Umwertung – On Nietzsche’s “Trans-valuation of All Values”

PART 1

Life and the World as Wille zur Macht

Exordium

The original “motive” of social theoreticians, what “moves” or im-pels them to reflect on the cosmos cannot be found “outside” that cosmos. The “theoretician” is part of the “life” that is the object of theoria. The aim of Western philosophy had always been to achieve the object-ivity allowed by an “Archimedean point” – a point outside the cosmos. Yet in doing so, the growing “objectivity” of its episteme and gnosis led increasingly to the “subordination” of the cosmos by the “observer”, transforming its “theorization” into a praxis that gradually eclipsed its original “human interest” and hypostatized this last into a “dis-interested” search for “the Truth”, for the “essence of things”, for “the nature and being (Wesen) of reality”. Already with Hegel, and then continuing with nearly all post-Hegelian philosophers, it had dawned on Western thinkers that “science” itself, or “natural philosophy”, could never supply the ultima ratio of existence and being, and that therefore the very “trans-scendence” – the ab-strusion from the cosmos – of the human mind or spirit (Geist) could no longer be “posited” as the “objective ground” or “foundation” of human philosophical speculation. Not only did knowledge (Erkenntnis) need to reflect on its human interests (Inter-esse), but its operari needed also to become conscious of itself as praxis, as an “activity” that trans-forms the cosmos itself. Almost at the same time that Marx wrote the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach – “philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world; the point now is to change it” -, Nietzsche was inverting the Cartesian “cogito ergo sum” into his “vivo ergo cogito” (“I live, therefore I think”).

Existence comes before reflection: experience before theory: civil society before the State: social relations before morality. To a human observer and thinker of the nineteenth century the most obvious “reality”, palpable and ubiquitous, would have been that of industrial capitalism. The commodification and commercialization of every aspect of human life; the rapid industrialization and urbanization of European nation-states; the dramatic specialization of industrial branches and commensurate spread of the division of social labour; the growing concentration of capitalist ownership; last but perhaps most visible, the numeric and political rise of urban working classes and proletarian “masses”: these well-nigh apocalyptic, epochal transformations of civil society and of political institutions would have been evident to all - so evident and massive in fact as to be almost “in-comprehensible”, - too per-spicuous to be easily understood, too ubiquitous to be located, too rapid to be digested.

In these historical circumstances, the “motivations” that impelled Marx to write the Paris Manuscripts and Nietzsche his Untimely Meditations were almost diametrically opposed. Marx attributed the “alienation” of “species-conscious being-human” to the evident reality

of violent capitalist “separation” (Trennung) of living labour from the “means” or tools necessary for its “activity” (operari) and perceived a “contra-diction” between the “homologation” of human living labour and the “wealth” represented by the exchange-value of commodities that was then used “to pay” that living labour with dead objectified labour. His theoretical task was to expose the dis-tortion and impediment of a human communion whose practical construction was itself made possible by the antagonism of capitalist social relations of production.

Nietzsche, by contrast, eschews all “contra-dictions”: esse est percipi – what you see is what you get. The “inequality” and “conflict” that we witness through our senses is the very foundation of Life intended in its totality as the expression of innate “differences” between living things. The condemnation of this “reality” as “in-justice”, of these “dif-ferences” as “in-equalities” is the perverse attempt by the “beautiful souls” to impose their “power-lessness” (Ohn-macht) by means of their “ressentiment” on the “Will to Power” of the strong and dominant: “to judge is to be unjust”. (Freud’s comments regarding “Sozialismus” in Die Unbehagen und die Kultur will follow this line of reasoning. And so will also his introductory “reservations” about Romain Rolland’s “oceanic feeling”, which echo Nietzsche’s own critique of Schopenhauer’s “unegoistische Mit-leid” [sym-pathy, com-passion] or “con-scientia”.)

Unlike all previous philosophers, Nietzsche begins his entire “critique” of “modernity” – of the present state of bourgeois society – precisely from this “motivation”, from this “im-pulse”, this “drive” (Trieb). His starting point is the “mere appearance” that other philosophers dismiss in favour of a “hidden reality”, an “essence” that can explain or decipher the “kingdom of shadows” that they reject and condemn. Nietzsche wishes to explore the real sources of the Kantian ungesellige Geselligkeit (un-sociable society) just as it is – by scrutinizing the very “impulses” that may “motivate” human beings both to behave as they do and to “will the truth” of their practical world so as to master it (vouloir-savoir, vouloir-pouvoir). For him, “the kingdom of shadows” is not the world of “appearances” or “alienation”; it is instead the realm of “reality”, the agon and the object of the philosophia perennis, - the “essentialist”, “transcendental” philosophy that wishes to assign a moral “Value”, a finality, a “purpose” or “telos” to life when it ought to know that to do so is impossible – because “life” is immoral and because philosophy is itself “immersed in life”.

Marx denounced abstract bourgeois morality as the “mystification” of a brutal capitalist reality that needed to be “rectified” practically. The “misery” of bourgeois morality was that it left “reality” intact – and therefore “theory” and “practice” needed to be unified. Nietzsche instead condemns moral values precisely for seeking “to rectify” the “reality” of life by calling its manifestations (Geschehen) “appearances”. And he “reconciles” theory and practice by “diagnosing” moral values as physiological symptoms of the decay of those who espouse them! Not only are you wrong to seek to transform reality in accordance with your morality, with your ideals, but your very attempt is a sign and symptom of your “diseased” status and destiny!

At the same time, Nietzsche wishes to demolish the entire foundations of the philosophies of social progress that have sprouted in Europe with the rise of the bourgeoisie: on one side, the doctrine of liberalism sanctions the homologation of the self-regulating market mechanism in the utilitarian theories of Political Economy (whether Classical or Neo-classical), and the free concourse of public opinion that guarantees the Political “neutrality” of the nightwatchman State (Lassalle) in the functioning of the market Economy. On the other side, the numerical and political rise of the working class is manifested in the spread of Socialism whose doctrines envision the inevitable liberation of the proletariat from the exploitative yoke of the bourgeoisie and the ravages of its “anarchical” market.

Both theories find confirmation of their progressive faith in the seeming evolution (Entwicklung) of humanity both in a physiological and in a social sense, with the growing “democratization” of liberal regimes, promising the fatidic equiparation of Politics and Economics, of State and civil society, of the Rule of Law and free Public Opinion, of citizen and bourgeois, of public order and cohesion and free individuality. This is the Vergeistigung, the spiritualization that bourgeois society and the liberal economy promise and that now seems within reach through the unstoppable advance of scientific discovery, itself a product of the division of social labour, the Vergesellschaftung or “socialization” induced paradoxically by the very spread of “private enterprise” and of the “free market economy”.

Yet, in this apparently seamless chain of industrial and social “progress”, a “disconnection” does exist between ideals and reality, between “price” and “value”, between the “antagonism” of bourgeois society, its “unsociability”, and its hypo-critical (uncritical and dissimulating) lip-service and atavism to “moral values”, to the “utility” of capitalist economy, to the “conciliation” of its self-interests in the State that are glorified as “eternal” but in reality are exposed as both precarious and perishable. These a-spects of social life are “dis-connected” and need to be put together again. On one side we have the Vergeistigung (spiritualization) of Kultur and the nation-state; on the other side, we have the Entseelung (dis-enchantment) of material Zivilisation, of the market economy and its “fever of self-interests” (Hegel), together with coercive “rationalization” and bureaucratization of social life (Weber).

But for Nietzsche “natura non facit saltum”, not because “reality” is an unbroken chain of causality but precisely because there is no such causality – and “appearances” are all there is. There is no “Truth”, no “Idea” (Platonic or Hegelian), no “substance” hiding behind or under or beyond real e-vents (Geschehen) – there is no “Sub-ject” or “essence”: hence there can be no contra-diction, no hiatus irrationalis (Fichte) between reality and appearance, between noumenon and phenomenon, between thing in itself and “mere representation”, between Subject and Object.

Pref., 2 - …We have no right to be "disconnected"; we must neither err "disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our thoughts, our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and Whether's, grow connected and interrelated, mutual witnesses of one

will, one health, one kingdom, one sun—as to whether they are to your taste, these fruits of ours?—But what matters that to the trees? What matters that to us, us the philosophers! (GM, Pref)

[Vorrede, 2]…Wir haben kein Recht darauf, irgend worin einzeln zu sein: wir dürfen weder einzeln irren, noch einzeln die Wahrheit treffen. Vielmehr mit der Nothwendigkeit, mit der ein Baum seine Früchte trägt, wachsen aus uns unsre Gedanken, unsre Werthe, unsre Ja's und Nein's und Wenn's und Ob's — verwandt und bezüglich allesamt unter einander und Zeugnisse Eines Willens, Einer Gesundheit, Eines Erdreichs, Einer Sonne. — Ob sie euch schmecken, diese unsre Früchte? — Aber was geht das die Bäume an! Was geht das uns an, uns Philosophen!…

The aim of capital is to remove this “dis-connection”, the origin of “crisis”, by turning the “profit outcome” into something as smooth and natural and “necessary” as “a tree bearing fruit”, whence the notion of “fructiferous capital”. The im-possibility (because it involves a “contra-diction”) of reconciling this “physical” aspect of capital (its “use value” in the means of production and living labour) with its “value” (the “equi-valence” of “use values” as “exchange values”) by means of the “embodiment” of value in “money” – this is the “sub-stance” of the contradiction between “body” and “soul”, between “subject” and “object”, between the thing and the idea, between the world and the deity, between “beings” and “Being”. Nietzsche’s critique of “All Values” (alle Werthe) wishes to restore to this reality the same “physiological” naturalness (Greek “physis” – sprout, bloom) as the “organic nexus” between tree and fruit.

