antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things). * (d) If we abandon the ideas " subject " and " object "; then we must also abandon the idea "substance" and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: " matter," " spirit," and other hypothetical things, " eternity and the immutability of matter," etc. We are then rid of materiality. * From a moral standpoint the world is false. But inasmuch as morality itself is a part of this world, morality also is false. The will to truth is a process of establishing things; it is a process of making things true and lasting, a total elimination of that false character, a Revaluation of it into being. Thus, " truth " is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process or, better still, to the Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose: to introduce truth is a processus in infinitum, an active determining it is not a process of be- 6 1 coming conscious of something, which in itself is fixed and determined. It is merely a word for " The Will to Power." Life is based on the hypothesis of a belief in stable and regularly recurring things; the mightier it is, the more vast must be the world of know ledge and the world called being. Logicizing, rationalizing, and systematizing are of assistance as means of existence. Man projects his instinct of truth, his " aim," to a certain extent beyond himself, in the form of a metaphysical world of Being, a " thing-in-itself," a world already to hand. His requirements as a creator make him invent the world in which he works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipation (this faith in truth) is his mainstay. All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as a contest...* As soon as we. fancy that some one is responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God, Nature), and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us. * The " welfare of the individual " is just as fanciful as the " welfare of the species ": the first is not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species 62 is just as fluid as the individual. " The preservation of the species " is only a result of the growth of the species that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind. Theses: The apparent conformity of means to end (" the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man ") is merely the result of that " Will to Power " which manifests itself in all phenomena: To become stronger involves a process of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end: The ends which are apparent are not intended; but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organization which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends. Against apparent " necessity ": This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else. Against the apparent " conformity of means to ends ": The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
(z) THE THING-IN-ITSELF AND APPEARANCE.
553. The foul blemish on Kant s criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant had no right to his distinction " appearance " and " thing-in-itself" in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appearance from the appearance itself, as unallowable in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity: and this conception, on the other hand, already anticipates that differentiation, as if the " thing-in- itself " were not only inferred but actually given.
554. It is obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this it follows that the concept " cause and effect " is not applicable in a philosophy which believes in things- in-themselves and in appearances. Kant s mistake.. As a matter of fact, from a psycho logical standpoint, the concept " cause and effect " is derived from an attitude of mind which believes it sees the action of will upon will everywhere, which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechanical view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time) that concept is reduced to the mathematical formula with which and this is a fact which cannot be sufficiently emphasized nothing is ever understood, but rather defined deformed.
555. The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even supposing there were an " in-itself," an unconditional thing, it could on that very account not be known Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of " coming into relation with something "; the knowledge- seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothing to anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction, in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then?); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means: " to place one s self in relation with something," to feel one s self conditioned by something and one s self conditioning it under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects "in-them- selves ").
556. A " thing-in-itself " is just as absurd as a " sense- in-itself," a " meaning-in-itself." There is no such 65 thing as a " fact-in-itself," for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact. The answer to the question, " What is that? " is a process of fixing a meaning from a different standpoint. The " essence" the " essential factor" is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective, and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the question is " What is that for me? " (for us, for everything that lives, etc. etc.). A thing would be defined when all creatures had asked and answered this question, " What is that? " concerning it. Supposing that one single creature, with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all things, were lacking, that thing would still remain undefined. In short: the essence of a thing is really only an opinion concerning that " thing." Or, better still; " it is worth " is actually what is meant by * it is," or by " that is." One may not ask: " Who interprets, then? " for the act of interpreting itself, as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as " Being," but as a. process, as Becoming) as a passion. The origin of " things " is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking, willing, and feeling subject. The concept " thing " as well as all its attributes. Even " the subject " is a creation of this order, a " thing" like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the power that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined or distinct from all other individual capacities; at bottom action conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to come (action and the probability of similar action).
