Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject," or that aspect of "what actually is" in Hegel that becomes, that negates: there is a negativity that is greater and more powerful than Hegelian negativity, a type of becoming that is more true and more fundamental than Hegelian becoming, and thus a different type of movement and structure of the actual than the dialectic.
When we say "subject," we are of course referring to the famous and crucial phrase from the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit that essentialy sums up Hegel's philosophical position:
In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the [Hegelian] system itself, everything turns on grasping and expressing the True [what is real, actual], not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §17.
Essentially, this means that what is actual, is only because it is both 1) being, existence (this is what is meant by "Substance," a thing that has attributes), and 2) becoming (this is what is meant by "Subject"). That which really or actually is, not only is (that is, not only exists), but also becomes or incorporates becoming into its existence. In fact, by saying "equally" Hegel says that what is actual is indeed actual only to the extent that it also becomes: becoming and being only effect actuality insofar as they occur equally, insofar as becoming incorporates itself into being just as much as being exists. Now, this becoming that is incorporated into the Substance that is actual Hegel calls "negativity." Thus he says a little later on in the Preface:
The living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement [read: becoming] of positing itself, or is the mediation [read: becoming] of its self-othering with itself. This substance is, as Subject, pure simple negativity.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §18.
"Pure negativity" Hegel says a little later, is, "when reduced to its pure abstraction [or the most general concept which will encompass it], simple becoming" ("Preface", §20). Thus, when being (Substance) is "in truth," as Hegel says here, when it is actual, it negates, it becomes. Linking negation up with the concepts of becoming and being, subject and substance, we can see then why Hegel calls becoming "negativity:" becoming is the absence of being, and therefore, conceived purely, is not. It is the "not," pure and simple--what does not exist but what makes something actual. We can also see that the statement about the True as substance and equally as subject responds essentially to Descartes, who thought the True, the actual, was only insofar as it was Substance.
For Descartes, the cogito, when it grasped its actuality, was a res cogitans, "thinking thing," a thing that possessed the attribute of thinking. For Hegel, conceiving of actuality as guaranteed by the mere attribute of a thing did not seem concrete enough: reality and actuality conceived only as the adequate possession of a particular attribute seems too flimsy. Cartesian truth, Hegel thinks, would only be a matter of determining whether something possessed the right attribute and so was a substance--it was no more profound than this, this determining what is essentially already priveliged to be a substance (since it already possesses the attribute). The whole method of Descartes, the whole taking away of all that was supposedly real to reach what was actual, is essentially meaningless, since it only finds out what was already there. For Hegel, this whole process of abstracting away from reality essentially and necessarily effected the grasping of actuality that Descartes found--it did something, it had to do something, otherwise the truth that Descartes found would merely be superfluous, would not govern reality or essentially be true. Thus, whatever was true also had to be a "subject," had to be not merely an attribute but a predicate that determined the thing it was asserted to be the possession of.
Calling this predicate of the substance "subject" essentially means: the "I think" is not indifferent to the "I am," the thinking itself of Descartes effectuates the being that the thinking supposedly proves; or, put differently, the "cogitans" is not merely an adjective modifying "res," but essentially determines "res" as a verb. The "res," is what it does. This "doing" is not merely being, but is in fact a going beyond being into a realm where being is not. Conceived adequately, this "doing" is, for Hegel, a becoming. Thus he says, essentially of the res cogitans, that for it not to be a mere empty phrase, a mere truth that is indifferent to the everyday world that it supposedly governs, in order for it to govern that world as its actual nature, it must become, must enter into an other state that is not being--that in fact is not-being itself, negation: "whatever is more than... a word... contains a becoming-other that has to be taken back [into the word itself as its action, as what it does]" ("Preface" §20).
Now that this is cleared up, where does Nietzsche fall with respect to all of it? We said that Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject." We now see that implied in this is a radicalization of how Hegel, too, more rigorously conceived the Cartesian cogito: Nietzsche too is reacting to Descartes. Essentially, then, how Hegel conceives of actuality as effected by a becoming--becoming as negativity being the essence of the "subject"--will have to be just as inadequately conceived for Nietzsche as Descartes' substance was for Hegel.
Let us see what Nietzsche says:
What are attributes?-- We have not regarded change in us as change but as an "in itself" that is foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a "quality"--and in addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e. we have regarded the effect as something that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept "effect" is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion "every change must have an author";--but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say "lightning flashes," I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, is, and does not "become."-- To regard an event as an "effecting," and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.
-The Will to Power, #531 (composed 1885-1886)
Now, first of all, we should clarify what Nietzsche means by "attribute" in this note, for the question "what are attributes?" is that to which the whole rest of the note responds. Nietzsche means by "attribute" both attribute in the Cartesian sense, as that which is a property of a substance, but also "predicate" in the Hegelian sense, as that which is the subject of a substance. This is the upshot of the paragraph: we see not only that attributes are attributes, but that things that are asserted as predicates are attributes. It is not even a matter of a misnomer: Hegel does not use "predicate" when what he "really means" is "attribute," for Nietzsche--Hegel is not merely mistaken in taking something that is an attribute to be a predicate. What Nietzsche is getting at here, what he essentially determines the "attribute" to be, is something that is also signified by "predicate"--using "predicate" does not outstrip or go beyond what is essentially signified by "attribute," as Hegel thinks it does. That is, Nietzsche destroys Hegel's assumption that in making the attribute into a predicate, he is accurately conceiving actuality. Niether attribute nor predicate can do this for Nietzsche: actuality is something that exceeds the grasp of both these concepts, and thus are just as effective in grasping actuality as we now know (after Hegel) the attribute was--we can therefore lump them together under one name.
The main thrust of the paragraph thus made visible, we can turn to the actual statements themselves to determine how indeed the Hegelian predicate is just like an attribute. For wasn't the predicate subject, and the subject negativity, that is, becoming? How is becoming in Hegel only an attribute?
Because, says Nietzsche, it is not adequately conceived as becoming. In other words, it is covertly conceived as being. This is what Nietzsche means when he says, "We have not regarded change in us as change but as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a 'quality.'" "Change" here is becoming. "Not regarding change as change" means not conceiving becoming as a becoming that is adequate to the nature of becoming. What is this nature? Well, as we already determined when looking at Hegel, the nature of becoming is not-being: becoming is what happens when being stops being and changes into a different type of being. While a being is changing into a different type of being, it engages in a process where it turns into its opposite and negation--it becomes, it engages in not-being. Thus, if becoming is the opposite of being, to not regard becoming as becoming is essentially to pass off something as becoming that is not really the full and pure opposite of being, but only approximates this opposite. This pseudo-opposite would therefore be something that appears to change, appears to become, but does not really become. In fact, it would still be being. This is what Nietzsche means by "we have posited it [change, becoming] not as an event, but as a being." Now, what remains to be explained is the crucial part of this statement: how is this pseudo-becoming a pseudo-becoming because it is "regarded.. as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us?" Indeed, this "foreign-ness" of becoming is proffered as the essential thing that makes it lack actuality in the paragraph. How could becoming be in itself something foreign, and as this not really be actual becoming?
