Philosophy and Philosophers - an Introduction to Western Philosophy - Chapter 7
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Later German philosophy: Hegel, Nietzsche
The philosophers Hegel (1770–1831) and Nietzsche (1844–1900) in
many ways could hardly be more different; they differ in style, method
and conclusions. Hegel is methodical and technical where Nietzsche is
deliberately unsystematic and literary; this renders them both obscure
and difficult to understand, but in different ways. Yet there is a
connecting intellectual element, although what each makes of this
common element produces quite different philosophies.
The question arises as to what extent we can have a metaphysics of
reality: to what extent we can be said to have knowledge of reality:
how in a general way the world necessarily is in itself, as distinct from
how it merely appears. A problem arises from the apparent separation
of our view of how the world is and the world itself; once this
separation takes place the problem is to determine to what extent our
view of the world given in the concepts can be known to correspond to
the world itself: reality. One way of looking at this problem of
knowledge of reality is to try to determine which of our basic concepts
with which we think about the world reflect actual objective and
necessary features of the world, and which of our concepts reflect the
contribution of what is merely subjective or contingent. In describing
reality we aim to identify features that are true from any point of view,
which is, so to speak, the point of view of things themselves.
A common connection between Hegel and Nietzsche is the German
intellectual tradition derived from Kant. Kant’s philosophy sets up the
way in which the question of our knowledge of reality is asked. Kant
suggests that there is no way that the basic concepts through which we
have necessarily to think about the world can be shown to be valid for
the world as a reality beyond experience and independent of all
subjective conceptions. Such independence would entail a world to
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which we could never possibly know if our conceptions applied. What
Kant says is that our basic concepts do nevertheless have a kind of
objectivity through being necessarily valid a priori, if not for things-inthemselves
beyond experience, then in all cases for how things can
appear to us and to any rational beings. We cannot justify the assertion
of the objectivity and necessity of our conceptions of the world either
from experience or logically by their denial being contradictory. Their
necessity and objectivity are derived from the universal
intersubjectivity of any rational mind necessarily using these concepts
in all possible thought and knowledge; therefore anything that is
experienced must be formed by these concepts. The function of
philosophy is not then to give metaphysical knowledge of reality as a
whole—thus including things-in-themselves beyond possible
experience, and hence beyond being known as subject to our
conceptions—but must be content to give us knowledge of the a priori
structure of experiences, that is, the world as it appears. Kant also says
that it is within experiences that the appearance/reality distinction
must be made. The natural world as studied by science is the totality of
possible experiences. The function of philosophy is to justify rationally
the necessary application to appearances of the basic concepts which
are presupposed by natural sciences. For example, philosophy alone
cannot determine what causes what, but it can justify the necessity of
the concept of causation that is logically presupposed by science: the
concept of causation, that every event must have some cause, is shown
to be necessarily true in so far as the concept is applied to all possible
appearances but not to things-in-themselves.
Hegel and Nietzsche make something quite different of the
philosophy of Kant. Hegel thinks he can show that our concepts of
reason are necessarily and objectively valid for reality as a whole,
which includes appearances and things-in-themselves but ultimately
eliminates the distinction between them; thus knowledge of reality is
possible; metaphysics is possible. Nietzsche concludes that our
concepts can have no necessary and universal validity because no
concept can; they are interpretations that must be seen as originating
in certain features of the distinctively human condition; there can be
no overall non-perspectival conceptual system, devoid of all and any
points of view, which would give a complete description of reality.
Hegel sees the solution as lying in metaphysical or absolute
idealism. In Kant’s position, where the mind and the world are
separate in some sense, the concepts used by the mind can be known
to be a priori valid only to the extent that the world is regarded as
subject to mind or basic mental categories; that is, they are a priori
valid only for the world regarded as an appearance or phenomenon.
This leaves a problematic residual noumenal world, or thing-in-itself,
which is unknowable, beyond the phenomenon, because it is by
definition that which is independent of all of our conceptual
Hegel, Nietzsche 177
determinations. So long as features of the world are only partly a
product of mind, our concepts are assured as objectively valid only
for that part for which the mind is responsible. Thus with Kant we
cannot know reality as a whole, including reality as it is in itself, but
know it only as it appears: as it comes before the mind. The answer
for Hegel is to show how the mind and the world really form an
identity as one absolute spiritual entity which transcends the dualism
of subject and object; the concepts of thought are thereby necessarily
objectively valid for reality as a whole, not only for appearances,
because to know those concepts is the same as to know the structure
of reality itself; there is no world to which rational concepts could fail
to apply because the world in its entirety is a developing product of
the essence of absolute mind or reason. Our concepts no longer
merely give the form of any possible appearance of things, objective
merely for the world as experienced; rather, they are again absolutely
or unconditionally objective for the world-in-itself because the world
as determined by mental categories is one with the world itself. The
world/concept dualism is collapsed, as is knowledge and the object
of knowledge; thus the absolute objectivity of concepts is regained
with respect to reality in its entirety because there is no residual
thing-in-itself-world of which we have not taken account and for
which our concepts can fail to hold. This is not to say the world is the
product of finite individual minds as in subjective idealism; it is
rather a manifestation of infinite mind or spirit, or mind as such. The
understanding of the world is thus mind understanding the
development of itself.
In Nietzsche we see the triumph of perspectivism: the concepts
which constitute our notion of the world can have no unique objective
validity and represent one partial possible set of concepts which give
an interpretation which is the world to us; they give us, through a set
of classificatory and ordering concepts, a usable picture of the world
whose function and explanation are largely pragmatic. Our concepts,
far from describing the world in an objective and necessary way—
being valid from any point of view or universally—are constructed by
humans for their own peculiarly human purposes, especially the
purpose of survival. That is not to say that because there is no one
necessary way of construing the world any way is as good as any
other; but one view is not better than another in the traditional sense
of corresponding better to reality at all; views are better because they
enhance power and control to live one’s life in certain specific ways
and according to certain values. There can be no one conceptual
framework that gives the complete truth about the world; all views are
partial. Perspectives are a necessary condition of having a world at all.
Our rational conception of the world seems objective and necessary
because we seem not to be able to throw it off; but such conceptual
ordering of the world as we experience it is a kind of simplifying
178 Later German philosophy
fiction or falsification that serves to make the world amenably ordered
and calculable for human beings.
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was born in Stuttgart, the
son of a minor civil servant with a Lutheran background. He was
educated at the University of Tübingen, studying philosophy and
theology. There he met the poet Hölderlin and the philosopher
Schelling. The French Revolution, which occurred during his time at
university, made a deep impression on Hegel; he thought it was
momentous in its rigorous application of reason, but it was also a great
failure because reason was applied in an abstract way that took no
account of particular circumstances of the community. After university
he held various private tutorial posts, and began working on his
philosophy. Hegel taught philosophy at the University of Jena from
1801 to 1803. On leaving he began his first great philosophical work,
The phenomenology of spirit. Jena was occupied by the French in 1807
following the defeat of the Prussians by Napoleon, and the university
closed. After working as a newspaper editor, Hegel was from 1808 to
1816 the headmaster of a Gymnasium at Nuremberg. From 1816 to
1818 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg
where he wrote the Encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. Hegel had
by this time attained a significant reputation as a philosopher, and was
offered in 1818 the prestigious post of Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Berlin. In 1821 he published the Philosophy of right. The
position in Berlin he held until his death from cholera at the age of
sixty-one.
Seminal influences on Hegel’s work derive from his study of Greek
philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle, but also Heraclitus and
Eleatics such as Parmenides. Of philosophers nearer to his time,
Spinoza and Kant greatly affected Hegel’s philosophical outlook.
