(034) Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, One Paragraph at a Time
I’ve struggled 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 Two: The Free Spirit
34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the “nature of things.”
A person can stand from any philosophical viewpoint and look out into a world to see all things that they are certain are wrong with it. Inevitably we find a multitude of reasons to speculate that something is deceiving us about the “nature of things” causing us to mistrust our understanding of the world.
He, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently “the spirit,” responsible for the falseness of the world — an honourable exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of — he who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as falsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that it would not continue to do what it has always been doing?
The person who regards the process of thinking itself as the cause for the world being so falsely deduced might find a good reason to mistrust their capacity as a thinking being. Nietzsche refers to this as an “honorable exit” of advocatus dei (God’s advocates), presumably, it is an exit from the route to being a truthful philosopher.
In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers: for example, whether it be “real” or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description.
Thinkers innocently request honest answers from their consciousness about whether it is real or substantial or why consciousness keeps the external world at a distance.
The belief in “immediate certainties” is a MORAL NAIVETE which does honour to us philosophers; but — we have now to cease being “MERELY moral” men! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which does little honour to us!
It’s naive at a moral level to jump to immediate certainties. And philosophers are not only to be concerned with morality. In every way apart from issues concerning morality, belief in immediate certainties does little to honor the philosophical tradition.
If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a “bad character,” and consequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a RIGHT to “bad character,” as the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth — he is now under OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.
A middle-class person who expresses an immediate distrust of things is to be taken as a sign of poor character, but the philosopher lives in a world beyond those values. It is the truthful philosopher who has studied the history of humanity and its morals and has internalized and grown from the deceptions of reality that have occurred in such great numbers across the ages.
Perhaps the philosopher has an obligation to distrust reality to ensure that it is held under the greatest scrutiny possible.
— Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why NOT? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world.
Nietzsche breaks from his previous thread to humorously poke at the sad image of a philosopher that he was assembling. He explains that he has learned to think and estimate differently about deception, but he remains prepared to poke fun at philosophers when it is due.
He goes on to justify this because the philosopher who insists that truth is more valuable than appearance is a poorly proven assumption about the world. If we’re misguided and deceived about the truth, about the essential nature of things, why must appearances conform to truth?
So much must be conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the “seeming world” — well, granted that YOU could do that, — at least nothing of your “truth” would thereby remain!
If we as individuals were to do away with the world as it appears to us, as some philosophers would have it, we would simply be unable to live and operate. If it were even possible for us to engage with the naturally occurring essences of the world, there would be nothing left of our perspective to ground us.
Indeed, what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of “true” and “false”? Is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of semblance — different valeurs, as the painters say? Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US — be a fiction?
Why should we assume there is an essential difference between “true” and “false” in the first place? Perhaps some degrees exist inside the spectrum of truth and falsity that we must navigate.
The world comes to us value-laden. We don’t understand the mechanisms behind consciousness that narrow our focus on certain things at the exclusion of other things.
And to any one who suggested: “But to a fiction belongs an originator?” — might it not be bluntly replied: WHY? May not this “belong” also belong to the fiction? Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess-faith?
This seems to be a call to action for the philosopher to rise above arguments of mere objectivity, acknowledging that each philosopher carries with him his proclivities as laid out in the previous chapter entitled “On the Prejudices of Philosophers”.
Rather than being concerned with teaching people about “truth”, perhaps philosophers should be more concerned with other things, like asking fundamental questions and trying to better understand just how unsuccessful philosophers are at defining “knowledge as such”.