Well, let us reflect on what Hegel said becoming was. Hegel said "the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself." Notice that Hegel describes what is in effect becoming--Subject--as a type of "self-othering with itself." Is not this "self-othering" of which Hegel speaks what Nietzsche refers to as the "foreign?" Indeed, what is "other" is what is foreign: what is other is whatever is not-itself, what is not-here (but there, over and against oneself, in the foreign). Indeed, the German "fremd" carries this meaning of "other" with it much more than the "foreign" with which we translate Nietzsche: in German "other" is "anderes", a conjunction of "an", meaning "on," "apart from and yet related to," "an aspect of a thing that is not it but is added onto it," "on top of and against," and therefore essentially "not" in a privative way similar to the Latin prefix "a-" when it is used as a prefix, and the word "da," which means "here"--thus we say what is other is what is not-here. Indeed, Hegel himself often plays on this meaning, implying that what is other is also what is foreign. What this part of the passage of Hegel's means, then, is what we have just explained when we were explaining becoming: "self-othering" is what is necessary for something not just to merely exist as a substance, but also as subject. In order for something to really exist, it must in a sense go out of itself and change such that it becomes its own other. This is what Hegel means by "mediation:" something mediates insofar as it traverses a path in which it engages in a process where it becomes foreign, other than itself. Now, when we were explaining becoming and its opposition to being, we did not give it this sense of "becoming-foreign"--but indeed we can see that this is what we meant. Becoming is not just becoming for Hegel, it is becoming-other, becoming-foreign. It is becoming something that, while it "is" not, is indeed something that is set up as in opposition to being--that is, substance proper. This is so much the case that we can say the following: what does not become other, what does not become foreign to itself as being, does not become at all for Hegel. What does not set itself up in opposition to being when it becomes is only still merely being, merely substance without being subject, and fails to attain actuality or Truth.
Now we understand what Nietzsche means by regarding change or becoming "as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us." For Hegel, becoming is, in itself, what is foreign to being. As soon as something engages in becoming instead of being, it must be foreign or other to being, because becoming is in itself something different, foreign and other to being, to existence.
Now, Nietzsche says this regard for becoming as in itself foreign to being makes becoming or change into being. Why is this the case? Is not becoming something that is foreign to being? Hegel seems to be on the right track here: Nietzsche suddenly looks as if he is ruthlessly undermining something that most, if not all, would agree upon. But let us hear Nietzsche out. Why does Nietzsche assert becoming is being when it is regarded as the other of being? Because this makes becoming into "a 'quality.'" What is a quality? we must ask. Well, a quality is a quality of being. It is something that being does not have as an attribute or (what is the same for us now) a predicate, but which is commensurable with the character that being itself has. Being of the same quality as being means that one is commensurable with, adequate with, equivalent with being. Being a quality of being means that one can be substituted for being without any change effecting itself within the character of being. Thus, we see how what we agree upon fails us, along with Hegel. For it is obvious that if becoming, according to Hegel, is something that is commensurate with being, can be exchanged with being without making being change, well, as change itself becoming can no longer really be called becoming. What Nietzsche is getting at is this: if becoming can be something that being can just enter into, well, then it is not really becoming because it does not force that being to become, to change. The only question left to us, then, is whether Hegel holds this. If we reflect on what we have heard Hegel say, namely, that becoming is negation this will prove the case. Simply by negating itself, by being not-being, being itself can become what is other to it--becoming. Nietzsche is right. If being can be other than itself and thereby be becoming, becoming is commensurable with the character of being, and is therefore its "quality." When being negates itself, then, it is still being. All this comes down to one fundamental insight: Nietzsche effectively claims here that as long as becoming is the other of being, then it is not actually becoming.
Before specifying what actual becoming would be (presumably a becoming that is not the other of being), we might take a moment to show how immense this claim is. For its power is such that it effectively "breaks" the dialectic of Hegel. Furthermore, it does not break it from the outside by specifying something wrong with the points Hegel begins his dialectic at and ends it with (nature and Absolute Knowledge, respectively), in the manner of Strauss, Feuerbach, and the early Marx. What Nietzsche does is much more radical, and only the late Marx and Kierkegaard approached it prior to him: Nietzsche breaks the dialectic from the inside, from the movement of the aufheben or negativity that constitutes it.
So, what is the dialectic, and how does it get constituted by negativity? This is an immense question, but we can state what it is quite simply from what we have already determined. The dialectic is the name we give for the process of negation that makes a being or substance attain its actuality through its becoming. It is essentially the process of "mediation" we described earlier--a substance's taking up of its own opposite (the opposite remaining its becoming) in its becoming. When this substance is determined as all of actuality, all of the world and its meaningful events, or, to call it by its Hegelian name, Spirit--when this is the case we have the "dialectic" proper: it is the totality of world-meaning or Spirit mediating itself, going through the process of its becoming actual. This huge global movement is, then, what is broken by Nietzsche. No longer can we look at the history of the world and of its meaningful events as a process of the becoming-actual of being, or the subjectivization of its substance, for this becoming-actual or subjectivization is what is already there, what is superfluous about its deeper essence. Thus, what Hegel hated about Descartes, namely, that he was saying something that did not really say anything, can be applied back to Hegel by Nietzsche. Any process of negation, the becoming other of a thing, doe not necessarily have to proceed the way that Hegel specifies it will because he conceives of this becoming merely as a quality of being. We can see how this might change our perception of things when we look at the example of the lightening that Nietzsche gives: "lightning flashes."