Among contemporary thinkers important to Hegel we have to look to
Fichte (1762–1814) and Schelling (1775–1854).
The aim of philosophy, according to Hegel, should be to show how a
complete understanding of reality as a totality is possible, and this
entails that all reality has to be conceptually accessible; that there is
nothing real which is not captured by the concepts of reason; there is
also nothing which is a concept of reason which is not real. To reach
this end Hegel claims to prove the necessity of absolute idealism.
Part of the key to the philosophy of Hegel is found in his rejection of
Kant’s limitation of rational philosophical knowledge to the basic a
priori conceptual structure of appearances, which rendered things-inthemselves—things
as not known in their appearances—unknowable.
Thus reality in its entirety is not knowable since things-in-themselves
Hegel 179
are beyond possible appearances and excluded. Kant’s position gives
an oddly bifurcated world: the world as experienced and the world as
not experienced; and within this duality, if we are to talk meaningfully
about “reality” at all, we must talk of some characteristics within
appearances, and not ascribe it to things-in-themselves. Kant’s “critical
philosophy” aims to delineate the limits of philosophical knowledge
and understanding; all knowledge and understanding are
conceptual—bring things under concepts—or are expressed in
concepts; and if the application of our concepts is limited, then so are
knowledge and understanding. Hegel makes a distinction between
understanding and reason; he thinks that proper philosophical reason
can go beyond the limits set to our knowledge by Kant. For Kant the
limits of knowledge of reality are reached when we meet antinomies or
contradictory theses which are irredeemably opposed and between
which we cannot rationally choose; for Hegel philosophical reason can
find a way of transcending the contradiction in a new synthesis.
The question arises as to why Kant feels the need to posit an
unknowable noumenon at all. Overall, the reason must derive from the
realization that the sense of “reality” he is able to give within the realm
of appearances is not fully satisfying. Kant suggests that the raw
sensation of intuitions must have an external cause and the cause is the
thing-in-itself; but the thing-in-itself cannot be the cause of anything,
since the category of causality cannot apply to it. In any case, Kant’s
successors were quick to point out that noumenon is contradictory.
Even if we avoid giving any function to noumenon, it is still said to
exist; and this means the category of existence applies to it in flat
contradiction of the assertion that no categories can apply to it; even if
only one category is applicable to noumenon, it cannot be wholly
unknowable, which contradicts the initial supposition that it is
unknowable.
The collapse through contradiction of the conception of the thing-initself
leads inexorably to absolute idealism, and to the complete
knowability of everything. If noumenon is eliminated as the external
source of the given element in knowledge, sensation, to which the
mind introduces a priori form, then the distinction between form
imposed by mind and given content derived from sensation is
destroyed, and the universe must in its entirety be a product of mind.
This attacks the vital Kantian distinction between form and content,
between the a priori and a posteriori. What can be brought under
concepts is knowable; but noumenon is contradictory if posited as that
which cannot be brought under concepts, since it can at the very least
be known to exist: it is. Therefore everything is necessarily knowable,
since it is contradictory to posit that which cannot be brought under
concepts. To posit an unknowable “something” is contradictory, since
in positing it as something which exists we apply a concept, and to
apply a concept is to know that thing to which the concept is applied.
180 Later German philosophy
Indeed, Hegel suggests that the whole notion of being able to know the
limits to our knowledge is impossible. We should also note that
proving that all is knowable is by no means the same as saying that all
is known and that there are not things of which we are ignorant.
Everything must be knowable because a minimum condition for there
being something unknown in the totality of the universe is that it is,
but in that case it is something known, not unknown. If the thing-initself
is said to be “nothing”, we have applied a concept that makes it
completely knowable. In short, if X is posited as unknowable, it is
knowable, therefore it is knowable.
The result of this is that we must reject all talk which divides
knowledge of reality from reality itself for we can have no conception
of reality apart from knowledge, no place to stand where we could
compare knowledge and reality. We always work from within existing
knowledge to understand reality.
The argument that reality in its totality is knowable logically
inclines one to monism: for the universe to be understandable as a
whole everything must be explicable—which is not the same as
everything being actually explained—and for it to be possible for
everything to be explicable the universe must be posited as one selfexplanatory,
self-contained entity. This is the Absolute or reality as a
whole revealing itself in the fully adequate conceptual description of
the Absolute Idea or Notion where subject and object are one in a selfthinking
thought. The Absolute is the universe or reality as a totality;
in short, everything. Everything in the universe is understood through
something else in the universe; but if the universe—reality as a
whole—is to be understood or explained it must in total form a whole
which is self-explanatory; otherwise a regress of explanation could
not be ended. As Hegel puts it, “The truth is the whole”, for to
understand any part involves understanding the whole. If we try to
understand the truth about a part in isolation we will find that a
contradiction will arise in that we have to refer to some relation
outside it; ultimately we can draw this process to a close only when
we have a view of the whole and there is nothing outside left to refer
to; we thereby transcend and include all relational thinking in
describing reality.
Once the thing-in-itself that is inaccessible to our concepts is
eliminated by being shown to be impossible, then all reality is
accessible to concepts, for to posit that which is inaccessible to
concepts is contradictory. Thus the real is the rational and the rational
the real. What this means is that all that is real is the rational process of
concept generation, and hence is knowable, and the rational process of
concept generation is the real. The world in its totality is the necessary
unfolding of the logic of concepts. There is no longer any question of
our concepts failing to apply to reality in the sense of the totality of the
universe, for just as Kant’s categories were objective for all
Hegel 181
appearances, Hegel’s concepts now apply to reality itself, for the world
as it falls under concepts is all the world can be at any moment in its
unfolding: it is the real.
The function of philosophy is to construct or understand the
Absolute, to prove that the truth about reality as a whole is knowable.
Since it is not possible to posit anything apart from what falls under
mental concepts, to trace the development of concepts is to trace the
development of reality itself. In the Absolute, mind (the subjective)
and object (the objective) are collapsed into an ultimate subject that
rises above the duality because its object is itself; that is, the totality
thinks about what can be its only object, itself. The Absolute is the
actualization of this self-thinking thought: reality as a whole fully
understanding itself as a whole. Some writers have given the Absolute
a theistic interpretation and have seen the description of the Absolute
as a description of God; however, it cannot be a transcendent God, but
God immanent in the world. Absolute knowledge is the point at which
the infinite mind, through our finite mind, has a complete
understanding of reality, and that is when the Absolute has a complete
understanding of itself, including the process that led to that complete
understanding. Absolute knowledge captured in the Absolute Idea
gives a perfect conceptual description of the nature of reality
including, of course, the charting of the logical progression of
increasingly adequate concepts to that Absolute knowledge which is
the realization that the true nature of reality is that of the totality
which knows itself. Absolute knowledge is the realization in the
Absolute Idea that reality is ultimately a self-thinking thought, that
absolute idealism is necessarily true so that reality is ultimately one
infinite self-thinking mind. Reality is like a sphere with a perfect
mirror on its inner surface where every part is perfectly reflected in
another—but in this metaphor we would have to realize that the
sphere could not have an outer surface.
It is important to note that the mind referred to here—which
produces through its concepts reality in its entirety and is thus
identical with that reality, so that to understand reality is just the same
as to understand those concepts of mind—is not finite individual
mind, but one infinite or objective mind, whose essence is reason.
