is itself erroneous and false? In a short methodological paper concerning the question of what has to be considered as Nietzsche’s ‘true philosophy’ Jakob Dellinger has outlined a way out of this dilemma: As the discourse on ‘reason’ in language and the necessity of reason’s prejudice is shown to be ‘reasonable’ and full of prejudices itself, this very thesis is not only being broken, leading to absurd outcomes, but rather in the same moment ‘corresponded to’. [Accordingly] Nietzsche’s thoughts have to be understood as explicitly ‘reasonable’ thoughts on ‘reason’ in language in a double sense, because they are about ‘reason’ and follow ‘reason’ at the same time. So these thoughts do not represent in the simple way of ‘it is the fact that’, but rather prove themselves by designating themselves as being ‘reasonable’ (mistaken, wrong, interpretative and so on) and show, so to speak, this very ‘reason’ in the language at work.26

Following these reflections it can be stated that in the place of ‘breaking out’ of the web of language’s metaphysics, one has to perform the insight into this

  247



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

247

very condition by utilizing a highly reflective and partially different way of writing. Such a way of writing seems to be staged and exhibited by Nietzsche’s text due to the connection of all of its claims to an intratextual ‘I’. As this intratextual ‘I’ points out its own potentially idiosyncratic status by talking about the idiosyncrasies of other philosophers, the ‘views’ of this ‘I’ can also be understood as a purely affect-​driven way of ‘speaking’. This speech, conditioned by its own affective charge and despite its own conditionality due to its reflection upon itself, would indicate a potential way out of the otherwise omnipresent blindness to one’s own linguistic determinism, without being able to escape from it entirely. This attempt to employ a way of speaking that performs the major assumptions of TI Reason is evident in the use of a variety of images in the text, which boost the idiosyncrasy of the intratextual ‘I’  –​its sensualism  –​to an almost hypertrophic state: TI Reason 3, for example, opens with an ode to ‘this nose [. . .] which no philosopher has ever mentioned with admiration and gratitude’ (‘[d]‌iese Nase [. . .], von der noch kein Philosoph mit Verehrung und Dankbarkeit gesprochen hat’; TI Reason 3, KSA 6.75); TI Reason 4 speaks of the ‘brain diseases of sick cobweb-​weavers’ (‘Gehirnleiden kranker Spinnweber’; TI Reason 4, KSA 6.76); and TI Reason 5 starts by announcing how ‘we envisage the problem of error and illusory appearances [Scheinbarkeit]’ (TI Reason 5, KSA 6.77). At the same time, such a physiologically charged way of ‘speaking’ does not, due to its auto-​deictic character, lead to a de-​personalized, easily employable epistemological position, but remains bound to this ‘speaker’s’ perspective and her limitations. Such a speaker can potentially be faced at any time with another person’s perspective, which is as affect-​laden as his own, and so could also be ‘sounded out’ with his hammer. Such a manner of consciously orchestrated philosophical thinking, bound to a highly individualized speaker’s position, certainly goes beyond the boundaries of the epistemology of Nietzsche’s times. There are therefore reasons to fear that we do violence to the individuality of this text if we isolate positions or opinions and compare them with those of other thinkers, following classical academic practice. As this short example proves, Nietzsche’s text is endowed with semantic dimensions that are obscured, more than revealed if we compare it right from the start with Kant and his successors. Such readings, based on research into philosophical positions and opinions, are usually oblivious to the specific linguistic and grammatical structure of Nietzsche’s text, and thereby overlook the fundamental semantic potential of this text. The interpretation put forward here should have shown that TI Reason leaves the cosmos of (neo-​)Kantian thought due to its very specific linguistic and literary practices. Interpretations that rush into a comparison of alleged content overlook such differences at their peril.

248

248

Axel Pichler

As a consequence of this rather fragmentary analysis of TI Reason, one can also determine more precisely the central point of the quote from TI Skirmishes 1 that gave this chapter its title. By talking about ‘Kant:  or cant as intelligible character’, the text, in a way typical of Nietzsche’s late writings, turns the actual meaning of Kant’s ‘intelligible character’ on its head. This is shown to be absurd and counter to its original meaning as a consequence of the idiosyncrasy of the philosophical character ‘Kant’, which means, as a consequence of this type’s hypertrophic morality. Precisely in this idiosyncratic restriction of Kant’s concept of ‘intelligible character’, which stands for absolute unconditionality in his Critique of Pure Reason, lies its hypocrisy, the ‘cant’. For this reason, the concept is no longer convincing and is therefore abused parodically. So the ‘character’ (Typus) ‘Kant’ and its concept of ‘intelligible character’ have turned into a representative symbol of TI’s (ab)use of the philosophical tradition, from which Nietzsche’s text deviates, particularly through its linguistic–​ literary form. Under these conditions I doubt that it is useful to attempt desperately to reduce Nietzsche’s adoption and adaptation of Kant and his concepts in TI to their meaning in the original Kantian context and to relate them back to this context again.

Notes * This work is part of a wider research project that I carried out in 2012 thanks to the support of the Fritz-​Thyssen-​Stiftung. For further outcome of this project, see Pichler (2013; 2014), where I examine the meaning and function of textuality and the aesthetic form of presentation in philosophy based on a close reading of selected passages from TI. 1 Cf. Nietzsche’s letter from 7 September 1888 to his editor Constantin Georg Naumann, KGB III/5, Bf. 1103. 2 Cf. Schmidt (1972). Schmidt claims that because of this ‘Situationsabstraktheit’ literary texts are ‘not (uniquely) devised as pragmatic concepts of action’ (66; translated by A.P.). 3 The most famous literary parable of this complex problem –​the tension between the uniquely individual and so highly context-​dependent text-​production on the one side, and the abstractness of the finished vis-​à-​vis its author’s intentions on the other –​has probably been written by Jorge Luis Borges with his Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote. The project of its protagonist, which finally fails because of the aforementioned problems, is to rewrite this classic of world literature: ‘No quería componer otro Quijote –​lo cual es fácil –​sino el Quijote. Inútil agregar que no

  249



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

249

encaró nunca una transcripción mecánica del original; no se proponía copiarlo. Su admirable ambición era producir unas páginas que coincidieran –​palabra por palabra y línea por línea –​con las de Miguel de Cervantes’ (‘He did not want to compose another Quixote –​which is easy –​but the Quixote. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original, he did not mean to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce pages that would coincide –​word for word and line by line –​with those of Miguel de Cervantes’; Borges 2006: 90). 4 For a listing of the books Nietzsche possessed and his readings, cf. Campioni et al. (2003) and Brobjer (2008). 5 Genette (1997: 7). 6 The currently most extensive compilation of such hypotexts is supplied in Sommer (2012). 7 For the reasons for re-​editing Nietzsche’s posthumous writings in KGW IX, the editorial principles of this edition and its consequences for Nietzsche scholarship, see Endres and Pichler (2013). 8 Lindemann 2009: 271. 9 Siemens and van Tongeren 2012: 452. 10 The entire sentence reads as follows: ‘Judgements, value judgements on life, for or against, can ultimately never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they can be taken seriously only as symptoms, –​in themselves, judgements like these are stupidities’ (TI Socrates 2, KSA 6.68). 11 ‘[m]‌it dem Umreißen von Typen [. . .] eine Alternative zur traditionell verallgemeinernden Form des Philosophierens’ (Bertino 2011: 209). 12 Bertino 2011: 209. 13 The German original of this passage reads: ‘Freilich muss noch manche Hinterthür, welche sich die “philosophischen Köpfe”, gleich Schopenhauern selbst, gelassen haben, als nutzlos erkannt werden: keine führt in’s Freie, in die Luft des freien Willens; jede, durch welche man bisher geschlüpft ist, zeigte dahinter wieder die ehern blinkende Mauer des Fatums: wir sind im Gefängniss, frei können wir uns nur träumen, nicht machen. Dass dieser Erkenntniss nicht lange mehr widerstrebt werden kann, das zeigen die verzweifelten und unglaublichen Stellungen und Verzerrungen Derer an, welche gegen sie andringen, mit ihr noch den Ringkampf fortsetzen’ (AOM 33, KSA 2.395f.). 14 ‘[T]‌he basic issue is whether the appearance –​thing in itself distinction is to be understood as holding between two kinds of thing (the “two-​world” view) or between two ways of considering the same thing (the “two-​aspect” view)’ (Allison 2006: 413). 15 In favour of this reading, which was advanced in German Nietzsche scholarship by Günter Abel (1998: 102ff.), is the following passage from GM III 12: ‘(By the way: even in the Kantian concept of “the intelligible character of things”, something of this

250

250

Axel Pichler

lewd ascetic conflict still lingers, which likes to set reason against reason: “intelligible character” means, in Kant, a sort of quality of things about which all that the intellect can comprehend is that it is, for the intellect –​completely incomprehensible)’ (GM III 12, KSA 5.364). A challenge to this reading can be found in Riccardi (2009). 16 This figure is a translation of KGW IX’s diplomatic transcription of Nietzsche’s handwriting into English. From a philological point of view such a translation is highly problematic because it suggests that handwritten drafts can be transposed into another language. This is not the case, as a comparison of Figure 10.1 with the German transcription (Figure 10.2) and the facsimile (Figure 10.3) shows: Due to the different syntactical structures of German and English such a transposition has to forego the highly individual topography of the original handwriting. By doing so it breaks with the feature responsible for the individuality of a handwritten draft –​ its spatio-​semantic arrangement. Figure 10.1 should therefore only be seen as a tool to help non-​German-​speaking readers to decipher the facsimile. I would like to thank René Stockmar and Beat Röllin, who are members of the KGW IX’s editorial staff at University of Basel – https://germa.unibas.ch/abteilungen/neuere-deutscheliteraturwissenschaft/forschungsprojekte/nietzsche-projekt/ –, for providing me the KGW IX templates. 17 Cf. NL 1886/​87 7[4]‌, KSA 12.264: ‘Das theologische Vorurtheil bei Kant, sein unbewußter Dogmatismus, seine moralistische Perspektive als herrschend, lenkend, befehlend’. Also cf. Brobjer (2001: 421). 18 The text critical symbols used in the following quotations are to be read as follows: {} = text inserted by Nietzsche; xxx = words crossed out by Nietzsche; xxx = words underlined by Nietzsche. There one can find the following passages: ‘To assert the existence {as a whole} of things of which we know nothing whatever, {exactly because there is an advantage in not being able to know anything of them} was a naiveté of Kant, resulting from needs, namely moral-​metaphysical ones . . .’ (‘Das Dasein {im Ganzen} von Dingen behaupten, von denen wir gar nichts wissen, {exakt weil ein Vortheil darin liegt, nichts von ihnen wissen zu können} war eine Naivetät Kants, Folge eines Nachschlags von Bedürfnissen, namentlich moralisch-​metaphysischen . . .’; KGW IX/​6, W II 2.2; cf. NL 1887 10[205], KSA 12.582); ‘Kant had {seemed to have} need of {the hypothesis of} “intelligible freedom”, in order to acquit the ens perfectum of the responsibility for this world’s being such-​a-​such’ ‘(Kant hatte jene {schien die Hypothese der} “intelligible Freiheit” nöthig, um das ens perfectum von der Verantwortlichkeit für das So-​u-​So sein dieser Welt zu entlasten’; KGW IX/​6, W II 2.41; cf. NL 1887 10[150], KSA 12.540); ‘Beside Schop. I want to characterize Kant (Goethe’s passage on radical evil): nothing Greek, absolutely anti-​historical (passage on the French Revolution) a. moral fanatic. Saintliness in the background in his case too’ (‘neben Schop. will ich Kant charakterisiren (Goethes Stelle über das Radikal –​Böse): nichts Griechisches,

  251



19 20

21

22

23

‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

251

absolut Wider-​historisch (Stelle über die franz. Revolut.) u. Moral –​Fanatiker. Auch bei ihm im Hintergrund der Heiligkeit . . .’; KGW IX/​6, W II 2.58; cf. NL 1887 10[118], KSA 12.524f.); ‘type: Kant as a fanatic of the formal concept “thou shalt”)’ (‘Typus: Kant als Fanatiker des Formalbegriffs “du sollst” ’; KGW IX/​6, W II 2.134). For a close reading of this entire chapter, cf. Pichler (2014: 195–​266). A paradigmatic version of such an understanding of TI Reason can be found in Kevin Hill’s study Nietzsche’s Critique. There Hill (2003: 175) –​after lamenting the ambiguity of Nietzsche’s late epistemological writings –​states: ‘Fortunately, he crafted what appears to be a synopsis of his final view in Twilight of the Idols, which has the advantage of being clear, concise, very late (1888), and published.’ Hill’s study follows linguistic assumptions that are at odds with the ones applied in this chapter. He seems to assume that neither the ‘abstraction from a given situation’ (‘Situationsabstraktheit’) of a text, nor the option of written language to recontextualize, and thereby re-​semanticize a given word or sentence, might stand in the way of a monosemic reconstruction of their intentional and argumentative significance. He thus follows the antiquated notion of a text as a transparent medium, which has had a highly successful career in Western intellectual history since Thomas Aquinas’s mistranslation of Aristotle’s term ‘Periechon’. This is also reflected in his opening remarks on how to deal with Nietzsche’s strongly differentiated and highly aestheticized text-​corpus. There Hill (2003: 3) writes: ‘I will attempt to reconstruct what I take to be the skeletal structure of Nietzsche’s thought, stripped of its literary and rhetorical surface.’ Within the scope of this chapter it is not possible to provide a critique of Hill’s book. Such has already been delivered by Tom Bailey (cf. Bailey 2006). For Nietzsche’s literary strategy of personification, also see Stegmaier (2011: 107f.) and Benne and Müller (2014). In Pichler (2014) I argue that Nietzsche’s literary strategies of personification in TI lead to an innovative form of ‘typology’: The main characters of the book –​such as the omnipresent intratextual ‘I’ or Socrates –​are presented in a way that oscillates between showing them as highly individual characters and representative ‘types’. Therefore the way in which they are presented can also be described as a form of Prosopopeia. The huge difference between the common use of this rhetorical device and its use in TI is that in the latter its use is the result of a critique of abstract concepts: Because TI considers abstract concepts as highly problematic it switches from using such concepts to just showing them (see Pichler 2014: 364, fn 807). As Robert C. Solomon has shown among others, this form of thinking leads to the high frequency of ‘ad hominem’ arguments that can be found in Nietzsche’s writings. Cf. Solomon (2007: 180–​222). Enrico Müller has already outlined how Nietzsche’s form of philosophical writing leads to this consequence. In a paper entitled ‘Von der “Umwerthung” zur

252

252

Axel Pichler

Autogenealogie’ Müller convincingly reconstructs the development of Nietzsche’s thought and style in his late writings in order to characterize the publications from 1888 as a step from the already accomplished negative-​destructive work in Z, BGE and GM towards ‘autogenealogy’ and its form of ‘autodeictical’ writing. According to Müller (2009), the latter is a consequence of the proof of the conditionality of all philosophical projects given in the more destructive books, which implies that Nietzsche’s own project also has to be considered as conditional. This makes a ‘view from nowhere’ ultimately impossible: ‘Wenn dem so ist, tritt an die Stelle apophantischer, überzeugen wollender, Sätze notwendig die stilistische Auto-​Deixis, der performative Selbstverweis. [. . .] Der Autor “erleichtert” sich hier durch gezielt pathologisierende Interventionen gegen thematische Interpretation; so erschwert er willentlich den unvoreingenommenen, sachlichen Zugang des Lesers’ (146). For the self-​referential scope of ‘autodeixis’ and its epistemological consequences, see Pichler (2014: 281–​7). 24 This term was coined by Claus Zittel (2011: 12) ‘to designate the meaning-​ constituting interactions and engagement of different but in themselves stringent and coherent aesthetic procedures’. As the analysis of the previous stages of TI’s final text has shown, this practice of writings also seems to apply to TI. 25 Cf. Bailey 2006: 248–​50. 26 Dellinger 2009, p. 188 –​translated by A. P. The original reads: ‘Indem sich die Rede über die “Vernunft” in der Sprache und die Nezessität des Vernunft–​Vorurteils selbst als “vernünftig”, selbst als vorurteilshaft erweist, ist diese ihre These nicht nur gebrochen und ad absurdum geführt, sondern vielmehr wird ihr “in” diesem Bruch zugleich “entsprochen”. [Dem] gemäß müssen Nietzsches Gedanken als explizit “vernünftige” Gedanken von der “Vernunft” in der Sprache im doppelten Sinn, d.h. über sie und von ihr her, begriffen werden, die nicht einfach nach der Art des “das ist” bezeichnen, sondern sich in diesem Bezeichnen als “vernünftig” (irrtümlich, falsch, interpretativ, zurechtmachend usw.) erweisen und so die “Vernunft” in der Sprache gleichsam am Werk zeigen.’