Now, for Hegel, the substance of the lightning is actualizing itself or realizing itself in the sky because as it is ceasing to merely be and instead become not just merely itself but what is foreign to itself--its becoming. The lightning flashes: the flashing is the sign of the becoming of the substance that is lightning. We see how intertwined this perspective is with our normal conception of things when we merely begin to think of even more every day examples: the tree grows--it ceases being a tree and realizes itself as a growing-tree; the dog walks--the dog ceases to just merely be a dog by being a walking dog, by becoming something other. These are dialectical interpretations of events because they specify a structure of reality that the events supposedly coincide with. But how does Nietzsche view these events? "If I say 'lightning flashes,' I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, is, and does not 'become.' What this means is that Nietzsche sees the lightening dialectically and looks at its flashing not as an activity of the lightning but merely as something that the lightning instantiates itself as for the dialectician. The flash is not a unique event. It is merely an unfolding of what was always already present in the lightning just simply being lightning. This is because the flashing is not becoming, but being. We can see why Nietzsche says that this view posits the flash twice: the flash is supposedly something that is supposed to be other than being and yet at the same the activity that has made it other. While this first thing is specified by what Hegel calls "becoming," the actual activity, the flashing itself, is not grasped by this type of "becoming" since it is something that really truly excludes being (unlike Hegel's "becoming," which, let us repeat it, is only a being's "quality"). What actually makes the lightning flash is something that is not its becoming. According to Hegel, what makes the lightning flash is its not-being. But this only makes it into something that is a "subject" (as Nietzsche says) over and above its substance. It does not make it flash. Thus we come back to what we first specified as the upshot of this entire passage: what Hegel determined as predicate is just as good as the Cartesian attribute--they both miss the real issue, the real activity that is in complete opposition to being. What this is we have yet to specify--though Nietzsche does indeed specify it--but already we can use a more poignant example in order to hit home how incadequate this Hegelian view of things is: "I murder." The murder is not a consequence of any actual activity on my part according to Hegel--it is only the consequence of my not-being-myself. Now, Nietzsche allows us to see that I am myself insofar as I am not myself, because this murder was indeed me acting in accordance to my character as a substance, as an "I." But as far as Hegel is concerned, the activity of this action extends only so far as to show that I was acting as something that was not myself, but an application of myself, a becoming-other of what-once-was the substance that was myself. We indeed subscribe to this view in the courts, where we think an action is the application of the subjectivity of the subject: Hegel would say that it is the subjectivity of the subject. But this is, according to Nietzsche, missing the point. The action itself is never touched: the real becoming is pawned off as this pseudo-becoming, this mere predicate or attribute of being. This is what Nietzsche means when he characterizes this as a mere dogmatic adherence to the naive believe that "every change must have an author." Every becoming, every lightning flash, every murder, is only as it is because it is the effect of an intention, an authoring, a being that has become by negation or not-being. We have to ask: is this always the case? Especially of nature--how does lightning "intend" a flash?
What is the real action according to Nietzsche? We can look at how he describes this pawning-off in order to specify it. "We have regarded the effect as something that effects," Nietzsche says. That is, we regard an effect as a cause. In order to perceive the real essence of becoming, the activity of becoming, that which we mistakenly think we grasp when we call it this mere "effecting" that is really in essence an effect--in order to get at this we have to reverse cause and effect here. That is, in order to grasp actual becoming, we have to consider what we call a cause here--being, the lightning--and see this as the effect of a different cause. What is this different cause? Nothing other than what is effected by this "effecting," that is, the flashing, what we called the becoming of the being, the negation of the being. Put differently, in order to properly conceive becoming, we have to reverse cause and effect as we normally see it. This means not only that we have to reverse the priority of being over becoming that determines the particular relationship of becoming and being, for it is this priority of being over becoming that makes becoming the "other" of being. In other words, becoming is what it is for Hegel only insofar as it is is not-being. This implies that it has no real essence apart from being merely the cessation of being: where being stops, there becoming is; becoming is only the consequence of being, its effect.
Reversing this priority means reversing cause and effect. Therefore we have to conceive of being itself, existence, as a consequence of what we call becoming, such that being is merely not-becoming. This reversal effectuates a conception of the actual--which we remember is the mediation of the effecting and the effect, what we called being and its negation--that is one in which becoming as activity is genuinely conceived. Becoming in this actual sense is what becomes such that in not becoming it is being. Only when becoming is something that can be (exist) when it stops becoming--and not the mere consequence of a cessation in things being--only when this is the case have we properly conceived becoming. What does this look like? We have hinted at it: instead of seeing the lightning effectuating the flash, or causing it, we see the flash causing the lightning. How can this be?
Well, we regard the lightning as something that serves as the vessel or embodiment for the particular event (becoming) that is the flash. This is perhaps better seen in the example of murder. Where murder was something that was merely the extension and application of the substance or existing person, for Nietzsche, the person is a mere vessel for the act of murder, no matter what she or he intended. And while this may be more troubling, and make it universally harder to assign guilt, looking at events this way will make them more accurate, make them more actual. It is the ability to think this, to think of what is merely as the vessel for the mighty process of becoming (a will to power) that sustains in fact brings it as it is about, that allows us to say we have adequately forged a realm for thought beyond the dialectic and the shoddy interpretation of becoming as something lacking action--that is, it allows us to say we have adequately gone beyond Hegel. We have only hinted at how this beyond is to be really thoroughly conceived, but hopefully the break with the dialectic itself will be clear--and that is what is important in knowing the thrust and the importance of both Nietzsche and Hegel.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Will to Power and Eternal Return
Nietzsche says, "supposing everything is becoming, then knowledge is possible only on the basis of belief in being," (The Will to Power, #518) and thereby shows quite clearly the essential link between his two basic concepts called "the will to power" and "the eternal return." In fact, here he shows these two basic concepts are one. How?
Will to power (in German, der Wille zur Macht) is the fundamental assertion that whatever is, wills, or is only insofar as it possesses (or rather inhabits) some intention towards an object. Now, it is not only this. To will to power means that whatever is, wills itself: the will itself that is, is the object of that will. Thus will to power is the willing of a will. It is the will that the will will again. Now, this does not mean that whatever is--that is, whatever wills--merely wills its own self-preservation. No. It wills enhancement. When we say that will to power is a will that wills itself again, we mean by this "again" not a mere endurance. What wills to power does not seek to merely endure or suffer through the moment and thereby preserve itself--Nietzsche calls this type of will the height of "slavish" morality, and would scoff at our even being able to confuse it with what is signified by "will." What wills to power seeks not to be again--this is what is implied by interpreting "willing again" as a will to endure. Rather, what wills to power seeks to become again, to have the chance to not exist as a will but instead will again--will being at bottom development, overcoming, becoming. If this will to will again means that a will will exist again, well, that is great. But it is essentially of no consequence to a will whether it exists or not--it merely seeks to impose itself on its object.
Eternal return (der Ewigen Wiederkunft) is a name for a fundamental reversal of metaphysics that Nietzsche conceived: all being is the becoming of being. Now, throughout metaphysics being (existing, is-ing) is conceived in opposition to becoming. What exists excludes what is-on-the-way-to-existing (this is what is essentially meant by "becoming"). As soon as something becomes, it strictly is not anymore. For example, say my opinion changes. Indeed we say this often enough--what do we mean by it? What is meant by this is that my opinion becomes: it temporarily does not exist while it changes from what it was to what it then, after becoming or changing, is. It is absurd to think of what my opinion is at the time that I am changing it. I only "have an opinion" before and after the becoming of the opinion. So too with being: this is how we can say that it is what does not exist.