557. The qualities of a thing are its effects upon other " things." If one imagines other " things " to be non existent, a thing has no qualities. That is to say: there is nothing without other things. That is to say: there is no " thing-in-itself."
558. The thing-in-itself is nonsense. If I think all the " relations," all the " qualities," all the " activities " of a thing, away, the thing itself does not remain: for " thingness " was only invented fanci fully by us to meet certain logical needs that is to say, for the purposes of definition and comprehension (in order to correlate that multitude of relations, qualities, and activities).
559. " Things which have a nature in themselves " a dogmatic idea, which must be absolutely abandoned.
560. That things should have a nature in themselves, quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a perfectly idle hypothesis: it would presuppose that interpretation and the act of being subjective are not essential, that a thing divorced from all its relations can still be a thing. Or, the other way round: the apparent objective character of things; might it not be merely the result of a difference of degree within the subject perceiving? could not that which changes slowly strike us as being " objective lasting, Being, " in- itself"? could not the objective view be only a false way of conceiving things and a contrast within the perceiving subject?
561. If all unity were only unity as organization. But the " thing " in which we believe was invented only as a substratum to the various attributes. If the thing " acts," it means: we regard all the other qualities which are to hand, and which are momentarily latent, as the cause accounting for the fact that one individual quality steps forward that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities x as the cause of the quality x which is obviously quite absurd and imbecile! All unity is only so in the form of organization and collective action: in the same way as a human community is a unity that is to say, the reverse of atomic anarchy; thus it is a body politic, which stands for one, yet is not one.
562. " At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing." The " thing- in-itself" remained over. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based upon that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also substance. " The thing affects a subject? " Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside our selves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all! Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation. In movement no new meaning is given to feeling. That which is, cannot be the substance of movement: it is therefore a form of Being. N.B. The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede it (purposes); Secondly, through mental images of phenomena which follow behind it (the mathematico-physical explanation). The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which is the symbolization of the world by means of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation: physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without feeling or purpose right up to the highest man. And teleology is only a history of purposes, and is never physical.
563. Our method of acquiring " knowledge " is limited to a process of establishing quantities; but we can by no means help feeling the differences of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us; it is not a " thing-in-itself." Our senses have a certain definite quantum as a mean, within the limits of which they perform their functions that is to say, we become conscious of bigness and smallness in accordance with the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish that is to say, we feel even proportions as qualities in regard to our possibilities of existence.
564. But could not all quantities be merely tokens of qualities * Another consciousness and scale of desires must correspond to greater power in fact, another point of view; growth in itself is the expression of a desire to become more; the desire for a greater quantum springs from a certain quale; in a purely quantitative world, everything would be dead, stiff, and motionless. The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: it is discovered that they can only stand together, an analogy 565. Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity that is to say, as qualities, which we can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. But everything in regard to which the word " know ledge " has any sense at all, belongs to the realm of reckoning, weighing, and measuring, to quantity: whereas, conversely, all our valuations (that is to say, our sensations) belong precisely to the realm of qualities, i.e. to those truths which belong to us alone and to our point of view, and which absolutely cannot be " known." It is obvious that every one of us, different creatures, must feel different qualities, and must therefore live in a different world from the rest. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy proper to human nature; the demand that these our human interpretations and values, should be general and perhaps real values, belongs to the hereditary madnesses of human pride.
566. The " real world," in whatever form it has been conceived hitherto was always the world of appearance over again.
567. The world of appearance, i.e. a world regarded in the light of values; ordered, selected according to values that is to say, in this case, according to the standpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and the increase of power of a certain species of animals. It is the point of view, then, which accounts for the character of" appearance." As if a world could remain over, when the point of view is cancelled! By such means relativity would also be cancelled! Every centre of energy has its point of view of the whole of the remainder of the world that is to say, its perfectly definite valuation, its mode of action, its mode of resistance. The " world of appearance " is thus reduced to a specific kind of action on the world proceeding from a centre. But there is no other kind of action: and the " world " is only a word for the collective play of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every isolated factor against the whole. There no longer remains a shadow of a right to speak here of " appearance."...The specific way of reacting is the only way of reacting; we do not know how many kinds and what sort of kinds there are. But there is no " other" no " real," no essential being, for thus a world without action and re action would be expressed...The antithesis: world of appearance and real world, is thus reduced to the antitheses "world" and "nonentity."