This “connection” involves a tie, a bond, a medium that may allow us to compare, to match, to measure and to calculate (Nietzsche uses Ver-gleich-en for “comparing”, from gleich, “equal”, in Aph.501, ‘WM’). We need a unit of “value” or at least a de-fini-tion of it: to connect concepts, we must “isolate” their “commonality” first. The matrix of the “unity” and “identity” presented and postulated by “science” is precisely a “measurement” which calls into being a “standard of value”. So what can “equate” or “homo-logate” two disparate things must be a “commonality” (homo-noia, agreement or harmony), a “value”. It is the very possibility of ever finding such a “nexus”, such a “homo-noia”, that Nietzsche questions and denies from the outset – save as it exists in the very act of Becoming (Werden, Wechsel), of trans-formation (Ver-anderung), of trans-crescence, of meta-morphosis or e-volution (Entwicklung) of Life.

Notice the chasm between Marx’s “value” and Nietzsche’s. For Marx and Classical Political Economy, “Value” is to be found in “the alienation of labour”, but ultimately it is living labour that constitutes the social synthesis – the “potential foundation” for social harmony. (Habermas seeks further to distinguish between labour as “instrumental action” not subject to “self-reflection” and interaction that cannot be subsumed by the scientific principles that govern labour as instrumental action. Yet, as Nietzsche’s critique will show, Marx’s original intuition of the “inseparability” of these two moments of human evolution was quite correct. Its elaboration in the Grundrisse constitutes, to my mind, perhaps the pinnacle of human “self-reflection”. We will return to this essential theme in Part Two.) No distinction is possible in Marx between techne’ and poiesis, between the “technical” form of the means of pro-duction and the “inter-action” of social agents, because for him they are one and the same thing in human evolution. (It is this artificial distinction that paradoxically reconciles Lukacs’s left-Hegelian hypostasis of “totality” in the “individual

subject-object” in the guise of the proletariat [in reality a late-romantic longing for the “autonomy” of the skilled worker or “Gelernt”] with the reification of “Technik” in Heidegger and later in Marcuse [itself the subject of an important review by Habermas on the Weberian notion of Rationalisierung].)

The apory will arise rather in Marx’s hypostatization of “science” or “scientific method” as enabling the “discovery” of “the laws of motion” of the capitalist mode of production, and the consequent “reduction” of living labour to labour-power (Arbeitskraft) as “the source of value”, as a quantifiable entity. Forgetting its “critical” in-tention (dia-noia, Entwurf), the Marxian critique of Political Economy will end up reductively positing “labour” in its “alienated” or “separated” form (Trennung) as the foundation of human society, of its “reproduction” through the social osmosis represented by the division of labour. Specifically, Marx’s notion of “socially necessary labour time”, from which he derived the concept of “surplus value” (Mehrwert) as the basis of “capitalist exploitation” and therefore of “profit”, is incomprehensible without this “scientistic” quantitative “prejudice” or atavism that Marx “engages with” or even “espouses” with his theorization of “market competition”, even through the “politicized” filter of “commodity fetishism”. In other words, even assuming that “surplus value” is a “fiction” or a “necessary illusion” (Lukacs) due to the enforced “commodification” of human living labour, Marx does not explain how a “fiction” can give rise to a “quantifiable and calculable reality”, the “reality of profit”, except as a “political exercise of social power”, as “inter-action”, as a distortion of the “inter-esse” implicit in the labour process. (See the discussion of Colletti’s attempt, in Ideologia e Societa’, to reconcile this “mechanistic” view of the wage relation in our ‘Civil Society’. Surprisingly, in his essay on the Weberian Rationalisierung, Habermas uncritically embraces Marx’s notion of surplus value as the capitalist “theft of labour time” [!] – as does Negri in his study of the Grundrisse called Marx Oltre Marx.)

It will be on the evident “metaphysical” nature of Marx’s attempted “transformation” of [“real”] “values” into [“apparent”] “market prices” that Bohm-Bawerk will decree the “close” [Abschluss, demise, end] of Karl Marx’s system”. The Austrian School will erect its own economic theories on Machian scientific premises, privileging “sensory perception” [“appearances” or “representations”], that run parallel to Nietzsche’s own critique of science which will find its own vindication in Schumpeter’s “theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung” – economic evolution as trans-crescence or “growth-through-crisis”. Bohm-Bawerk, “the bourgeois Marx”, will expose the “metaphysics” of the Marxian labour theory of value. But the Marxist riposte, too concerned with defending the indefensible, will neglect to expose the “metaphysics” behind the Neo-classical notion of marginal utility developed, among others, by Bohm-Bawerk’s Viennese teacher, Karl Menger. (On all this, refer to our study of ‘The Austrian School’. Important and appropriate, if not adequate, early formulations of the whole problematic are in H. Grossman, ‘Karl Marx and CPE’. A masterful discussion that canvasses many of the politico-economic themes in this study is in M. Cacciari’s Krisis.)

Nietzsche explodes both the Classical and the Marxian as well as the Neo-classical “syntheses”: he seeks to un-mask the “value” behind “values” so as to operate his “transvaluation [Umwertung] of all values” – save that, of course, there is no “value behind

values”, but only “will to power”: the Umwertung is possible only if this assumption (Voraussetsung) is granted. This is where Schopenhauer went astray for Nietzsche: because in preserving the Kantian “intelligible freedom”, his undifferentiated, “unegoistic” or “self-less” Will ends up preserving its operari (its Arbeit, its dira necessitas) through the A-skesis even as it strives to negate and “renounce” it. (Refer to our study, ‘Umkehrung: Schopenhauer’s Reversal of Kant’s Metaphysics’.) - Because this A-skesis, this “ascetic ideal”, as Nietzsche valiantly shows, is nothing other than the Will to Power in another guise, in a guise that “wills Nothingness rather than not will at all!” It follows that the “need-necessity” of the operari returns in the semblance of Schopenhauer’s Nirvana; that the Entsagung (Renunciation) of the Will is merely another, though paradoxical, manifestation or objectification of the Will: except that now, with Nietzsche, the very interpretation of the indistinct, undifferentiated - “unegoistich” (!), as he accurately styles it - Schopenhauerian Will to Life has been trans-formed into the “Will to Power”. This is Nietzsche’s “Instinkt der Freiheit”: – it is a new “im-pulsion”. And it is to the “impulses”, the “drives” or Triebe, to the “instincts” that Nietzsche returns to trace his Genealogie der Moral:

Preface, 5 -…The issue was, strangely enough, the value of the " unegoistic " instincts, the instincts of pity [Mitleid], selfdenial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as " intrinsic values in themselves," on the strength of which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation. But against these very instincts there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper : and in this very instinct I saw the great danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction—seduction to what ? to nothingness ? — in these very instincts I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes backwards, the will turning against Life, the last illness [Krankheit] announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality of sympathy [Mitleid, or com-passion, or pity, in Schopenhauer’s foundation of ethics] which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern European civilisation ; I realised that it was the route along which that civilization [Cultur] slid on its way to—a new Buddhism ? — a European Buddhism - Nihilism? This exaggerated estimation in which modern philosophers have held sympathy, is quite a new phenomenon: up to that time philosophers were absolutely unanimous as to the worthlessness of sympathy. (GM)