Now, if all being is the becoming of being, what do we mean by that? Well, it implies two steps of our cognition. First, we have to see that Nietzsche does not strictly invert the proposition "all being is being" by saying that "all being is... becoming." If we omit "the being of," we see Nietzsche would be simply saying that all being is non-being, all existence is non-existence--in essence, nothing exists. Everything becomes. After contemplating what Nietzsche does not exactly say, we can then proceed to add "the being of" back in and see what he does say. But what he does indeed say has to be taken from the standpoint of this inversion: being is no longer primary, it no longer reigns over becoming. With this dethroning, becoming is more primary. Now, this established, we may assert that if all being is the being of becoming, this means all that is, is as a consequence of becoming (if becoming is primary). This is why this is a reversal of metaphysics: where becoming was subordinated to being, being becomes subordinate to becoming. Its existence is not eradicated, as it would be via the inversion we spoke of before--this would not allow it to be suboordinate. We see that a more complete and rigorous reversal than the mere inversion of being and becoming has occured in allowing being to exist under becoming, be determined by becoming.
And what would this being or existence determined by becoming look like? This is where the scenario signified by the phrase "eternal return" comes in. If all was becoming, and being was a mere consequence of becoming, then all that existed, all being, would have to be the result of a recurrance or return of becoming--that is, becoming that was repeated. Let us sketch out the scenario: if time not the span in which things existed, as it would be within traditional metaphysics, but the span in which they became, then time, if it ended, would have to begin again--this is prescribed by the nature of time remaining the span in which things become. In other words, if the process of becoming ended, it would have to just begin again. Now, what got repeated because of this beginning again, this repetition of time, would then no longer just be becoming, but would have some actual existence independent of the process of becoming. It would have being. Being, then, is what returns, or what is repeated, when becoming ends and begins becoming again. In other words, being is the becoming-again of events in time. This is how being is the being of becoming.
Before we move on, we might ask why does becoming have to repeat--that is, become in the same way that it became before? Well, there are disputed answers to this within Nietzsche scholarship. The easiest way to explain it is that becoming must be a finite process. If what becomes is finite, then there are only a determinate number of possibilities for what becomes to become. Once these are expended completely, then the whole process would have to start over, and, though the order in which they became could be different, each possibility would be expended by the becoming again and thus would exist again.
Now, whether this recurring-time-structure of the world is the case is irrelevant. Nietzsche in fact never claims that it is. But it is not a mere fanciful thought. Why? Because, as we shall see, it is essentially not the structure of the world itself, but the structure of the will to power. In other words, what is designated by the eternal return is not the nature of reality, but the nature of the will to power that produces reality. The will to power operates in such a way that it takes being as the being of becoming, and insofar as this is true--which Nietzsche does claim and assert with vehemence--then reality, whatever it is--Nietzsche in fact thinks we cannot ultimately determine it--will be structured according to the idea of eternal return through the will to power.
How do these two basic ideas relate and become one? We see already that if will wills itself again when it is will to power, it must will itself to repeat. Thus it must will the eternal return to be true of reality, must will the eternal return into reality. In other words, in willing itself again it must will the eternal recurrance of itself, must will its return (i.e. must will itself) again and again, eternally.
But while this explanation is sufficient to link these concepts together, it still preserves a distinction between the two terms. The real key to understanding Nietzsche is getting at why they are one, why they are both aspects of the same phenomenon. And to do this, we must turn to the quote from Nietzsche (it should be noted that this quote isn't the only one where this connection can be made: Nietzsche is in fact quite frequently saying something of the sort that can be construed this way). But what Nietzsche means by "knowledge" in this quote must be specified first. "Knowledge works as a tool of power," he said once, putting it quite succinctly (The Will to Power, #480). How is this so? Because knowledge is knowledge not of reality, but of what is real for the will that wills power. Thus, knowledge can be a "tool," an effect of the will's intention; it can be a facet or aspect of the intention that intends or strives for its object; it can be a reflection of this intention representing what the intention needs out of reality in order for it to get its object (which, we remember, is itself). If we conceive of knowledge as this, the (to use a not unrelated Freudian term) wish-fulfillment or fantasy of the will to power, and not as the representation of the reality as it is outside of the will (for there is no way the will can get outside the will), then we can begin to turn to the phrase and make sense of it.
"Supposing everything is becoming, then knowledge is possible only on the basis of belief in being." What Nietzsche means is this: if we can only act in such a way that we will to power, and if the will to power supposes everything is becoming or, expressed differently, supposes that the eternal return is true, then knowledge or the will to power's fantasies are possible only if the will to power believes or wills being and not the being of becoming to return eternally. In other words, knowledge is only possible if the will to power goes against itself and, as the will to the eternal return or recurrence of will, wills that the eternal return not be true. Let us be clear: it wills the eternal return not to be the true object of the will to power because in willing being to exist instead of the being of becoming, it wills that the exact reversal of the eternal return (being) be more primary than the product of the eternal return (the being of becoming).
Now, a lot is happening here, but it is already clear that knowledge is a product of the most savage and primordial masochistic act of the will: its will not to return. Knowledge is the reflection of this will to undo will. Now we begin to have a sense of how the will to power and the eternal return are really products of the same immense phenomenon that Nietzsche spent his life fighting: the fall of the will to power into a slavish will to nothingness, the fall of the will of the master into the will of the slave and the advent of nihilism—all this brings about a change in the will to power such that it does not will the eternal return anymore. Only when we figure out that this is the phenomenon that Nietzsche's concepts are forged in order to combat do we see how both the will to power and the eternal return are ideas that are interconnected, for we see they originate from and explain the same thing.
But let us elaborate, starting with the term "slave:" why is knowledge slavish exactly? Because, as we have already established, as knowledge, knowledge represents a reality that the will wills to be true--and in this case this reality is essentially a reality where willing does not occur. If the will wills itself not to return, it wills its own death. And if, looking through Nietzsche's writings, we see that he often says the essence of (biological) life is the will to power, it becomes clear why Nietzsche links this will of the death of willing to the slave, who essentially is characterized as nihilistic: the will against life is a will to nothingness, and therefore nihilistic. Nihilism is the will of the slave for Nietzsche. The term opposed to the slave—master—we see characterizes those who are worthy of life, those who do not seek to be free of it but want to will correctly (that is, will to power).