Reality can be nothing but the conceptual construction of infinite mind
(spirit or Geist), so knowledge of reality turns out to be mind’s
knowledge of itself. But the infinite mind understands itself through
finite minds; and the conceptual development manifest in finite minds
in various human activities, especially in philosophy, will reflect the
conceptual development of reality itself. The development of the
world, present reality as a whole, is towards the Absolute and is just
the same as the development to that point at which reality has a fully
adequate understanding of itself in the Absolute Idea under the
category of a single self-thinking thought.
182 Later German philosophy
There is a strong teleological element in Hegel’s account of reality;
the universe moves towards the Absolute as the end or result. Reality
is identical with, and includes, the process of infinite mind’s
conceptual development towards absolute knowledge, which is
knowledge of reality, which is reality as self-knowing. Reality at any
stage or “moment” in the development can be nothing other than the
total system of concepts of reality, which are manifest through the
conceptual development of finite minds. In the end state of this
conceptual development, where the Absolute is a fully self-knowing
thought, the subjective and objective, the concept of reality and reality
itself, indeed all conceptual opposites, differences and relations, are an
identity contained in a unity. A fully comprehensive knowledge of
reality will involve the identity of all opposing concepts, for the
Absolute includes in itself all concepts—all determinations. Otherwise
the understanding will be inadequate, as it will not be complete; for
what is rational is real, and what is rational is what can be brought
under concepts, therefore if some concepts are not included, there
cannot be an understanding of the Absolute, since such an
understanding leaves something out. The Absolute cannot be either
one thing or its opposite, but must be both in an identity. Where all
conceptual opposites become one, or identities, it might be supposed
that the Absolute is an indeterminate, undifferentiated and
unknowable “something” where conceptual characterization is
impossible because opposites have become identities. But Hegel does
not think of the Absolute as the vanishing point at which all
conceptual differentiation is destroyed; rather, it is where all opposing
concepts are unified into one all-encompassing entity which preserves
their real opposition: an identity-in-difference. The opposition of
concepts is not merely apparent, but real, and their real difference is
preserved in their identity. The Absolute, in knowing itself as a totality,
recognizes the various phases that lead to that final state as real
moments in its life. In the progress towards the Absolute nothing is
lost. An analogy might be the way in which the colour white is
produced by combining all colours.
If the rational is the real and the real the rational, this means that
reality just is the process of infinite mind actualizing the end state:
reality as the self-knowledge of the totality. This process of conceptual
development, which is also necessarily the development of reality
itself towards the Absolute, is dialectical. The dialectic development of
reality towards the Absolute takes place under three headings:
(1) Logic
(2) Philosophy of Nature
(3) Philosophy of Mind.
We can trace the development of dialectical Logic working itself out
towards the Absolute—towards the complete truth about the nature of
Hegel 183
reality, the whole, which is the Absolute’s conception of itself—in any
of the above. They must all amount to aspects of the same thing: the
necessary march of reason towards the total truth about the universe,
which is an infinite mind’s understanding of itself.
In (1) Logic describes the inner essence of the Absolute in its pure
form, including of course the necessary movements towards its
actualization. It is the study of the development of the Absolute in the
non-temporal dialectical Logic of conceptual development itself
abstracted from its manifestations in human minds or the natural
world. The manifestation of the process of the Absolute in (2) and (3)
involves the discernment, among the mass of facts about nature and
human world history, of the bare bones of reason’s conceptual
development in nature and through history given in (1). What is
studied under (2) and (3) is the progress manifest in the temporal
world of the Logic of the Absolute. In all cases this follows the same
overall pattern: objectivity as thesis, subjectivity as antithesis, which
form a unity in the Absolute Idea.
It is vital to understand that the terms of Hegel’s Logic are not
propositions but concepts and that, unlike traditional logic, it is
concerned not with mere form but also with content. Traditional logic
is concerned with valid argument-forms; the universal necessity of
these forms derives precisely from their being valid regardless of
content. We can see this in the following syllogism.
This argument is valid whatever we substitute for X, Y, or f; but for
that very reason traditional logic on its own can tell us nothing about
the actual world and is purely hypothetical, valid regardless of actual
truth. It is important to understand that Hegel is concerned with a
Logic of concepts which have content and which tell the truth about
reality. Once the distinction between conceptual development and
reality is ultimately eliminated as an untenable opposition, the
dialectic Logic of conceptual development is the development of
reality itself. The form/content distinction disappears, and thus the
aim of Hegel’s Logic is truth.
The dialectic of concepts is a structure whereby less adequate
conceptions of reality are overcome but retained to form conceptions
which are more adequate. We can envisage this as a series of
expanding concentric circles, each of which is more adequate in its
description of reality. At any level less than the whole, the concepts we
employ to describe reality are found to be contradictory; what this
contradiction amounts to is the idea that isolated description is
contradictory in different ways in different cases, but always because it
184 Later German philosophy
cannot be genuinely isolated. The attempt to describe a thing which is
less than the Absolute or whole in isolation will be contradictory
because it will necessarily involve relations to things outside it. Thus
the concept A will be found to involve not-A. It is not that both are
simultaneously true, thus breaking the law of non-contradiction, not-
(A and not-A); it is that both separately are inadequate in expressing
the truth, and to get nearer the truth they have to be raised up into a
higher synthesis which contains the truth from both. The less adequate
conceptions are not discarded but preserved in the more adequate
conceptions. Ultimately it is found that the whole system of concepts is
interdependent, and the whole system alone removes all
contradictions and gives an adequate description of the truth about
reality. Up to the point of absolute knowledge the impetus to improved
conceptual mastery of reality comes from reason being driven by
contradictions in its attempt to complete a conceptual description of a
part of reality in isolation. The intellect cannot rest content with an
incomplete and, in Hegel’s sense, therefore an internally contradictory
view of reality. The method involved in attaining the complete
conceptual grasp of reality involves an essentially triadic structure:
concept A (“thesis”) is inadequate in capturing reality on its own and
is found logically to involve its opposite B (“antithesis”); we cannot
think the A without the B; A is thus “contradictory” in isolation from
its relation to B; so both are found to be inadequate descriptions of
reality, and thus form, preserving their opposition and identity, C
(“synthesis”). But the C is also then a thesis and will also be found to
be inadequate, and to involve its antithesis D, which will give rise to
their resolution in E; and so on.
A (thesis)
® C (synthesis/thesis)
B (antithesis) ® E…
D (antithesis)
The nature of reality is deduced from the first principle using the
triadic dialectical method. The first principle turns out to be a category
or concept, since concepts have the right kind of logical, rather than
temporal, priority through their level of inclusiveness. The first
concept with logical priority is Being or “isness”. This is the
fundamental category of reality: whatever is real is, it has the most
abstract quality of “isness”; whatever the determinate character of any
real thing in the world, it logically presupposes the category Being.
But, just because it is the absence of all determination, Being is a
vacuity and is found to be identical with Nothing; Being contains
within it its opposite, Nothing. Reason cannot rest with this
contradiction. From the process of Being passing into Nothing because
the two are identical, we see that equally Nothing passes into Being;
Hegel 185
this leads to a concept in which the concepts of Being and Nothing are
unified in an identity of opposites: Becoming. In the category of
Becoming the concepts of Being and Nothing are preserved in their
difference and also in their identity. They are “sublated” or “put aside”
in a higher unity. The poorest, but still true definition or conception, of
the Absolute is Being; this is the starting point of the logical derivation
of all the concepts which give increasingly adequate definitions of the
Absolute which is reality as a totality; the dialectical deduction of
concepts produces increasingly adequate definitions or conceptions
which include the earlier ones, ending in the most adequate definition
of the Absolute, the Absolute is the Absolute Idea: self-thinking mind.
