The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (95 page)

3
Cf.
Beyond Good and Evil
, §280. For opposition to Descartes’ own answer to the Reflective Question, see
Will
, §§436, 471, and 533.

4
See Williams (
1978
),
Ch. 2
, passim; and see esp. the wonderful comments on the fungus analogy at pp. 54–55. Cf.
Gay Science
, §344;
Beyond Good and Evil
, §§1 and 16;
Genealogy
, III.24, concluding paragraphs;
Will
, §§587 and 588; and
Werke
, VII.3.30.10 (cited in Poellner (
1995
), p. 113).

5
Let us not forget, as far as this question is concerned, that not believing something need not mean believing the opposite. It may involve having no belief about the matter at all. It may even involve refusing to think in such terms. Recall in this connection the discussion of thick ethical concepts in the Introduction, §7. There is room for the view that it can be both true that a work of art is blasphemous, say, and better for me not to think that it is; better for me not so much as to think in terms of blasphemy. (I shall return to these issues in the Conclusion, §3(b).)

6
See
Will
, §§532 (esp. the final paragraph) ff. Cf.
Beyond Good and Evil
, §177. Cf. also Wittgenstein (
1974b
), §222. For the reference to Pilate, see John, 18:38.

7
This is in effect what he called the sole fact of pure reason: see
Ch. 5
, §9.

8
Cf. Deleuze (
2006a
), p. 1, and
Ch. 2
, §§7 and 8.

9
This is an allusion, as Nietzsche subsequently makes clear, to the famous exchange between the first doctor and Argan in the Finale to Molière (
1959
): the doctor asks how opium induces sleep and Argan replies by invoking its power to do so.

10
See also the rest of the section;
Genealogy
, III.25; and
Will
, §530.

11
‘If anyone …’. The qualification is important. There is a profound sense, which I hope will become clear in the course of the chapter, in which Nietzsche’s principal target is not an individual at all, but a kind of sickness of which Kant happens to be an especially significant symptom. In fact Nietzsche would see this as testimony to Kant’s greatness. Through all the seemingly irreverent rhetoric a clear respect for Kant is discernible.

12
Nietzsche contrasts the moderns with ‘those Greeks’, who ‘knew how to live’ by ‘[stopping] courageously at the surface … [and believing] in the whole Olympus of appearance’; ‘those Greeks’ who were, as he famously puts it, ‘superficial –
out of profundity
’ (
Gay Science
, Preface, §4, emphasis in original). Not that the modern attempt to escape appearances in this way can be said to be peculiarly modern: see Plato’s
Republic
, Pt VII, §§5–7. For more on the need to stop at the surface, see §6 in this chapter.

13
Cf.
Ch. 1
, n. 7.

14
Cf.
Beyond Good and Evil
, §1, and
Genealogy
, III.27.

15
The word ‘moreover’ in this sentence is important. Nietzsche’s conception has a number of separable components. The valuing of truth above all else does not
have
to be a valuing of truth conceived in this way.

16
Nietzsche talks of a ‘liberation from all illusion, as “knowledge,” as “truth,” as “being,” as release from all purpose, all desire, all action, as a state beyond even good and evil’ (
Genealogy
, III.17).

17
Cf. Clark (
1990
), p. 223, where Maudemarie Clark urges that Nietzsche is engaged in sense-making of a sort that does not.

18
This is not the same as (though neither is it incompatible with) Heidegger’s view. Heidegger argues that Nietzsche is engaged in metaphysics on yet another conception of metaphysics, but in such a way as to bring it (metaphysics) to an end: see
Ch. 18
, §4.

19
See
Ch. 3
, n. 22, for one crucial difference between this view and the perspectivism that we found in Leibniz. For an exploration of the whole idea of a point of view in this broad sense, see Moore (
1997a
), esp.
Ch. 1
. In that book I argue,
contra
Nietzsche, that there can be sense-making that is not from any point of view: see esp.
Ch. 4
. (I draw on the work of Bernard Williams: see esp. Williams (
1978
), pp. 64–68.) How does this consist with my claim in §4 of the previous chapter that it is not possible for us to make sense of things except from our position of engagement with them? The matter is complex. But summarily: I do not count our position of engagement with things as a point of view. This is precisely because it admits of no alternative. In my book I also discuss Nietzsche’s views: see
Ch. 5
, §8, from which some of the present section is derived. For further discussion of Nietzsche’s views, see Houlgate (
1986
), esp. pp. 56–67; Clark (
1990
),
Ch. 5
; Poellner (
1995
),
Ch. 6
, §2; and Gemes (
2009
), to which Christopher Janaway replies in Janaway (
2009
), §2.

20
See Nehamas (
1985
), passim.

21
See
Gay Science
, §58.

22
See
Twilight
, V.6, and
Will
, §567.

23
See also
Daybreak
, §243;
Gay Science
, §§54, 373, and 374;
Beyond Good and Evil
, §§14 and 16; and
Will
, §§477, 503–507, 555–568, 590, and 616.

24
I have taken the liberty of replacing ‘perspective’ in Walter Kaufmann’s and R.J. Hollingdale’s translation by ‘perspectival’.

25
I have taken the liberty of replacing each occurrence of ‘is’ in the first sentence of Walter Kaufmann’s translation by ‘are’.

26
There is a large literature on this question. For one very interesting discussion that bears on it, see Han-Pile (
2009
).