Master and slave basically characterized, then, we can see that the advent of knowledge was also for Nietzsche the advent of both nihilism and slavishness—in other words, the fall of the will to power to a will to nothingness. According to Nietzsche in this short remark, knowledge of reality only comes on the scene once life, the will to power, ceases to will itself to power again and again. Why? It is clear that if this is true, this fact makes all knowledge slavish knowledge, even if it is held by a master, simply because it has an essence that wills the end of the will to power. It is also clear that a true master would only diverge from willing his power again and again, eternally, by acquiring knowledge (or, descending into the muck of the slave) only to will himself to power better, more easily, more deftly, with more skill. But for anyone who takes reality to be something that can be known, they cease willing to power: they apparently engage with reality in such a way that they are slaves, that they will their own destruction.
But is this true? Does knowledge come on the scene when life ceases to will itself to recur eternally? Why should Nietzsche indeed affirm this? Everything revolves around seeing how knowledge does not seek the eternal recurrence of the will to power. But before we can grasp this, it is handy to picture life before the advent of knowledge. If the essence of life is to will itself (which is, we remember, will to power) to power, then there is no need for knowledge (in the sense we already described) at all. Knowledge can only be a deviation from the primary task, can only be secondary (readers of Freud now see that these primary and secondary tasks are a lot like the primary and secondary processes of the unconscious and the conscious). Adhering to this primary task, then, will in this time before knowledge knows nothing. Put differently, prior to the advent of knowledge, there was only a masterly willing of will such that reality was only the reflection of the will to power. In fact, it was not even a reflection of this will to power: reality simply was—no representation of the will to itself needed to juxtapose itself between the object and the will, as there is with knowledge. Reality was not fantasy or the wish-fulfillment of the will, for the will did not need anything more out of it in order to get at its object than what it already was. As hard or impossible as this is to picture, the key to grasping the fall of the will to power into nihilism is to see that this reality of the master is necessary to keep in view, a reality where knowledge is superfluous and in which life can get along fine without it. For once we know this and grasp it at least as somewhat plausible (looking at animals for examples), the concepts of the will to power and the eternal recurrence seem clearer, and the phenomenon of knowledge more sinister.
As we said, the key to knowing how knowledge arises when life seeks to will itself is to see that any deviation from this primary process must hinder the will to power, and hinder it in a way that resembles knowledge. Since the will to power seeks to will itself again and again eternally, that is, seeks to will the eternal recurrence of the becoming that is itself, all knowledge can only be a will for something else to recur eternally. And while this "something other" does not directly have to be the reverse of the will to power, the force that will undo it, to some degree this reverse is always the ultimate effect of any will that does not will itself to power. Why? Well, because along with any other object willed, there will also be a will against the will to power, a will to nothingness, because it wills something other than becoming to exist. That is, if it does not will becoming, it must will some form of being. And since being can only be a consequence of becoming for the will, this will must will against will. It is that simple.
But we have not shown how it wills against will in a form that resembles knowledge. Well, let us remember what Nietzsche here says knowledge is: knowledge is that which is possible only on the basis of a will that being should exist. Knowledge assumes things simply are. In fact, insofar as it exerts itself, it wills that they are this way. It does not assume that they become—how could it get a handle on them? Indeed, if you know my changing opinion in the process of it being changed, you know nothing: it is not an opinion anymore or yet. Thus Nietzsche shows, quite profoundly, that all those conceptions about reality that go so far as to presuppose that what is real is no longer the old solipsistic Cartesian cogito, but the structure of a world, of a reality that merely happens to fall in line in a particular way with our mode of perceiving—all these Kantian and Hegelian and Comteian notions of reality as a thing that is structured to suit knowledge overlook something. They do this even if they affirm idealistically (like Berkeley) that only knowledge is reality (i.e. that all that is real are pure subjective perceptions--there is no "external reality" at all). They are overlooking how reality is not structured at a deeper level, at the level that makes possible their assertion that reality is structured for knowledge. At this level, being and becoming war with each other, and all that exists is will. Their philosophies thus will being as opposed to becoming, since what is remains the sole object of knowledge (knowledge is not of becoming). And with this will they fail to see that their being can just as well be an effect of becoming.
Now, it is this hastiness, this lack of resolve to make sure being permeates all that is willed that makes their will lack something. What it lacks is a will to impose itself upon all things such that it can expend all its possibilities and recur again: this will lacks a will to power. As such, it has made something be in opposition to becoming, so that it can grasp and comprehend not what it is but what it should be. Reality thus is representation as opposed to reality—fantasy or mere wish fulfillment. As such, it is knowledge. Thus knowledge is the effect of a denigrated will to power.
We have moved quickly, because the central issue here will bring us back to what has just happened. The central issue is this: regardless of whether will to power is what is real, regardless of whether the recurring-time-structure is the structure of reality itself, all knowledge stops short at a point where its essence could be one of two things, being or being of becoming. Since they are identical in their appearance (both appear to be being), but different in their genealogy or origin (one has its origin in being, the other in becoming), the decision to pick one over the other will inevitably be fatal, regardless of which is chosen. For all knowledge can see here is being: it has stopped short of genealogy. It thus affirms being and ceases to have contact with reality other than through fantasy. Now, what made this knowledge stop short? A lack of will. It is not knowledge itself, but the will of knowledge that is its downfall. This will, because it wills only being at this juncture and does not will itself—i.e. because it is not at this juncture true to its nature, which, as a will, is will to power, will to recur again and be again the being of becoming—because it wills being over its own nature it stops short of itself, does not will itself again, again at this final juncture where of all places it should will itself again, assert itself again. It is suddenly truer to the object of the will than the will itself. This, then, regardless of what reality is, makes the will to power what is not willed by knowledge.
And this is why Nietzsche repeats again and again that "knowledge is dangerous." It is not dangerous because it is a "tool of power," in the sense that, as knowledge, it can influence us to will domination over things that we should not dominate, like the poor, etc: knowledge here is not dangerous primarily because it is "ideology," because it has something wrong with its content. It is dangerous first and foremost for the will and its ability to will itself because of its form--that is, because it is merely a tool that seeks to substitute itself for will (one sees parallels with Heidegger's assertion that Being has fallen from its essence to become something merely ready-to-hand, something approximating techne, what gets used in the world). Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that we probably no longer have the capacity to will something without knowledge (in the conventional slavish sense) anymore: he believes that many generations must pass before humanity can live up to such a will again (and a knowledge that is suboordinate to will--we must keep in mind that Nietzsche is not advocating fanaticism or the end of knowledge, but only its being in the proper place, underneath will). Thus knowledge comes on the scene when life ceases to will itself to recur eternally. And thus the phenomenon is unitary: it occurs when being and being of becoming are put before a will, and the will does not make a choice and impose itself but accepts them both as equivalent, as being. In essence, this is the same choice we make everyday when we see a shoe or something made in a foreign land using slave labor and do not see its origin but see it only as a finished product—that is, see it only as a shoe, something that is regardless of where it came from, not as something that is only because it is the result of becoming what it is (that is, being-made-by-slaves). Now, as soon as this type of will becomes the predominant one, all that can result is nihilism, because the choice has already been made inside the slavish will itself against the true nature of life, against a will towards the eternal return of will. As soon as this will to power resurges, however (and it will have to overcome knowledge as slavish knowledge in order to do so) the proper nature of will might be restored to itself and life will again masterfully affirm life (and know masterfully--know not instead of willing but know in order to will).