It should be noted that philosophy, in exhibiting the development of
reason through our actual history, as in (3) above, is not disputing, or
indeed discovering, historical facts; what it is doing is giving an
interpretation describing their dialectical Logic. The mass of factual
details is boiled off to leave the outline of the dialectical process.
In (3), which is the Absolute manifest as mind or spirit, we can trace
the Logic of the conceptual development in consciousness towards
attaining the complete truth about reality as necessarily being absolute
idealism. The Absolute’s knowledge of itself is not identical with the
thoughts of any finite mind, but finite minds are carriers of the
increase in conceptual mastery down through history. Thus we are
tracing in the philosophy of spirit the conceptual development of
mankind, which is the development of consciousness to ever higher
levels of understanding, eventually participating in the Absolute’s selfknowledge.
The phenomenology of mind or spirit studies forms of
consciousness as they acquire a better grasp of reality. We can trace the
manifestation of the dialectic of spirit in its objective manifestations
through the history of public institutions, societies and cultures, which
is the development of the idea of freedom.
In the Philosophy of Mind we can follow the dialectical development
in two connected ways: (a) “Subjective Mind”, (b) “Objective
Mind”,
(a) “Subjective Mind”
This is the phenomenology of mind—mind’s appearance to itself—
the way that mind itself has developed with dialectical necessity to
higher levels of consciousness so as to participate in absolute
knowledge. Hegel traces consciousness from its lowest levels to the
highest. This has three main phases.
(i) Consciousness This starts with “sense-certainty”: the awareness
of raw unclassified sensations. But it soon becomes clear that
knowledge, through awareness of bare particulars, is
contradictory because the awareness is ineffable: to articulate it
without using the universal categories is impossible; even
“this”, “here”, “now” take us beyond what is immediately
186 Later German philosophy
given. Universal terms are required. This leads on to the next
stage, “perception”, in which we classify what we perceive
under sensuous universals—“table”, “star”. But soon it is clear
that non-sensuous universals are involved which are not
encountered in experience—“many”, “one”—and these are
posited as existing as separate realities. These form the basis
for scientific laws. The universals are studied as independent
objects.
(ii) Self-consciousness This begins with the stage at which we realize
that the conceptual structure of the world is a construct of
mind; we become conscious of ourselves as active categorizers
and law makers. Consciousness recognizes the object not as a
not-self but simply as itself. This is the beginning of selfconsciousness;
we are turned back on ourselves. But the object
still remains obstinately regarded as external to the self and at
the same time really one with self. This gives rise to the next
phase, “desire”, in which the aim is pure self-consciousness
where the only object truly is itself; so the self tries to destroy
the external object by consuming it. But the very need to
destroy the external object shows that the self is still dependent
for its self-consciousness on the external. This solipsist phase
gives way to one in which the existence of other selves are
recognized in the world: other egos which are, of course,
themselves self-conscious. If we cannot negate the object, it
must negate itself; but only consciousness can negate itself; so
the external object is recognized as an ego. The independence
of the egos rival one another; this struggle is recognized in the
master/slave relationship, in which one seeks to destroy the
other. The independence of the other ego is negated by the
master in regarding the slave as a thing without selfconsciousness
but as mere consciousness. Thus the object for
the slave is not itself, but merely the external objects on which
it labours for the master. But again contradiction arises because
the master finds he is dependent on the slave through the fact
that the extent of independence of his self-consciousness
depends on negating the self-consciousness of the slave, which
proves independence of the slave, but that means the slave
must after all be self-conscious. The master finds he needs the
slave for his recognition as the master. Also the slave becomes
self-conscious in seeing himself in what he creates. Each now
recognizes the other as self-conscious again. The mutual
acceptance by all selves of each other ushers in the notion of
“universal self-consciousness”.
(iii) Reason The equal recognition of all egos means that another
consciousness is for my self-consciousness another selfconsciousness,
and is therefore myself. Ego contemplates ego
Hegel 187
as its object. Thus the object of self- consciousness is in
whatever it contemplates simply itself. Thus we reach pure
self-thinking thought, where the only object of thought is itself,
and the distinction between self and other is made within self,
since there is nothing beyond infinite mind. Thus we have
absolute idealism.
We can see how the triadic dialectic works here: objectivism and
subjectivism are combined in absolute idealism where the distinction is
transcended because the Absolute is the totality. The object for the
totality identical with mind can only be itself.
(i) Consciousness
(the object is
independent of
self).
® (iii) Reason (subject/
object distinction
is collapsed).
(ii) Self-consciousness
(the object is
identical with
subject).
(b) “Objective Mind”
This constitutes the public manifestation of spirit, which is in turn
the development of the dialectic. Hegel supports this belief with
interpretations of actual historical periods. Roughly, this historical
progression is “The Oriental World” (in which only one, the
despot, is free), “The Greek World” (in which only some, nonslaves,
are free), “The Germanic World” (in which, eventually, all
are free). The overall direction of history is towards consciousness
of freedom. Freedom is understood by Hegel not as absence of
coercion and doing what one likes, but as acting from selfdetermination;
and that means acting according to universally
valid rational principles because in acting under the
determinations of universal rational prescriptions one is most free
from individual causal circumstances. Obedience to absolute moral
laws and ethical individualism are synthesized in the “organic
community” in which the individual is free because the rational
moral principles he would, as an individual, obey in order to be
free are also the specific rational laws of the community: they are
in harmony. Moreover, since the community forms the individual,
what he naturally desires or wills is no longer pitted against the
attempt to obey abstract rational moral principles; rather, he
188 Later German philosophy
naturally wills those rational principles which are also society’s
laws.
Hegel’s philosophy of absolute idealism can itself be seen as a result of
a triadic synthesis of Platonism and Kantianism in the search for
knowledge of reality, which means the possession of necessary and
universal truths about the actual world. Empiricism alone cannot
through experience support such truths; such truths can only be
known a priori as the conceptual truths of the intellect.
(I) Platonism is a form of objectivism: one in which the sensible
world is found to be ontologically unsuitable for necessary and
universal truths. So the concepts constituting these truths are said to be
mind-independent and concerning an intelligible, world-transcendent
realm of mind-independent things-in-themselves, but they are not
properly applicable to the sensible world.
(II) Kantianism is a form of subjectivism: one in which the sensible
world cannot rationally justify such necessary and universal truths. So
the concepts constituting these truths are said to be mind-dependent
and concerning a sensible realm of mind-dependent appearances, but
they are not applicable to things-in-themselves.
(III) Hegelian absolute idealism. The concepts which are objective in
Platonism (I), apart from mind and not applicable to the sensible
world, and the concepts which are subjective in Kantianism (II),
dependent on mind and applicable only to the sensible world, are
synthesized in absolute idealism (III): they are found to constitute
reality itself in its totality. The concepts constituting necessary and
universal truths are subjective or mind-dependent and objective or
mind-independent because rational essence of mind, infinite mind, is
the only reality there can be; apart from reality constituted by the
rational concepts of mind there can be no reality. Finite mind
participates in infinite mind in so far as the infinite mind is in the
finite, and that means in so far as finite minds accord with the
dialectical rationality of infinite mind, which is to the extent that finite
mind abides by reason which is what is universal and essential about
mind. Thus objectivism and subjectivism, and the subject/object
dichotomy, are synthesized and transcended in absolute idealism,
where infinite mind and the whole of reality are one self-thinking
entity: the Absolute.
We can conclude with a general remark on Hegel’s philosophy.