References Abel, G. (1998), Nietzsche. Die Dynamik der Willen zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr, 2nd ed., Berlin/​New York: De Gruyter. Allison, H. E. (2006), ‘Kant on Freedom of the Will’, in Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, 381–​415, Cambridge/​ New York: Cambridge University Press. Bailey, T. (2006), ‘After Kant: Green and Hill on Nietzsche’s Kantianism’, Nietzsche-​ Studien 35: 228–​62.

  253



‘Kant: or cant as intelligible character’

253

Benne, C., and Müller, E. (2014), ‘Das Persönliche und seine Figurationen bei Nietzsche’, in: Christian Benne and Enrico Müller (eds), Ohnmacht des Subjekts –​ Macht der Persönlichkeit, 15–67, Basel: Schwabe. Bertino, A. C. (2011), ‘Vernatürlichung’. Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter. Borges, J. L. (2006), ‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’, in M. R. Barnatán, Borges: Narraciones, 85–​96, Madrid: Catedra. Brobjer, T. H. (2001), ‘Nachweise aus Höffding, Harald: Psychologie in Umrissen u.a.’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 418–​21. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context. An Intellectual Biography, Urbana/​Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Campioni, G., D’Iorio, P., Fornari, M. C., Fronterotta, F. and Orsucci, A. (eds) (2003), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, Berlin/​New York: De Gruyter. Dellinger, J. (2009), ‘ “Vernünftige” Gedanken von der “Vernunft” in der Sprache. Oder: Drei Stellungen des Gedankens zur “Objektivität” des Nietzscheschen Textes’, Nietzscheforschung 16: 183–​9. Endres, M., and Pichler, A. (2013), ‘ “warum ich diesen mißrathenen Satz schuf.” Ways of Reading Nietzsche in the Light of KGW IX’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44 (1): 90–​109. Genette, G. (1997), Palimpsests. Literature in the Second Degree, trans. C. Newman and C. Doubinsky. University of Nebraska Press. Hill, R. K. (2003), Nietzsche’s Critiques. The Kantian Foundations of His Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lindemann, U. (2009), ‘Intertextualitätsforschung’, in J. Schneider (ed.), Methodengeschichte der Germanistik, 269–​87, Berlin/​New York: De Gruyter. Müller, E. (2009), ‘Von der “Umwerthung” zur Autogenealogie. Die Götzen-​ Dämmerung im Kontext des Spätwerks’, Nietzscheforschung 16: 141–​50. Pichler, A. (2013), ‘ “Den Irrtum erzählen”: Eine Lektüre von “Wie die ‘wahre Welt’ endlich zur Fabel wurde”’, Nietzscheforschung 20: 193–​210. Pichler, A. (2014), Philosophie als Text –​Zur Darstellungsform der ‘Götzen-​Dämmerung’, Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus’. Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe. Schmidt, S. J. (1972), ‘Ist “Fiktionalität” eine linguistische oder eine texttheoretische Kategorie?’, in E Güllich and W. Raible (eds),Textsorten: Differenzierungskriterien aus linguistischer Sicht, 59–71, Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum. Siemens, H., and Tongeren, P. van (2012), ‘Das Nietzsche-​Wörterbuch: Anatomy of a “großes Projekt”’, in V. Caysa and K. Schwarzwald (eds), Nietzsche –​ Macht –​Größe, 451–​66, Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter. Solomon, R. C. (2007), ‘Nietzsche ad hominem. Perspectivism, Personality, and Ressentiment Revisited’, in B. Magnus and K. B. Higgins (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, 223–​51, New York: Cambridge University Press.

254

254

Axel Pichler

Sommer, A. U. (2012), Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Fall Wagner, Götzen-​Dämmerung. Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken Bd. 6.1, ed. The Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2011), Friedrich Nitzsche zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius. Zittel, C. (2011), Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’, 2nd rev. ed., Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

  255

11

Nietzsche, Kant and Self-​Observation: Dealing with the Risk of ‘Landing in Anticyra’ Luca Lupo

1.  Kant on self-​observation Self-​observation is the subject of paragraph 4 of Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology. Kant defines ‘self-​observation’ as a ‘methodical compilation [eine methodische Zusammenstellung] of the perceptions [Wahrnehmungen] formed in us’, a compilation ‘which delivers material for a diary [Tagebuch] of an observer of oneself [eines Beobachters seiner selbst] and easily leads to enthusiasm [Schwärmerei] and madness [Wahnsinn]’.1 Kant clearly formulates a negative judgement on the practice of self-​observation and clearly indicates its risks. Enthusiasm and madness are the dangers of self-​observation that Kant indicates, and significantly, he feels the need to dwell on these dangers three times, at the beginning of the paragraph, as we have seen, and twice shortly thereafter, at the end of it. To observe the various acts of representative power in myself, when I summon them, is indeed worth reflection; it is necessary and useful for logic and metaphysics. –​But to wish to eavesdrop on oneself when they come into the mind unbidden and on their own (this happens through the play of the power of imagination when it is unintentionally meditating) constitutes a reversal [Verkehrung] of the natural order in the faculty of knowledge, because then the principles of thought do not lead the way (as they should), but rather follow behind. This eavesdropping on oneself is either already a disease of the mind (melancholy), or leads to one and to the madhouse. He who knows how to describe a great deal about his inner experiences (of grace, of temptations) may, with his voyage of discovery in the exploration of himself, land only in Anticyra.2

This emphasis appears more remarkable when we consider that the paragraph on self-​observation consists of little more than three pages. In epistemological

256

256

Luca Lupo

terms, Kant points out how the knowledge derived from self-​observation is unstable by nature. Considering that self-​observation, from a transcendental point of view, is based on inner sense, and ‘inner sense sees the relations of its determinations only in time, hence in a flux’, we can find ‘no stability in observation [Betrachtung], which is necessary for experience’,3 Kant concludes. Hence, we have the unreliability of knowledge in the form of self-​observation. The firmness of the faith in the rational subject is the paradoxical precondition for the Kantian suspicion towards self-​observation in which it takes root. The words used by Kant are very eloquent and sound like a true manifesto of such modern illuminist faith, emphasized by the use of italics: ‘To observe the various acts of representative power in myself, when I summon them, is indeed worth reflection; it is necessary and useful for logic and metaphysics.’ As long as it is the I that leads the way, all is well, and rationality is safe: but, as soon as something else –​let’s call it Non-​I –​manifests itself coming into play, then such event opens the paths towards mental illness, towards madness. What Kant opposes to the I, comes, at least, in a dual role: as the wish to spy on something that is basically elusive, on the one hand, and as a plurality, a dynamic, unintentional multiplicity of the ‘object’ ‘spied on’, that is, ‘the various acts of representative power’ on the other. While the I is one, the characteristic of the Non-​I is instead that of being plural. The acts of which such plurality consists are described as living a life of their own, as being autonomous with respect to the I: they ‘come into the mind unbidden and on their own’, and they are the effects of a game, different from the one that reason plays. To let the (power of) imagination replace the I, that is, the principles that govern rational thought, is tantamount to subverting ‘the natural order in the faculty of knowledge’. In affirming such ‘natural order’, the Kantian discourse admits, at the same time, the existence of a different ‘order’, an order of the otherness, or rather, the existence of a force. However, and this is the trouble spot, as well as being multiple and dynamic, this force is not represented by anything external; it is present in the I although it is not the I. Facing the potential occurrence of such force, the only thing that the Kantian discourse can do here is to say that things should not go this way, that the principles of thought should (sollen) counteract this force. In the face of the unintentional creative power of imagination, Kant seems in fact merely to warn us, rather than debating the subject. He declares that ‘the warning’ (Warnung) is exactly ‘the real purpose of this section’. To follow the involuntary course of one’s thoughts and feelings is a path of ‘confusion in the mind of supposed higher inspirations and powers flowing into us, without our

  257



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

257

help, who knows from where’.4 Referring to such ‘supposed higher inspirations and powers’, Kant performs a sort of exorcism: he projects outwards the danger of a multiplicity that is already within the subject, and threatens it from within.5 The need for such exorcism stems from a fear –​it is noteworthy how, once again, the sphere of the irrational exerts its influence in the field of the I, in this case in Kant’s very I –​a fear and a concern which touches him personally. It is the fear of ‘landing in Anticyra’,6 a metaphor with which Kant alludes to the risk of the descent into madness, a danger that all men whose work concerns thinking often face (especially when they take themselves as objects of observation). Nietzsche also expresses a critical attitude towards self-​observation as a form of knowledge. In his critique of self-​observation he agrees with Kant.7 However, as we shall see, Nietzsche’s distrust of self-​observation takes off from completely different assumptions:  indeed, it results from the radical renunciation of the claim that the subject should be a unique and stable reference point. Nietzsche assumes what Kant rejects, namely, the fact that feeling, willing, thinking are not based on a firm, transcendental point of origin. If one wonders where thoughts, feelings, volitions come from, the only possible answer for Nietzsche is ‘I do not know’.8

2.  Nietzsche on self-​observation The most problematic aspect of surveying human consciousness is the fact that such an investigation is performed in a condition, the ‘state of consciousness’, which is also the object of the survey. We are inside our object of investigation, inside our question and therefore too close to it to see it. Moreover, we ourselves are in question and we are the question itself. The difficulty of being able to have it as object of inquiry is what leads our consciousness to be unconscious. It is familiar to us, being the starting point of our questioning, and at the same time alien to us, for we do not know how it could be possible. For this reason, consciousness can be identified with the unconscious and paradoxically becomes one with it. Consciousness is ‘unconscious’ to the extent that we do not know all aspects of the processes and dynamics that shape our manner of creating the world and experiencing it. What is unconscious? What is the unconscious par excellence? It is just the fact that we can have experience of the world, that is, our consciousness. The investigation of consciousness is a form of self-​observation that Nietzsche regards with extreme scepticism. The main problem with this survey is that the ‘subject’, as an observed object, coincides with the point of

258

258

Luca Lupo

observation. Self-​observation is therefore manifested as an inherently paradoxical form of knowledge. In general, it would perhaps be inappropriate and not entirely correct to consider observation as a form of knowledge. Observation can be thought of, rather, as a preparatory practice/​process in order to attain knowledge, but it cannot yet be considered proper knowledge. It is something that can precede and prepare for it, that can make knowledge possible, but it is not certain that it will succeed in this task. What self-​observation can do rather, precisely because of its peculiarity as a reflexive act, is to allow the empirical subject to have a direct experience of the concept of the limits of knowledge. The object of the search in this case, the self to be observed, is constitutively unattainable, because it is not a stable entity: it is constantly changing and can be grasped only at the limits of language. Already at the stage of Human, All Too Human Nietzsche shows a critical attitude towards the cognitive possibilities related to a practice of self-​observation. Self-​observation is originally defective because the standard by which we measure, our own being [Wesen], is not an unalterable magnitude, we are subject to moods and fluctuations, and yet we would have to know ourselves as a fixed standard to be justly able to assess the relation between ourselves and anything whatever else.9

The subject is therefore something in oscillation, whose centre of gravity is elusive and continuously shifting. If it is true that the subject is a plural entity of variable geometry which ‘continuously increases or decreases –​the centre of the system continually shifting’,10 self-​observation will necessarily be problematic. As a consequence, ‘it is doubtful that “the subject” can prove itself –​to this end, it would have to have a firm foothold outside [itself], and this is lacking’.11 Hence, we need to decline self-​observation in the sense of a ‘phenomenalism’ that tries to ‘gain’ access to the subject ‘from the outside’. Still, we find a ‘dominant prejudice that you know the ego, that it does not fail to make itself continually felt; but hardly any work or intelligence are applied to it –​as if, for self-​knowledge, we were relieved of research by an intuition [Intuition]!’12 Self-​observation is problematic because the object of observation is moving, changing, difficult to circumscribe and define and is subject to transformations of time. In aphorism 223 of ‘Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche’,13 Nietzsche argues that self-​observation mainly passes through observation and knowledge of the circumstances determining the subject, and it is resolved in the knowledge of their history.14 Knowledge of the self is only possible as a ‘universal knowledge

  259



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

259

with regard to all that is past’, and history is the set of ‘adventurous travels’ of an ego ‘in the process of becoming and transformation’: the past continues to flow within us in a hundred waves, we ourselves are, indeed, nothing but that which at every moment we experience of this continued flowing. It may even be said that here too, when we desire to descend into the river of what seems to be our own most intimate and personal being, the dictum of Heraclitus applies: we cannot step into the same river twice.15

For Nietzsche, as indeed also for Kant, man is the point of observation of the world, but he is also a phenomenon like the others, being subject to the same conditions of investigation as other phenomena. The relativization of the human point of view depends on the recognition of its changing and unstable nature. Observation of the self is connected with the dissolution of the idea of the subject as the foundation of knowledge. Cognition of the self, taken as a phenomenon among other phenomena, rather than an unconditioned subject of knowledge, gives rise to a different cognitive attitude that could be defined as an ‘epistemology of moderation’, according to which [w]‌e learn to think less of all that is conscious:  we unlearn to hold ourselves responsible for our self, because we, as conscious purposive [zwecksetzende] beings, are just the smallest part [of occurrence as a whole –​LL]. Of the numberless effects [Einwirkungen] at every moment, for example, of air and electricity, we hardly sense anything: there might be enough forces which continuously influence us, without ever entering our sensation [Empfindung].16

The faith in the subject implies the need to postulate the subject itself as something stable with a mysterious, original nucleus that must be examined and known, but is not questioned as such. In the observation of self as phenomenon proposed by Nietzsche, the idea of a stable core of the observer fades away. As a phenomenon among phenomena, the individual, the subject, the I  is constituted by the external world; it builds itself, redefines itself from time to time, starting out from the constellations of things, people and experiences it actively deals with. These elements allow it to know itself: ‘Man is very well defended against himself, against being reconnoitred and besieged by himself ’, Nietzsche writes in an aphorism called Self-​observation and adds that ‘he is usually able to perceive of himself only his outer walls. The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path’.17 Self-​observation in a Nietzschean sense is therefore only possible through the observation of the world,18 and then in fact it ceases to be ‘self-​observation’: a

260

260

Luca Lupo

never-​ending task, since the object–​subject, the object–​I and the object–​world, finally coincide, as do also the limits of each of them. In this overlapping of the I and world, the limits of the I dilate out of proportion: the I is as wide as the part of the world that constitutes it, and it is therefore as unknown as is the world. It is to this Heraclitean expansion of the boundaries of the I that Nietzsche seems to allude when he states that ‘[h]‌owever far a man may go in self-​knowledge, nothing however can be more incomplete than his image of the totality of drives that constitute his being’.19 In the absence of what can be called a ‘passage from outside’ (i.e. in the absence of an observation of the I conceived as observation of the external world), self-​observation has proved to be a sterile cognitive practice in human history: in fact, despite all efforts, the world of the subject remains an unknown world and the ‘‘ignorance of self ’ remains substantially unaltered. This is particularly demonstrated by the fallacy of the ‘primeval delusion’ that ‘still lives on that one knows, and knows quite precisely in every case, how human action is brought about’.20 An illusion that has long prevented us from seeing that actually ‘all actions are essentially unknown’21; indeed, ‘no amount of knowledge about an act ever suffices to ensure its performance’.22 The faith in a personal will and the voluntary nature of the action ‘results from a false self-​observation’.23 In a list of topics dated in the summer of 1883, Nietzsche speaks of the ‘essentially erroneous self-​observation of each agent’,24 but a really emblematic step in the theme of self-​observation is to be found in the unused material for the drafting of Zarathustra. Here Nietzsche begins to question the nature of what is external (our neighbour: der Nächste) and concludes that what is inside is also known as something external, and it is, like that which is external, only an image (or sign). Listen to me a moment, Oh Zarathustra –​one day a disciple said –​I have something whirling in my mind, and indeed I  would almost believe that my head whirls around something so as to turn in a circle. What is that, our neighbour? Something of us, changes in us of which we have become aware [bewuβt]: our neighbour is an image [ein Bild]. But what are we ourselves? Are not we ourselves but an image [Bild]? Something of us, changes in us of which we have become aware? Our self, about which we know: is that also no more than an image [Bild], something outside of us, outer, outward [ein Bild ein Außer-​uns, Äußeres, Äußerliches]? We only ever get in touch with the image, and not with us ourselves [wir rühren immer nur an das Bild und nicht selber an uns].