568. A criticism of the concept "real and apparent world." Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things. " Appearance " itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e. in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance; a tempo in which observation and comparison is possible, etc. " Appearance " is an adjusted and simplified world, in which our practical instincts have worked: for us it is perfectly true: for we live in it, we can live in it: this is the proof of its truth as far as we are concerned...The world, apart from the fact that we have to live in it the world, which we have not adjusted to our being, our logic, and our psychological prejudices does not exist as a world " in-itself "; it is essentially a world of relations: under certain circumstances it has a different aspect from every different point at which it is seen: it presses against every point, and every point resists it and these collective relations are in every case incongruent. The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power: under what form, force, or constraint, it acts or resists. Our particular case is interesting enough: we have created a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to enable us to endure life in that world.
569. The nature of our psychological vision is deter mined by the fact (i) That communication is necessary, and that for communication to be possible something must be stable, simplified, and capable of being stated pre cisely (above all, in the so-called identical cs. In order that it may be communicable, it must be felt as something adjusted, as " recognisable" The material of the senses, arranged by the understanding, re- 73 duced to coarse leading features, made similar to other things, and classified with its like. Thus: the indefiniteness and the chaos of sense-impres sions are, as it were, made logical. (2) The phenomenal world is the adjusted world which we believe to be real. Its "reality" lies in the constant return of similar, familiar, and related things, in their rationalised character, and in the be lief that we are here able to reckon and determine. (3) The opposite of this phenomenal world is not " the real world," but the amorphous and un- adjustable world consisting of the chaos of sensa tions that is to say, another kind of phenomenal world, a world which to us is " unknowable." (4) The question how "things-in-themselves" are constituted, quite apart from our sense-receptivity and from the activity of our understanding, must be answered by the further question: how were we able to know that things existed"} " Thingness " is one of our own inventions. The question is whether there are not a good many more ways of creating such a world of appearance and whether this creating, rationalising, adjusting, and falsifying be not the best-guaranteed reality itself: in short, whether that which " fixes the meaning of things " is not the only reality: and whether the " effect of environment upon us " be not merely the result of such will-exercising subjects...The other " creatures " act upon us; our adjusted world of appearance is an arrangement and an overpowering of its activities: a sort of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable; the hypothesis might be advanced that subjects are all that exist, that 74 " object " is only a form of action of subject upon subject...a modus of the subject.
(k) THE METAPHYSICAL NEED.
570. If one resembles all the philosophers that have gone before, one can have no eyes for what has existed and what will exist one sees only what is. But as there is no such thing as Being; all that the philosophers had to deal with was a host of fancies y this was their " world."
571. To assert the existence as a whole of things concerning which we know nothing, simply because there is an advantage in not being able to know anything of them, was a piece of artlessness on Kant s part, and the result of the recoil-stroke of certain needs especially in the realm of morals and metaphysics.
572. An artist cannot endure reality; he turns away or back from it: his earnest opinion is that the worth of a thing consists in that nebulous residue of it which one derives from color, form, sound, and thought; he believes that the more subtle, at tenuated, and volatile, a thing or a man becomes, the more valuable he becomes: the less real, the greater the worth. This is Platonism: but Plato was guilty of yet further audacity in the matter of turning tables he measured the degree of reality according to the degree of value, and said: The more there is of " idee. " the more there is of Being. He twisted the concept " reality " round and said: " What ye regard as real is an error, and the nearer we get to the idea the nearer we are to truth. " Is this understood? It was the greatest of all re- christenings: and because Christianity adopted it, we are blind to its astounding features. At bottom, Plato, like the artist he was, placed appearance before Being! and therefore lies and fiction before truth! unreality before actuality! He was, however, so* convinced of the value of appearance, that he granted it the attributes of " Being," " causality | " goodness," and " truth," and, in short, all those things which are associated with value. The concept value itself regarded as a cause: first standpoint. The ideal granted all attributes, conferring honor: second standpoint.