Absolute knowledge is reached when the Absolute fully understands
itself in the Absolute Idea: for the totality to understand itself is to
show how the completely adequate understanding of reality is
possible. It is extraordinary to note that Hegel thinks that his
philosophy is the culmination of the Absolute’s self-knowledge, not
just a description of it; Hegel’s own philosophy is the manifestation in
the world of the Absolute’s full conceptual grasp of itself in the
Hegel 189
Absolute Idea in which the object and subject are one: the subject can
have as its object only itself. The development of infinite mind has
reached its culmination and is manifest through Hegel’s finite mind:
the philosophy of absolute idealism.
Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was born in Röcken in Germany the
son of a Lutheran pastor. His father died in 1849; his upbringing was
dominated by his pious mother, also his sister and aunts. His rigorous
early education, which included classics, took place at the famous
boarding school at Pforta, near Naumburg. For most of his life
Nietzsche laboured under the effects of poor health, including weak
eyesight; for days on end he was struck down by crippling migraines.
Nietzsche studied philology at the University of Bonn and then at
Leipzig; while a student he encountered the greatest influences on his
early thinking, the composer Richard Wagner (1813–83) and the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Nietzsche’s
outstanding academic achievements are indicated by his appointment,
when only twenty-five, as Professor of Classical Philology at the
University of Basel. He resigned from Basel in 1878 because of illhealth.
From 1878 to 1889 he led an immensely lonely life wandering
from place to place in Europe, often in the high Swiss mountains. It
was during this time that most of his major works were written. His
romantic intentions were always hopelessly unfulfilled, and he
remained unmarried. In 1889 Nietzsche rushed into a street in Turin
and embraced a horse that was being flogged; he then suffered a
massive mental collapse that plunged him into a vegetative insanity
for the rest of his life; during the last ten years of his life all spark of
intelligence left Nietzsche’s mind; the decline may have been due to
acquired or inherited syphilis. Until the end of his life he was looked
after mostly by his mother but also by his sister Elisabeth, who
propagated mythology and obscurity around Nietzsche’s work.
It is impossible not to be controversial in giving an account of
Nietzsche’s philosophy; this is partly because of the scattered nature of
his views on any one subject, and partly because of his manner of
writing. In concentrating on that part of Nietzsche’s philosophy
concerned with the nature of philosophy, knowledge and metaphysics,
one must be aware that a great deal of his interest lies in the realm of
values and how one ought to live one’s life; but the two areas are
intimately connected in Nietzsche’s thought. Nietzsche’s grounds for
rejecting the possibility of absolute knowledge in general include
values in particular. Although Nietzsche deliberately does not produce
a systematic exposition of his views, nevertheless all parts of his
philosophy are interconnected. The overriding consideration in the
190 Later German philosophy
account of Nietzsche given here is to take seriously his repeated
pronouncement that he was doing something quite different from
what had gone before in philosophy. With this in mind, one should
avoid attempting to fit him conveniently into any philosophical school.
It is all too easy to construe Nietzsche as presenting albeit novel
answers to the same old philosophical problems. His aim, however, is
to question the very concepts in which traditional philosophical
problems are couched. Traditional philosophy has been concerned to
present to philosophical problems answers which it aims to be
universally and objectively true. But the presupposition that lies
behind this advancement of a philosophical position as universally
valid is that such universal and objective truths are possible—and it is
exactly this that Nietzsche denies is the case. This denial is not the
same as advocating scepticism with regard to knowledge, for
scepticism too assumes that knowledge must involve necessity and
certainty, but thinks it is something we cannot attain.
The key to Nietzsche’s philosophy is his attack on absolutism of any
sort, final universally binding answers to philosophical problems,
which easily leads to dogmatism. There are, in fact, no eternal
transcendental truths waiting to be discovered, independent of all
thinkers whatsoever.
Nietzsche refers to all views or theories as false or as fictions.
Everything is false, and what we regard as true are but convenient
errors required for our lives. This applies to our common-sense or herd
view of the world, which he regards as a convenient fiction, but on
which our survival has come to depend: it is a world of independent
things, of various kinds, that causally interact according to certain
laws, and is observed by a relatively permanent self. This view has
become so deeply entrenched that we no longer recognize it as a view,
among other possible views, at all. In particular the a priori categories
that Kant regards as universally valid, and hence objective, are
regarded by Nietzsche as having no absolute necessity or universal
validity, but as products of human interests and purposes; they are no
more than psychologically a priori. All views of the world are attempts
to schematize and organize experience for the sake of control and
power over our environment. But there is no reason therefore to
suppose that the way we view the world—our conception of reality—
need be universally valid in terms of power and control for everyone.
Nietzsche is opposing ideals which produce an ossified and idealized
“fabricated world” which is then regarded as the only “real world”. In
Twilight of the idols Nietzsche says, “I mistrust all systematizers and
avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
We must come to see our truths, and our claims to knowledge, in all
fields of activity for what they are: interpretations from certain
perspectives. There is also no possibility of a complete view of
anything or everything. Thus we find that he attacks metaphysics,
Nietzsche 191
knowledge, truth, moral values and values in general, in so far as
definitive answers are proposed. Once we see that we have no more
than different perspectives on the world, we are liberated from the
tyranny of supposing that any view has ever to be accepted as a final
universally valid view. It is not just a matter of being modest in our
philosophical claims by saying that we are not sure if we have finally
solved certain philosophical problems; it is a matter of actively
denying that such final solutions are ever attainable.
Nietzsche objects to the pretence of philosophers that they have, or
at least can have, a disinterested concern for the truth and knowledge,
one that is unaffected by, and separable from, any considerations of
conditions that would define in some way a point of view or
perspective: the specific values, personal predilections, and attitudes to
life that characterize what kind of people they are. It has been the habit
of metaphysicians to juxtapose a superior absolute disinterested view
of the world—which usually means positing another “real world”
beyond or behind the apparent one—with the unthought-out vagaries
of the common-sense view of the world whose chief aim has not been
the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and truth. There is no such
disinterested point of view which would fulfil the condition for
describing reality; all views are inherently perspectival and thus not
exhaustive; the view from nowhere is no view at all; it is not even an
unattainable ideal.
Unlike the systems of metaphysics proposed by past philosophers,
which give a view of reality, the indisputable value of the
commonsense view of the world is that it at least has been of
pragmatic use to us: it has promoted the survival of our species.
Indeed, the common-sense view has prevailed and is regarded as
“true” precisely because it aids survival; the views that did not aid
survival have, of course, died out with their proponents or have been
rejected as “errors”. The entrenchment, the seeming necessity of our
commonsense view, is determined not by its logically absolute or
universal necessity or by its accurate reflection of reality, but by its
huge value in promoting a particular kind of life and attitude to life:
specific interests and values. The imposition of false simplifications or
coarsenings by which we give order to our world is a precondition for
survival; they arrange a world in which our existence is made possible.
This applies to our belief in “things”, natural laws and causality, the
self, and even logic. In this sense Nietzsche’s account of why we have
the concepts we have, and which views we hold to be true, is
naturalistic, rather like the position of Hume. Nietzsche says in the
book The will to power that “Rational thought is interpretation
according to a scheme that we cannot throw off.” We become the
prisoners of our “truths” and “knowledge”: we forget they are fictions
serving our survival, and instead of their serving our needs, we serve
the “truths” and “knowledge” which we come to regard as more than
192 Later German philosophy
instruments of survival. The “truths” and “knowledge” were designed
to fit us and our needs; once we lose sight of this the relation is
reversed, and we begin to fit the “truths” and “knowledge”. For
Nietzsche this relation is particularly important in the area of human
values.