27
He famously opens the preface by ‘supposing truth to be a woman.’

28
It seems to me that, in Williams (
2002
), Bernard Williams exaggerates the tension between these, and thereby infelicitously downplays the denial that there are facts: see p. 10 and nn. 10 and 23.

29
For further discussion, see Deleuze (
2006a
),
Ch. 3
, §15; Craig (
1987
), pp. 273ff.; Clark (
1990
),
Ch. 1
(which contains references to a further wealth of material); Schacht (
1995a
); and Tanesini (
1995
) – each of which differs in various striking ways from the others but all of which are very helpful.

30
See e.g. Copleston (
1960
), p. 410; Clark (
1990
), p. 151; and Poellner (
1995
),
Ch. 6
, §3. (I should add that, although I am at variance with all three writers concerning the force of this objection, there is much in their respective discussions that I admire. What gives me greatest pause in Maudemarie Clark’s case is the emphasis that she places, throughout her book, on different stages in Nietzsche’s thinking. I think that many of the tensions that she thinks can be resolved by appeal to these different stages can be resolved in any case.) Cf. the quotation from Quine (
2008b
), pp. 242–243, given in
Ch. 12
, §8. Cf. also Plato’s
Theaetetus
, 171a–c; and Nagel (
1997
), pp. 14–15. Nietzsche, incidentally, is aware of the objection: see
Beyond Good and Evil
, §22, final sentence.

31
Cf. Yovel (
1989
), p. 121.

32
Cf. n. 5.

33
I leave open whether this is what Nietzsche would say. What he would say, and what he continually does say, is that it is of vital importance to make sense of things from different points of view – the better (as I see it) to grasp the truth. See e.g.
Genealogy
, III.12, and
Ecce Homo
, I.1. Cf. Deleuze (
1990b
), pp. 174–175.

34
The argument against regarding perspectivism as a truth lies, I believe, elsewhere: see n. 19.

35
Cf.
Gay Science
, §354, where Nietzsche refers to ‘the epistemologists who have become entangled in the snares of grammar (the metaphysics of the people).’ Cf. also
Beyond Good and Evil
, Preface and §20.

36
I referred parenthetically just now to the comparisons with Wittgenstein. Significantly, G.E.M. Anscombe, drawing heavily on the work of Wittgenstein, devotes a justly famous article to arguing that the word ‘I’ cannot function as a referring expression, in the way in which it appears to, precisely because, if it did, what it was used to refer to would have to be an immaterial thinking substance of the very kind that Descartes took himself to be (Anscombe (
1983
)).

37
See also
Beyond Good and Evil
, §§12, 17, 34, and 54;
Genealogy
, I.13;
Twilight
, IV.5; and
Will
, §§371, 519, 531, 561, and 631.

38
Kant (
1998
), A66/B91ff., is very pertinent here.

39
See
Will
, §§314, 507, and 567. Cf. Yovel (
1989
), pp. 178–181, and Williams (
2006h
), pp. 325–326.

40
See again the quotation from
Beyond Good and Evil
, §11, given in §2. See also ibid., §§4, 21, and 22; and
Will
, Bk Three, Pt I.5, passim, and §520 – in the last of which Nietzsche writes that ‘all human knowledge is either experience or mathematics’, thereby anticipating the logical positivists’ Humean repudiation of synthetic
a priori
knowledge. Note: in many of these passages we need to beware something that we have already witnessed, namely that sometimes (and not only when he is using scare quotes) Nietzsche means by ‘truth’ absolute truth.

41
This is what I called in
Ch. 5
, §2, the Causal Principle. In
Beyond Good and Evil
, §4, Nietzsche suggests that this critique extends to synthetic
a priori
‘truths’ in general.

42
See also
Gay Science
, §§110 and 111;
Beyond Good and Evil
, §4;
Will
, Bk Three, Pt I.5, passim, and §§507 and 584.

43
The Wittgensteinian element in these quotations is evident not least in the element of idealism (see
Ch. 10
, §§3 and 4). But Nietzsche is altogether less concerned than Wittgenstein to disown the latter: in a passage omitted from the first quotation he talks of ‘the axioms of logic’ as ‘a means and measure for us to
create
reality, the concept “reality,” for ourselves’ (emphasis in original). This helps to explain why, in Nietzsche’s case, the idealism is as much an empirical idealism as a transcendental idealism (
Ch. 5
, Appendix). Cf. also
Will
, §522, where Nietzsche writes, ‘We cease to think when we refuse to do so under the constraint of language’ (emphasis removed). Frege, the early Wittgenstein, and the later Wittgenstein would all agree. But then Nietzsche immediately adds, in idealist vein, ‘We barely reach the doubt that sees this limitation as a limitation.’ Frege and the two Wittgensteins would try to resist the idea that there is any limitation here. What Nietzsche sees as a limitation of thought they would see rather as a
limit
of thought, in the sense of one of thought’s essential features: see e.g.
Ch. 9
, §4.

44
See n. 33.

45
Cf.
Ch. 12
, n. 8.

46
In Kant’s case the empirical world bore them all, at least insofar as the sense-making in question was ‘thick’: see
Ch. 5
, §§4 and 8. In Frege’s case the transcendent world bore features corresponding to various logical features of our sense-making: see
Ch. 8
, §6. (Note: my talk of two worlds in Kant’s case is to be interpreted with due caution. In particular it is not meant to beg any of the questions raised in
Ch. 5
, n. 36.)