  261



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

261

Are we not just as far and close to ourselves in the same measure as [we are to] the neighbour? Indeed we have an image of the human [ein Bild vom Menschen]  –​we did it drawing it out of ourselves. And now we apply it to ourselves, –​to understand [verstehen] ourselves! Ah yes, to understand [verstehen]! It is going badly, to the very worst, with our self-​understanding [with unsrem Selbst-​Verständniß]! Our strongest feelings:  insofar as they are feelings, they are something outer, outward, imagistic: they are similes [Gleichnisse]. And what we used to call inner world [innere Welt]: alas, it is poor and misleading and empty and contrived [dichterisch] to the highest degree!25

In the winter of the same year, meditating on the birth of science from the natural ‘aversion to intellectual chaos’, Nietzsche observes: This same aversion grips me when I  consider myself [bei Betrachtung meiner selber]: I would like to represent the inner world [innere Welt] to myself imagistically [mir bildlich vorstellen] through a scheme [Schema] and rise above the intellectual confusion. Morality was such a simplification:  with its doctrines, it regarded the human as something known [erkannt], as something familiar [bekannt].  –​Now we have destroyed morality  –​we have once again become completely obscure to ourselves! I know that I know nothing of myself. (NL 1883–​ 4 24[18], KSA 10.656)

The Nietzschean suspicion towards self-​observation is coupled with the attempt to establish an epistemology based on the primacy of the body. Relying on the observation of the body allows you to correct the natural tendency of the mind (which is nothing more than ‘a testimony of the intensified senses’) to deception: When we directly ask the subject about the subject, and every time the mind [Geist] is mirrored in itself, we risk the danger that it may be useful and important to its activity to interpret itself falsely. Therefore, we ask the body and reject the testimony of the intensified senses.26

Even in the mid-​1880s, Nietzsche continues to be wary of the combination of theory of knowledge and self-​observation without significant changes. The philosopher quips about this combination, considering in particular as absurd the claim that an act of self-​observation can be foundational for philosophical research. Here the target is again Kant:

262

262

Luca Lupo

It is almost comical that our philosophers require that philosophy should begin with a critique of the cognitive faculty: is it not highly unlikely that the organ of knowledge can ‘criticize’ itself [sich selber ‘kritisiren’ kann], once we have become suspicious of the results of knowledge until now? The reduction of philosophy to ‘the will of a theory of knowledge’ is comical. It is as if security could thereby be found! (NL 1885–​6 61[60], KSA 12.26)

According to Nietzsche, ‘a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself, if it can only use itself for the criticism? It cannot even define itself ’.27 Further on: ‘an instrument cannot criticize its own validity [seine eigene Tauglichkeit]: the intellect itself cannot determine its own limits [Grenze], not even [determine] its own success or lack of success’.28 In a previous brief remark, Nietzsche had already dwelt on the strangeness of ‘a cognitive apparatus that wants to know itself!!’ (Ein Erkenntniß-​Apparat, der sich selber erkennen will!!). ‘We should be beyond this absurdity of a task! (The stomach that consumes itself –​)’.29 The main mistake of modern philosophy consists in having believed in ‘facts of consciousness’ (Thatsachen des Bewusstseins) and in failing to recognize that self-​observation is also based on phenomenalism: I hold fast to the phenomenality of the inner world:  everything of which we become aware [bewuβt] is thoroughly fashioned [zurechtgemacht], simplified, schematized, interpreted –​the real process [Vorgang] of inner ‘perception’, the causal unification of thoughts, feelings, desires, such as between subject and object, are absolutely hidden for us –​and perhaps they are pure imagination. This ‘apparent inner world’ is treated with the same forms and processes of the ‘outer’ world.30

Again, ‘nothing is more phenomenal, (or clearer) nothing is more deceptive [Täuschung] than this inner world we observe through the famous “inner sense” ’.31 During the period 1887–​88, Nietzsche radicalized the criticism of self-​ observation, questioning the very figure of the psychologist. The difference between the old psychology and psychology of the future is grounded in the attribution of value to self-​observation: Psychologists, as they have first become possible from the nineteenth century: no longer those nerds who cannot see farther than three or four steps forward, and are almost satisfied to dig deep inside themselves. We psychologists of the future, we have not much goodwill towards self-​observation: we almost consider a sign of degeneration [Entartung] that an instrument would seek to

  263



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

263

‘know itself ’: we are instruments of knowledge and would like to have all the naivety and precision of an instrument; therefore, we are not permitted to analyze, to understand ourselves. First sign of an instinct of self-​preservation of the great psychologist: he never seeks himself, he has no eyes, no interest, no curiosity about himself . . .32

In the next note Nietzsche adds: ‘[W]‌e distrust all the navel-​gazers, for self-​ observation for us is equivalent to a form of degeneration of psychological genius.’33

2.1 Getting closer to Anticyra In the pragmatic field, Kant criticizes self-​observation, but Nietzsche seems to want to expose (unmask) that critical enterprise itself as based on assumptions derived from self-​observation. The operation carried out by Kant in the context of his critical philosophy does not in Nietzsche’s opinion differ significantly from that criticized by Kant himself in his Anthropology: from Nietzsche’s point of view, even the critical inquiry becomes Schwärmerei. Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge as self-​observation constitutes just a stage in a more general and more radical critique of the metaphysical tradition in Descartes and Kant. In particular, Nietzsche writes ironically:  ‘[T]‌he theory of knowledge is the favourite occupation of those keen minds that have not learned enough and come to argue that, at least here, everyone could start all over again and “self-​observation” would be sufficient.’34 Instead, the knower must avoid self-​ knowledge and leave ‘his roots planted in the earth’35; in other words, putting aside the Zarathustrian metaphorical language in favour of the phenomenalism supported by the late (and not only by the late) Nietzsche, it is necessary to leave the introspective attitude and look beyond ourselves, out of ourselves into the world, in order to know ourselves. However, the survey of the texts that we have presented should have made clear how Nietzsche tends to confuse and overlap the epistemological and anthropological level, in fact progressively reducing the former to the latter and Kantian criticism to a form of self-​observation. Nietzsche therefore misunderstands criticism but such misunderstanding will not be unfruitful, as we shall see later on. Nietzsche shows a critical stance towards self-​observation, yet at the same time he also practices it, in a form that is not far from the self-​observation targeted by Kant’s criticism, as is evident, for example, from the many autobiographical

264

264

Luca Lupo

attempts that culminate in Ecce Homo. In this sense, despite his radical criticism of the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche can be ascribed in this particular respect to the established, centuries-​old tradition of men of knowledge who devote themselves to the practice of what Michel Foucault called ‘technologies of the self ’.36 We might think that Nietzsche’s philosophy is a permanent meditation by Nietzsche on himself,37 even when his research is directed towards the outside world: a meditation on himself through the ‘outer’ path of the world. The access to the self through such outer path prevents Nietzschean self-​observation from taking a sterile narcissistic drift,38 but at the very moment when Nietzsche reaches the extreme limit of self-​observation, with Ecce Homo, he materializes the risks evoked by Kant.

3.  Landing in Anticyra: A lucky shipwreck? It is noteworthy that an Introduction to Immanuel Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, ‘constituted Foucault’s secondary doctoral thesis39 (the principal thesis being Madness and Civilization [sic]), which was supervised by Jean Hyppolite and submitted to the University of Paris, Sorbonne on May 20, 1961’.40 No less noteworthy is what Jean Hyppolite wrote on Foucault’s minor thesis, namely, that it was inspired ‘more by Nietzsche than Kant’.41 In any case, both represent the background, the fundamental theoretical and methodological reference points that guide Foucault’s research, in which a critical–​anthropological perspective and genealogical enquiry merge, generating a completely new point of view. Prima facie the main and the secondary thesis seem unrelated, but a closer look shows the link between them, which lies in the attention that Kant dedicates in his work to the question of mental illness, genealogically investigated by Foucault in his main thesis. In his Introduction, Michel Foucault makes two important points concerning the relationship between Kant and Nietzsche with a significant bearing on the reference to Nietzsche at the end of the History of Madness. In the conclusion of this chapter, we will focus on these texts and try to shed light on them: they are in fact particularly difficult to interpret, but they show at least one thing clearly, namely, that in the relationship between Kant and Nietzsche the very destiny and meaning of the adventure of Western thought is at stake. On the first point, Foucault makes clear reference to Nietzsche, without naming him, and underscores the importance of the link between Nietzsche and

  265



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

265

Kant, the thread connecting them and the urgent need to deepen the analysis of this underestimated link, an analysis that is presented as a crucial task for contemporary thought. Foucault shows here that he absorbed the Nietzschean lesson42 either through the practice of a refined rhetoric of reticence particularly resistant to a hasty reading or using the concept of Eternal Return to clarify the relationship between the two thinkers. What form of blindness prevents us from seeing that the authentic articulation of the Philosophieren was once again present, and in a far more restrictive form, in a thinking that was perhaps not itself aware of what it owed in terms of filiation and fidelity to the old ‘Chinaman of Königsberg’? We would probably have to know what ‘to philosophize with a hammer’ means, take a preliminary look at what the Morgenrot [sic] is, to understand what comes back to us in the Eternal Return to see there the authentic repetition, in a world that is our own, of what was, for an already distant culture, reflection on the a priori, the originary and finitude. For it is there, in that thinking which thought the end of philosophy, that the possibility of continuing to philosophize, and the injunction of a new austerity, resides.43

The history of philosophy is marked by repetition:  fundamental questions return, over and over again. Their repetition is hidden by the fact that they come up in configurations which are only apparently new. What returns in a manner identical to itself is ‘the authentic articulation of the Philosophieren’, the act of philosophizing itself. The past must be investigated moving from the present:  this is what the genealogical method teaches, and this is what Foucault learned following in Nietzsche’s footsteps. According to this epistemological principle, Nietzsche is in Foucault’s view the key to understanding Kant’s thought, with which he is linked by a relationship of ‘filiation and fidelity’ –​despite the sarcastic expression ‘Chinaman of Königsberg’ that Nietzsche himself uses to refer to Kant. By using it he seems to hide from himself (and from us) the relevance of this relationship, perhaps without even realizing its repression. From a genealogical point of view, our understanding of the present (i.e. of Nietzsche and his thought, understood as events of the present times: ‘to philosophize with a hammer’, ‘Morgenrot’ and ‘Eternal return’) is needed in order to rethink the fundamental and recurring questions which Kant had already posed (on the a priori, the originary and finitude), in order to continue performing the act of thinking effectively. In the second text that significantly closes the Introduction, Foucault considers Nietzsche’s negative anthropology to be almost the necessary result of

266

266

Luca Lupo

Kantian thought: the Übermensch is the answer to the impossibility and the dissolution of the Kantian question ‘Was ist der Mensch?’ The Nietzschean enterprise can be understood as at last bringing that proliferation of the questioning of man to an end. For is not the death of God in effect manifested in a doubly murderous gesture which, by putting an end to the absolute, is at the same time the cause of the death of man himself? For man, in his finitude, is not distinguishable from the infinite of which he is both the negation and the harbinger; it is in the death of man that the death of God is realized. Is it not possible to conceive of a critique of finitude which would be as liberating with regard to man as it would be with regard to the infinite, and which would show that finitude is not an end but rather that camber and knot in time when the end is in fact a beginning? The trajectory of the question Was ist der Mensch? in the field of philosophy reaches its end in the response which both challenges and disarms it:  der Übermensch.44

Here Nietzsche’s filiation and fidelity to Kant concerns a further question, a crucial and recurring question for Kant himself and for philosophy in general (as are the questions of the a priori, the originary and finitude). It is the question that summarizes all other philosophical questions, namely, the question of man: Was ist der Mensch? For Foucault, Nietzsche’s answer brings ‘the proliferation of the questioning of man to an end’. In this case too, as in the previous quotation, Foucault uses an argumentative strategy marked by finesse and scientific ‘audacious prudence’: the interrogative movement of the text reveals both. He also refers to the crucial categories of Nietzschean thought, connecting them to each other and using them as tools to show the primacy of immanence: the death of God, the Übermensch and, again, the Eternal Return. Furthermore, Foucault here uses the same argument that Nietzsche had already used in the Twilight of the Idols, in the section entitled ‘How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable’.45 Here, as is well known, Nietzsche concludes that abolishing the ‘true world’ entails abolishing the ‘illusory world’ along with it. As a result, the ontological dualism fades away. In Foucault’s text we can see the same argumentative structure at work (if a polarity falls, then the other term also loses its sense) to explain the evolution of the relationship between God and man and to show how the introduction of the concept of the Übermensch entails a liberation ‘with regard to man as it would be with regard to the infinite’, a liberation ‘which would show

  267



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

267

that finitude is not an end but rather that camber and knot in time when the end is in fact a beginning’. Once again temporality is the key here: thanks to the concept of the Eternal Return, Nietzsche’s answer to the question of man appears as a paradoxical opening rather than a closing. Thanks to this opening, the question of man is renewed and asked again and again, even though the subject of this question might not in fact be called ‘man’ anymore because it has disappeared with God, who made man possible but who was also a constraint and a bond. As mentioned, the introduction, translation and notes to Kant’s Anthropology represent the complementary thesis to Foucault’s History of Madness (1959–​60), which is actually the main work. In the last chapter of this work, entitled ‘the anthropological circle’, Foucault focuses on the importance of the relationship between madness and work, and how Nietzsche’s madness deeply belongs to his work. Shifting our attention now from the Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology to the conclusion of the History of Madness, we can close the circle we opened by reading the pages in which Kant warned us against the dangerous consequences of the self-​observation, and the risks of madness breaking into the sphere of rationality. Here Foucault seems not only to capture the thread binding Kant to Nietzsche, but also to recover the positive and generative aspects of Nietzsche’s (and not only Nietzsche’s) drift into madness: that same madness Kant had seen as a danger arising from the very practice of self-​observation and that Nietzsche had lived and expressed throughout his work, becomes for Foucault an heuristic and epistemological opportunity: Nietzsche’s madness, i.e. the collapse of his thought, is the way in which that thought opens onto the modern world. It is that which made it impossible that makes it present to us: we are offered it by all that wrenched it from his grasp. That is not to say that madness is the only language common to an œuvre and the modern world [. . .] but it does mean that through madness, an œuvre that seems to sink into the world and reveal there its non-​sense, and to acquire these purely pathological features, ultimately engages with the time of the world, mastering it and taking the lead. By the madness that interrupts it, an œuvre opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer, opening an unhealable wound that the world is forced to address. By it everything that is necessarily blasphemous in an œuvre is reversed and, in the time of the œuvre that has slumped into madness, the world is made aware of its guilt. Henceforth and through the mediation of madness, it is the world that becomes guilty (for the

268

268

Luca Lupo

first time in the history of the West) in relation to the œuvre: it is now arraigned by the œuvre, constrained to speak its language, and obliged to take part in a process of recognition and reparation, to find an explanation for this unreason and explain itself before it. The madness where an œuvre plunges into a void is the space of our work, the infinite path to understanding it at last, our confused vocation as apostles and interpreters. For that reason it matters little when the voice of madness first whispered within Nietzsche’s pride or Van Gogh’s humility. There is only madness as the last instant of the œuvre –​for the œuvre indefinitely repels madness to its outer limits. Where there is an œuvre, there is no madness: and yet madness is contemporaneous with the œuvre, as it is harbinger of the time of its truth. The instant in which, together, madness and an œuvre come into being and rich fulfilment is the beginning of the time when the world first finds itself summoned by the œuvre, and is responsible for all that it is in the face of it.46

Consigned to the limits of the world by modern thought, madness returns in the works and lives of men of knowledge and arts of our times, like Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Artaud. When madness manifests itself in the gap that lies between their work and the world, the work becomes a wound that ‘the world is forced to address’. Madness turns the work into a mirror in which the image of the world is reflected. The world would not want to see what this image represents, namely, the repressed, irrational side of the world itself and of reason. Reflecting itself in the void that madness has opened, the world feels responsible and guilty for it recognizes itself, precisely the repressed part of itself, in such a void. The world finds itself constrained to seek the meaning of its own madness. However, the wound does not allude to the misery alone, but also to an opening of the work to the world. It is thus not just a traumatic opening, for it allows the world to go beyond the surface of the work and look inside it grasping its very truth. Deprived of such wound, the world would not be able to investigate itself and the truth could not manifest itself. If on the one hand Foucault insists that ‘[w]‌here there is an œuvre, there is no madness’, on the other he describes the latter as ‘the harbinger’ of a time in which the very truth of the former will be revealed. Indeed, thanks to Nietzsche’s key role Foucault is able to bring to an end the repression of madness, conceived by the modern age, from Descartes to Kant, as the irrational shadow of philosophical rationality. Furthermore, he shows how looking fearlessly into the breakdown of reason makes possible an opportunity for self-​understanding that cannot be missed. The Kantian fear of landing in Anticyra paves the way for the Nietzschean serendipitous shipwreck: Naufragium feci, bene navigavi.47

