Prejudices of Philosophers

1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us!

What strange, perplexing, questionable questions!

This Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves?

WHO is it really that puts questions to us here?

WHAT really is this “Will to Truth” in us?

In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will—until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will.

Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us—or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx?

It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it?

For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

2. HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite?

For example, how can truth come out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception?

Or the generous deed out of selfishness?

or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness?

Such genesis is impossible.

But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself—THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"

This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this “belief” of theirs, they exert themselves for their “knowledge,” for something that is in the end solemnly christened “the Truth.”

The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES.

It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, “DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM.”

Metaphysicians have set their seal on the popular valuations and antitheses of value.

It may be doubted whether:

1. Antitheses exist at all
2. Value is merely superficial estimates

In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish.

But it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life be assigned:

• to pretence
• to the will to delusion
• to selfishness and cupidity.

WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related and knotted to these evil and opposed things.

But who concerns himself with such dangerous “Perhapses”!

3. The greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions.

It is so even in the case of philosophical thinking.

One has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and “innateness.”

As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is “being-conscious” OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense.

The greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels.

Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life.

For example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than “truth” such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves.

Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the “measure of things.”

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely.

The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, species-rearing.

The falsest opinions (to which the synthetic a priori judgments [active-thinking confined-to-the-mind] belong), are the most indispensable to us.

The renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.

TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

5. Philosophers are regarded as half-distrustfully and half-mockingly because of how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way.

They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of “inspiration”), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or “suggestion,” which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event.

They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub “truths,"—and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.

The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his “categorical imperative”—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers.

Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in fact, the “love of HIS wisdom,” to translate the term fairly and squarely—in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!

6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography;

Moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.

To understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: “What morality do they (or does he) aim at?”

Accordingly, I do not believe that an “impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument.

But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize.

To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—“better,” if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an “impulse to knowledge,” some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.

The actual “interests” of the scholar are generally in quite another direction:

• family
• money-making
• politics

It is almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed.

Whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that.

In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal.

His morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS,—that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.

7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes.

In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies “Flatterers of Dionysius”

consequently, tyrants’ accessories and lick-spittles;

“They are all ACTORS, there is nothing genuine about them”.

Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor.

The latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters—of which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote 300 books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god Epicurus really was.

Did she ever find out?

8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the “conviction” of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery:

Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.