That a view promotes certain interests and values is not
objectionable in itself because every view does this in different ways.
What Nietzsche objects to is the dogmatism he sees as inherent in the
various metaphysical systems of the past, which suppose they can rise
above perspectival interests and values and present to us a
disinterested, non-perspectival, complete, view of things truly, as they
really are in themselves. The philosophers’ metaphysical systems,
however, are really doing the same kind of thing as common sense:
they are producing organizing schemata that reflect specific deep
values and interests. This would be fine provided we realized what we
were doing, because we are not obliged to accept the systems unless
we want to accept those specific values as well, values which point to a
way of life and an attitude to life. The notion that metaphysics seeks a
non-perspectival value-free view of reality contains latent dogmatism
because if the view is transcendentally universal and necessary, as it is
usually claimed to be, then it demands of everyone that they accept it
regardless of their specific perspectival view and values. But
Nietzsche’s point is that there are only perspectives.
Nietzsche objects to the claim that the metaphysical systems of
philosophers are superior to common sense in being more true in the
sense of corresponding to the true nature of reality: all views are
equally false or fictions in that sense. Nietzsche does not defend
common sense against the metaphysicians because it gives the truer
view of reality, but on the grounds that it has, at least in the past,
proved beneficial to life. He does not attack common sense because it
is false or a fiction—not presenting to us the truth about reality in the
sense of corresponding accurately to reality—but because it has now
become inimical to life and harmful to that which is strongest and best
in us. Nietzsche wishes to replace the common view of the world, not
on the grounds that his view is truer in the sense of more accurately
describing reality in the way that traditional metaphysics advocates—
the common view is not therefore claimed to be refuted—but because
his view supports certain values, attitudes and a mode of life which he
wishes to advocate for the future development of man. His attempt to
replace common-sense or herd views of the world and values with
new views does not involve utterly overthrowing existing values, but
he admits it is dangerous because the herd view has undoubtedly had
survival value; the ushering in of new views is difficult and opens up
the possibility of our destruction through disorder or harmful views.
It is sometimes suggested that Nietzsche is rejecting the
correspondence theory of truth, whereby we suppose we can
Nietzsche 193
accurately reflect an independent reality, and replacing it with a
pragmatist theory of truth, whereby what is true is determined by the
effects holding a conception has on the practical conduct of one’s life
and whether it thereby works. This, however, is most misleading if one
thinks that Nietzsche’s criterion for truth is the base utility of our
views in the narrow sense of being practically useful. This would be
greatly at variance with the whole spirit of Nietzsche’s philosophical
outlook. Nietzsche defends common sense because it has been shown
to be motivated by serving specific values effectively—mainly practical
values connected with survival—but that does not mean that a view
has to serve those values, even if any view must serve some set of
values or other. He is in fact arguing against the delusion that what
promotes life guarantees truth in the sense of truths which must be
agreed to by all.
It has been said that while Nietzsche ostensibly rejects the whole
notion of views and theories of reality accurately mirroring, or failing
to mirror, a world which is an independently ordered objective reality,
he tacitly assumes a correspondence theory of truth in saying that
common-sense views, and indeed all views, are in that correspondence
sense false. Nietzsche is thus accused of inconsistency in that if all
views are false in failing to correspond to reality, there must be some
absolute standpoint which does correspond accurately to reality,
compared to which all existing views are not true; so, in fact, not all
views need be false. If, as Nietzsche says, error might well be a
condition for life, and views that promote life are not thereby shown to
be true, it suggests that there is some sense in which some theory
might be true in reflecting reality more accurately. Be that as it may,
Nietzsche wishes to undermine and replace the correspondence notion
of truth with a notion of “truth” that is open about its being motivated
by promoting some specific values or other, rather than claiming
disinterestedly to pursue correspondence to an objective reality; and
these values, and hence the associated “truths”, need not be accepted
by everyone. Nietzsche’s claim is that we cannot rid ourselves of the
values that motivate our “truths”, which such “truths” in fact serve
and which lead to our deciding what is “true”. But it is arguable that
because a view is shown to promote certain specific values, this is
sufficient to show that the view cannot nevertheless just be true in the
sense of reflecting reality.
Nietzsche does indeed present to us a theory in the “will-topower”
which is a view of the world; the world is the will-to-power,
and nothing else besides. Partly he seems to do this in order to show
that the world is such that no view of reality can ever be right if it
claims the world has an objective order. But that seems to suppose
some kind of correspondence notion of truth. However, he cannot
consistently support his assertion that no view can accurately mirror
reality by presenting an account of the world which gives just such
194 Later German philosophy
an account of reality. The will-to-power must be advocated on
grounds other than that it mirrors reality accurately, and this is what
Nietzsche does.
Nietzsche’s view is that the world is a never-ending flux or
becoming with no intrinsic order. The world comprises power-quanta
whose entire being consists in the drive or tendency to prevail over
other power-quanta. Power-quanta differ from one another entirely
quantitatively, not qualitatively, and they should not be thought of as
things; their entire being consists of their activity, which is their attempt
to overcome and incorporate in themselves other power-quanta. Each
power-quantum is the sum of its effects; it is what it does. Thus the
world is a constant flux of struggle, but it is not a struggle between
“things”, it merely involves a constant variation of power-quanta. We
too are part of this flux. Human beings are nothing more than complex
constellations of power-quanta.
In saying that the world is the will-to-power, Nietzsche sees the
will-to-power as manifesting itself in multifarious ways. But the willto-power
as such in its general form is fundamental, and
manifestations are modes of it. In all sorts of ways in personal and
social life we see the will-to-power manifest: in the drive to control,
organize and overcome. To control and make manageable does not
mean necessarily physical domination, although this is one
manifestation of the will-to-power. Any attempt to bring under control
our environment is a mode of the will-to-power, and one of the prime
examples of this is knowledge itself. Knowledge is a will-to-power
because within what we know we have a framework in which what
we deal with is manageable by being organized, so increasing our
power. By organizing under concepts of things and kinds of things we
have something that we call the world under which we transform
nature into something that is, in the broadest sense, mastered, its
disorder overcome and under control.
Nietzsche is advocating a view of reality in which his perspectivism
and his belief in the value of that freedom resulting from the creative
capacity to give various interpretations are supported, he is not
claiming a disinterested motivation. These new interpretations are not
easily achieved, nor can they be gratuitously adopted, since they
involve the adoption of values which fundamentally guide our lives
and characterize who we are.
Nietzsche’s view of the world has an affinity to that of the
Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus, whom he admired. In such a world
of universal flux it is certainly extremely difficult to see how any
theory of reality which identifies as real certain permanent “things”
which behave in certain ways could be anything but false and a gross
simplification of a flux so complex and ever-changing that it defies any
theoretical description at all. It is a world without objective order, so
there is nothing for putative objective truths concerning reality to be
Nietzsche 195
true of. Except in so far as it is trivially described as a world of
constant change, it is a world in which no description can be
objectively true at all. All views of reality which aim to be universally
true presuppose some objective fixity, so any view which purports to
be universally true of reality must be false if there is no such fixity. And
it might be argued that a view like Nietzsche’s, which merely asserts
that there is no objective order, is no view of reality at all. Reality has
no ultimate nature; that the world has a character is denied. Nietzsche
is asserting that the world has no objective order; the denial that we
can assert this without contradiction seems to amount to the assertion
that it is a necessary truth that the world has an objective order—
which surely cannot be right. There is nothing fixed for truths to
correspond to. This leaves us free, although not frivolously so, to
invent our own organizing systems, but not under the pretence that we
are reflecting an already existing objective reality.