  269



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

269

Notes My special thanks to Niccolò Maria Bonifati and to Vincenzo Continanza for their helpful linguistic revision of the text and to Regina Greber for her kind suggestions for the choice of the title. 1 Anth § 4 132. If, on the one hand, in Kant’s view, self-​observation may lead to madness, on the other, its practice represents, for example, according to Goethe ([1811–​33] 1948: 7), a hallmark, a sign of distinction between ‘ordinary men’ (gewöhnliche Menschen) and the ‘most excellent spirits’ (vorzüglichsten Geister): while the former do not observe themselves, the latter do it acutely and in detail, recording carefully their own thoughts and feelings in writings, letters and journals. However, in his Commentary to Kant’s Anthropology, section four, Brandt also refers to a Goethean critique of self-​observation (über seine Constitution Betrachtungen machen) as a symptom of sickness; healthy men rarely observe themselves (see Brandt 1999: 131). Furthermore, Kant’s definition of self-​ observation can be traced back to those sets of ascetic practices and principles aimed at shaping the lives and actions of philosophers and men of faith, which Foucault called ‘Technologies of the Self ’ (see later, Foucault (1988)). 2 Anth §4 134. 3 Anth §4 134. 4 Anth §4 133; italics added. 5 See Mark 5.1–​13, ‘http://​www.vatican.va/​archive/​ENG0839/​_​PW7.HTM’ \l ‘61’. 6 ‘Anticyra was an ancient coastal city on the Gulf of Corinth, in Phocis. The medicinal plant hellebore alleged to cure madness grew there. See Horace, Satires 2. 3 165–​166; De arte poetica 360. Külpe surmises that Kant borrowed the allusion from an article in the Teutsche Merkur 2 (1784) entitled “über das Reisen und jemand, der nach Anticyra reisen sollte” (p. 151)’ (Kant ([1798] 2006: 22, note 17). For further details, see also Brandt’s (1999: 136) commentary. 7 My chapter focuses specifically on some aspects of self-​observation in Kant and Nietzsche, a topic that is just a part of the more general problem of self-​knowledge. For a detailed survey of the concept in a comparative perspective in both the philosophers, see Katsafanas (2015). More specifically about self-​knowledge in Nietzsche, see also Stellino (2015). More generally, see Constâncio, Branco and Ryan (2015) and here in particular: Branco (2015); Constâncio (2015); Jensen (2015); Stegmaier (2015); Zavatta (2015). 8 Cf. NL 1884 26 [92], KSA 11.174, and Lupo 2006: 112. 9 MA 32, KSA 2.51. 10 NL 1887 9[98], KSA 12.391. 11 NL 1885 40[20], KSA 11.638. 12 NL 1881 11[226], KSA 9.528.

270

270

Luca Lupo

13 VM 223, KSA 2.477–​8. 14 On the relationship between self-​knowledge and genealogy, see again Stellino (2015) and Lupo (2011). 15 VM 223, KSA 2.477. 16 NL 1883–​4 24[16], KSA 10.654. 17 MA 491, KSA 2.319. 18 Goethe and his autobiography, Truth and Fiction, is a fundamental reference point for Nietzsche and an example of the practice of self-​observation as a phenomenalism, a looking into oneself ‘from outside’. 19 M 119, KSA 3.111. 20 M 116, KSA 3.108. 21 M 116, KSA 3.109. 22 M 116, KSA 3.109. 23 NL 1885 34[243], KSA 11.502. 24 NL 1883 7[268], KSA 10.323. 25 NL 1883 12[40], KSA 10.408. 26 NL 1885 40[21], KSA 11.639. 27 NL 1885–​6 2[87], KSA 12.105. 28 NL 1885–​6 2[132], KSA 12.133. 29 NL 1884 26[18], KSA 11.154. 30 NL 1887–​8 11[113] (358), KSA 13.53. 31 NL 1888 14[152], KSA, 13.335. 32 NL 1888 14[27], KSA 13.230. 33 NL 1888 14[28], KSA 13.231. 34 NL 1880 3[57], KSA 9.63. 35 NL 1882 3[1]‌295, KSA 10.88. 36 According to Foucault (1988: 18), such technologies ‘permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality’. For some introductory remark on the technologies of the self in Nietzsche and Foucault, see Pellegrini (2015). 37 In the framework of his interpretation from an existential perspective, Jaspers still remains a reference point on the topic of self-​observation in Nietzsche, especially Jaspers ([1936] 1979, ­chapter 3 part 1 entitled ‘How Nietzsche understands himself and his own thought’, 383ff.). Among other things Jaspers writes: ‘When Nietzsche acknowledges that he has “few good intentions towards self-​observation”, he means that he is not a psychologist in the sense of an empirical investigator who merely observes, seeking to grasp his facts experimentally, casuistically, and statistically,

  271



38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

271

with a view to causal explanation; rather his psychology consists in a philosophical illumination of Existenz. The psychology that practices self-​observation differs from that which illumines Existenz through self-​understanding: self-​observation relates to empirical existence (including one’s own); self-​understanding relates to possible Existenz. Certain aspects of my existence, with their endless special ramifications, are indeed knowable through observation, and it is reasonable to concern oneself with them insofar as technical aids are applicable (thus Nietzsche observes the dependence of his psychic states upon diet and climate) and phenomena are discoverable in or to which possible Existenz speaks (extensive parts of his psychological works are of this nature: illuminations that appeal to Existenz, even when they deal with facts). But it is fatuous for the observer to gyrate around the empirical factuality of his own existence as though, by applying self-​observation psychologically, he might therein find himself as Existenz’ (383–​4). Later on Jaspers adds: ‘Thus Nietzsche opposes self-​observation and self-​reflection (although he practices both) with a view to limiting them and finding the proper way to the kind of self-​understanding that has its roots and its goal elsewhere’ (384). See Jaspers ([1936] 1979) and Lupo (2011). For further information about the complex editorial history of the Foucauldian Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology by Nigro and Briggs, see Foucault (2008); for an overview on this Foucault’s early work, see Terra (1997). Foucault 2008: 127. Foucault 2008: 128–​9. For helpful remarks on Foucault’s debt to Nietzsche on the relationships among reason, unreason and madness, see: LaCapra (1992), Megill (1992), Gordon (1992), passim. Foucault 2008: 107–​108. Foucault 2008: 124. In commenting this translation of Foucault’s text we will follow the mistranslation therein of the gender-​neutral term ‘Mensch’ as ‘man’. See GD Fabel, KSA 6.81; Lupo (2006: 38 ff.) Foucault ([1961] 2006: 537). For brief but illuminating remarks on the topics of this quote, see Palombi (2014: 69–​72). ‘When I suffer shipwreck, I have navigated well.’ Nietzsche borrows the motto from Diogenes Laertius and Schopenhauer. He refers to it in three passages in the published works and in the posthumous notes: in WA 4, KSA 6.20; NL 1875 3[19], KSA 8.20; and NL 1888 16 [44], KSA 13.501. The original Laertian version recounts how, because of a shipwreck, the stoic philosopher Zeno of Citius was forced to flee to Athens and that this serendipitous, even though traumatic event made his encounter with his master, the Cynic Crates of Thebes, possible (see Diogenes Laertius VII, 4; (Diogenes L. 1925)).

272

272

Luca Lupo

References Branco, M. M. J. (2015), ‘Questioning Introspection: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein on “The Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’ ” ’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 454–​86. Brandt, R. (1999), Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Hamburg: Meiner. Campioni, G., Segala, M., and Pica, C. L. (eds) (2011), Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Omaggio a Sandro Barbera, Pisa: ETS. Constâncio, J. (2015), ‘Nietzsche on Decentered Subjectivity or, the Existential Crisis of the Modern Subject’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 279–​316. Constâncio, J., Branco, M. M. J., and Ryan, B. (eds) (2015), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, Berlin/​Boston: De Gruyter. Diogenes, L. (1925), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks, London/​New York: Heinemann and Putnam’s. D’Iorio, P., Fornari, M. C., Lupo, L., and Piazzesi, C. (eds) (2015), Prospettive. Omaggio a Giuliano Campioni, Pisa: ETS. Ferrari, J. (ed.) (1997), L’année 1798. Kant sur l’Anthropologie, Paris: Vrin. Foucault, M. (1988), ‘Technologies of the Self ’, in Martin et al., Technologies of the Self, 16–​49. Foucault, M. ([1961] 2006), History of Madness, London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (2008), Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, trans. Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Goethe, W. J. ([1811–​33] 1948), Werke, München: Hamburger Ausgabe, Band X, Dtv. Gordon, C. (1992), ‘Histoire de la folie. An Unknown Book by Michel Foucault’, in Still and Velody, Rewriting the History of Madness, 19–​42. Jaspers, K. ([1936] 1979), Nietzsche. An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, South Bend: Gateway. Jensen, A. (2015), ‘Helmholtz, Lange, and Unconscious Symbols of the Self ’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 196–​218. Kant, I. ([1798] 2006), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. and ed. Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katsafanas, P. (2015), ‘Kant and Nietzsche on Self-​Knowledge’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 110–​30. LaCapra, D. (1992), ‘Foucault, History and Madness’, in Still and Velody, Rewriting the History of Madness, 78–​85. Lupo, L. (2006), Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880–​1888, Pisa: ETS. Lupo, L. (2011), ‘Appena prima del buio. Le lettere di Nietzsche da Torino’, in Campioni et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 463–​72.

  273



Nietzsche, Kant and Self-Observation

273

Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., and Hutton, P. H. (eds) (1988), Technologies of the Self, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Megill, A. (1992), ‘Foucault, Ambiguity and the Rhetoric of Historiography’, in Still and Velody, Rewriting the History of Madness, 86–​104. Palombi, F. (2014), Michel Foucault, Milano: RCS Mediagroup Corriere della Sera. Pellegrini, M. (2015), ‘Come si diventa ciò che si è: la stilizzazione di sé tra Nietzsche e Foucault’, in D’Iorio et al., Prospettive, 387–​90. Stegmaier, W. (2015), ‘Subjects as Temporal Clues to Orientation: Nietzsche and Luhmann on Subjectivity’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 487–​510. Stellino P. (2015), ‘Self-​Knowledge, Genealogy, Evolution’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 550–​73. Still, A., and Velody, I. (eds) (1992), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la Folie, London: Routledge. Terra, R. R. (1997), ‘Foucault lecteur de Kant: de I’Anthropologie a I’ontologie du present’, in Ferrari, L’année 1798. Kant sur l’Anthropologie, 59–​171. Zavatta, B. (2015), ‘ “Know Yourself ” and “Become What You Are”. The Development of Character in Nietzsche and Emerson’, in Constâncio et al., Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 254–​78.

274

  275

Complete Bibliography Abel, G. (1998), Nietzsche. Die Dynamik der Willen zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr, 2nd ed., Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Abel, G. (2001), ‘Bewußtsein –​Sprache –​Natur. Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 1–​43. Albrecht, J. (1979), ‘Friedrich Nietzsche und das “sprachliche Relativitätsprinzip”’, Nietzsche-Studien 8: 225–​44. Acampora, C. D. (2015), ‘Being Unattached: Freedom and Nietzsche’s Free Spirits’, in R. Bamford, Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy, 189–​206, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Allison, H. E. (1983), Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, New Haven: Yale University Press. Allison, H. E. (2006), ‘Kant on Freedom of the Will’, in P. Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, 381–​415, Cambridge/​ New York: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, R. L. (1996), ‘Overcoming Charity: The Case of Maudemarie Clark’s Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy’, Nietzsche-​Studien 25: 307–​41. Anderson, R. L. (2002), ‘Sensualism and Unconscious Representation in Nietzsche’s Theory of Knowledge’, International Studies in Philosophy 34: 95–​117. Anderson, R. L. (2005), ‘Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption’, European Journal of Philosophy 13: 185–​225. Ansell-​Pearson, K. (1988), ‘The Question of F. A. Lange’s Influence on Nietzsche: A Critique of Recent Research from the Standpoint of the Dionysian’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 539–​54. Ansell-​Pearson, K. (1997), ‘Nietzsche contra Darwin’, in K. Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition, 85–​122, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Bailey, T. (2006), ‘After Kant: Green and Hill on Nietzsche’s Kantianism’, Nietzsche-​ Studien 35: 228–​62. Bailey, T. (2013), ‘Nietzsche the Kantian’, in K. Gemes and J. Richardson (eds), 134–​59, The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barbera, S. (1995), ‘Eine Quelle der frühen Schopenhauer-​Kritik Nietzsches: Rudolf Hayms Aufsatz “Arthur Schopenhauer”’, Nietzsche Studien 24: 124–​36. Beiser, F. C. (2014), The Genesis of Neo-​Kantianism, 1796–​1880, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benders, R. J., and Ottermann, S. (2000), Friedrich Nietzsche. Chronik in Bildern und Texten, München/​Wien: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik bei Hanser/​dtv. Benne, C. and Müller, E. (2014), ‘Das Persönliche und seine Figurationenbei Nietzsche’, in C. Benne and E. Müller (eds), Ohnmacht des Subjekts – Macht der Persönlichkeit. Basel: Schwabe 15–67.

276

276

Complete Bibliography

Bertino, A. C. (2011), ‘Vernatürlichung’. Ursprünge von Friedrich Nietzsches Entidealisierung des Menschen, seiner Sprache und seiner Geschichte bei Johann Gottfried Herder, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Böhning, T. (1988), Metaphysik, Kunst und Sprache beim frühen Nietzsche, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Borges, J. L. (2006), ‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’, in M. R. Barnatán (ed.), Borges: Narraciones, 85–​96, Madrid: Catedra. Bornedal, P. (2010), The Surface and the Abyss. Nietzsche as Philosopher of Mind and Knowledge, Berlin: New York: de Gruyter. Bouveresse, J. (2016), Nietzsche contre Foucault. Sur la vérité, la connaissance et le pouvoir, Marseille: Agone. Branco, M. J. M. (2015), ‘Questioning Introspection: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein on “The Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’ ”’, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 454–​86, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Branco, M. J. M., and Constâncio, J. (forthcoming), ‘Philosophy as “Free-​ Spiritedness”: Philosophical Evaluative Judgments and Post-​Kantian Aesthetics in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil,’ in P. Katsafanas (ed.), Routledge Philosophy Minds: Nietzsche, London/​New York: Routledge. Brandt, R. (1999), Kritischer Kommentar zu Kants Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Hamburg: Meiner. Breitenbach, A. (2009), ‘Teleology in Biology: A Kantian Perspective’, Teleology. Kant Yearbook 1: 31–​56. Brobjer, T. H. (2001a), ‘Beiträge zur Quellenforschung’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 418–​21. Brobjer, T. H. (2001b), ‘Nachweise aus Höffding, Harald: Psychologie in Umrissen u.a.’, Nietzsche-​Studien 30: 418–​21. Brobjer, T. H. (2003), ‘Nietzsche as German Philosopher: His Reading of the Classical German Philosophers’, in N. Martin (ed.), Nietzsche and the German Tradition, Oxford e.a.: Peter Lang. Brobjer, T. H. (2008), Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context. An Intellectual Biography, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Broese, K. (2004), ‘Nietzsches erste Begegnung mit Schopenhauer im Lichte eines bisher unveröffentlichten Manuskriptes aus seiner Bonner Studienzeit’, Schopenhauer-​ Jahrbuch 85: 13–​26. Broese, K. (2005), ‘Nietzsches frühe Auseinandersetzung mit Kants Kritizismus’, in B. Himmelmann (ed.), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, 364–​72, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Campioni, G. (2001), Les lectures françaises de Nietzsche, Paris: PUF. Campioni, G., D’Iorio, P., Fornari, M. C., Fronterotta, F., and Orsucci, A. (2003), Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Campioni, G., Segala, M., and Pica Ciamarra, L. (eds) (2011), Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Omaggio a Sandro Barbera, Pisa: ETS. Chignell, A. (2007), ‘Belief in Kant’, Philosophical Review, 116 (3): 323–​60.