Es handelte sich in Sonderheit um den Werth des „Unegoistischen“, der Mitleids-, Selbstverleugnungs-, Selbstopferungs-Instinkte, welche gerade Schopenhauer so lange vergoldet, vergöttlicht und verjenseitigt hatte, bis sie ihm schliesslich als die „Werthe an sich“ übrig blieben, auf Grund deren er zum Leben, auch zu sich selbst, Nein sagte. Aber gerade gegen diese Instinkte redete aus mir ein immer grundsätzlicherer Argwohn, eine immer tiefer grabende Skepsis! Gerade hier sah ich die grosse Gefahr der Menschheit, ihre sublimste Lockung und Verführung — wohin doch? in's Nichts? — gerade hier sah ich den Anfang vom Ende, das Stehenbleiben, die zurückblickende Müdigkeit, den Willen gegen das Leben sich wendend, die letzte Krankheit sich zärtlich und schwermüthig ankündigend: ich verstand die immer mehr um sich greifende Mitleids-Moral, welche selbst die Philosophen ergriff und krank machte, als das unheimlichste Symptom unsrer unheimlich gewordnen europäischen Cultur, als ihren Umweg zu einem neuen Buddhismus? zu einem Europäer-Buddhismus? zum — Nihilismus?… Diese moderne Philosophen-Bevorzugung und Überschätzung des Mitleidens ist nämlich etwas Neues: gerade über den Unwerth des Mitleidens waren bisher die Philosophen übereingekommen. Ich nenne nur Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld und Kant, vier Geister so verschieden von einander als möglich, aber in Einem Eins: in der Geringschätzung des Mitleidens. —6…. Let us speak out this new demand: we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values [Werth dieser Werthe] is for the first time to be called into question - and for this purpose a knowledge is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out of which these values grew, and under which they experienced their evolution [entwickelt haben] and their distortion (morality as a result [Folge], as a

symptom, as a mask, as Tartuffism, as disease [Krankheit], as a misunderstanding ; but also morality as a cause, as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a "fetter,"as a drug), especially as such knowledge has neither existed up to the present time nor is even now generally desired. The value of these "values" was taken for granted as an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation in judging the " good man " to be of a higher value than the '' evil man," of a higher value with regard specifically to human progress, utility, and prosperity generally, not forgetting the future. What? Suppose the converse were the truth! What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" a symptom of retrogression [Ruckgangssymptom], such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which the present battened on the future - more comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but also pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled with the guilt, if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendour of the human species were never to be attained? So that really morality would be the danger of dangers ? (GM)

Sprechen wir sie aus, diese neue Forderung: wir haben eine Kritik der moralischen Werthe nöthig, derWerth dieser Werthe ist selbst erst einmal in Frage zu stellen — und dazu thut eine Kenntniss derBedingungen und Umstände noth, aus denen sie gewachsen, unter denen sie sich entwickelt und verschoben haben (Moral als Folge, als Symptom, als Maske, als Tartüfferie, als Krankheit, als Missverständniss; aber auch Moral als Ursache, als Heilmittel, als Stimulans, als Hemmung, als Gift), wie eine solcheKenntniss weder bis jetzt da war, noch auch nur begehrt worden ist. Man nahm den Werth dieser „Werthe“ als gegeben, als thatsächlich, als jenseits aller In-Frage-Stellung; man hat bisher auch nicht im Entferntesten daran gezweifelt und geschwankt, „den Guten“ für höherwerthig als „den Bösen“ anzusetzen höherwerthig im Sinne der Förderung, Nützlichkeit, Gedeihlichkeit in Hinsicht auf den Menschen überhaupt (die Zukunft des Menschen eingerechnet). Wie? wenn das Umgekehrte die Wahrheit wäre? Wie? wenn im „Guten“ auch ein Rückgangssymptom läge, insgleichen eine Gefahr, eine Verführung, ein Gift, ein Narcoticum, durch das etwa die Gegenwart auf Kosten der Zukunft lebte? Vielleicht behaglicher, ungefährlicher, aber auch in kleinerem Stile, niedriger?… So dass gerade die Moral daran Schuld wäre, wenn eine an sich mögliche höchste Mächtigkeit und Pracht des Typus Mensch niemals erreicht würde? So dass gerade die Moral die Gefahr der Gefahren wäre?…

Will to Power as Instinkt der Freiheit

Nietzsche’s “critique” is as “pity-less” (a play of words on Schopenhauer’s “Mitleid” or “sympathy”, which also means “pity”) as it is terrifying: seen from the moral viewpoint, the world is false! Any moral or scientific “system of values”, any “per-spective” on life and the world can only be “partial”, an “error”, because it cannot even begin “to com-prehend”, to encapsulate or encompass the entire world or life. Consequently, it cannot be life and the world that are false, but rather, on the contrary, it must be these “perspectives” that are “false” to the extent that they seek to impose a “value” on life and the world that these simply cannot have from the necessarily “partial” perspective of the “valuer”! To impose a “value” on life and the world is tantamount to imposing an “ideal” on them, a “hidden reality”, a “sub-stance” or “purpose” that is simply im-possible to determine or identify. Worse still, to decree the existence of such “values” is equivalent to “renouncing” life and the world such as they are! Life is “that which is” (the Greek expression for Being, to on, that Heidegger reprised) – it is “appearance” and “error” rather than “reality” or “truth”, and as such we must accept it and embrace it – as such we must will it.

Indeed, values, viewpoints and perspectives, morality itself are possible only because life and the world themselves are “value-less”, because they are “im-moral”! If values “existed”, they would not be “possible” as “values” because they would be already

embodied, “realized” in this world – we would have reached our goal, our utopia, our millennium by now! The sheer “ideality” of values, their “wish-fulness”, serves only to highlight their im-potence, their power-lessness (Ohn-macht), their ineffectuality. (It is utterly incredible that Heidegger should have missed this most fundamental point in Nietzsche’s philosophy! [See our discussion in “Critical Excursus” below.] Whilst he ably enucleates Nietzsche’s de-struction of the “values” of the philosophia perennis and its “suprasensory world”, especially in Holzwege, Heidegger completely fails to see that for Nietzsche the “sensory world” itself is also not “true”! Pathetic is Heidegger’s rejection of the sheer thought of this [“the phrase sounds monstrous”, in ch.13, Vol.1 of Nietzsche] and his attempt “to recuperate” the value of truth” for philosophy – in art! We will discuss in Part Two the significance of this late-romantic escape into art that epitomizes the Ohn-macht of bourgeois thought [especially its neo-Nietzschean component from Jaspers to Badiou] in the face of the capitalist Rationalisierung.)

Nor, evidently, can such an inversion of perspective be confined solely to moral values and to “philosophy”. For Nietzsche’s “critique” of morality, his “Wanderung” into the “genealogy of morals”, has delved into a far deeper “foundation” (Grundlegung), far deeper “roots” (Wurzeln) that disclose the “active” origin of all Western values ranging from metaphysics to economics and physics. His de-structive critique ploughs deep into and undermines our very “perception” and “conception” of life and the world.

36. Suppose nothing else were "given" as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other "reality" besides the reality of our drives - for thinking is merely a relation of these drives [Triebe] to one another; is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this "given" would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or "material") world? I mean, not as a deception, as "mere appearance," [Kant’s “bloss Erscheinung”] an "idea" (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer) but as holding the same rank of reality as our affect - as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes ramifications and developments in the organic process (and, as is only fair, also becomes tenderer and weaker) - as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions are still synthetically intertwined along with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and metabolism - as a pre-form of life. In the end not only is it permitted to make this experiment; the conscience of method demands it…(BGE)

The reality that we observe around us – the world around us not as we shoud like it to be, but as it is – is a reality of conflict, confrontation and struggle, not merely in “nature” but also, and perhaps worst of all, in “civil society”, in the “unsociable society”. Everywhere we witness behaviour or conduct that is dictated not by “principles” but rather by “need” (Not), by “necessity” (Not-wendigkeit), by “struggles” that reflect the evident “goal” of individual self-preservation that emanates from “a kind of instinctive life…[comprising] all organic functions… as a pre-form of life”. These are the “affects”, the motiv-ations and the e-motions that “move” us, that “drive” us – these are the im-pulses, the “drives”. And not only do these “drives” subsist at an elemental organic level, but they rise and permeate through even to the level of “thinking”, so that even the “content” of our “self”, of our id-entity, of our in-dividuality (indivisibility of self) must be questioned and discarded.