Will to power (in German, der Wille zur Macht) is the fundamental assertion that whatever is, wills, or is only insofar as it possesses (or rather inhabits) some intention towards an object. Now, it is not only this. To will to power means that whatever is, wills itself: the will itself that is, is the object of that will. Thus will to power is the willing of a will. It is the will that the will will again. Now, this does not mean that whatever is--that is, whatever wills--merely wills its own self-preservation. No. It wills enhancement. When we say that will to power is a will that wills itself again, we mean by this "again" not a mere endurance. What wills to power does not seek to merely endure or suffer through the moment and thereby preserve itself--Nietzsche calls this type of will the height of "slavish" morality, and would scoff at our even being able to confuse it with what is signified by "will." What wills to power seeks not to be again--this is what is implied by interpreting "willing again" as a will to endure. Rather, what wills to power seeks to become again, to have the chance to not exist as a will but instead will again--will being at bottom development, overcoming, becoming. If this will to will again means that a will will exist again, well, that is great. But it is essentially of no consequence to a will whether it exists or not--it merely seeks to impose itself on its object.
Eternal return (der Ewigen Wiederkunft) is a name for a fundamental reversal of metaphysics that Nietzsche conceived: all being is the becoming of being. Now, throughout metaphysics being (existing, is-ing) is conceived in opposition to becoming. What exists excludes what is-on-the-way-to-existing (this is what is essentially meant by "becoming"). As soon as something becomes, it strictly is not anymore. For example, say my opinion changes. Indeed we say this often enough--what do we mean by it? What is meant by this is that my opinion becomes: it temporarily does not exist while it changes from what it was to what it then, after becoming or changing, is. It is absurd to think of what my opinion is at the time that I am changing it. I only "have an opinion" before and after the becoming of the opinion. So too with being: this is how we can say that it is what does not exist.
Now, if all being is the becoming of being, what do we mean by that? Well, it implies two steps of our cognition. First, we have to see that Nietzsche does not strictly invert the proposition "all being is being" by saying that "all being is... becoming." If we omit "the being of," we see Nietzsche would be simply saying that all being is non-being, all existence is non-existence--in essence, nothing exists. Everything becomes. After contemplating what Nietzsche does not exactly say, we can then proceed to add "the being of" back in and see what he does say. But what he does indeed say has to be taken from the standpoint of this inversion: being is no longer primary, it no longer reigns over becoming. With this dethroning, becoming is more primary. Now, this established, we may assert that if all being is the being of becoming, this means all that is, is as a consequence of becoming (if becoming is primary). This is why this is a reversal of metaphysics: where becoming was subordinated to being, being becomes subordinate to becoming. Its existence is not eradicated, as it would be via the inversion we spoke of before--this would not allow it to be suboordinate. We see that a more complete and rigorous reversal than the mere inversion of being and becoming has occured in allowing being to exist under becoming, be determined by becoming.
And what would this being or existence determined by becoming look like? This is where the scenario signified by the phrase "eternal return" comes in. If all was becoming, and being was a mere consequence of becoming, then all that existed, all being, would have to be the result of a recurrance or return of becoming--that is, becoming that was repeated. Let us sketch out the scenario: if time not the span in which things existed, as it would be within traditional metaphysics, but the span in which they became, then time, if it ended, would have to begin again--this is prescribed by the nature of time remaining the span in which things become. In other words, if the process of becoming ended, it would have to just begin again. Now, what got repeated because of this beginning again, this repetition of time, would then no longer just be becoming, but would have some actual existence independent of the process of becoming. It would have being. Being, then, is what returns, or what is repeated, when becoming ends and begins becoming again. In other words, being is the becoming-again of events in time. This is how being is the being of becoming.
Before we move on, we might ask why does becoming have to repeat--that is, become in the same way that it became before? Well, there are disputed answers to this within Nietzsche scholarship. The easiest way to explain it is that becoming must be a finite process. If what becomes is finite, then there are only a determinate number of possibilities for what becomes to become. Once these are expended completely, then the whole process would have to start over, and, though the order in which they became could be different, each possibility would be expended by the becoming again and thus would exist again.
Now, whether this recurring-time-structure of the world is the case is irrelevant. Nietzsche in fact never claims that it is. But it is not a mere fanciful thought. Why? Because, as we shall see, it is essentially not the structure of the world itself, but the structure of the will to power. In other words, what is designated by the eternal return is not the nature of reality, but the nature of the will to power that produces reality. The will to power operates in such a way that it takes being as the being of becoming, and insofar as this is true--which Nietzsche does claim and assert with vehemence--then reality, whatever it is--Nietzsche in fact thinks we cannot ultimately determine it--will be structured according to the idea of eternal return through the will to power.
How do these two basic ideas relate and become one? We see already that if will wills itself again when it is will to power, it must will itself to repeat. Thus it must will the eternal return to be true of reality, must will the eternal return into reality. In other words, in willing itself again it must will the eternal recurrance of itself, must will its return (i.e. must will itself) again and again, eternally.
But while this explanation is sufficient to link these concepts together, it still preserves a distinction between the two terms. The real key to understanding Nietzsche is getting at why they are one, why they are both aspects of the same phenomenon. And to do this, we must turn to the quote from Nietzsche (it should be noted that this quote isn't the only one where this connection can be made: Nietzsche is in fact quite frequently saying something of the sort that can be construed this way). But what Nietzsche means by "knowledge" in this quote must be specified first. "Knowledge works as a tool of power," he said once, putting it quite succinctly (The Will to Power, #480). How is this so? Because knowledge is knowledge not of reality, but of what is real for the will that wills power. Thus, knowledge can be a "tool," an effect of the will's intention; it can be a facet or aspect of the intention that intends or strives for its object; it can be a reflection of this intention representing what the intention needs out of reality in order for it to get its object (which, we remember, is itself). If we conceive of knowledge as this, the (to use a not unrelated Freudian term) wish-fulfillment or fantasy of the will to power, and not as the representation of the reality as it is outside of the will (for there is no way the will can get outside the will), then we can begin to turn to the phrase and make sense of it.