  277



Complete Bibliography

277

Clark, M. (1990), Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, M. (1998), ‘On Knowledge, Truth, and Value: Nietzsche’s Debt to Schopenhauer and the Development of His Empiricism’, in C. Janaway (ed.), Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer As Nietzsche’s Educator, 37–​78, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2006), ‘The Naturalisms of Beyond Good and Evil’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, 148–​67, Oxford: Blackwell. Clark, M., and Dudrick, D. (2012), The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Constâncio, J. (2011a), ‘Instinct and Language in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2011b), ‘On Consciousness. Nietzsche’s Departure From Schopenhauer’, Nietzsche-​Studien 40: 1–​42. Constâncio, J. (2013), ‘On Nietzsche’s Conception of Philosophy in Beyond Good and Evil: Reassessing Schopenhauer’s Relevance’, in M. E. Born and A. Pichler (eds), Texturen des Denkens: Nietzsches Inszenierung der Philosophie in ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, 145–​64, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2015), ‘Nietzsche on Decentered Subjectivity or, the Existential Crisis of the Modern Subject’ in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco, and B. Ryan, Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 279–​316, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2016), ‘Nietzsche on Nihilism (eine unersättliche Diskussion?)’, in A. Bertino, E. Poljakova, A. Rupschus, and B. Alberts (eds), Zur Philosophie der Orientierung, 83–​100, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Constâncio, J. (2017), ‘ “Who Is Right, Kant or Stendhal?’ On Nietzsche’s Kantian Critique of Kant’s Aesthetics’, in M. J. M. Branco and K. Hay (eds), Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology (Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy vol. III), London: Bloomsbury. Constâncio, J., Branco, M. J. M., and Ryan, B. (eds) (2015), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Crawford, C. (1988), The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Crescenzi, L. (1994), ‘Verzeichnis der von Nietzsche aus der Universitätsbibliothek in Basel entliehenen Bücher (1869–​1879)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 388–​442. Darwin, C. ([1859] 2008), On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, C. ([1871] 2004), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: Penguin. Dellinger, J. (2009), ‘ “Vernünft ige” Gedanken von der “Vernunft” in der Sprache. Oder: Drei Stellungen des Gedankens zur “Objektivität” des Nietzscheschen Textes’, Nietzscheforschung 16: 183–89.

278

278

Complete Bibliography

Dellinger, J. (2013), ‘Zwischen Selbstaufhebung und Gegenlehre. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer und die ‘Perversität der Gesinnung’, in D. Birnbacher and A. U. Sommer (eds), Moralkritik bei Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, 61–​98, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Dellinger, J. (2013), ‘Vorspiel, Subversion und Schleife. Nietzsches Inszenierung des “Willens zur Macht” in Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, in M. E. Born and A. Pichler (eds), Texturen des Denkens: Nietzsches Inszenierung der Philosophie in ‘Jenseits von Gut und Böse’, 165–​87, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Dellinger, J. (2016), ‘Aufklärung über Perspektiven. Ein Lektüreversuch zum zwölften Abschnitt der dritten Abhandlung von Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral’, in H. Feger (ed.), Nietzsche und die Aufklärung in Deutschland und China, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter. Diogenes, L. (1925), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks, London/​New York: Heinemann and Putnam’s. D’Iorio, P. (1993), ‘La superstition des philosophes critiques. Nietzsche et Afrikan Spir’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 257–​94. D’Iorio, P. (1995), ‘La linea e ilcircolo, Genova: Pantograf. D’Iorio, P., Fornari, M. C., Lupo, L., and Piazzesi, C. (eds) (2015), Prospettive. Omaggio a Giuliano Campioni, Pisa: ETS. Doyle, T. (2004), ‘Nietzsche’s Appropriation of Kant’, Nietzsche-Studien, 33: 180–204. Doyle, T. (2009), Nietzsche on Epistemology and Metaphysics: The World in View, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Doyle, T. (2012), ‘The Kantian Background to Nietzsche’s Views on Causality’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 43 (1): 44–​56. Eco, U. (1999), ‘Kant and the Platypus. Essays on Language and Cognition, New York: Harcourt Brace. Endres, M., and Pichler, A. (2013), ‘ “warum ich diesen mißrathenen Satz schuf ”. Ways of Reading Nietzsche in the Light of KGW IX’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44 (1): 90–​109. Ferrari, J. (ed.) (1997), L’année 1798. Kant sur l’Anthropologie, Paris: Vrin. Figl, J. (1984), Dialektik der Gewalt. Nietzsches hermeneutische Religionsphilosophie mit Berücksichtigung unveröffentlichter Manuskripte, Düsseldorf: Patmos. Figl, J. (1989), ‘Nietzsches frühe Begegnung mit dem Denken Indiens. Auf der Grundlage seiner unveröffentlichten Kollegnachschrift aus Philosophiegeschichte (1865)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 18: 455–​71. Figl, J. (1991), ‘Nietzsches Begegnung mit Schopenhauers Hauptwerk. Unter Heranziehung eines frühen unveröffentlichten Exzerptes’, in W. Schirmacher (ed.), Schopenhauer, Nietzsche und die Kunst (Schopenhauer-​Studien 4), Wien: Passagen Verlag. Fischer, K. (1860), Immanuel Kant. Entwicklungsgeschichte und System der kritischen Philosophie. Erster Band: Entstehung und Begründung der kritischen Philosophie. Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Zweiter Band: Das Lehrgebäude der kritischen Philosophie.

  279



Complete Bibliography

279

Das System der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols [= Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. III, IV], Mannheim: Friedrich Bassermann. Fortlage, K. (1852), Genetische Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant, Leipzig: Brockhaus. Foster, J. (1982), The Case for Idealism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Foucault, M. ([1961] 2006), History of Madness, London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1988), ‘Technologies of the Self ’, in L. H. Martin, H. Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (eds), Technologies of the Self, 16–​49, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Foucault, M. (2008), Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, trans. Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Foucault, M. (2011), Leçons sur la volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France, 1970–​1971, Paris: Seuil-​Gallimard. Gardner, S. (2009), ‘Nietzsche, the Self, and the Disunity of Philosophical Reason’, in K. Gemes and S. May (eds), Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geertz, C. (1973), ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, 3–​30, New York: Basic Books. Gemes, K. (1992), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 47–​65. Genette, G. (1997), Palimpsests. Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Gentili, C. (2015), ‘Prospettiva e ascetismo’, in B. Giacomini, P. Gori and G. Grigenti (eds), La ‘Genealogia della morale’. Letture e interpretazioni, 211–​38, Pisa: ETS. Gerratana, F. (1988), ‘Der Wahn jenseits des Menschen. Zur frühen E. v. Hartmann-​ Rezeption Nietzsches (1869–​1874)’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 391–​433. Goethe, W. J. ([1811–​33] 1948), Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe, X Bde., München: Dtv. Gordon, C. (1992), ‘Histoire de la folie. An unknown book by Michel Foucault’, in A. Still and I. Velody (eds), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la Folie, 19–​42, London: Routledge. Grady, J. E. 2007), ‘Metaphor’, in D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, 188–213, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Green, M. S. (2002), Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gregory, F. (1977), Scientific Materialism in Nineteenth Century Germany, Dordrecht/​ Boston: D. Reidel Publishing. Guervós, L. E. de Santiago. (2012), ‘Physiology and Language in Friedrich Nietzsche: “The Guiding Thread of the Body”’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language, 63–​88, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter.

280

280

Complete Bibliography

Guyer, P. (1987), Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamann, J. G. ([1784] 1951), ‘Metakritiküber den Purismum der Vernunft’, in J. Nadler (ed.), SämtlicheWerke, vol. 3: SchriftenuberSprachen/Mysterien/Vernunft (1772–1788), Wien: Herder. Han-​Pile, B. (2009), ‘Transcendental Aspects: Naturalistic Elements and Ontological Commitments in Nietzsche’s Thought’, Inquiry 52: 179–​214. Hartmann, E. von (1869), Philosophie des Unbewußten. Versuch einer Weltanschauung, Berlin: Duncker. Hartmann, E. von (1879), Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. Prolegomena zu jeder künftigen Ethik, Berlin: Duncker. Haym, R. (1864), Arthur Schopenhauer, Berlin: Georg Reimer. Helmholtz, H. von (1867), Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, Leipzig: Voss. Helmholtz, H. von (1925), Treatise on Physiological Optics, trans. from the Third German Edition, ed. J. P. C. Southall. Vol. III: The Perceptions of Vision. The Optical Society of America. Electronic edition (2001), University of Pennsylvania. URL: http://​psych.upenn.edu/​backuslab/​helmholtz. Herder, J. G. (1799), ‘Verstand und Erfahrung, eine Metakritik zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”’, vol. 1 Vernunft und Sprache, eine Metakritik zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”, mit einer Zugabe, betreff end ein kritisches Tribunal aller Facultäten, Regierungen und Geschäfte, Leipzig: Hartknoch Hill, K. R. (2003), Nietzsche’s Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought, Oxford; Clarendon Press. Himmelman, B. (2005), ‘Kant, Nietzsche und die Aufklärung’, in B. Himmelman (ed.), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, 29–46, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Himmelmann, B. (ed.) (2005), Kant und Nietzsche im Widerstreit, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Himmelmann, B. (2014), ‘Nietzsches Philosophie der Macht als Philosophie der Endlichkeit’, in S. Dietzsch and C. Terne (eds), Nietzsches Perspektiven, 15–​30, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Houlgate, S. (1993), ‘Kant, Nietzsche and the Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 115–​57. Hussain, N. J. Z. (2004), ‘Reading Nietzsche through Ernst Mach’, in G. Moore and T. H. Brobjer (eds), Nietzsche and Science, 111–​29, Aldershot/​Burlington: Ashgate. Jacobi, F. H. (1787), David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gespräch, Breslau: Gottlieb Löwe. Janz, C. P. (1978), Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie in drei Bänden, München-​Wien: dtv. Jaspers, K. ([1936] 1979), Nietzsche. An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, South Bend, IN: Regnery Gateway. Jensen, A. (2015), ‘Helmholtz, Lange, and Unconscious Symbols of the Self ’ in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 196–​218, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter.

  281



Complete Bibliography

281

Jörn A., ‘Friedrich Nietzsche und das “sprachliche Relativitätsprinzip”’, in NietzscheStudien, 8: 225–44. Kant, I. ([1781/1787] 1998), Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Woods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. ([1798] 2006), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. and ed. Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1838–42), Immanuel Kant’s sämmtliche Werke, Hrsg. v. K. Rosenkranz u. F. W. Schubert, 12 vols, Leipzig: Voss. Katsafanas, P. (2015), ‘Kant and Nietzsche on Self-​Knowledge’, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 110–​130, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Kaulbach, F. (1990), Philosophie des Perspektivismus. 1. Teil: Wahrheit und Perspektive bei Kant, Hegel und Nietzsche, Tübingen: Siebeck/​Mohr. Kofman, S. (1979), Nietzsche et la scène philosophique, Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions. Kohl, O. (1868), ‘Immanuel Kants Ansicht von der Willensfreiheit’, diss., Leipzig. Köhnke, K. C. (1986), Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus, Frankfurt/​ M.: Suhrkamp. LaCapra, D. (1992), ‘Foucault, History and Madness’, in A. Still and I. Velody (eds), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la Folie, 78–​85, London: Routledge. Lakoff, G. (1987), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langbehn, C. (2005), Metaphysik der Erfahrung. Zur Grundlegung einer Philosophie der Rechtfertigung beim frühen Nietzsche, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Lange, F. A. (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn: Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1873–​5), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, 2. verb. u. verm. Aufl., 2 vols, Iserlohn: Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1880), History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance, 3 vols, Boston: Houghton, Osgood. Lange, F. A. (1887), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, ed. H. Cohen (Wohlfeile Ausgabe, Zweites Tausend), Iserlohn, Leipzig: J. Baedeker. Lange, F. A. (1974), Geschichte des Materialismus. Frankfurt/​M.: Suhrkamp. Langton, R. (1998), Kantian Humility. Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lehmann, R. (1878), Kant’s Lehre vom Ding an sich. Ein Beitrag zur Kantphilologie, Berlin: J. Sittenfeld. Leiter, B. (2002), Nietzsche on Morality, London: Routledge. Leiter, B. (2015), Nietzsche on Morality, 2nd edition, London and New York: Routledge

282

282

Complete Bibliography

Liebmann, O. (1880), Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit. Eine Erörterung der Grundprobleme der Philosophie, Zweite, beträchtlich vermehrte Auflage, Straßburg: K. J. Trübner. Liebmann, O. (1865), Kant und die Epigonen, Stuttgart: Carl Schober. Liebmann, O. [without author] (1871), Vier Monate vor Paris. 1870–​1871. Belagerungstagebuch eines Campagne-​Freiwilligen im K.Pr. Garde-​Fusilier-​Regiment, Stuttgart. Lindemann, U. (2009), ‘Intertextualitätsforschung’, in J. Schneider (ed.), Methodengeschichte der Germanistik, 269–​87, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Lopes, R. (2008), ‘Ceticismo e vida contemplativa em Nietzsche’, PhD thesis. Belo Horizonte, UFMG. Lopes, R. (2011), ‘ “A almejada assimilação do materialismo”: Nietzsche e o debate naturalista na filosofia alemã da segunda metade do século XIX’, Cadernos Nietzsche 29: 309–​52. Lopes, R. (2012), ‘Das politische Triebmodell Nietzsches als Gegenmodell zu Schopenhauers Metaphysik des blinden Willens’, in J. Georg and C. Zittel (eds), Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten, 147–​56, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Louden, R. B. (2014), ‘Nietzsche as Kant’s True Heir?’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 45 (1): 22–​30. Loukidelis, N. (2013), Es denkt. Ein Kommentar zum Aphorismus 17 von Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Lupo, L. (2006), Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli anni 1880–​1888, Pisa: ETS. Lupo, L. (2011), ‘Appena prima del buio. Le lettere di Nietzsche da Torino’, in G. Campioni, M. Segala and L. Pica Ciamarra (eds), Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Omaggio a Sandro Barbera, 463–​72, Pisa: ETS. Lupo, L. (2012), ‘Drives, Instincts, Language, and Consciousness in Daybreak 119: “Erleben und Erdichten”’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language, 179–​95, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter. Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., and Hutton, P. H. (eds) (1988), Technologies of the Self, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Mattioli, W. (2010), ‘Metáfora e ficcionalismo no jovem Nietzsche’, Revista Trágica 3 (2): 39–​60. [online]. URL: http://​www.tragica.org/​. Mattioli, W. (2011), ‘Do idealismo transcendental ao naturalismo: um salto ontológico no tempo a partir de uma fenomenologia da representação’, Cadernos Nietzsche 29: 221–​70. Mattioli, W. (2012), ‘Das Unbewusste als transzendentaler Raum perspektivistischer Weltbildung bei Nietzsche’, in J. Georg and C. Zittel (eds), Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten, 173–​82, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Megill, A. (1992), ‘Foucault, Ambiguity and the Rhetoric of Historiography’, in A. Still and I. Velody (eds), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la Folie, 86–​104, London: Routledge.

  283



Complete Bibliography

283

Meijers, A. (1988), ‘Gustav Gerber und Friedrich Nietzsche. Zum historischen Hintergrund der sprachphilosophischen Auffassungen des frühen Nietzsche’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 369–​90. Meijers, A., and Stingelin, M. (1988), ‘Konkordanz zu den wörtlichen Abschriften und Übernahmen von Beispielen und Zitaten aus Gustav Gerber: Die Sprache als Kunst (Bromberg 1871) in Nietzsches Rhetorik-​Vorlesung und in “Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne”’, Nietzsche-​Studien 17: 350–​68. Metterhausen, W. (1942), Friedrich Nietzsches Bonner Studentenzeit 1864/​1865, Kassel, unpublished manuscript. Meyer, M. (2012), ‘Nietzsche’s Naturalism and the Falsification Thesis’, in H. Heit, G. Abel and M. Brusotti (eds), Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Hintergründe, Wirkungen und Aktualität, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Molnar, G. (2006), Powers: A Study in Metaphysics, ed. Stephen Mumford, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, G. (2009), ‘Nietzsche and Evolutionary Theory’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, 517–​31, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-​Blackwell. Müller, E. (2009), ‘Von der “Umwerthung” zur Autogenealogie. Die Götzen-​ Dämmerung im Kontext des Spätwerks’, Nietzscheforschung 16: 141–​50. Müller, E. (2011), ‘Vernunft’, in C. Niemeyer (ed.), Nietzsche-​Lexikon, 2nd ed., 399–​401, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Müller, F. M. (1866), Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache, Bd. 2, Leipzig: Mayer. Müller, F. M. (1887), The Science of Thought, London: Longmans. Müller, F. M. (1892), Natural Religion: The Gifford Lectures, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Müller-​Lauter, W. (1999), ‘Der Organismus als innerer Kampf. Der Einfluß von Wilhelm Roux auf Friedrich Nietzsche’, in W. Müller-​Lauter, Über Werden und Wille zur Macht. Nietzsche-​Interpretationen I, 97–​140, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Nasser, E. (2015), Nietzsche e a ontologia do vir-​a-​ser, São Paulo: Loyola. Nietzsche, F. (1993), Appunti filosofici. Omero e la filologia classica, eds G. Campioni and F. Gerratana, Milan: Adelphi. Orsucci, A. (1994), ‘Unbewußte Schlüsse, Anticipationen, Übertragungen. Über Nietzsches Verhältnis zu Karl Friedrich Zöllner und Gustav Gerber’, in Tilman Borsche, Federico Gerratana and Aldo Venturelli (eds), ‘Centauren-​Geburten’. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, 193–​207, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Orsucci, A. (2001), La genealogia della morale di Nietzsche, Roma: Carocci. Orsucci, A. (2006), ‘L’enciclopedia nietzscheana delle “scienze dello spirit” nelle discussioni del primo ‘900: alcune corrispondenze. Nuoveprospettivestoriografiche’, http://www.hypernietzsche.org/files/aorsucci-1,1/aorsucci.html. Ottmann, H. (2000), ‘Immanuel Kant’, in:H. Ottmann (ed.), Nietzsche-​Handbuch. Leben –​ Werk –​ Wirkung, 411–​12, Stuttgart/​Weimar: Metzler.