In rejecting the correspondence theory of truth, it must be
emphasized that Nietzsche is not, I believe, giving a new general
criterion of truth at all; that he is not arguing that one set of
considerations is universally valid when deciding upon truth. That
idea includes the rejection of both the correspondence theory and a
generalized pragmatic theory which would impose one universally
binding way of deciding on the truth. There is no universally valid
criterion for truth, no single scale along which truth can be graded; but
there are different views which serve or promote certain values and
modes of life, yet all are “illusions” if they are required to be more than
valid from a certain point of view. This is close to relativism, but not
equivalent to the notion that one view is as good as any other. Some
views are better than others from the standpoint of a certain set of
values, interests, and attitudes to life, although they are not binding on
all; it will certainly not be the case that one view will do as well as
another for a specific standpoint; some “truths” will promote it, and
some will be inimical to it. The view accepted is inseparably linked to
the deepest values in life, the lives themselves, and who one is, and
one cannot easily or flippantly swap one view or set of truths for
another.
This, however, is not the only interpretation of Nietzsche’s view of
truth. Some commentators have argued that Nietzsche wishes to
replace the correspondence theory of truth with a form of pragmatist
theory; this is pragmatic value determined not by base usefulness but
in terms of a more general criterion of power and control appropriate
for those people of higher “rank-order”, those capable of maximal
power, control and creativity. Thus truth in the new sense can still be
graded along a single scale, but this time not arranged in order of
greater correspondence to “the facts” (which Nietzsche says do not
exist apart from interpretations or views), but arranged in rank
according to effectiveness of power and control.
196 Later German philosophy
Nietzsche famously proclaims that “God is dead”, not so much
because the belief that God exists is false—although Nietzsche thinks
this is the case—but because God is a bastion for justifying objective
values which must be valid for all. Nietzsche further wants to banish
even the shadow of God from the world, that is, he wishes to banish
the lingering effects of the belief in God from the world; for even nonbelievers
still often act as if somehow there were a transcendent order
of values outside the world, and as if this world were not the only
world. He claims that it has not sunk deep into our consciousnesses,
and our way of living, that this world is the only world—there is no
world beyond. If we accept this, it profoundly changes the evaluations
we make in and of our lives. It is Nietzsche’s aim to present to us a
transvaluation of all existing values for the new life, and a suitable
world-view, for truly free spirits, for the higher man’s potentialities.
Thus Nietzsche’s views are not advocated because of their more
accurate mirroring of reality—because no view does that—or because
they are universally valid; but because of their efficacy with respect to
certain values and ways of life which Nietzsche believes in and wants
us to consider.
Another way of putting Nietzsche’s perspectivism is that all truths
and knowledge about the world are interpretations: a mode of
organizing our experience under concepts which give us a world-view
with the condition that no such view can possibly be complete because
it is dependent on qualifying reference to a point of view. Nietzsche
does not object to any view because it is an interpretation; he objects
only to the view being seen as more than an interpretation, whilst
there are values it probably deviously and dishonestly promotes under
the false banner of being the objective truth. This applies to the various
systems of metaphysics, Kantian a priori categories, natural science,
common sense, and even logic. What Nietzsche objects to is what are
in fact interpretations down to their most basic constituents being
viewed as other than interpretations and as absolute transcendental
objective truths.
What underlies Nietzsche’s position is a general attack on the whole
notion of separating our theories about the world from the world itself.
There are no facts but only interpretations, and no world left over once
all interpretations are subtracted. Our theories, when considered in
their entirety, cannot be compared with reality because there is no
reality outside our interpretation which is not itself part of an
interpretation. There is no neutral ground on which to stand whereby
our interpretation can be compared with reality because to have a
conception of reality with which an interpretation could be compared
is itself to articulate an interpretation. So Nietzsche is not saying we
always have mere interpretations, because the use of the word “mere”
here suggests a comparison with something we actually have that is
not a mere interpretation, compared with which mere interpretations
Nietzsche 197
are shown to be “mere”. Nietzsche denies that there is a view which is
not an interpretation; he denies the existence of a non-perspectival,
non-interpretative view that would alone make any sense, by contrast,
of any view being merely or only an interpretation.
It might be suggested that there obviously is an interpretationindependent
reality. But the response to this is that this view of the
world is itself an interpretation. The obviousness of the view that there
is an interpretation-independent reality made up of objective “things”
of various kinds that behave in certain ways, and our inability to see it
as an interpretation, both derive from the way that the view is deeply
entrenched in our form of thinking and way of life; and this
entrenchment manifests itself chiefly in the structure of our language.
Our world-view is inherited in our language, and for this reason we
have to use language self-consciously and critically. Deeply embedded
in language is the notion of a “subject” to which “predicates” are
applied, and we take this to reflect a metaphysical as well as a
linguistic distinction. The structure of the language we use to speak
about the world implicitly involves a metaphysics: it immediately
leads us to talk of the world as containing relatively autonomous
“things”, which “causally” interact, which are observed by relatively
permanent “selves”. Indeed, the notion of “things” results from the
projection onto the world of the fiction of the “self” (the “I” or “ego”);
and the “self” derives from our linguistically requiring an “agent”
whenever we speak of actions. We do not just say “think”, but
grammatically normally require a subject who does the thinking.
Rather like Hume, Nietzsche explains our belief in causally
necessary connections through our acquiring it in a way that is
rationally unjustifiable; the belief is rather a result of non-rational
processes whereby through the observation of constantly conjoined
events we acquire habits of association; there are no objective causal
connections. The division of the world into recognizable repeatable
events and things is the imposition of a fiction by us. No two things
are ever really identical, and no two events the same; but we ignore
differences in order to establish an order; and we are not refining our
experience by this process, but rather coarsening it by making similar
what is different. More sensitive creatures who refused to categorize
under universal terms would have perished, for a simplified world is
required for survival. We treat the world as if what is referred to in our
concepts is real. But these organizing concepts are only psychologically
a priori, not transcendentally a priori as Kant suggests.
Such concepts are rightly said to be irrefutable by experience;
experience already presupposes them and is organized in accordance
with them. But that does not mean, particularly with respect to our
values, which we have inherited—our whole notion of a single scale
for “good” and “evil”—that our entrenched beliefs cannot be overcome:
they may not be refutable, but they can, perhaps with difficulty, be
198 Later German philosophy
replaced by something new. Philosophy has spent much of its energy
finding a rational justification of existing values without first
questioning the value of those values themselves.
We find it difficult to articulate any other interpretation of reality
than our usual one because a metaphysics is embedded in the very
language in which any other view is to be expressed. The same
applies to values. It is not that Nietzsche thinks there is some ideal
language which would free us from the common-sense or herd
interpretation or metaphysics and give us a true picture of the world:
a correct or true metaphysics. Rather we are to be freed from the
tyranny of seeing any views as true in the sense of mirroring reality in
order to release our powers to create new independent interpretations
that are fashioned to suit what we value most in life; but we can do
this only once we are released from pursuing the chimera of the
absolutely true complete view of reality and universally correct
system of values.
Another way of putting the point about all views being
interpretations is that the old philosophical dichotomy of the
appearance /reality distinction is eliminated; the “real world” goes
because there is no single universal complete description possible; it
cannot be formed from piecing together or summing various different
views either. That does not mean we are left with the merely apparent
world; “appearance” and “reality” are mutually dependent contrasting
concepts, and once the “real world” goes, there remains no sense to the
supposedly contrasted “apparent world”, so that goes too. The
apparent world is the world; the world as construed under an
interpretation is the world. To suppose otherwise is merely tacitly to
suggest that there is another view which is not an interpretation
characterizing “the world” with which our supposedly mere
interpretation could be compared; but there is no view that is not an
interpretation; any other view would always be an interpretation too.
