Philosophizing with a Hammer: Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols
Friedrich Nietzsche
b. 1844 - d. 1900 Professor of Classics, University of Basel (1869-1879) Associated with Richard Wagner Went mad in 1889 Major influence on existentialism and postmodernism
Major Works
The Birth of Tragedy (1872) The Gay Science (1882) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (c. 1885) The Genealogy of Morals (1887) Twilight of the Idols (1888) Ecce Homo (1888)
God is Dead
Perhaps Nietzsche's most famous statement is God is dead. But this he is often falsely interpreted as an atheist statement (note the difference between God is dead and God does not exist). This should be understood in the broader sense as a denial of objectivity. There is no God's eye perspective from which to see when philosophizing.
Perspectivalism
This links with Nietzsche's views on truth. The denial of an objective stance from which to follows also brings with it a kind of conceptual relativism. For Nietzsche, there are many perspectives or vantage points to understand the world, some of which are no better than others. Not this does not mean there are no bad perspectives; rather while there are better and worse ways to truth, there is no single rightor perfect truth.
The Two-Worlds View
Nietzsche opposed the notion in philosophy which dates back to Plato but is continued throughout the Christian traditionof a dualism of real and ideal. For Plato, the world in which we live is a false one, and we need to strive to the unchanging world of forms to attain truth. And in Christianity, this imperfect life is just a prelude to a more perfect one in heaven. Nietzsche considers both as a denial of this world, and thus a denial of life.
Reason in Philosophy
Everything that philosophers have handled, for thousands of years now, has been a conceptual mummy (1102b). Two idiosyncrasies of philosophy include their hostility to history, or rather becoming; and secondly their confusion of what comes first with what comes last. The first gives us the notion that our senses are in error; the second gives us empty abstract concepts that have no application in the world.
Sensation and Truth
The moral is: free yourself from the senses trickery, from becoming, from history, from the lie; history is nothing but belief in the senses, belief in the lie (1103a). Philosophers always use the eyes as epistemic metaphorswhat of the poor forgotten nose? This tendency of philosophers, to ignore the changing and embrace the unchanging, leads us to privileged reason and downplay the world.
[T]he 'highest concepts,' that is, the most universal and emptiest concepts . . . these they posit at the beginning as the beginning (1103a). Innate ideas, the concept of God, eternal truths, the formsall of these things are considered the place from which philosophy must start. Nietzsche diagnoses the error as resulting from our language. The first-person pronoun I makes an I-subject into an I-substance, and from which follows subjective certainty (Descartes). The concept of being results from the same error, attributing this notion of substance to the not-I.
Empty Concepts
Morality as Anti-Nature
To Nietzsche, Christian morality is founded on a denial of passion and instinct, and embraces the myth of the other world, just as philosophy does. To destroy the passions and desires, merely in order to protect oneself against their stupidity and the disagreeable consequences of their stupidity seems to us today to be itself an acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who pull out teeth so that they won't hurt anymore . . . By ripping out the passions by the root means ripping out life by the root; the practice of the Church is hostile to life (1105b).
Transvaluation of All Values
Nietzsche denies religious values which focus on ascetic idealsthose of self-sacrifice and self-deprivation. He finds these values, which repress our fundamental desires and instincts, as anti-life. Instead, he attempts to overthrow these moral systems, to replace them with a system which is consistent with an exaltation of life, not an exaltation of suffering.
Four Great Errors
1. The error of confusing cause and effect 2. The error of false causality 3. The error of imaginary causes 4. The error or free-will
Confusion of Cause and Effect
Morality teaches that performing actions in a certain way, or under certain conditions is a recipe for happiness. But Nietzsche thinks the reverse is true, their virtue is the effect of happiness. Consider the anecdote of Coranado's diet (1107b-1108a). Likewise vice and luxury are not causes of a civilization's decline, but rather effects of it. Generally, what morality teaches us to do is something we should already be doing when the conditions are right.
False Causality
The notion that there must be some innate concepts or internal facts from which our knowledge is caused (eternal truths, forms), or that there must be antecedent motives to an action (duties), or some thinking thing there to cause thought (res cognitans)--are all part of the error of false or imaginary causes.
Free-will
For Nietzsche, the notion of free-will is an invention which allowed moralists to hold people responsible for their actions. Free-will relies upon making motive and will causal factors in actions. In this sense, it is a useful invention to attain subordination of the masses. The goal of the immoralist is to revitalize human emotion and instinct without the corresponding notions of guilt and punishment.
Restoring Dionysus
It is Dionysus (or Baccus), the Greek god of wine and sexuality, which Nietzsche turns to in the closing passages of the selection. The urges which the Bacchanalia represent (the orgy, both literally and figuratively, as an ecstatic outpouring of passion and as a celebration of life) are consistent with his attempt to bring instinct (not reason) as our fundamental drive, and to turn against the Christian virtue of chastity and aeseticism.