"Supposing everything is becoming, then knowledge is possible only on the basis of belief in being." What Nietzsche means is this: if we can only act in such a way that we will to power, and if the will to power supposes everything is becoming or, expressed differently, supposes that the eternal return is true, then knowledge or the will to power's fantasies are possible only if the will to power believes or wills being and not the being of becoming to return eternally. In other words, knowledge is only possible if the will to power goes against itself and, as the will to the eternal return or recurrence of will, wills that the eternal return not be true. Let us be clear: it wills the eternal return not to be the true object of the will to power because in willing being to exist instead of the being of becoming, it wills that the exact reversal of the eternal return (being) be more primary than the product of the eternal return (the being of becoming).
Now, a lot is happening here, but it is already clear that knowledge is a product of the most savage and primordial masochistic act of the will: its will not to return. Knowledge is the reflection of this will to undo will. Now we begin to have a sense of how the will to power and the eternal return are really products of the same immense phenomenon that Nietzsche spent his life fighting: the fall of the will to power into a slavish will to nothingness, the fall of the will of the master into the will of the slave and the advent of nihilism—all this brings about a change in the will to power such that it does not will the eternal return anymore. Only when we figure out that this is the phenomenon that Nietzsche's concepts are forged in order to combat do we see how both the will to power and the eternal return are ideas that are interconnected, for we see they originate from and explain the same thing.
But let us elaborate, starting with the term "slave:" why is knowledge slavish exactly? Because, as we have already established, as knowledge, knowledge represents a reality that the will wills to be true--and in this case this reality is essentially a reality where willing does not occur. If the will wills itself not to return, it wills its own death. And if, looking through Nietzsche's writings, we see that he often says the essence of (biological) life is the will to power, it becomes clear why Nietzsche links this will of the death of willing to the slave, who essentially is characterized as nihilistic: the will against life is a will to nothingness, and therefore nihilistic. Nihilism is the will of the slave for Nietzsche. The term opposed to the slave—master—we see characterizes those who are worthy of life, those who do not seek to be free of it but want to will correctly (that is, will to power).
Master and slave basically characterized, then, we can see that the advent of knowledge was also for Nietzsche the advent of both nihilism and slavishness—in other words, the fall of the will to power to a will to nothingness. According to Nietzsche in this short remark, knowledge of reality only comes on the scene once life, the will to power, ceases to will itself to power again and again. Why? It is clear that if this is true, this fact makes all knowledge slavish knowledge, even if it is held by a master, simply because it has an essence that wills the end of the will to power. It is also clear that a true master would only diverge from willing his power again and again, eternally, by acquiring knowledge (or, descending into the muck of the slave) only to will himself to power better, more easily, more deftly, with more skill. But for anyone who takes reality to be something that can be known, they cease willing to power: they apparently engage with reality in such a way that they are slaves, that they will their own destruction.
But is this true? Does knowledge come on the scene when life ceases to will itself to recur eternally? Why should Nietzsche indeed affirm this? Everything revolves around seeing how knowledge does not seek the eternal recurrence of the will to power. But before we can grasp this, it is handy to picture life before the advent of knowledge. If the essence of life is to will itself (which is, we remember, will to power) to power, then there is no need for knowledge (in the sense we already described) at all. Knowledge can only be a deviation from the primary task, can only be secondary (readers of Freud now see that these primary and secondary tasks are a lot like the primary and secondary processes of the unconscious and the conscious). Adhering to this primary task, then, will in this time before knowledge knows nothing. Put differently, prior to the advent of knowledge, there was only a masterly willing of will such that reality was only the reflection of the will to power. In fact, it was not even a reflection of this will to power: reality simply was—no representation of the will to itself needed to juxtapose itself between the object and the will, as there is with knowledge. Reality was not fantasy or the wish-fulfillment of the will, for the will did not need anything more out of it in order to get at its object than what it already was. As hard or impossible as this is to picture, the key to grasping the fall of the will to power into nihilism is to see that this reality of the master is necessary to keep in view, a reality where knowledge is superfluous and in which life can get along fine without it. For once we know this and grasp it at least as somewhat plausible (looking at animals for examples), the concepts of the will to power and the eternal recurrence seem clearer, and the phenomenon of knowledge more sinister.
As we said, the key to knowing how knowledge arises when life seeks to will itself is to see that any deviation from this primary process must hinder the will to power, and hinder it in a way that resembles knowledge. Since the will to power seeks to will itself again and again eternally, that is, seeks to will the eternal recurrence of the becoming that is itself, all knowledge can only be a will for something else to recur eternally. And while this "something other" does not directly have to be the reverse of the will to power, the force that will undo it, to some degree this reverse is always the ultimate effect of any will that does not will itself to power. Why? Well, because along with any other object willed, there will also be a will against the will to power, a will to nothingness, because it wills something other than becoming to exist. That is, if it does not will becoming, it must will some form of being. And since being can only be a consequence of becoming for the will, this will must will against will. It is that simple.
But we have not shown how it wills against will in a form that resembles knowledge. Well, let us remember what Nietzsche here says knowledge is: knowledge is that which is possible only on the basis of a will that being should exist. Knowledge assumes things simply are. In fact, insofar as it exerts itself, it wills that they are this way. It does not assume that they become—how could it get a handle on them? Indeed, if you know my changing opinion in the process of it being changed, you know nothing: it is not an opinion anymore or yet. Thus Nietzsche shows, quite profoundly, that all those conceptions about reality that go so far as to presuppose that what is real is no longer the old solipsistic Cartesian cogito, but the structure of a world, of a reality that merely happens to fall in line in a particular way with our mode of perceiving—all these Kantian and Hegelian and Comteian notions of reality as a thing that is structured to suit knowledge overlook something. They do this even if they affirm idealistically (like Berkeley) that only knowledge is reality (i.e. that all that is real are pure subjective perceptions--there is no "external reality" at all). They are overlooking how reality is not structured at a deeper level, at the level that makes possible their assertion that reality is structured for knowledge. At this level, being and becoming war with each other, and all that exists is will. Their philosophies thus will being as opposed to becoming, since what is remains the sole object of knowledge (knowledge is not of becoming). And with this will they fail to see that their being can just as well be an effect of becoming.
Now, it is this hastiness, this lack of resolve to make sure being permeates all that is willed that makes their will lack something. What it lacks is a will to impose itself upon all things such that it can expend all its possibilities and recur again: this will lacks a will to power. As such, it has made something be in opposition to becoming, so that it can grasp and comprehend not what it is but what it should be. Reality thus is representation as opposed to reality—fantasy or mere wish fulfillment. As such, it is knowledge. Thus knowledge is the effect of a denigrated will to power.