Nietzsche found it difficult to express his perspectivism because of
the way that a certain view is already inherent in the language which
we have to use to express ourselves. It seems as though in asserting
perspectivism—that there are only interpretations of the world—that
we admit that there is a real world which could be described in some
way that was not an interpretation. This, it can be argued, is merely a
grammatical point: only trivially are our interpretations different
perspectives on “the world”, because this notion of “the world” is
utterly empty until an interpretation is submitted to fill it in; so there is
no “world” to compare with all interpretations; take the perspectival
interpretations away and “the world” vanishes. Truth and knowledge
necessarily involve having a view; without a view involving certain
basic concepts there is nothing for propositions to be true of, no world
for us to know; but there are no concepts we have to regard as
necessary and universally binding.
Nietzsche 199
It is sometimes said that Nietzsche’s perspectivist position is plainly
self-refuting. For if all views are perspectives—that is,
interpretations—then perspectivism must apply to itself, so
perspectivism may be false. There are a number of complex
discussions of this matter. Some critics are unable to see how selfrefutation
can be avoided. Others argue that perspectivism does not
apply to all views, but only to “first order” views about the world, and
it does not therefore apply to itself, which is a “second order” view
about views. Still others argue that perspectivism is not self-refuting:
perspectivism must admit that it is possibly false, but that is not the
same as admitting that it is false; that it is false could be shown only by
actually producing a view that was not an interpretation—one that is
free from being motivated by, and independent of, specific values—
and not merely by suggesting that a view which is not an
interpretation is possible. Perspectivism, on this account, cannot claim
that it is necessarily true, and that means it cannot claim that views
which are not interpretations—which are objectively true—are
impossible.
Nietzsche’s perspectivism is not equivalent to relativism if
relativism is construed as saying the world has more than one
character and there is no way of choosing between various complete
views of that world; perspectivism denies that the world has any
character independent of interpretations, and that any view could
possibly be complete or exhaustive. Perspectivism also holds that some
views are better than others on the grounds that they are more fitted
for certain purposes, promoting the way one wishes to live one’s life
and the values one holds most deeply about life, but these values are
not universally applicable to all individuals of different sorts at all
times and places; they are not “better” from all points of view.
Nietzsche rejects the positions which suggest that there are views of
the world and systems of values that are binding on everyone equally.
He also rejects the notion and pretence that truth can be pursued in a
disinterested fashion. The view that there is one truth, and one system
of values, is itself a view which is intended to promote—although it
may do so covertly and even deviously—certain values which involve
holding back more creative and courageous spirits who want to
counter the idea of universal truths and values themselves. Thus the
advocation of universal truths and values binding on all is itself one
manifestation of the will-to-power, to control; but it is also a sign of
weakness; for the belief in universal objective views and values
binding on all itself manifests the lack of power or strength and
creativity—unlike the “highest type” or “free spirits”—to transfigure
the world with new views and interpretations of one’s own and
sustain those views and interpretations without the support of a belief
in their being universal and absolutely objective.
It can clearly be argued that, far from leading to an advocation of
200 Later German philosophy
domination and tyranny, Nietzsche’s position that there cannot be
objectively true or false values suggests that each person must now go
away and find his own way, do his own work—as Zarathustra
suggests at one point—and Zarathustra tells of one way which gives
new meaning to the world. As Nietzsche writes in Thus spoke
Zarathustra, at the end of Part I:
I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and
be alone! […] Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard
yourself against Zarathustra! […] Perhaps he has deceived you
[…] One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil […]
You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?
You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus
do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now I
bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have
all denied me will I return to you.
In Ecce homo, before quoting from the above passage of Zarathustra,
Nietzsche points out that these words are “Precisely the opposite of
that which any sort of ‘sage’, ‘saint’, ‘world-redeemer’ and other
décadent would say in such a case…He does not only speak differently,
he is different.”
However, there is the possibility that pursuing my own way, such as
that involved in the way of the Übermensch (Superman) depicted by
Zarathustra, could involve the subservience of others, in particular
that of the “herd”, who have a slave mentality in that they need
masters to lead them, and who lack the creative power to generate and
sustain their own new views. Nietzsche indeed seems to suggest that
such subservience is required.
There are two central notions in Nietzsche’s world-view: the will-topower
and eternal recurrence.
The doctrine of “eternal recurrence” has its origin in the idea that
the world is infinite in time, but finite in space or energy, and therefore
states are bound, given sufficient time, to repeat themselves. Thus this
world is our eternity. Although Nietzsche does seem to have believed
in “eternal recurrence” as a scientific cosmological theory, the
importance and main grounds of the view lie not there but, rather, in
its power as a myth whereby our decisions are concentrated on this
world; we had better be authentic and true to ourselves, and not
wasteful of our lives, for this is the only life we have and we are
destined to repeat what we choose for eternity. We must free ourselves
of the attitude carried by the belief that this life is a “waiting room” for
something else. There is nothing beyond, no life beyond, which would
compensate for, or relieve us of, the weight placed on our choices in
this life. To carry this burden is to support the values of strength and
independence, and not to view this world as inferior: this is amor fati, a
yea-saying to life.
Nietzsche 201
These views are better because of their fecundity in promoting a
certain way of life. But this notion of better does not apply with
absolute universality. The life is that of the “Superman” or Übermensch,
as foretold by Zarathustra. This is the life of the “Beyond-Man” or
“Overman” who sees all views as interpretations, and is released as a
free spirit to transfigure the world according to newly created “truths”
and values which are his own, and he has the strength or power to do
so. The notion of the Übermensch as creator involves the idea of
creating one’s own self. Now we are, of course, free to accept this view
or not. If we wish to embrace the values of strength and enhance our
feeling of power and control as free spirits, then Nietzsche commends
to us the will-to-power and eternal recurrence as “truths” to live by.
Previous interpretations have outlived their usefulness and have
become constraining and inimical to the exploration of new
interpretations that would transform or transfigure our world-view.
Once we see common sense, and indeed any view which seems more
than an interpretation, as an interpretation, we are liberated to explore,
and will feel we should explore, other ways of viewing the world.
Nothing could be more stultifying to pursuing other ways of viewing
the world than the belief that one has found the final correct, complete,
view; the pursuit of other views will in such circumstances, as with
much metaphysics, carry no conviction and will be seen as a mere
game played away from the only correct view. But once the notion of
an absolutely correct view, and even its pursuit, is abandoned, the
exploration of alternative modes of interpreting the world cannot in
this way be deleteriously compared. This mode of viewing the world—
that all views are interpretations from a perspective—commends itself
to those who have the strength to break with habit, custom, the belief
in absolute standards, and to produce their own views, suited to their
own values and purposes, which in turn will fundamentally
characterize who they are. One cannot separate the basic beliefs and
values one holds, and what one does, from who one is, but thereby
who one is can be changed; and Nietzsche praises those who have the
strength to give themselves laws and so create themselves.
The will-to-power, both as a view of the world as one of
ontological flux with no objective order, and as an account of the
drive behind knowledge itself, undermines the idea that knowledge
can be a disinterested activity separable from specific values;
knowledge is rather a means to support specific values. The doctrine
of eternal recurrence emphasizes the weight of the choices we make
in our new-found freedom as free spirits who have the strength
creatively to transfigure our world with new truths and values in a
way that has no end.
202 Later German philosophy
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