(019) Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, One Paragraph at a Time
I’ve struggled immensely in all my attempts to read and comprehend Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”. These blog posts are my attempt to better understand this material. I encourage any corrections or criticisms in the comments.
Chapter One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers
19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing — he seems to have adopted a POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name — and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.
Nietzsche criticizes philosophers, specifically Schopenhauer, for taking the phenomena of “will” as a human given that exists and is “absolutely and completely known”. Like Kant’s “synthetic judgments a priori”, or the Stoic claim that we desire to live “according to one’s nature”, Nietzsche is harshly critical of the notion that human will simply exists and isn’t a compilation of a complicated multiplicity of feelings.
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “unphilosophical”: let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition “AWAY FROM WHICH we go,” the sensation of the condition “TOWARDS WHICH we go,” the sensation of this “FROM” and “TOWARDS” itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion “arms and legs,” commences its action by force of habit, directly we “will” anything.
In order to speak of the phenomena of “willing”, one must be unphilosophical. Among the complicated multiplicity of feelings that one experiences as part of the act of willing there are two sensations to speak of, namely, the sensation of moving toward something and the sensation of moving away from something. Furthermore, we experience the physical, bodily sensations of movement without even having to consciously “will” our body into motion.
Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought; — and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the “willing,” as if the will would then remain over!
We recognize the multiplicity of sensations as ingredients to “will”, but we must also recognize thinking as an ingredient. There is a ruling thought behind every action, which, if we were to somehow separate from the “will”, would more than likely result in the loss of the will altogether.
In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the command.
The third element that complicates “will” is the emotion that underlies, or perhaps overlies, every willful command.
That which is termed “freedom of the will” is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: “I am free, ‘he’ must obey” — this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that “this and nothing else is necessary now,” the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered — and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who WILLS commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience.
“Freedom of the will” is an experience of the emotional supremacy of the person who must obey. “I am free, ‘he’ must obey”. The separations between “I” and “he” is in no way clear to the observer whose attention is necessarily fixed upon one thing. This observing-commanding-obeying consciousness, which somehow manages to fix its attention onto a singular thing, makes a value judgment which indicates that “this and nothing else is necessary now”. This experience comes with so much certainty that the “willing” subject will obey, and yet believe himself to be in the position of the commander.
But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will, — this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term “I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing — to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action.
We experience will as this observing-commanding-obeying party simultaneously. Despite this simultaneous experience, as the obeying party, we know that the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion immediately after follow the act of will, but do not precede it. Will is present before sensations become present. One is compelled to action prior to conscious acknowledgment of sensation.
Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command — consequently obedience, and therefore action — was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.
Someone who believes that will and action are somehow the same things may experience success as a result of actions undertaken. This success is experienced as the sensation of an increase in power when a person’s actions are obedient to their will.
“Freedom of Will” — that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order — who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful “underwills” or under-souls — indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls — to his feelings of delight as commander. L’EFFET C’EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth.
There is a complex sense of delight that accompanies the exercise of volition — when a person identifies himself as the thing giving orders. If we are to imagine our bodies as a complex set of souls and personalities, we can also conceptualize them as a social structure, or commonwealth, to be organized and set in a kind of hierarchy. A person governing over their internal commonwealth of wills and actions will start to identify with the success of this commonwealth.
In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many “souls”, on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such within the sphere of morals — regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of “life” manifests itself.
Here Nietzsche seems to make a very profound moral claim. He states that “willing-as-such” should be placed within the sphere of morals. Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that the “relations of supremacy”, or hierarchical order, which can be internalized and personal, or externalized and societal, is a fundamental phenomenon of life. The individual hierarchy which constitutes the individual, and which governs his disparate actions, is comparable to societal hierarchies, which govern the disparate individuals themselves.
Do you think that interpretation is correct?