284

284

Complete Bibliography

Palombi, F. (2014), Michel Foucault, Milano: RCS Mediagroup Corriere della Sera. Pellegrini, M. (2015), ‘Come si diventa ciò che si è: la stilizzazione di sé tra Nietzsche e Foucault’, in P. D’Iorio, M. C. Fornari, L. Lupo and C. Piazzesi (eds), Prospettive. Omaggio a Giuliano Campioni, 387–​90, Pisa: ETS. Pichler, A. (2013), ‘ “Den Irrtum erzählen”: Eine Lektüre von “Wie die ‘wahre Welt’ endlich zur Fabel wurde”’, Nietzscheforschung 20: 193–​210. Pichler, A. (2014), Philosophie als Text –​Zur Darstellungsform der ‘Götzen-​Dämmerung’, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Poellner, P. (1995), Nietzsche and Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poellner, P. (2001), ‘Perspectival Truth’, in J. Richardson and B. Leiter (eds), Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rethy, R. (1991), ‘Schein in Nietzsche’s Philosophy’, in K. Ansell Pearson (ed.), Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, London/​New York: Routledge. Reuter, S. (2004), ‘Reiz. Bild. Unbewusste Anschauung. Nietzsches Auseinandersetzung mit Hermann Helmholtz’ Theorie der unbewussten Schlüsse in Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne’, Nietzsche-​Studien 33: 351–​72. Reuter, S. (2009), An der ‘Begräbnisstätte der Anschauung’. Nietzsches Bild-​und Wahrnehmungstheorie in Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne, Basel: Schwabe. Riccardi, M. (2009), ‘Der faule Fleck des Kantischen Kriticismus’. Erscheinung und Ding an sich bei Nietzsche, Basel: Schwabe. Riccardi, M. (2010), ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Kant’s Thing in Itself ’, Nietzsche-​Studien 39: 333–​51. Richardson, J. (1996), Nietzsche’s System, Oxford/​New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, J. (2004), Nietzsche’s New Darwinism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Richardson, J. (2006), ‘Nietzsche on Time and Becoming’, in K. Ansell-​Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, 208–​29, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Romundt, H. (1872), Die menschliche Erkenntniß und das Wesen der Dinge, Basel: Georg. Romundt, H. (1882), Antäus. Neuer Aufbau der Lehre Kants über Seele, Freiheit und Gott, Leipzig: Veit. Romundt, H. (1883), Die Herstellung der Lehre Jesu durch Kant’s Reform der Philosophie, Bremen: Roussell. Romundt, H. (1885a), Grundlegung zur Reform der Philosophie: vereinfachte und erweiterte Darstellung von Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1885b), Die Vollendung des Sokrates: Immanuel Kants Grundlegung zur Reform der Sittenlehre, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1886), Ein neuer Paulus: Immanuel Kants Grundlegung zu einer sicheren Lehre von der Religion, Berlin: Nicolai. Romundt, H. (1887), Die drei Fragen Kants, Berlin: Nicolai. Rorty, R. (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  285



Complete Bibliography

285

Rosch, E. H. (1973), ‘Natural Categories’, Cognitive Psychology, 4: 328–50. Rosch, E. H. (1975), ‘Cognitive Representation of Semantic Categories’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 104 (3): 192–233. Roth, S. (2008), ‘Kant und die Biologie seiner Zeit’, in O. Höffe (ed.), Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft (Klassiker Auslegen), 275–​87, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Röttges, H. (1999), Das Problem der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Philosophie, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Roux, W. (1881), Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Ein Beitrag zur Vervollständigung der mechanischen Zweckmäßigkeitslehre, Leipzig: W. Engelmann. Salaquarda, J. (1978), ‘Nietzsche und Lange’, Nietzsche-​Studien 7: 236–​60 Salaquarda, J. (1979), ‘Der Standpunkt des Ideals bei Lange und Nietzsche’, Studi Tedeschi XXII (1): 133–​70. Schaarschmidt, C. (1857), Der Entwicklungsgang der neueren Speculation als Einleitung in die Philosophie der Geschichte kritisch dargestellt von Dr. C. Schaarschmidt, Bonn: Marcus. Schacht, R. (1983), Nietzsche, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schlicht von Rabenau, M. (2014), Der philosophische Begriff des Gebrauchs. Platon, Kant, Wittgenstein, Münster: Mentis. Schlimgen, E. (1999), Nietzsches Theorie des Bewußtseins, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Schmidt, S. J. (1972), ‘Ist “Fiktionalität” eine linguistische oder eine texttheoretische Kategorie?’, in E Güllich and W. Raible (eds), 59–​71, Textsorten. Frankfurt/​ M.: Athenäum. Schopenhauer, A. (1949a), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung I, in A. Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1946–​1950, vol. 2 (quoted as WWV I). Schopenhauer, A. (1949b), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II, in A. Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1946–​1950, vol. 3 (quoted as WWV II). Schopenhauer, A. (1966), The World as Will and Representation, vol. I, trans. E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover. Schopenhauer, A. (2010), The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sellars, W. (1991a), ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’, in Science, Perception and Reality, 1–​40, Atascadero: Ridgeview. Sellars, W. (1991b), ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, in Science, Perception and Reality, : 127–​96, Atascadero: Ridgeview. Siemens, H. (2006), ‘Nietzsche and the Empirical: Through the Eyes of the Term “Empfindung”’, South African Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 146–58. Siemens, H. (2009), ‘Nietzsche contra Liberalism on Freedom’, in K. Ansell-​ Pearson, A Companion to Nietzsche, 437–​54, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-​Blackwell.

286

286

Complete Bibliography

Siemens, H., and Tongeren, P. van (2012), ‘Das Nietzsche-​Wörterbuch: Anatomy of a “großes Projekt”’, in V. Caysa and K. Schwarzwald (eds), Nietzsche –​ Macht –​ Größe, 451–​66, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Simon, J. (2003), Kant. Die fremde Vernunft und die Sprache der Philosophie, Berlin/​ New York: de Gruyter. Simon, J., and Stegmaier, W. (1998), ‘Einleitung zu’, in J. Simon and W. Stegmaier (eds), Fremde Vernunft. Zeichen und Interpretation IV, 7–​22, Frankfurt/​ M.: Suhrkamp. Small, R. (1994), ‘Nietzsche, Spir, and Time’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1): 85–​102. Small, R. (2010), Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought, London/​ New York: Continuum. Solomon, R. C. (2007), ‘Nietzsche ad hominem. Perspectivism, personality, and ressentiment revisited’, in B. Magnus and K. B. Higgins (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, : 223–​51, New York: Cambridge University Press. Sommer, A. U. (2012), Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Fall Wagner, Götzen-​ Dämmerung. Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken Bd. 6.1, ed. by the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Sommer, A. U. (2015), ‘Is There a Free Spirit in Nietzsche’s Late Writings?’, in R. Bamford (ed.), Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Philosophy, 253–​65, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Sousa, Luís de (2012), ‘Knowledge, Truth, and the Thing in itself: The Presence of Schopenhauer’s Transcendental Idealism in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-​Moral sense (1873)’, in J. Constâncio and M. J. M. Branco (eds), As the Spider Spins: Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and use of Language, 39–​61, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Spinoza, B. ([1677] 2002), Ethics, trans. S. Shirley, in M. L. Morgan (ed.), Spinoza: Complete Works, 213–​404, Indianapolis/​Cambridge: Hackett. Spir, A. (1873/​1877), Denken und Wirklichkeit. Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie, 2 Bände, Leipzig: J. G. Findel. Stack, G. J. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (1987), ‘Zeit der Vorstellung. Nietzsches Vorstellung der Zeit’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 41: 202–​28. Stegmaier, W. (1987), ‘Darwin, Darwinismus, Nietzsche. Zum Problem der Evolution’, Nietzsche-​Studien 16: 264–​87. Stegmaier, W. (1990), ‘Die Zeitlichkeit des Lebendigen. Kant, Hegel und die Prinzipien von Darwins Evolutionstheorie’, in H. Busche, G. Heffernan and D. Lohmar (eds), Bewußtsein und Zeitlichkeit. Ein Problemschnitt durch die Philosophie der Neuzeit, 75–​87, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Stegmaier, W. (1994), Nietzsches ‘Genealogie der Moral’. Werkinterpretation, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

  287



Complete Bibliography

287

Stegmaier, W. (1997a), ‘Geist. Hegel, Nietzsche und die Gegenwart’, Nietzsche-​Studien 26: 300–​18. Stegmaier, W. (1997b), ‘Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft’, in W. Stegmaier (with the collaboration of H. Frank), Hauptwerke der Philosophie. Von Kant bis Nietzsche, Stuttgart: Reclam. Stegmaier, W. (1999), ‘Das Zeichen X in der Philosophie der Moderne’, in W. Stegmaier (ed.), Zeichen-​Kunst. Zeichen und Interpretation V, 231–​56, Frankfurt/​ M.: Suhrkamp. Stegmaier, W. (2004a), ‘ “Philosophischer Idealismus” und die “Musik des Lebens”. Zu Nietzsches Umgang mit Paradoxien. Eine kontextuelle Interpretation des Aphorismus Nr. 372 der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft’, Nietzsche-​Studien 33: 90–​128. Stegmaier, W. (2004b), ‘Orientierung zum Handeln in wechselnden Horizonten’, in R. Elm (ed.), Horizonte des Horizontbegriffs. Hermeneutische, phänomenologische und interkulturelle Studien, 251–​66, Sankt Augustin: Academia. Stegmaier, W. (2008), Philosophie der Orientierung, Berlin/​New York: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2011), Friedrich Nitzsche zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius. Stegmaier, W. (2012), Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie. Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der ‘Fröhlichen Wissenschaft’, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2013), Friedrich Nietzsche zur Einführung, 2nd ed, Hamburg: Junius. Stegmaier, W. (2015), ‘Subjects as Temporal Clues to Orientation: Nietzsche and Luhmann on Subjectivity’, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 487–​510, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Stegmaier, W. (2016), Orientierung im Nihilismus –​Luhmann meets Nietzsche, Berlin/​ Boston: de Gruyter. Stellino P. (2015), ‘Self-​Knowledge, Genealogy, Evolution’, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 550–​73, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Still, A., and Velody, I. (eds) (1992), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Histoire de la Folie, London: Routledge. Stingelin, M. (1996), ‘Unsere ganze Philosophie ist Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs’. Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-Rezeption im Spannungsfeld zwischen Sprachkritik (Rhetorik) und historischer Kritik (Genealogie), München: Fink. Stroud, B. (1968), ‘Transcendental Arguments’, Journal of Philosophy LXV: 241–​56. Repr. in: R. C. S. Walker (ed.), Kant on Pure Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Taylor, J. R. (1989), Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory, Kant on Pure Reason, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Terra, R. R. (1997), ‘Foucault lecteur de Kant: de I’Anthropologie a I’ontologie du present’, in J. Ferrari (ed.), L’année 1798. Kant sur l’Anthropologie, 59–​171, Paris: Vrin. Thüring, H. (1994), ‘Beiträge zur Quellenforschung’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 480–​9. Timms, E. (1986), Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satyrist: The Postwar Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika, New Haven: Yale University Press.

288

288

Complete Bibliography

Trabant, J. (1992), Humboldt ou le sens du langage, Liège: Madarga. Treiber, H. (1993), ‘Zur Genealogie einer “science positive de la morale en Allemagne”. Die Geburt der “r(é)ealistischen Moralwissenschaft” aus der Idee einer monistischen Naturkonzeption’, Nietzsche-​Studien 22: 165–​221. Treiber, H. (1994), ‘Zur “Logik des Traumes” bei Nietzsche. Anmerkungen zu den Traum-​Aphorismen aus Menschliches, Allzumenschliches’, Nietzsche-​Studien 23: 1–​41. Ueberweg, F. (1866–​7), Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie von Thales bis auf die Gegenwart, 3rd ed., 3 vols., Berlin: Mittler. van Tongeren, P. (2012), Het Europese nihilisme. Friedrich Nietzsche over een dreiging die niemand schijnt te deren, Nijmegen: Vantilt. Wallace, A. R. (1864), ‘The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of “Natural Selection”’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London 2: clviii–​clxx [followed by an account of related discussion on pp. clxx–​clxxxvii]. Weber, M. ([1904–​20] 2005), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London/​ New York: Routledge. Wilcox, J. (1982), Truth and Value in Nietzsche, Washington: University Press of America Wolff, R. P. (1973), Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith. Wood, Allen W. (2008), Kantian Ethics, New York: Cambridge University Press. Zavatta, B. (2009), ‘Die in der Sprache versteckte Mythologie und ihre Folgen fürs Denken. Einige Quellen von Nietzsche: Max Müller, Gustav Gerber und Ludwig Noiré’, Nietzsche-Studien 38: 269–98. Zavatta, B. (2013), ‘Nietzsche and 19th Century Linguistics’, in H. Heit and L. Heller (eds), Nietzsche im 19.Jahrhundert. Natur-, Geistes-, und Sozialwissenschaftliche Kontexte, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Zavatta, B. (2015), ‘ “Know Yourself ” and “Become What You Are”. The Development of Character in Nietzsche and Emerson”, in J. Constâncio, M. J. M. Branco and B. Ryan (eds), Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity, 254–​78, Berlin/​Boston: de Gruyter. Zittel, C. (2011), Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’, 2nd rev. ed., Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Zöllner, J. C. F. (1872), Über die Natur der Cometen. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntniss, 2 Aufl., Leipzig: Staackmann.