36…Not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so) - that is a moral of method which one may not shirk today - it follows "from its definition," as a mathematician would say. The question is in the end whether we really recognize the will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of the will: if we do - and at bottom our faith in this is nothing less than our faith in causality itself - then we have to make the experiment of positing the causality of the will hypothetically as the only one. "Will," of course, can affect only "will" - and not "matter" (not "nerves," for example). In short, one has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect will wherever "effects" are recognized - and whether all mechanical occurrences are not, insofar as a force is active in them, will force, effects of will. Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will - namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it; suppose all organic functions could be traced back to this will to power and one could also find in it the solution of the problem of procreation and nourishment - it is one problem - then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as - will to power. The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its "intelligible character" - it would be "will to power" and nothing else. (BGE)

If we admit, as we must, that “Will can affect only ‘will’ – and not ‘matter’ (not ‘nerves’, for example)”, it follows therefore that each and every “causal connection” that we “attribute” to the world as linking together “e-vents” or “happenings” (Geschehen) does not in “actuality” (Thatsachlichkeit) belong to the “world” but rather to “the world viewed from the inside” – to the “given” that we have posited. All our ethical and scientific “explanations” of life and the world, therefore, must stem (Entstehen) from this “Will”. And “it follows mathematically from the definition” (!) – Nietzsche will say later, “just like a number that leaves no curious remainder” – that there is no “cause and effect”, no “world” outside of this “relation of instincts to one another”! Thus, because this “Will” is in its turn “merely a relation of these drives to one another”, we cannot conclude with Kant and Schopenhauer that this “Will” is “free”! For indeed it makes no sense to attribute or as-sign an “id-entity” or a “Subject”, a “personality”, an “ego” to this “Will”! There is no possibility of “intro-spection”; no Cartesian “methodical doubt” is admissible, no Husserlian epoche’. – Because there can be no “agency” or “subject” that performs these “actions”: to say that there is, would be to anticipate the answer to our question! Thus, “Cogito ergo sum” turns into “Vivo ergo cogito”: all we can be aware of is the fact of being aware – that is the Will. But we cannot from this “experience” (Er-eignis, Er-fahrung) proceed to deduce intuitively, as did Schopenhauer, or apodictically (Husserl) – not to mention syllogistically (Descartes) or synthetically (Kant) - a “unity of apperception”, an “understanding” (Verstand) and then a “reason” (Vernunft) – because such entities or faculties would seek to do the impossible, namely, to de-fine and con-fine the cosmos when they are only a “part” of it! (In analogous fashion, Kierkegaard reproached Hegel for casting his dialectical net so wide to comprehend the world - that existence oozed out of its meshes!)

Here for perhaps the earliest time we see a dramatic development in philosophy (not seen since Spinoza’s pantheism) from transcendentalism to immanentism: the questioning of “subjectivity” now reaches deeper than ever into the inner recesses of the psyche. A “materiality” is introduced in the study of activities that had always been attributed to the “spirit” or “soul”, but that now are presented as hedonistic expressions of deeper “conative” biological – Nietzsche will say “physiological” – needs. Whereas Schopenhauer

sought “to repress” these libidinal impulses, “the Will to Life”, which represent “necessity” as “need” (Notwendigkeit als Not), and “need” as “suffering” (Leid, pathos), and therefore “activity” (Tun, Wirk-lichkeit)) as “operari” and work, as striving and poverty, as Arbeit (labour!) -, Nietzsche sees them instead as legitimate “ex-pressions” of the instincts, of feelings, of “affirmative life”, as desire and sensuous hedonism, as the search not for “self-preservation”, which would de-fine and con-fine the instincts to the Utilitarian “adaptation” and neo-Darwinian “survival of the fittest”, but as a striving for “freedom” – but freedom understood as self-affirmation, as “agon-ism”, as power.

It is no objection against Nietzsche to argue that morality also is a “ramification and development” of the “intelligible character” or the instinct of freedom, of the Will to Power: Nietzsche will reply that the objection only strengthens his contention: life and the world must be seen “materialistically”, “physio-logically”, yes, but from “inside” the Will! Morality and values are organic ex-crescences of the instincts of freedom, but they are simultaneously “symptoms” and “signs” of the “Dis-gregation” (his German word) of these instincts! There is no solipsism here. Neither Schopenhauer’s Will-to-Life nor Nietzsche’s Will to Power are “Subjects” – there is no Fichtean Ich-heit here, although we have seen that Schopenhauer’s conception of the Will as “Thing-in-itself” is open to just such an objection. By “id-entifying” the Will as a “thing-in-itself”, Schopenhauer attributed to it at once a “subjectivity” – what Nietzsche derided as “intelligible freedom” – as well as a Platonic idealistic “finality” which was reflected in his theory of ethics.

The Will to Power, instead, is clearly intended by Nietzsche as a universal condition that mani-fests itself in life and the world in the manner that we will trace presently.Turning his own critical weapon against him, Nietzsche also asks Schopenhauer the rhetorical question the latter posed to demolish Kant’s ethics (in Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik): “Who tells you?” “Where is it written” that the “negation” of the Will and the sublimation of its “drives” is something that pertains to “intelligible freedom”, that is “free” instead of “necessary”? As Cacciari writes (‘DCP’, p.61), Kant and Schopenhauer and the entire “metafisica occidentale” including Hegel and Marx seek “freedom from the Will”, from arbitrariness and contingency, as a necessary pre-condition for the attainment of the ultimate “ideal freedom”, of the “Good” – the summum bonum, a God in disguise, a deus absconditus, a homo-noia (agreement and harmony) that becomes a pro-noia (divine pro-vidence), a Platonic Ideal. Nietzsche instead, by pressing consistently the “inversion” or Ent-wertung (emptying out) operated by Schopenhauer identifying “the Will” as the active principle [Weltprincip] of Life not “subordinated” to the Ding an sich and to the Kantian Pure Reason (Vernunft) that alone can com-prehend it - only to smuggle back “intelligible freedom” as its perceived indistinct, “unegoistic”, “abulic strife” renounceable through the “reflective reason” (Verstand) -, seeks to uncover and re-affirm the primacy of the “Instinct of Freedom” – the incessant and irrepressible “Wille zur Macht” that attaches to “living things”, not as an arbitrary force, a liberum arbitrium that needs to be “governed” by a “tyrannical” Reason or Understanding, or by the Idea or the Divinity, but as the expression of its intrinsic and irrepressible “destiny” or “stored-up force”, - as a physio-logical, genetic “tendency” or in-tention, dia-noia (plan, Entwurf, from Greek noein, to mean), a dynamis (Greek, to be able).

Interesting at this juncture to compare the dualism highlighted by Nicholas of Cusa between Platonic ‘chorismos’ and Aristotelian ‘methexis’ – in Cassirer’s Individual and Cosmos.

Put differently, Nietzsche retains Schopenhauer’s revolutionary “reversal” (Umkehrung) of the Kantian “thing-in-itself”, from “Unknowable Object” to its obverse or reverse – the Will to Life. Where Schopenhauer went wrong for Nietzsche, however, was in his “positing” of the “freedom of the Will” as the ultimate “intelligible freedom” that circumscribes the inscrutable, unknowable “Character” of every “thing” in the World. For Nietzsche, because everything “in life” is in life, it is impossible to de-limit life itself, to de-fine it, to draw the “boundary” of life and the world. What we are “aware of” is the Will-to-life: But this Will-to-life itself is “inscrutable” and run by “instincts” that characterize it. Consequently, even this Will-to-life cannot be de-scribed or de-fined as “free” – because there is an evident need-necessity to it constituted by the “instincts” or “drives” that “motivate” its self-affirmation. That is why Nietzsche describes the Will to Power as “intelligible character” in opposition to Schopenhauer’s “intelligible freedom”.

Heidegger in his Nietzsche will seek to relegate the philosopher of Rocken to the rank of “traditional metaphysics” of which he would represent only the “con-clusion” or “com-pletion” or “per-fection” (Vollendung) precisely by showing the “self-dissolution” of metaphysics in the very “attainment” of its “object” – truth and reason. By “motivating” the Will to Power, he will attempt erroneously to give it an animistic aura, to psychologise it along the Aristotelian lines of the De Anima where the formal “ability” of the psyche, its “power” or dynamis is “materialized” as an “energy” (energeia) that finally assumes the “id-entity” (entelechy) of volition and perception (see Vol.1, from ch.5.). Heidegger’s “reading” of Nietzsche betrays all the romantic existential features of his concept of Da-sein (being there). It is this “psychologistic” or “anthropological” turn that will lead to his acrimonious “divorce” with Husserl.An important “corrective” to Heidegger’s distorted analysis is supplied by Karl Jaspers, in Nietzsche, with his punctilious and accurate review of the philosopher’s “perspectivism”. The limit of Jaspers’s exegesis of Nietzsche is that he fails to perceive what Heidegger instead did! The most essential point: - that Nietzsche’s “de-struction” of the notions of truth and reason does not “end” (recall Heidegger’s Vollendung) in an irrisory “endless doubt” (see homonymous section in the chapter “The Passion for Will-to-Truth”) or sterile circulus vitiosus (on which Jaspers tarries, in the chapter “The Interpretative Theory”, see especially section on “The Circle”), but rather, as the title of this section suggests, “opens up” to the entire multi-verse of Nietzschean praxis, the Wille zur Macht as “rationalization of the world”, which Jaspers almost totally neglects (only a few pages are dedicated to it in Section 5 of what is a monumental tome) and unmistakeably mis-takes philosophisch for a jejune “existentialist” pathos.

It is not possible, then, Nietzsche concludes, to draw a line between operari and esse, between “activity” and “being”, as Schopenhauer and Kant and the rest of Western philosophy do – giving rise thereby to the insuperable anti-nomies of “body” and “mind” (or “soul”), “essent” and “essence”, “(external) space” and “(internal) time”, nature and spirit, object and subject.