573. The idea of the " true world " or of " God " as absolutely spiritual, intellectual, and good, is an emergency measure to the extent to which the antagonistic instincts are all-powerful...Moderation and existing humanity is reflected exactly in the humanisation of the gods. The Greeks of the strongest period, who entertained no fear whatever of themselves, but on the contrary were pleased with themselves, brought down their gods to all their emotions? The spiritualisation of the idea of God is thus very far from being a sign of progress: one is heartily conscious of this when one reads Goethe in his works the vaporisation of God into virtue and spirit is felt as being upon a lower plane.
574. The nonsense of all metaphysics shown to reside in the derivation of the conditioned out of the unconditioned. It belongs to the nature of thinking that it adds the unconditioned to the conditioned, that it invents it just as it thought of and invented the "ego" to cover the multifariousness of its processes: it measures the world according to a host of self-devised measurements according to its fundamental fictions "the unconditioned," "end and means," "things," "substances," and according to logical laws, figures, and forms. There would be nothing which could be called knowledge, if thought did not first so re-create the world into "things" which are in its own image. It is only through thought that there is untruth. The origin of thought, like that of feelings, cannot be traced: but that is no proof of its primordiality or absoluteness! It simply shows that we cannot get behind it, because we have nothing else save thought and feeling.
575. To know is to point to past experience: in its nature it is a regressus in infinitum. That which halts (in the face of a so-called causa prima or the unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness.
576. Concerning the psychology of metaphysics the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the greatest suffering (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the " real " world. Thus the passions have been step by step struck out, God posited as the opposite of evil that is to say, reality is conceived to be the negation of the passions and the emotions (i.e. nonentity]. Irrationality, impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incal culable suffering). Consequently they denied this ele ment in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute " rationality " and " conformity of means to ends." Change and perishability were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with Spinoza: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm). A nature overflowing and playing with energy, would call precisely h.z passions, irrationality and change, good in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc.
577. Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza s artlessness and Descartes likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita 578. Moral values in epistemology itself-. The faith in reason why not mistrust? The " real world " is the good world why? Appearance, change, contradiction, struggle, regarded as immoral: the desire for a world which knows nothing of these things. The transcendental world discovered, so that a place may be kept for " moral freedom " (as in Kant). Dialectics as the road to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: probably because sophistry was held to be the road to immorality). Time and space are ideal: consequently there is unity in the essence of things; consequently no " sin," no evil, no imperfection, a justification of God. Epicurus denied the possibility of knowledge, in order to keep the moral (particularly the hedonistic) values as the highest. Augustine does the same, and later Pascal (" corrupted reason"), in favour of Christian values. Descartes contempt for everything variable; likewise Spinoza s.