  289

Name Index Abel, Günter 48, 100, 249 Adickes, Erich 148, 149, 249 Albrecht, Jörn 54, 65 Allison, Henry E. 148, 249 Anaxagoras 85, 228 Anaximander 228 Ansell-​Pearson, Keith 20, 107, 174 Anselm (of Canterbury) 4 Anticyra 18, 255, 257, 263, 264, 268, 269 Aristotelian 188, 189 Aristotle 52, 181, 188, 251 Arnobius 234 Artaud, Antonin 268 Athens 271 Baer, Karl Ernst von 94 Bailey, Tom 19, 21, 22, 226, 251, 252 Barbera, Sandro 21, 23 Basel 2, 3, 8–​10, 19, 24, 55, 59, 62, 65, 66, 105, 250 Baumannshöhle 10 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 20 Beiser, Frederick 21, 111, 133, 134 Benders, Raymond 19 Beneke, Friedrich Eduard 133 Benne, Christian 251 Berkeleian 210, 215 Berkeley 229 Bertino, Andrea 65, 196, 236, 249 Böhning, Thomas 63 Bonn 4, 5, 9 Borges, Jorge Luis 248, 249 Bornedal, Peter 67 Boscovich, Roger Joseph 94, 220, 223, 224 Boscovichean 217 Brandt, Reinhard 269 Brobjer, Thomas 19, 20, 21, 22, 132, 133, 183, 226, 249, 250 Brochard, Victor 234 Broese, Konstantin 19, 20 Brusotti, Marco 22, 23, 97 Burckhardt, Jacob 9

Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges 23 Caesar 86 Campioni, Giuliano 19, 21, 64, 249 Cartesian (see also Descartes) 27, 87, 91, 212, 213 Cassirer, Ernst 9 Cervantes, Miguel de 249 Chignell, Andrew 155, 156 Chur 3, 19, 242 Clark, Maudemarie 16, 36, 76, 109, 121, 122, 128, 133, 134, 141, 149, 153, 154, 158, 161, 163–​5 Cohen, Hermann 9, 12 Constâncio, João 14, 15, 42, 58, 63, 66, 133–​5, 269 Copernican 28, 106, 186 Copernicus 183–​5 Corinth (Gulf of), Phocis 269 Crates of Thebes 271 Crawford, Claudia 8, 20, 22, 133, 227 Crescenzi, Luca 19 Cynic 271 D’Iorio, Paolo 24, 47, 49, 50, 52, 57, 83, 99, 133, 134 Darwin, Charles Robert 17, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 182 Darwinian 32, 168 Darwinism 7, 170, 175, 177 Darwinist 7 Dellinger, Jacob 132, 202, 246, 252 Descartes, René 29, 86, 87, 91, 94, 212, 263, 268 Desprez, Louis 234 Deussen, Paul 6, 7, 9, 62, 177 Diogenes Laertius 271 Dionysian 110 Doyle, Tsarina 17, 46, 62, 229, 230 Drossbach, Maximilian 9, 23, 65, 161 Dudrick, David 16, 36, 76, 153, 154, 158, 161, 163–​5 Dühring, Eugen 11, 203

290

290

Name Index

Eco, Umberto 55, 66, 68 Eleatic, Eleatics 91, 244 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 3 Endres, Martin 249 Euclidean 42 Féré, Charles 234 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 8 Figl, Johann 5, 19, 20 Finland 67 Fischer, Kuno 3, 6, 7, 12, 14, 19, 21, 103, 111, 119, 124, 125, 134, 149, 168, 226, 242 Fortlage, Karl 19, 20 Foucault, Michel 18, 132, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 French Revolution 250 Fries, Jakob Friedrich 133 Galton, Francis 234 Gardner, Sebastian 42 Gemes, Ken 129, 133 Genette, Gerard 234, 249 Gerber, Gustav 9, 56, 66, 70, 79, 80, 97, 112 Germans (the) 13, 236 Germany 12, 71, 76, 80 Gerratana, Federico 8, 20, 21, 22, 69 Gersdorff, Carl von 5, 12, 19, 20, 133, 165 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 4, 235, 250, 269, 270 Goethean 269 Goncourt, Edmond de 234 Gori, Pietro 134 Grady, Joseph Edward 64 Greeks 3, 77, 83, 95, 97, 110, 158, 194, 213, 226, 250 Green, Michael Steven 74, 81, 93–​9 Guyer, Paul 126, 148 Hamann, Johann Georg 9, 52–​4, 64 Hartmann, Eduard von 3, 8, 9, 11, 22 Haym, Rudolf 6, 21, 23 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 71, 182, 227, 230 Helmholtz, Hermann von 3, 13, 55–​7, 61, 62, 66, 72, 73, 80 Heraclitean 97, 260 Heraclitus 77, 97, 244, 245, 259 Herbart, Johann Friedrich 133

Herder, Johann Gottfried von 8, 52–​4, 65 Hill, Kevin 34, 35, 226, 227, 229, 244, 251 Himmelmann, Beatrix 6, 14, 16, 46, 146, 164, 177 Höffding, Harald 234 Horace 269 Houlgate, Stephen 148, 149 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 9, 53, 54, 65 Hume, David 17, 27–​30, 206, 207, 208, 212, 214, 220, 222 Humean 42, 104, 212, 220, 222–​4 Hussain, Nadeem 23 Hyppolite, Jean 264 Itaparica, André Luís Mota 16 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 148 Janz, Curt Paul 21 Jaspers, Karl Theodor 270, 271 Johnson, Mark 64 Kantianism 1, 2, 6, 14, 18, 72, 103, 105, 107–​11, 114, 128, 129, 130, 133, 183 Kaulbach, Friedrich 199 Kletschke, Hermann 19 Kofman, Sarah 23 Kohl, Otto 3, 19 Köhnke, Klaus 23, 97 Königsberg 238, 265 Königsberg, University of 172 Königsbergian 123, 131, 146 Kraus, Karl 12 Külpe, Oswald 269 Lakoff, George 64 Lamarck, Jean-​Baptiste de 64 Langbehn, Claus 20 Lange, Friedrich Albert 2, 3, 5–​8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 58, 62, 66, 70, 72, 73, 80, 97, 103–​7, 111, 114–​16, 119, 130, 132, 134, 144, 149, 156–​9, 161–​4, 168, 169, 170, 174, 177, 205, 227 Langean 110, 114, 115, 150, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164 Langeanism 21, 163, 164 Langton, Rae 124, 148, 150 Lehmann, Gerhard 3, 19 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 150, 199, 212, 214, 219

  291



Name Index

291

Leibnizean 212, 213 Leipzig 5, 6, 8–​10, 20 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 9, 11, 65 Liebmann, Otto 3, 12, 13, 21, 23, 103, 118, 134, 149 Lindemann, Uwe 249 Lockean 48 Loukidelis, Nikolaos 22, 23 Lupo, Luca 18, 63, 65, 68, 99, 100, 134, 269, 271

Platonic 123, 128, 131, 146 post-​Kantian 7, 9, 18, 20, 71, 103, 104, 132 post-​Kantianism 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 112, 118, 120, 121, 123, 134 pre-​Platonics/​pre-​Platonic philosophy 85, 97, 105 pre-​Socratics/​pre-​Socratic philosophers 77, 83, 97, 228

Marburg school 111 Mattioli, William 14, 22, 81, 97–​100 Meijers, Anthonie 66, 97, 133 Menard, Pierre 248 Metterhausen, Wilhelm 20 Meyer, Jürgen Bona 9 Molnar, George 219, 220, 230 Montaigne, Michel de 3 Müller, Enrico 251, 252 Müller, Max 13, 58, 59, 61, 67, 69, 70 Müller-​Buck, Renate 20 Müller-​Lauter, Wolfgang 175 Mushacke, Hermann 19, 226

Rée, Paul 10 Reuter, Sören 21, 22, 76, 97 Riccardi, Mattia 14, 16, 20–​2, 83, 97, 124–​6, 134, 148, 149, 165, 230, 231, 250 Richardson, John 15, 23, 42, 100, 135 Rohde, Erwin 9, 10, 19, 22, 177 Rohn (bookstore in Leipzig) 5, 20 Röllin, Beat 250 Rolph, William 234 Romundt, Heinrich 3, 9, 10, 19, 22, 62, 64–​6 Rorty, Richard 55 Rosch, Eleanor 67 Rosenkranz, Karl 7, 19 Roth, Friedrick 65, 177 Roux, Wilhelm 94, 175

Natorp, Paul 9 Naumann, Constantin Georg 248 Naumburg 22 neo-​Kantians/​neo-​Kantianism 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 23, 25, 36, 37, 46, 55, 62, 103, 109, 111, 118, 119, 133, 156, 161, 247 Newton, Isaac 213 Niese, Karl Eduard 4 Orsucci, Andrea 21, 65, 66, 97 Ottermann, Stephan 19 Overbeck, Friedrich 9, 10, 21 Oxford 58 Palombi, Fabrizio 271 Parmenidean 83, 84, 91, 182 Parmenides 14, 77, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 95, 181 Pascal, Blaise 3 Petri, Moritz 65 Pfister, Manfred 234 Pichler, Axel 11, 14, 248, 249, 251, 252 Plato 145, 156, 181, 193, 235, 238

Quijote (Quixote) 248, 249

Salaquarda, Jörg 20, 58, 133, 148, 165 Sanskrit 58 Sanskritist 67 Schaarschmidt, Carl 4, 5, 9 Schacht, Richard 42, 133 Schiller, Friedrich 4, 157 Schlechta, Karl 21 Schlimgen, Erwin 99, 100 Schmidt, Siegfried 233, 248 Schopenhauer, Arthur 2–​6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 19–​ 24, 46, 47, 61–​4, 69, 72, 87, 92, 96, 99, 100, 103, 110–​14, 119, 124, 125, 128, 133, 144, 149, 159, 182, 192, 205, 206, 210, 215, 235, 249, 271 Schopenhauerian 5, 7, 8, 22, 63, 72, 110, 113, 114, 120, 215, 226, 227, 229, 230 Schopenhauerianism 8, 10 Schulpforta 3, 4 Siemens, Herman 48, 50, 63, 97, 174, 203, 249 Silenus 110, 193

292

292

Name Index

Simon, Josef 199, 201, 203 Socrates 86, 87, 159, 167, 190, 193, 194, 235, 249, 251 Socratic 7, 46, 190, 193, 194 Solomon, Robert C. 251 Sommer, Andreas Urs 178, 249 Sorbonne, University of Paris 264 Spencer, Herbert 11 Sphinx 116 Spinoza 169, 177 Spir, Afrikan Aleksandrovič 3, 9, 11, 14, 22, 47, 48, 57, 61, 62, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 134, 149, 161, 245 Stack, George J. 20, 58, 116, 132–​4, 148, 165, 227 Stegmaier, Werner 17, 100, 135, 182–​4, 186, 188, 190, 196, 197, 200–​3, 251 Steinthal, Heymann 53, 54, 65 Stingelin, Martin 65, 66, 97 Stockmar, René 250 Stoic 271 Stroud, Barry 30, 33 Taylor, John 67 Teichmüller, Gustav 9, 161 Thales 184 Thomas Aquinas 251 Thüring, Hubert 22 Timms, Edward 12 Tongeren, Paul van 117, 134, 249

Trabant, Jürgen 65 Treiber, Hubert 10, 19, 21, 55, 62, 65 Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf 65 Tübinger Schule 20 Ueberweg, Friedrich 3, 6, 21 Ural-​Altaic (languages) 54, 66 Vaihinger, Hans 132 Van Gogh, Vincent 268 Vedanta 216 Vischer-​Bilfinger, Wilhelm 3, 18 Wagner, Richard 7, 8, 9, 235 Wagnerism 8, 9 Wallace, Alfred Russel 172 Weimar 4 Wenkel, Friedrich August 22 Western 4, 46, 225, 251, 264, 268 Wilcox, John 133 Winckler, Hugo 66 Wolff, Christian 199 Wood, Allen William 150 Zarathustra 118, 162, 178, 195, 197, 260 Zarathustrian 263 Zavatta, Benedetta 9, 13, 22, 23, 53, 59, 66, 67, 269 Zeno of Citius 271 Zittel, Claus 252 Zöllner, Karl Friedrich 22, 66

  293

Subject Index a priori 4, 6, 14, 16, 29, 31–​4, 38, 45, 49, 72–​7, 80, 81–​3, 89, 90, 93, 98, 104, 113–​14, 119–​22, 132, 142, 155–​8, 164–​5, 167, 171, 185, 188, 200, 207–​10, 227, 233, 265–​6affect 37, 39, 48, 62, 95–​6, 182, 197, 209, 247 affection 46, 48, 141, 143, 182, 187 self-​affection 86 affirmation of life 107–​8, 198, 225 agency 1, 165, 169, 189, 201–​2 agent 27–​8, 96, 146, 156, 157, 163–​4, 260 analysis 52, 61, 71–​2, 80, 263 analytic judgements 57, 149 Analytic, Transcendental 82 animal 32, 37–​8, 42, 59, 163, 173–​4, 197 animal rationale/​animal rationabile 172 appearance(s), (See also phenomenon, semblance (schein)) 5, 12, 17, 20, 36, 39, 52, 58, 60, 84, 86–​7, 108, 110, 117, 119–​20, 123–​5, 127–​8, 140–​5, 147–​50, 171, 175, 184, 210, 213–​14, 226, 229, 234–​5, 238, 246–​7, 249 apperception, unity of apperception 28–​30, 34–​5, 37, 39, 40, 59, 209, 227 apprehension 74–​5, 78, 98, 208 auto-​deixis/​autodeixis 252 autonomy 75, 171, 192, 196, 233, 256 becoming 14, 34, 47, 59, 60, 63, 84, 91–​8, 122, 190, 228, 244–​5, 246, 259 Begriffsdichtung (conceptual poetry) 6, 7, 21–​2 belief 16, 27–​8, 30–​1, 33–​4, 36–​7, 39, 41–​2, 45, 49–​50, 57, 74, 93–​4, 108–​9, 117, 149–​50, 153–​63, 165, 190, 193, 207–​9, 225, 244 bifurcation 36–​7 body 12, 31, 40–​1, 43, 49, 54–​7, 62, 64, 78–​9, 143, 187, 195, 197–​8, 202, 213, 229, 261

categorical imperative 12–​13, 117, 187 categories 2, 6, 15, 28, 29, 31, 33–​4, 36, 42, 46–​53, 63–​4, 75, 77, 78, 80, 104–​5, 111–​12, 114–​16, 120, 121–​3, 125–​6, 128–​9, 134, 141–​5, 147, 150, 165, 189 categorization, linguistic 46, 54, 55–​7, 67–​8, 133 causa sui 12 causality, cause 12, 17, 29, 30, 31–​4, 47–​9, 55–​7, 60, 63, 66, 73–​6, 79, 80–​1, 92, 110–​14, 116–​17, 119–​22, 125, 140–​3, 145, 147–​9, 169, 196–​7, 206–​8, 212, 214–​17, 219–​25, 227, 230–​1, 236, 246, 262, 266, 271 cause, final (see also teleology) 167 causes, space of/​reasons, space of 16, 76, 164–​5 causes vs. reasons/​causal vs. logical conditions 29, 31 chance 17, 38, 169, 191–​2, 203 cognition, cognitive 15, 21, 28, 42, 47, 48, 71–​3, 75–​7, 79–​81, 83, 84, 87, 89, 91–​9, 104–​5, 110–​12, 114–​16, 124–​6, 129, 132–​3, 150, 168, 200, 207–​9, 212, 215–​18, 230, 258–​60, 262 cognitive interests 36 cognitive linguistics 64, 67–​8 cognitivism see noncognitivism coincidence 169 comparative linguistics 52–​4 comparative mythology 58 concept-​word (Wort-Begriff) 58 condition (of experience, of possibility, of knowability/​epistemic, of life/​ existence) (see also life-condition) 15, 28, 29–​35, 37–​9, 42–​3, 48–​50, 54–​5, 59, 61, 64, 71–​2, 78, 83, 93, 104, 116–​ 17, 119–​22, 129, 134, 140, 142, 148–​9, 153, 156, 165, 173, 189, 192–​3, 198, 210, 214, 216, 243, 259

294

294

Subject Index

conditioned –​unconditioned (bedingt –​ unbedingt/​das Unbedingte) 5, 14–​15, 34, 47, 60, 74–​6, 78, 82–​6, 90, 91–​3, 97, 99, 104–​5, 115, 121, 129, 132, 149, 183–​4, 186, 188–​90, 192, 194, 200, 206, 216, 223, 236, 247–​8, 252, 259 conscious, consciousness (see also self-​consciousness) 8, 13, 22, 27, 30–​1, 35, 37–​40, 54, 59, 61, 63, 65, 74–​6, 83, 85–​9, 120, 191, 198, 257, 259, 262 construction, constructivism 31, 66, 80, 122, 129, 184–​9, 191, 199 contingency, contingent 33, 50–​1, 81, 129, 156–​7, 168, 176, 185, 191, 194, 200, 209 Copernican revolution (reversal, turn) 28, 106, 186 Critique of the Power of Judgement (see also judgement, power of) 8, 47, 167, 168, 226 Critique of Practical Reason (see also reason, practical) 146 death of God (see God, death of) determining judgements (see judgements) diplomatic edition (KGW IX) 234, 238, 250 discord 173 dogmatic, dogmatism 140, 142, 144, 156–​7, 167, 199, 206, 214, 218, 226, 228, 250 drives (see also affect, instinct) 2, 32, 37–​41, 61, 63, 66, 93, 95–​6, 100, 130, 158–​9, 160, 162–​3, 173, 196–​7, 209, 223–​4, 230, 260 empirical knowledge 84, 97–​8, 153–​4, 156–​7, 161, 165, 168, 211 error 27–​8, 33, 38, 43, 52, 64, 77, 83, 90, 92–​8, 109, 112–​17, 119, 120–​2, 127–​8, 130, 150, 169, 191–​2, 223, 246–​7 error theory (see also falsification thesis) 77, 92–​4, 96, 97–​8 eternal recurrence, eternal return 43, 99, 168, 265, 266–​7 eternal truths (aeternae veritates) 110–​12, 206 ethics 8, 22, 117, 158–​9, 165, 173 evolution (see also Darwinism) 14, 17, 32, 50, 52, 92–​3, 111, 114–​16, 120–​1, 127, 160, 167, 172–​5, 177–​8, 182–​3, 188–​9, 191–​3, 196

experience 4, 15, 27–​32, 39, 42, 46–​7, 49–​50, 55, 60–​1, 67, 68, 72, 74–​5, 77–​8, 82, 84–​6, 89, 91, 98–​9, 104, 112, 114–​16, 120–​2, 124–​5, 127, 140–​3, 147, 149, 156, 163, 176, 185–​6, 194, 200, 207, 209, 211, 216–​17, 227–​8, 255–​9 experiment 37–​9, 41, 73, 170–​2, 176–​7, 185–​6, 201, 224, 270 faculty (power) 21, 122, 126, 142–​3, 171, 173–​4, 182, 188–​9, 200, 207–​9, 227, 255–​7, 262 falsification thesis (see also error theory) 15, 36, 103, 109, 110, 112, 114, 116, 119, 121–​3, 127–​32, 134 final cause (see cause, final) force 17, 40, 96, 157, 168, 175, 191, 212–​15, 217–​19, 223, 230, 234, 256, 259 formative forces 17, 175 freedom 117–​18, 146–​7, 150, 167, 171, 173–​5, 192, 194–​6, 203, 225, 237–​9, 250 functionalization 17, 189, 199 God 4, 19, 37, 110 (Silenus), 117–​18, 146, 149, 154–​6, 159, 161–​2, 190, 195–​6, 202, 238, 266–​7 death of 117–​18, 131–​2, 266 machine-​god 213 heautonomy 171 historical philosophizing 14, 45, 46–​9, 77, 92–​3, 94, 97, 111, 113, 170 horizon 199–​200, 233 human nature (see nature) I (see also subject, apperception) 28, 30–​1, 34, 40–​2, 197, 216, 229 intratextual ‘I’, narrative ‘I’ 243–​7, 251 idealism 5, 7, 8, 12, 14–​15, 22, 30, 71–​2, 76, 85–​6, 88–​9, 95, 98, 103, 113, 118, 142–​6, 150, 190–​1, 207, 210–​11, 214, 216, 226–​9, 245 identical (things) 60, 63–​4, 100 identity, principle of 14, 66, 73–​9, 81–​4, 91–​2, 99, 121–​2, 246 self-​identical 34, 74, 78, 81–​2, 86, 93, 99, 129, 217, 265 ignorabimus 114