39 The fable of intelligible freedom.7 The history of those feelings, by virtue of which we consider a person responsible, the so-called moral feelings, is divided into the following main phases. At first we

call particular acts good or evil without any consideration of their motives, but simply on the basis of their beneficial or harmful consequences. Soon, however, we forget the origin of these terms and imagine that the quality "good" or "evil" is inherent in the actions themselves, without consideration of their consequences; this is the same error language makes when calling the stone itself hard, the tree itself green-- that is, we take the effect to be the cause. Then we assign the goodness or evil to the motives, and regard the acts themselves as morally ambiguous. We go even further and cease to give to the particular motive the predicate good or evil, but give it rather to the whole nature of a man; the motive grows out of him as a plant grows out of the earth. So we make man responsible in turn for the effects of his actions, then for his actions, then for his motives and finally for his nature. Ultimately we discover that his nature cannot be responsible either, in that it is itself an inevitable consequence, an outgrowth of the elements and influences of past and present things; that is, man cannot be made responsible for anything, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his actions, nor the effects of his actions. And thus we come to understand that the history of moral feelings is the history of an error, an error called "responsibility," which in turn rests on an error called "freedom of the will."Schopenhauer, on the other hand, concluded as follows: because certain actions produce displeasure ("sense of guilt"), a responsibility must exist. For there would be no reason for this displeasure if not only all human actions occurred out of necessity (as they actually do, according to this philosopher's insight), but if man himself also acquired his entire nature out of the same necessity (which Schopenhauer denies). From the fact of man's displeasure, Schopenhauer thinks he can prove that man somehow must have had a freedom, a freedom which did not determine his actions but rather determined his nature: freedom, that is, to be this way or the other, not to act this way or the other. According to Schopenhauer, "operari" (doing), the sphere of strict causality, necessity, and lack of responsibility, follows from esse (being) the sphere of freedom and responsibility. The displeasure man feels seems to refer to "operari" (to this extent it is erroneous), but in truth it refers to esse, which is the act of a free will, the primary cause of an individual's existence. Man becomes that which he wants to be; his volition precedes his existence.8

In this case, we are concluding falsely that we can deduce the justification, the rational admissibility of this displeasure, from the fact that it exists; and from this false deduction Schopenhauer arrives at his fantastic conclusion of so-called intelligible freedom. But displeasure after the deed need not be rational at all: in fact, it certainly is not rational, for it rests on the erroneous assumption that the deed did not have to follow necessarily. Thus, because he thinks he is free (but not because he is free), man feels remorse and the pangs of conscience.Furthermore, this displeasure is a habit that can be given up; many men do not feel it at all, even after the same actions that cause many other men to feel it. Tied to the development of custom and culture, it is a very changeable thing, and present perhaps only within a relatively short period of world history.No one is responsible for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is to be unjust. This is also true when the individual judges himself. The tenet is as bright as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to walk back into the shadow and untruth [“the kingdom of shadows”] -- for fear of the consequences. 7. In ancient Greece, Plato's world of ideas--as a model for the sensual world--was referred to as the "intelligible world:" "Intelligible freedom" is the pure form of freedom, the idea of freedom. See The World as Will and Idea, bk. 4, par. 55; 8. Ibid., bk. 4., par. 65.

Seen from “inside the Will”, life and the world cannot be com-prehended; no Ratio can give them an Ordo, an “absolute Truth” that can reconcile life as experienced by the Will with the world that the Will experiences. Nor can this “per-spect-ive”, this a-spect itself be “pinned down” to a particular “theory”. Metaphysically, for Nietzsche there can be no “re-presentation” (Vorstellung) of the world to the Will, to the “life” experienced by the Will – because there is no “outside” that corresponds to the “inside” of the Will! To posit a “Vorstellung”, as Schopenhauer does, a “mere appearance” (bloss Erscheinung) arranged by the Understanding (Verstand) that merely re-presents the “world” intelligibly to the Will, is to posit the ec-sistence of a “Truth” that is the Scholastic “adaequatio rei et

intellectus”, the “cor-respondence” of “mind” with “thing” - even if this “thing” is a Berkeleyan “idea” along the formula that Schopenhauer adopts, esse est percipi –, or else, what amounts to the same, the “adaequatio intellectus ad rem”, the experience and knowledge of the thing by the mind. In both cases, a “mind” is being op-posed to a “thing”, the subject to the object, the soul to the body – “life” (experience) is opposed to “the world” (the thing in itself).

Nietzsche applies here to Schopenhauer his very critique of the “formalism”, of the “purity” of Kant’s Pure Reason (without which, as Cacciari notes, “Lukacs’s reading [in the “Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought”] of Kantian rationalism is unthinkable” [‘K’, p.57]). No such “hiatus”, no such chasm or division of Being, and its consequent “antinomies” is “possible” for Nietzsche. Indeed, the very “Will to Truth”, the search and pursuit, the unstinting quest for this adaequatio is itself the ex-pression of the Will to Power – it is a Will to Truth that still posits an “adaequatio” in the Scholastic and Cartesian tradition, and that does not challenge the epistemological validity of natural and physical “laws”. Schopenhauer still believes in the “truth” of mathematics and logic, in their ability “to govern” the physical world via the Understanding (Verstand): his metaphysics show that it is possible to abolish the “objectivity” of the Ding an sich without in the least challenging the “logical-empirical”, therefore “rational ordering” of the world: for Schopenhauer the Ratio-Ordo is the fulfillment (Vollendung) of metaphysics as the correct (truthful) “measurement” of the cosmos. Even the Berkeleyan idealism of “esse est percipi” in its Schopenhauerian (and later Machian) adaptation pre-supposes a transcendental Subject, the Will (which Husserl will replace with “the transcendental ego”) that “orders rationally” its “representations” (Vorstellungen).

“Philosophising with a hammer”, Nietzsche takes an irreverent stance toward the “idols” of philosophy – and particularly his own “idol”, Schopenhauer. The last of the “thoughts out of season” discuss Schopenhauer’s influence as “educator” but do not invoke his philosophy, least of all the ethics, - and for good reason.

2. This irreverence, that the great wise men are declining types [Niedergangs-Typen], first suggested itself to my mind with regard to a case where the strongest prejudices of the learned and the unlearned stood opposed to it: I recognised Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline [Verfalls-Symptome], as agencies in Grecian dissolution, as pseudo-Grecian, as anti-Grecian ("The Birth of Tragedy" 1872). That consensus sapientium I understood it better and better proves least of all that they were correct in that on which they were in accordance: it proves rather that they themselves, those wisest men, were somehow in accordance physiologically to take up a position to have to take up a position unanimously negative with regard to life. Judgments, valuations with regard to life, for or against, can ultimately never be true: they only possess value as symptoms; they only come into consideration as symptoms; in themselves such judgments are follies. (ToI)

2. Mir selbst ist diese Unehrerbietigkeit, dass die grossen Weisen Niedergangs−Typen sind, zuerst gerade in einem Falle aufgegangen, wo ihr am staerksten das gelehrte und ungelehrte Vorurtheil entgegensteht: ich erkannte Sokrates und Plato als Verfalls−Symptome, als Werkzeuge der griechischen Aufloesung, als pseudogriechisch, als antigriechisch (“Geburt der Tragoedie” 1872), jener consensus sapientium—das begriff ich immer besser—beweist am wenigsten, dass sie Recht mit dem hatten, worueber sie uebereinstimmten: er beweist vielmehr, dass sie selbst, diese Weisesten, irgend worin physiologisch uebereinstimmten, um auf gleiche Weise negativ zum Leben zu stehn,—stehn zu muessen. Urtheile, Werthurtheile ueber das Leben,

fuer oder wider, koennen zuletzt niemals wahr sein: sie haben nur Werth als Symptome, sie kommen nur als Symptome in Betracht,—an sich sind solche Urtheile Dummheiten.

The “transvaluation of all values” requires the awareness of there being “values” that are “judgements… with regard to life” that are impossible because the “beings” that make them are themselves “within” or “immersed” in life and therefore are unable to assign values “objectively” – telling us in the process only something about themselves, about their “symptoms”, and therefore their own “physiology” and “psychology”, because “in themselves… judgements are follies”. To judge is to stand outside of life. But to act in life is to potentiate one’s role in it: by trans-valuing values we can play an “active” role in life that leaves behind the “contemplative” one. Schopenhauer had started with the “actuality” (Wirklichkeit) of the Will, with its “will to life”; but he ended up with the “renunciation” of the world (Entsagung) and with the “values” of com-passion (or sym-pathy, Mit-leid) and pantheism – thereby glorifying contemplation, “the mirror to the world”.

Vorwort…Nothing succeeds unless overflowing spirits have a share in it. The excess of power only is the proof of power. A Transvaluation of all Values [Umwertung aller Werthe], that note of interrogation, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow on him who sets it up, such a doom of a task compels one every moment to run into sunshine , to shake off a seriousness which has become oppressive, far too oppressive.