We have moved quickly, because the central issue here will bring us back to what has just happened. The central issue is this: regardless of whether will to power is what is real, regardless of whether the recurring-time-structure is the structure of reality itself, all knowledge stops short at a point where its essence could be one of two things, being or being of becoming. Since they are identical in their appearance (both appear to be being), but different in their genealogy or origin (one has its origin in being, the other in becoming), the decision to pick one over the other will inevitably be fatal, regardless of which is chosen. For all knowledge can see here is being: it has stopped short of genealogy. It thus affirms being and ceases to have contact with reality other than through fantasy. Now, what made this knowledge stop short? A lack of will. It is not knowledge itself, but the will of knowledge that is its downfall. This will, because it wills only being at this juncture and does not will itself—i.e. because it is not at this juncture true to its nature, which, as a will, is will to power, will to recur again and be again the being of becoming—because it wills being over its own nature it stops short of itself, does not will itself again, again at this final juncture where of all places it should will itself again, assert itself again. It is suddenly truer to the object of the will than the will itself. This, then, regardless of what reality is, makes the will to power what is not willed by knowledge.
And this is why Nietzsche repeats again and again that "knowledge is dangerous." It is not dangerous because it is a "tool of power," in the sense that, as knowledge, it can influence us to will domination over things that we should not dominate, like the poor, etc: knowledge here is not dangerous primarily because it is "ideology," because it has something wrong with its content. It is dangerous first and foremost for the will and its ability to will itself because of its form--that is, because it is merely a tool that seeks to substitute itself for will (one sees parallels with Heidegger's assertion that Being has fallen from its essence to become something merely ready-to-hand, something approximating techne, what gets used in the world). Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that we probably no longer have the capacity to will something without knowledge (in the conventional slavish sense) anymore: he believes that many generations must pass before humanity can live up to such a will again (and a knowledge that is suboordinate to will--we must keep in mind that Nietzsche is not advocating fanaticism or the end of knowledge, but only its being in the proper place, underneath will). Thus knowledge comes on the scene when life ceases to will itself to recur eternally. And thus the phenomenon is unitary: it occurs when being and being of becoming are put before a will, and the will does not make a choice and impose itself but accepts them both as equivalent, as being. In essence, this is the same choice we make everyday when we see a shoe or something made in a foreign land using slave labor and do not see its origin but see it only as a finished product—that is, see it only as a shoe, something that is regardless of where it came from, not as something that is only because it is the result of becoming what it is (that is, being-made-by-slaves). Now, as soon as this type of will becomes the predominant one, all that can result is nihilism, because the choice has already been made inside the slavish will itself against the true nature of life, against a will towards the eternal return of will. As soon as this will to power resurges, however (and it will have to overcome knowledge as slavish knowledge in order to do so) the proper nature of will might be restored to itself and life will again masterfully affirm life (and know masterfully--know not instead of willing but know in order to will).
A particularly good quote...
...from Nietzsche:
Not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of "truth."
-The Will to Power, #515, March-June 1888
In other words, whatever is non-contradictory merely is lacking the will or the strength to overcome its simplicity (a Hegelian term meaning its identity with itself or self-equivalence) and encounter or reside in contradiction. As soon as it overcomes this, it will be powerful, for it will have to possess not only the level of strength necessary for itself to exist (as it does in merely being non-contradictory) but also the level of strength necessary for itself to hold itself together despite its contradiction. Now, this contradictory thing is not true by virtue of this strength either, but it certainly can assert itself and control the merely non-contradictory due to it. This is why--as Freud, a Nietzschian, notes--the most domineering and efficient forces throughout history seem to articulate themselves contradictorily, "unreasonably:" think of Fascism ("in order to be a people, we must become solely a state!"), colonialism ("in order to live better, you must allow us to destroy your way of life!"), sometimes democracy ("in order to have freedom, you must always comport yourself as a free person!").
If we understand all this, Nietzsche's critiques of classical logic, like this late fragment, become clearer and much more poignant:
If, according to Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the most certain of all principles, if it is the ultimate and most basic, upon which every demonstrative proof rests, if the principle of every axiom lies in it; then one should consider all the more rigorously what presuppositions already lie at bottom of it. Either it asserts something about actuality, about being, as if one already knew this from another source; that is, as if opposite attributes [of a thing under consideration as to whether it is contradictory] could not be ascribed to it [because contradiction everywhere is, for some reason, impossible]. Or the proposition means: opposite attributes should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be be called true by us.
-The Will to Power, #516, Spring-Fall 1888
Nietzsche here basically outlines the superego: logic, rationality, the non-contradictory--all this is merely the result of an imperative to-be-logical, -rational, etc.... or else! Freud saw it the same way. In The Ego and the Id the quintessential statement of the superego to the ego is specified by Freud as the following: "You ought to be like this (like your father)" (Pg. 30).
Not being able to contradict is proof of an incapacity, not of "truth."
-The Will to Power, #515, March-June 1888
In other words, whatever is non-contradictory merely is lacking the will or the strength to overcome its simplicity (a Hegelian term meaning its identity with itself or self-equivalence) and encounter or reside in contradiction. As soon as it overcomes this, it will be powerful, for it will have to possess not only the level of strength necessary for itself to exist (as it does in merely being non-contradictory) but also the level of strength necessary for itself to hold itself together despite its contradiction. Now, this contradictory thing is not true by virtue of this strength either, but it certainly can assert itself and control the merely non-contradictory due to it. This is why--as Freud, a Nietzschian, notes--the most domineering and efficient forces throughout history seem to articulate themselves contradictorily, "unreasonably:" think of Fascism ("in order to be a people, we must become solely a state!"), colonialism ("in order to live better, you must allow us to destroy your way of life!"), sometimes democracy ("in order to have freedom, you must always comport yourself as a free person!").
If we understand all this, Nietzsche's critiques of classical logic, like this late fragment, become clearer and much more poignant:
If, according to Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the most certain of all principles, if it is the ultimate and most basic, upon which every demonstrative proof rests, if the principle of every axiom lies in it; then one should consider all the more rigorously what presuppositions already lie at bottom of it. Either it asserts something about actuality, about being, as if one already knew this from another source; that is, as if opposite attributes [of a thing under consideration as to whether it is contradictory] could not be ascribed to it [because contradiction everywhere is, for some reason, impossible]. Or the proposition means: opposite attributes should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not to know the true, but to posit and arrange a world that shall be be called true by us.
-The Will to Power, #516, Spring-Fall 1888
Nietzsche here basically outlines the superego: logic, rationality, the non-contradictory--all this is merely the result of an imperative to-be-logical, -rational, etc.... or else! Freud saw it the same way. In The Ego and the Id the quintessential statement of the superego to the ego is specified by Freud as the following: "You ought to be like this (like your father)" (Pg. 30).
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