579. Concerning the psychology of metaphysics. This world is only apparent: therefore there must be a real world; this world is conditioned: conse quently there must be an unconditioned world; this world is contradictory: consequently there is a world free from contradiction; this world is evolving: conseqtiently there is somewhere a static World: a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also exist). Pain inspires these conclusions: at bottom they are wishes that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is like wise revealed by the fact that another and better world is imagined: the resentment of the meta physician against reality is creative here. The second series of questions: wherefore suffer?...and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the real world to our apparent, changing, suffering, and contradictory world: (i) Suffering as the consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as the consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (A host of experiences drawn from the sphere of nature or society, universalised and made absolute.) But if the conditioned world be causally determined by the unconditioned, then the freedom to err, to be sinful, must also be derived from the same quarter: and once more the question arises, to what purpose?...The world of appearance, of Becoming, of contradiction, of suffering, is therefore willed; to what purpose? The error of these conclusions: two contradictory concepts are formed because one of them corre sponds to a reality, the other " must " also corre spond to a reality. " Whence " would one otherwise 80 derive its contradictory concept? Reason is thus a source of revelation concerning the absolute. But the origin of the above contradictions need not necessarily be a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose +.he real genesis of the concepts: this springs from practical spheres, from utilitarian spheres, hence the strong faith it com mands (one is threatened with ruin if one s con clusions are not in conformity with this reason; but this fact is no "proof" of what the latter asserts). The preoccupation of metaphysicians with pain, is quite artless. " Eternal blessedness ": psycho logical nonsense. Brave_ a.nd creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions they are incidental conditions: both of them must be desired when one will attain to something. It is a sign of fatigue and illness in these meta physicians and religious men, that they should press questions of pleasure and pain into the foreground. Even morality in their eyes derives its great importance only from the fact that it is regarded as an essential condition for abolishing pain. The same holds good of the preoccupation with appearance and error: the cause of pain. A superstition that happiness and truth are related (confusion: happiness in " certainty," in " faith ").
580. To what extent are the various epistemological positions (materialism, sensualism, idealism) conse quences of valuations? The source of the highest 8 1 feelings of pleasure (" feelings of value") may also judge concerning the problem of reality The measure of positive knowledge is quite a matter of indifference and beside the point: as witness the development of India. The Buddhistic negation of reality in general (appearance = pain) is perfectly consistent: un- demonstrability, inaccessibility, lack of categories, not only for an " absolute world," but a recogni tion of the erroneous procedures by means of which the whole concept has been reached. " Absolute reality," " Being in itself," a contradiction. In a world of Becoming, reality is merely a simplification for the purpose of practical ends, or a deception t resulting from the coarseness of certain organs, orf a variation in the tempo of Becoming. The logical denial of the world and Nihilism is a consequence of the fact that we must oppose nonentity with Being, and that " Becoming " is denied. (" Something" becomes.)
581. Being and Becoming. " Reason " developed upon a sensualistic basis upon the prejudices of the senses that is to say, with the belief in the truth of the judgment of the senses. " Being," as the generalization of the concept " Life " (breath), " to be animate," " to will," " to act upon," " become." The opposite is: " to be inanimate," " not to become," " not to will." Thus: " Being " is not opposed to " not-Being," to " appearance," nor is I. F 82 it opposed to death (for only that can be dead which can also live). The " soul," the " ego," posited as primeval facts; and introduced wherever there is Becoming.
582. Being we have no other idea of it than that which we derive from " living How then can everything " be " dead?
583. A. I see with astonishment that science resigns itself today to the fate of being reduced to the world of appearance: we certainly have no organ of knowledge for the real world be it what it may. At this point we may well ask: With what organ of knowledge is this contradiction estab lished?...The fact that a world which is accessible to our organs is also understood to be dependent upon these organs, and the fact that we should understand a world as subjectively conditioned, are no proofs of the actual possibility of an objective world. Who urges us to believe that subjectivity is real or essential? The absolute is even an absurd concept: an " absolute mode of existence " is nonsense, the concept " being," " thing," is always relative to us. 83 The trouble is that, owing to the old antithesis "apparent" and " real," the correlative valuations "of little value" and "absolutely valuable " have been spread abroad. The world of appearance does not strike us as a " valuable " world; appearance is on a lower plane than the highest value. Only a " real " world can be absolutely "valuable."...Prejudice of prejudices! It is perfectly possible in itself that the real nature of things would be so unfriendly, so opposed to the first conditions of life, that appearance is necessary in order to make life possible...This is certainly the case in a large number of situations for instance, mar riage. Our empirical world would thus be conditioned, even in its limits to