Kein Ding geraeth, an dem nicht der Uebermuth seinen Theil hat. Das Zuviel von Kraft erst ist der Beweis der Kraft.—Eine Umwerthung aller Werthe, dies Fragezeichen so schwarz, so ungeheuer, dass es Schatten auf Den wirft, der es setzt—ein solches Schicksal von Aufgabe zwingt jeden Augenblick, in die Sonne zu laufen, einen schweren, allzuschwer gewordnen Ernst von sich zu schuetteln. Jedes Mittel ist dazu recht, jeder “Fall” ein Gluecksfall. (GD)

2…We must by all means stretch out the hand, and attempt to grasp this surprising finesse, that the worth of life cannot be estimated. It cannot be estimated by a living being, because such a one is a party yea,THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES IOQthe very object in the dispute, and not a judge ; it cannot be estimated by a dead person for a different reason. For a philosopher to see a problem in the worth of life, is really an objection to him, a mark questioning* his wisdom, a folly. What? and all these great wise men they were not only decadents, they were not even wise? But I come back to the problem of Socrates. (ToI)

Man muss durchaus seine Finger darnach ausstrecken und den Versuch machen, diese erstaunliche finesse zu fassen, dass der Werth des Lebens nicht abgeschaetzt warden kann. Von einem Lebenden nicht, weil ein solcher Partei, ja sogar Streitobjekt ist und nicht Richter; von einem Todten nicht, aus einem andren Grunde.—Von Seiten eines Philosophen im Werth des Lebens ein Problem sehn bleibt dergestalt sogar ein Einwurf gegen ihn, ein Fragezeichen an seiner Weisheit, eine Unweisheit.—Wie? Und alle diese grossen Weisen—sie waeren nicht nur decadents, sie waeren nicht einmal weise gewesen?—Aber ich komme auf das Problem des Sokrates zurueck. (GD)

There can be no “truth”, therefore, that is not a static, contemplative and “adequate measure”. Nor is truth “dialectical” in the sense that we may “discover” it as an “intelligible” pattern of the world, as a “becoming” (Werden) that is the “extrinsication and supersession” (Auf-hebung) of an “Idea” – that of the Platonic “beautiful soul” or that of Hegel. Dialectics is a “ragionevole ideologia” that seeks to democratize life, imposing “universal values” on it, “to order” it so as “to see a problem in the worth of life”.

Dialectics triumphs when “all superior taste is vanquished” and “the mob gets the upper hand”. Again, contemplation and com-passion seek to order, becalm and defeat the senses in favour of “reason”.

5. With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour of dialectics. What really happens then? Above all superior taste is vanquished, the mob gets the upper hand along with dialectics.

10. When one finds it necessary to turn reason into a tyrant, as Socrates did, the danger cannot be slight that something else will play the tyrant. Rationality was then hit upon as the savior; neither Socrates nor his "patients" had any choice about being rational: it was de rigoeur, it was their last resort. The fanaticism with which all Greek reflection throws itself upon rationality betrays a desperate situation; there was danger, there was but one choice: either to perish or--to be absurdly rational. The moralism of the Greek philosophers from Plato on is pathologically conditioned; so is their esteem of dialectics. Reason=virtue=happiness, that means merely that one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark appetites with a permanent daylight--the daylight of reason. One must be clever, clear, bright at any price: any concession to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward.

10. Wenn man noethig hat, aus der Vernunft einen Tyrannen zu machen, wie Sokrates es that, so muss die Gefahr nicht klein sein, dass etwas Andres den Tyrannen macht. Die Vernuenftigkeit wurde damals errathen als Retterin, es stand weder Sokrates, noch seinen “Kranken” frei, vernuenftig zu sein,—es war de rigueur, es war ihr letztes Mittel. Der Fanatismus, mit dem sich das ganze griechische Nachdenken auf die Vernuenftigkeit wirft, verraeth eine Nothlage: man war in Gefahr, man hatte nur Eine Wahl: entweder zu Grunde zu gehn oder— absurd−vernuenftig zu sein... Der Moralismus der griechischen Philosophen von Plato ab ist pathologisch bedingt; ebenso ihre Schaetzung der Dialektik. Vernunft = Tugend = Glueck heisst bloss: man muss es dem Sokrates Das Problem des Sokrates. nachmachen und gegen die dunklen Begehrungen ein Tageslicht in Permanenz herstellen—das Tageslicht der Vernunft. Man muss klug, klar, hell um jeden Preis sein: jedes Nachgeben an die Instinkte, an's Unbewusste fuehrt hinab...

But it is not just “eudaemonism” that is at issue: before Reason can invade ethics and turn the world into a “telos”, a summum bonum that confuses virtue with happiness, truth with the good life – even Schopenhauer describes virtue as “absence of pain”, Nirvana, and pain as the prong to “com-passion” through “reflective reason” –, before it can do this it must turn its “measure” into the “adequation of the world”, it must shape the world and order it in its own image – the Ratio-Ordo.

1. When these honorable idolators of concepts worship something, they kill it and stuff it; they threaten the life of everything they worship. Death, change, old age, as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds objections--even refutations. Whatever has being does not become; whatever becomes does not have being. Now they all believe, desperately even, in what has being. But since they never grasp it, they seek for reasons why it is kept from them. "There must be mere appearance, there must be some deception which prevents us from perceiving that which has being: where is the deceiver?" "We have found him," they cry ecstatically; "it is the senses! These senses, which are so immoral in other ways too, deceive us concerning the true world.

Sie fragen mich, was Alles Idiosynkrasie bei den Philosophen ist?... Zum Beispiel ihr Mangel an historischem Sinn, ihr Hass gegen die Vorstellung selbst des Werdens, ihr Aegypticismus. Sie glauben einer Sache eine Ehre anzuthun, wenn sie dieselbe enthistorisiren, sub specie aetemi,—wenn sie aus ihr eine Mumie machen. Alles, was Philosophen seit Jahrtausenden gehandhabt haben, waren Begriffs−Mumien; es kam nichts Wirkliches lebendig aus ihren Haenden. Sie toedten, sie stopfen aus, diese Herren Begriffs−Goetzendiener, wenn sie anbeten,—sie werden Allem lebensgefaehrlich, wenn sie anbeten. Der Tod, der Wandel, das Alter ebensogut als Zeugung und Wachsthum sind fuer sie Einwaende, —Widerlegungen sogar. Was ist, wird nicht; was wird ist nicht... Nun glauben sie Alle, mit Verzweiflung

sogar, an's Seiende. Da sie aber dessen nicht habhaft werden, suchen sie nach Gruenden, weshalb man's ihnen vorenthaelt. “Es muss ein Schein, eine Betruegerei dabei sein, dass wir das Seiende nicht wahrnehmen: wo steckt der Betrueger?”—“Wir haben ihn, schreien sie glueckselig, die Sinnlichkeit ist's! Diese Sinne, die auch sonst so unmoralisch sind, sie betruegen uns ueber die wahre Welt.

It is not just the moral world that defies our “values”. The physical world, the world of the senses does, too, and so we seek to give it an “order”, a “measure” that is only a “symptom” of our “valuing”, but bears no resemblance to “the truth”. In reality it has nothing to do with it because “truth” itself is only the name we give to this order that we seek! The “rationalization” (Rationalisierung) of life is a specific “practice” that “reduces” life and the world to “measurement” and “predictability”: it is much less scientia than it is technique; it is instrumentality clothing itself as “truth”, as the fixity of “being”, as essence.

2. With the highest respect, I except the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change [Veranderung, becoming], he rejected their testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity. Heraclitus too did the senses an injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics believed, nor as he believed--they do not lie at all. What we make of their testimony - that alone introduces lies; for example, the lie of unity, the lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence. "Reason" is the cause of our falsification of the testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming [Werden], passing away, and change [Wechsel], they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The "apparent" world is the only one: the "true" world is merely added by a lie. (ToI)

2. Ich nehme, mit hoher Ehrerbietung, den Namen Heraklit's bei Seite. Wenn das andre Philosophen−Volk das Zeugniss der Sinne verwarf, weil dieselben Vielheit und Veraenderung zeigten, verwarf er deren Zeugniss, weil sie die Dinge zeigten, als ob sie Dauer und Einheit haetten. Auch Heraklit that den Sinnen Unrecht. Dieselben luegen weder in der Art, wie die Eleaten es glauben, noch wie er es glaubte,—sie luegen ueberhaupt nicht. Was wir aus ihrem Zeugniss machen, das legt erst die Luege hinein, zum Beispiel die Luege der Einheit, die Luege der Dinglichkeit, der Substanz, der Dauer... Die “Vernunft” ist die Ursache, dass wir das Zeugniss der Sinne faelschen. Sofern die Sinne das Werden, das Vergehn, den Wechsel zeigen, luegen sie nicht... Aber damit wird Heraklit ewig Recht behalten, dass das Sein eine leere Fiktion ist. Die “scheinbare” Welt ist die einzige: die wahre Welt ist nur hinzugelogen...