  295

Subject Index imagination 2, 207–​10, 255–​6, 262 incorporation 31, 37–​9, 41–​3, 96, 98, 120, 127, 175 instinct 8, 14, 22, 38, 43, 45, 48–​9, 51, 54, 61, 63–​5, 68, 96, 120, 123, 134, 163, 170, 190, 196, 197, 198, 242, 263 intellect (see understanding) intention, intentionality 91, 93, 95, 96, 99–​100, 169, 200, 213, 229, 233, 248, 251 intrinsic nature, property (see also relational) 17, 124–​6, 140, 143–​4, 148, 150, 156, 206–​7, 211, 213–​15, 217–​19, 221, 223–​5, 228–​9, 231 intuition(s) 2, 28, 47, 55, 63, 72–​5, 90, 119–​20, 126, 142, 146, 148–​9, 188, 208, 214, 227, 258 irrational (see rational)

295

life/​living 17, 28, 32–​6, 38–​9, 43, 47, 49, 51, 63, 65, 87, 92, 96, 107, 117–​19, 120, 123, 129, 130, 155, 159, 161, 170–​1, 173–​6, 181, 188, 190, 192–​4, 196, 198, 200, 202, 225, 228, 235, 249 life-​condition (see also condition of life) 15, 31–​4, 37, 42, 64, 116–​17, 119, 129, 134, 173 limits 7, 21, 39, 46, 87, 95, 112, 140, 143–​4, 146, 153, 155, 157, 159, 161, 185, 192, 207, 258, 260, 262, 268 literary forms 14 logic/​logical 6, 29, 31–​2, 34, 52–​3, 56, 73–​4, 95–​6, 98, 109, 111–​12, 120, 128, 140, 142–​4, 146, 148, 150, 161, 165, 181, 183, 189, 192, 199–​201, 206, 216–​17, 221, 231, 245–​6, 255–​6

judgement(s) 13, 31, 47–​8, 50, 53–​5, 61, 63, 65, 80, 93, 97, 104, 115–​16, 121, 134, 142, 155, 189, 201, 207, 227, 230 aesthetic 2 analytic 14, 57, 78, 149 determining 171 evaluative, moral 66, 75, 107, 130, 235, 236, 249 instinctive 68, 120, 134, 196 power of (see also Critique of the Power of Judgement) 171, 200 reflective 171 synthetic 4, 33–​4, 45, 56–​7, 77–​9, 81–​2, 84, 119–​22, 208 teleological (see also teleology) 16, 167–​8, 171, 189

madness 18, 51, 255–​7, 267–​71 materialism 7, 71–​2, 105, 158 materialistic conceptions 168 mathematics/​mathematical 112, 116, 140, 155, 165, 185, 212–​13, 219–​20, 245 meaning 14, 17, 50, 60, 64, 93, 110, 112, 117, 123–​4, 139–​41, 144–​6, 167, 172, 175–​6, 182, 188, 201, 233–​4, 237, 242, 244, 248, 252, 264, 268 meaningless(ness)/​meaningfulness 118, 132, 145, 154, 163, 170, 209 metaphysics 2, 5–​8, 15–​16, 18, 21–​2, 42, 46, 56, 63, 77, 79, 92, 96, 106–​8, 113–​14, 140, 147, 149, 156, 159, 165, 168, 181, 183, 188, 190, 192, 205, 220, 225–​6, 244–​6, 255–​6 morality 37, 45, 117–​18, 135, 155, 174, 176, 184, 236, 245, 248, 261

language 2, 8–​9, 14, 36, 42, 52–​4, 57–​60, 65–​7, 112, 122–​3, 133, 156, 165, 170, 184, 190, 192, 198, 223, 236, 246, 250, 251, 258, 263, 267–​8 linguistic/​linguistics 13, 46, 53–​4, 57, 59–​60, 61, 64, 67, 112, 120, 233, 238, 244, 247–​8, 251, 269 laws (of nature, universal laws) 14, 47, 50, 55, 75, 80–​2, 104, 110–​12, 115, 163, 167, 169, 171, 174–​6, 182, 184, 206–​7, 224

natural selection 59, 168–​9, 172 naturalism/​naturalistic/​naturalization/​ naturalize 6, 14, 17, 31, 38, 47, 72, 76, 79–​80, 93, 106, 110–​11, 114, 133, 153, 158, 165, 168–​9, 177, 182, 196, 206, 217, 221–​2, 225, 229, 245 nature 5, 8, 16–​17, 49, 58, 76, 83, 98, 104–​5, 111–​12, 115–​16, 121, 128–​9, 150, 163, 167–​75, 181–​96, 199, 201, 206, 212–​13, 217–​18, 224 human nature 1, 18, 53, 156–​7, 170, 184, 192–​3, 225

296

296

Subject Index

neo-​Kantianism/​Kantianism/​post-​ Kantianism 1–​2, 6, 8–​9, 14, 18, 72, 103–​11, 114, 118–​21, 123, 128–​30, 133–​4, 183 nihilism 37, 106, 118, 132, 135, 225 noncognitivism 93, 95, 97, 99, 245 normativity/​normative 1, 14, 16, 77, 84, 93, 103, 110, 117–​18, 121, 123, 131–​2, 153–​4, 156–​8, 161–​5 noumenon 99, 140–​1, 144–​50 thing in itself 2, 5–​6, 15–​16, 21, 36, 47, 82–​3, 85, 88, 91–​2, 103–​29, 134, 139–​50, 192, 208, 211–​12, 221, 226–​9, 238, 249

pluralistic/​plurality/​pluralization/​pluralize 13, 17, 78, 82, 86, 92, 95, 97, 105, 116, 130, 135, 189, 197, 199, 234, 256 poetry (see also Begriffsdichtung) 6–​8, 21, 156–​7, 165 power of imagination 255–​6 power of judgement (see judgement) power of orientation 185, 198 purpose/​purposive(ness)/​telos/​ends 8, 16–​17, 31, 47, 59, 118, 131, 167–​76, 186, 189, 191, 195, 198, 200, 213, 229, 259 purposeless/​goalless(ness) 110, 118, 132

objectivity 17, 31, 54, 62, 75, 77, 106, 113, 130, 135, 182, 189, 201, 208, 210–​11, 214, 222 ontology/​ontological 14, 51, 61, 75–​7, 83–​5, 91, 94–​6, 105, 126, 140, 142, 144, 148–​50, 199, 211–​13, 217, 228, 235, 238, 266 organic 48–​9, 51, 61, 65, 75, 91–​3, 115, 167, 171, 175 inorganic 171 organism 7, 32, 48–​9, 93, 120, 169–​72, 175 organization (F. A. Lange) 5, 12, 73, 104, 111, 115–​16 orientation 17, 157, 182–​9, 197–​8, 201–​3 overman (see Übermensch)

rational (being)/​rationality 65, 79, 83, 112, 117, 149, 155–​8, 168, 172–​3, 191–​6, 198–​200, 203, 230, 244, 256, 267 irrational 191–​6, 244, 257, 268 reality 14, 31, 34–​5, 39, 41, 45, 48, 51, 58–​60, 64, 66, 74, 82–​92, 94–​9, 105, 109–​12, 121–​3, 126–​8, 143–​4, 147, 150, 181–​2, 187, 189–​90, 199, 206, 215–​18, 225–​26, 228, 230, 236 empirical reality 85, 127, 212, 228 metaphysical reality 212–​13, 219 reason(s)(see also rational (being)/​ rationality) 13–​14, 16, 17, 27, 31, 33, 42, 48, 52, 54–​5, 61–​2, 65, 76, 79–​80, 82, 87, 110, 112, 120, 122–​3, 128–​9, 135, 140, 145, 147, 155–​7, 161, 163, 167, 171–​4, 181–​203, 223–​4, 238, 242–​8, 250, 256, 268, 271 practical reason (see also Critique of Practical Reason) 147, 172 pure reason 14, 52, 61–​2, 122, 146, 155, 161, 184, 187, 189, 196 reasons, space of see causes, space of /​ reasons, space of unreason 169, 268, 271 reflection 16, 37, 72, 100, 140, 156–​7, 171–​2, 247, 258, 268, 271 regulative (principle, belief, use of reason, fiction) 12, 45, 62, 91–​3, 199 relation(s) 2, 32, 34, 36, 40, 49, 54–​6, 60, 63, 75, 78–​9, 81–​2, 92, 94–​8, 112–​14, 124–​7, 130, 133, 142, 144–​5, 148, 171–​2, 192, 195–​7, 201, 207, 209, 211, 214–​15, 217, 219–​20, 222–​4, 228, 230–​1, 256, 258, 270–​1

paradox 15–​16, 28–​9, 94, 103, 131–​2, 135, 188, 192–​5, 204, 245, 256–​8, 267, 285 part (/​whole) 43, 171, 259 perception 47, 49–​50, 52, 54–​8, 60, 62, 64, 66, 72–​5, 78, 80–​1, 84, 92, 99, 183–​4, 256, 262 perspective(s) 18, 27, 33, 35–​6, 40, 72–​3, 100, 143–​4, 150, 182–​5, 194, 217, 230, 242, 244–​7, 264, 269–​70 perspectivism/​perspectival 15, 35–​6, 43, 62, 109, 131, 135, 143–​4, 149–​50, 161, 181–​2, 189, 199, 201–​3 phenomenon (see also appearance(s)) 2, 5, 16, 59, 66, 80, 86, 88, 91, 108, 124–​5, 128, 140, 148–​9, 164, 197, 223, 259 physiology 1, 5–​6, 12–​13, 20–​1, 23, 43, 45, 49–​50, 52, 54–​5, 61–​2, 72–​3 of the senses 55, 61–​2

  297

Subject Index relational 17, 114, 124–​6, 148, 150, 206, 213–​15, 217–​25, 231 religion 4, 18, 21, 22, 131, 158–​9, 174, 192 representation(s) 14, 30, 48–​9, 52, 56, 58, 60, 64, 67–​8, 73, 75, 77–​8, 83, 85–​96, 99–​100, 109, 112–​15, 120, 126–​8, 140, 142–​3, 148–​9, 163, 210, 216, 227, 229 reversal 17, 28, 181–​2, 184–​7, 255 revolution (see Copernican revolution) scepticism 17, 27–​8, 30, 42, 115, 123, 131, 143, 146, 157, 160, 167, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 222, 223, 257 science(s) 3, 6–​7, 17, 20, 45, 47, 71–​2, 75–​7, 80, 92–​5, 97, 105–​6, 109, 113–​15, 119–​21, 128, 130, 135, 153, 156, 159, 165, 170, 171, 174, 184–​5, 187–​9, 200, 215, 224, 245, 261 self 34–​5, 38, 41, 61, 197–​8, 209–​11, 216, 223–​ 4, 227, 229–​30, 258–​60, 264, 269–​70 self-​consciousness 2, 86, 215 self-​identity/​self-​identical (see identity) self-​knowledge 134, 167, 187, 258, 260, 269, 270 self-​observation 2, 18, 255–71 self-​organization 172, 197–8 self-​relation 195–7 semblance (Schein) 52, 64, 113, 161, 191, 228 sensation 14, 47–51, 56–7, 60, 64–5, 73, 75, 77–8, 80, 82, 98, 134, 245, 259 Sinnesphysiologie (see physiology of the senses) space, time, causality (see also time and causality) 110, 116 space of reasons (see causes, space of/​ reasons, space of) Spielraum 194 struggle for life 173–​4, 176 subject, subjectivity 4, 15, 17, 27–​31, 34–​7, 39–​43, 46, 48, 51–​4, 57, 66, 72, 74–​5, 78, 86–​7, 89–​93, 105, 108, 114, 133, 142, 147, 150, 155, 200, 211, 216–​17, 223, 230, 235, 256–​62 intersubjective/​intersubjectivity 121, 211 substance 28–​9, 31, 40–​1, 48–​9, 53, 59–​60, 63–​4, 73–​5, 77–​8, 82, 88, 92–​3, 119–​122, 140, 144, 148–​50, 190, 212, 214, 216, 219, 222–​4, 246

297

survival of the fittest 175 synthesis 17, 35, 40–​1, 52, 78, 97, 186, 205–​ 12, 214–​21, 225 synthetic judgement (see judgement) teleology 6, 8, 16, 167–​8, 170, 173–​4, 176, 178 thing 7, 27–​8, 30–​1, 35, 38, 41–​2, 46, 48, 49–​50, 52, 55–​60, 62, 64, 66, 74, 78–​9, 81–​3, 85, 90, 97, 105, 109, 112, 118, 122, 124–​7, 140, 142–​5, 148–​50, 154–​5, 171, 175, 177, 183, 192, 214, 217–​18, 220–​2, 224–​5, 229, 231, 249–​50, 256 thing in itself (see noumenon) time 2, 14, 28, 31, 42, 47, 51, 59, 63–​4, 68, 73, 84–​6, 88–​91, 94–​5, 98–​9, 110–​14, 116, 120, 125, 148–​9, 189, 194–​5, 200, 206, 211, 217, 229, 258, 266–​8 timeless/​timelessness 62, 84–​5, 184–​6, 188, 194, 236 transcendental argument 15, 27–​31, 33, 41 transcendental idealism 14–​15, 76, 103, 118, 142–​6, 150, 210 truth 7, 15–​16, 21, 31–​40, 42–​3, 50, 55, 60, 64, 71, 83–​4, 93–​6, 98, 103–​10, 112, 114–​18, 123–​4, 127–​35, 157, 165, 170, 181, 184, 189–​90, 192, 200, 268 untruth 34, 114, 184 Übermensch 38, 266 unbedingt, das Unbedingte (see conditioned) unconditional/​ unconditioned (see conditioned) unconscious 8, 14, 48, 50, 54, 61, 63, 95, 96, 99–​100, 120, 190, 196, 257 unconscious inferences 20, 56, 66, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 81 unconscious tropes 21, 66, 79, 80, 81 understanding 63, 73, 79, 84, 89, 111–​12, 125–​6, 128, 140, 142–​3, 149, 169–​71, 187–​9, 199–​201, 208, 210, 214, 227 laws of 47, 50, 80, 104, 110, 112, 184, 206 unity 28–​30, 34–​7, 39–​41, 43, 77–​8, 81–​2, 85, 109, 121–​2, 146, 189–​90, 201, 246 unsocial sociability 174

298

298

Subject Index

values 32, 37, 38, 95, 107, 113, 117, 119, 130–​2, 157, 162–​5, 176, 186, 198, 225, 228 Christian values 162 variation 14, 38, 116, 168–​70, 217, 246

viewpoint 31, 36, 39, 59, 187, 194, 201 vis viva 206, 212, 231 will to power 12, 17, 63, 91, 96, 126, 168, 172, 198, 205–​6, 212, 215, 217–​26, 242

  299

300