“Being is an empty fiction”, because life is a constant becoming (Werden), a trans-formation (Ver-ander-ung), a change (Wechsel). Every “science” that presumes to describe “the true world” is a “deceitful invention”, not because the “thing in itself” cannot be known, but because it “posits” such a fiction lying behind our senses and lying to them. “We have learned to sharpen [our senses, to] furnish them with appliances, and follow them mentally to their limits”, but the limits remain because they are and will remain “practices” that can never even hope to attain the status of “truth”. To the extent that we have “science”, metaphysics is “fulfilled” and “truth retreats” to the corner of “abortion and not-yet science”. But science itself is not “truth”: science is “error”; science is only our practice of domination and control – it is a “rationalization” of life and the world, the ultimate result (Folge) and perfection (Vollendung) of the “desperation” and “decadence” that inspired the original metaphysics. Science is its own practical out-come or re-sult – science is technique (techne’, Technik).

The need-necessity of the instincts applies not only to the body, but also to the “mind”, to the “soul”, to the psyche. To begin from the “free mind”, from the “free will” and therefore to ignore the “conditions” of human action - physiological first, then cultural, “the ontogeny of thought”-, the “constraints” upon the mind and the will that call for “responsibility”, for “competence” and “judgement”: – to do so is tantamount to idealizing human beings, to suppressing their real need-necessity, the life of the instincts; it is to apply a “Value” to life and the world that simply does not “ec-sist”. “To judge is to be unjust”: to expect that there is “Truth” in the world is to be blind to the fact that the world then must be “error”! It makes possible that “judgemental” stance that mirrors the operari in the Askesis: “renunciation” or “resignation” becomes a “negative operari” that confirms the effectuality of the positive: the devil only exists because we “renounce” it. (On this see “The Religious Life” in ‘HATH’.)

32 The Immoralist speaks. There is nothing more distasteful to a philosopher than man in as far as he wishes. When the philosopher sees man only in his doings, when he sees this bravest, most artful, and most enduring animal, led astray even into labyrinthine states of trouble, how worthy of admiration does man appear to him ! The philosopher even furnishes man with encouragement . . . But he despises wishing man, ‘desirable’ man also and in general all desirabilities, all human ideals. If it were possible, a philosopher would be a nihilist, because he finds nothingness behind all human ideals. Or not even nothingness, but only vileness, absurdity, sickness, cowardice, and fatigue: all sorts of dregs out of the drained goblet of his own life . . . Man, who, as a reality, is so worthy of reverence, how is it that he deserves no respect in so far as he manifests his wishes? Has he to do penance for being so accomplished as a reality? Has he to compensate for his activity, for the exertion of thought and will in every activity, by the stretching of his limbs in the imaginary and absurd? The history of his desirabilities has hitherto been the partie honteuse of man; one must be careful not to read too long in it. What justifies man is his reality, it will for ever justify him. How much more worthy is actual man, compared with any merelyI CJ2 THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLSwished, dreamt, or shamelessly falsified man! compared with any ideal man whatsoever ... It is only ideal man that is distasteful to the philosopher.

And this “reality” of human beings involves motives that may well be incompatible or contradictory, that in their dilemmatic and conflictual character reveal the complexity of psychic life – something that makes the “simplistic” notion of “in-dividual” extremely deceptive.

57 Morality as man's dividing himself. A good author, who really cares about his subject, wishes that someone would come and destroy him by representing the same subject more clearly and by answering every last question contained in it. The girl in love wishes that she might prove the devoted faithfulness of her love through her lover's faithlessness. The soldier wishes that he might fall on the battlefield for his victorious fatherland, for in the victory of his fatherland his greatest desire is also victorious. The mother gives the child what she takes from herself: sleep, the best food, in some instances even her health, her wealth.Are all these really selfless states, however? Are these acts of morality miracles because they are, to use Schopenhauer's phrase, "impossible and yet real"? Isn't it clear that, in all these cases, man is loving something of himself, a thought, a longing, an offspring, more than something else of himself; that he is thus dividing up his being and sacrificing one part for the other? …The inclination towards something (a wish, a drive, a longing) is present in all the above-mentioned cases; to yield to it, with all its consequences, is in any case not "selfless." In morality, man treats himself not as an "individuum," but as a "dividuum." (HATH)

Nietzsche immediately contradicts Schopenhauer (and later Freud), by inverting the sign of “civilization” and “culture”: - it is the former that is the product of sublimation, whereas the latter is rather an ex-pression of libido, of exuberance, of the Will-to-Life. His “psycho-logist” is no “psycho-analyst”: not all sublimation is repressive and Nietzsche would scoff at the “clinical” use of psychoanalysis as a way of “reconciling” Kultur and Zivilisation, of “adjusting” the ego to the reality of Angst. It is vital that the “truth” that is applied to the psyche is not the same adaequatio, the measuring “truth” that is a “tool” of homo faber. This “new truth” must be able to comprehend “the ontogeny of thought”, “the exuberant forms of life”. This is no “neo-Darwinism”: in “Anti-Darwin” (ToI) Nietzsche shows how “the weak”, rather than “the strong” emerge successful from “adaptation”.

There are “institutions”, a kind of “spontaneous order”, that arise from human evolution. But Nietzsche seems always to want to see them sub specie individui: - psychology is always “confined” to the individual psyche, however much this may be a “dividuum” of conflictual e-motions; and this is due undoubtedly in large part to his imperfect understanding of the long process of biological evolution leading to homo sapiens. There is never even remotely a mention or simulacrum of “species-conscious being”: for Nietzsche, “man” develops endogenously, ontogenetically, and largely in a “psychic” sense, not in a broader “biological” sense. Even when “the body” is evoked, it is not in the materialistic Marxian sense of human sym-biosis and phylo-genetic development of human organs and faculties but purely in an in-dividualistic, onto-genetic though sensuous dimension – only so far as “instincts” are concerned, but not in relation to other human faculties (recall again Marx’s “ideality” as being central to the “specific con-sciousness” of being-human).

(This tendency or deficiency in Nietzsche is due, as we shall soon see, entirely to his phenomenological understanding of being and time, which precedes Heidegger’s own more “systematic” exposition in Sein und Zeit.)

25…Perhaps a future survey of the needs of mankind will reveal it to be thoroughly undesirable that all men act identically; rather, in the interest of ecumenical goals, for whole stretches of human time special tasks, perhaps in some circumstances even evil tasks, would have to be set.In any event, if mankind is to keep from destroying itself by such a conscious overall government, we must discover first a knowledge of the conditions of culture, a knowledge surpassing all previous knowledge, as a scientific standard for ecumenical goals. This is the enormous task of the great minds of the next century. (HATH)

35…most of all we lack the art of psychological dissection and calculation in all classes of society, where one hears a lot of talk about men, but none at all about man. (Gaya Scienza)

An interior “conflict” in one’s “inclinations” is not a mark of “selflessness”. It shows rather that the “self” is not “in-dividual” or a-tomic, but is instead a far more complex maelstrom of forces than the “Sprache-Metaphysik” is able to comprehend. (We shall examine later, in Part Two, Nietzsche’s unprecedented insights into this intrinsically metaphysical “function” of language.) A fresh “method” is needed, then, one that encompasses this new-found “realism” but that goes beyond mere empiricism toward “overcoming” (Uberwindung) the idealized and spiritualised vision of human being (Vergeistigung) as well as its “scientistic” version (Entseelung, Rationalisierung) – because, as we have seen, “science” also is a dimension of human praxis, a “rational”

attitude to that “life” that is far more complex, open and “vital”, even “creative”, than the closed rational cosmos. Nietzsche intimates that a far sharper focus, greater cultivation and understanding of these psychic forces is warranted for human welfare – such as that initiated in what he calls “the awakening sciences”.

17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact, which these superstitious minds hate to concede - namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes and not when "I" wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." It thinks; but that this "it" is precisely the famous old "ego" is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this "it thinks" - even the "it" contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. 0ne infers here according to the grammatical habit: "Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently..."It was pretty much according to the same schema that the older atomism sought, besides the operating "power," that lump of matter in which it resides and out of which it operates - the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learned at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, including the logicians, to get along without the little "it" (which is all that is left of the honest little old ego). (BGE)

It is at this stage that Nietzsche’s unprecedented re-foundation and critique of metaphysics, of ontology, of the entire manner in which we envision reality comes to the fore. - Because it is clearly insufficient to engage in the task of de-struction of all our conceptions of “Value”. There are certainly instructive insights to be gained from such a “negative” endeavour, but even the most “negative” critique must start or be founded on some “positive” de-finition of life and the world, of the cosmos and the nature of reality, where the Latin “finis” denotes not necessarily a “limit” but at least a “horizon” (Aph.482, ‘WM’), a “vision”. And Nietzsche does not disappoint: far from curtailing his incisive and penetrating intellect on the “ontic”, on “being-in-the-world”, on the things that constitute life and the world, Nietzsche engages in the most intriguing and revealing exploration of our intuition of reality, of being and time. So much so that, as we shall see, he certainly can claim precedence over Heidegger’s more “systematic” grounding of metaphysics in Sein und Zeit.

The “questioning” of the cosmos that is the paramount, imprescindible aim of “theoria” – this is the terminus a quo of the Cartesian doubt in the “Meditations” – and its universalisation to the status of a “methodical doubt” – again, Descartes in “Discours sur la Methode” – are supposed to constitute the foundations of philosophy, both as metaphysica generalis, questioning reality (ontology), and as metaphysica specialis (questioning knowledge and its various “branches”). It is the foundation of theory in the id-entity of the “transcendental subject” that engenders a “dichotomy” between the thinking subject and the “object” of the thinking. Kant had sought to overcome Hume’s systematic skepticism (already presaged in the idealism of Berkeley and the determinism of Leibniz) by re-drawing the boundaries of the knowing subject back to its fundamental “intuition” of space and time, and then by “ordering” the cosmos according to the “internal consistency” of Reason. Ultimately, for Kant, what allows the identification of “Pure Reason” as a “Subject” – as a “pre-requisite” of Reason itself! - is the very “possibility” of a priori judgements that are “synthetic”, not merely tautological or “analytic” judgements, and that can be “applied” epistemologically to perceived “phenomena”. For if indeed the world can be known “a priori”, the very possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge posits the existence of a causal chain that pre-supposes rationally the existence of an “entity” – Pure Reason –

that stands “outside” that causal chain and that allows its being “known” as such a “causal chain”. It is “pure” Reason, therefore, that posits in accordance with its own “rule”, its “purity”, the existence of Reason as an “intelligible freedom” that stands “outside” and is indeed “posited rationally” by the “necessity” or “heteronomy” of the events determined as cause and effect in the chain of causation.

This is what leads Kant to postulate the ec-sistence of a “Thing in itself”, an inscrutable unknowable Ob-ject, that gives rise to the “phenomena” (the “appearances” or Erscheinungen) that are “perceived” by the “transcendental Subject” – “transcendental” because the Subject itself is a “thing-in-itself”, inscrutable and unobservable and yet “required” or “necessitated” dialectically by the “logic” of Pure Reason as applied to the “aesthetic” of human intuition. This “Subject” Kant explores as “Practical Reason” in its “ethical and normative” aspect (Sollen) as an “auto-nomous will” that must, nevertheless, give itself a “rational order”.

Indeed, because this Sollen cannot be said to have an “ob-ject” in the same sense that Pure Reason has “nature” or Sein as ob-ject, Kant did not deem it appropriate to extend the transcendental logic to the Sollen in the same way that he did for the Sein (the thing-in-itself), thereby transforming his Metaphysik des Sittens into a kind of philosophical anthropology. It was the refutation of this excessive “empiricism” that was to form the basis of neo-Kantism and of Husserl’s phenomenology. Neo-Kantism, particularly the Marburg School of Cohen and Cassirer, decreed that the Sollen had its own “rational rules” that permitted the formulation of a “Logic of Pure Knowledge” and an “Ethics of Pure Will” (cf. Hermann Cohen, System der Logik) whereby the pure will (the expression of Practical Reason) could determine the object of its own pure knowledge independently of human experience or natural science, just as Pure Reason did in respect of experience and nature. As we will see later in this Part, this neo-Kantism, through the filter of the Vienna Circle (Kaufmann, Schreier, Seidler) was to form the philosophical basis of the formalistic, dis-embodied “pure logic of choice” as the epistemological foundation of neoclassical theory of economics in its Austrian School version (von Mises and Hayek and Robbins), whereas its Machian variant shaped the Walrasian and Paretian general equilibrium analysis.

The possibility of formal “Pure” Reason acquiring the character of “Practical” Reason is precisely what Schopenhauer denies. “Who tells you?” Schopenhauer asks; “Where is it written” that the causal chain is anything more than an infinite “instrumental” sequence and that “from it” you can postulate rationally the actual existence of an autonomous “Pure Reason” from which you can derive a “Practical Reason” that “governs” the Will? As far as any “consciousness” is “aware”, what we know best, is the “Thing in itself”, the reality of a “qualitas occulta”. But this ineffable “thing-in-itself”, “the world”, is not a “thing” at all! Rather, it is our very “inwardness”, which is not necessarily a “Subject” with a precise “id-entity” and subject to “rules”, save those of intuition and experience, but it is a “force”, a “Will” – to be more precise, a “Will to Life”. This is the substance of what we have called Schopenhauer’s “reversal” (Umkehrung) of Kant’s metaphysics, and this is the starting point (the point de depart) of Nietzsche’s own critique of both Schopenhauer and Kant in that Nietzsche denies the “reality” (indeed, the “seriousness”!) of any “Thing-in-itself”, objective (as in Kant) or subjective (as in Schopenhauer), that inevitably assumes the “subjective” guise or free character of the esse. (On these themes and the inception of this “negatives Denken” [negative thought] we refer to our related study ‘Umkehrung: Schopenhauer’s Reversal of Kant’s Metaphysics’ and to Massimo Cacciari’s path-breaking early works in this field.)

As we shall see in Part Two, Schopenhauer ends up preserving the “validity” of logic and mathematics in the ability, not of “Reason” (Vernunft), but at least of the

Understanding (Verstand) to describe the “representations” that the “objectification of the Will”, the Body, perceives as “phenomena” [bloss Erscheinungen] ordered by the Understanding in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Even though for him “logico-mathematics” is not necessarily an intrinsic function of “Reason”, still it is an expression of the Understanding that ensures the “actuality” (Wirk-lichkeit or “work-like-ness”) of the “World”: therefore, Schopenahuer “under-stands” (Ver-stand, sub-stanti-ates) the “World as Will and Representation” (the title of his magnum opus). (Curious, but still wildly in-apt, is Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche’s assertion that “will can only act on will” in the de-ontological sense that “human beings” [whom Deleuze obviously sees as “in-dividual wills”!] can only act on one another [in Nietzsche et la Philosophie]. Deleuze fails to see that Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, is dealing with the Will as an “onto-logical” category, one that can certainly act on the entire reality of life and the world – which includes “nature”, of course.)

And this is where Nietzsche begins his “trans-valuation” (Umwertung, not “re-valuation”!) of all values, including the values of science, logic and mathematics – precisely where Schopenhauer’s Umkehrung (reversal, switching) of Kant’s metaphysics is completed. Nietzsche’s critique of “logico-mathematics” will form the central focus of our Part Two. This systematic “destruction of the Subject” that Nietzsche undertakes represents for him the “completion and perfection” (Vollendung, as Heidegger calls it, in Nietzsche, Vol.2, ch.4) of Western metaphysics. The disparate and desperate attempts either “to re-compose” the Subject in line with the philosophia perennis or to re-define it will be the focus of the Western philosophical enterprise from Brentano and Mach to Husserl and Heidegger, from Freud and Weber to Schutz and Mannheim, from Wittgenstein and Carnap to Quine and Strawson, from Menger and Jevons to Schumpeter and Hayek. Most ‘desperate’ of all is Husserl’s positing of a “transcendental ego” founded on the apparent “permanence” of “memories”. As Nietzsche pre-emptively objected (see Aph.502 and the whole part on ‘Logic’ starting from Aph.508, ‘WM’, and the quotation above), neither memory alone nor any kind of ‘logic’ (v. Husserl’s ‘Logische Untersuchungen’) can form the basis of any meaningful concept of “ego” because the sequence or recurrence of memories is itself not the effect of a conscious effort initiated by a subject, and because the categories of logic are themselves simply not ‘true’. Nevertheless, Husserl bears the merit of identifying the process of “Krisis” (notably in ‘The Crisis of European Sciences’) that runs along parallel cultural and economic lines and that will “characterize” the development of capitalist economy and society that we seek to understand critically in our series of studies.

Lukacs is quite wrong to denounce (in the homonymous Die Zerstorung der Vernunft) Nietzsche’s Entwurf (philosophical pro-ject) as a “destruction of Reason” tout court, even when “reason” is understood in a Marxian historico-materialist sense. If anything, it is Nietzsche who exposes the unfoundedness of the idealist transcendentalist premises from which Lukacs’s “rationalist” criticism moves. Also fallimentary, therefore, must be judged the cognate strenuous efforts of the Frankfurt School (see, for all, Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklarung) to define a “substantive reason” in opposition to the “instrumental reason” of the negatives Denken. Both Lukacs and the Frankfurt School moved within epistemological lines that Nietzsche’s critique, discussed in detail in our Part Two, had pitilessly swept away (long before Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit which, as Lukacs remarks in the Preface to the second edition of Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, many suggested was written as a reply to his book!).

Equally wrong is Klossowski when he opines (in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle) that Nietzsche’s Entwurf is aimed at denouncing “bourgeois culture”, when in fact he is merely pointing to, or indicating (Anzeichen – another word for “sign” that will be

adopted later by the phenomenologists Husserl and Schutz), even when he seems to be in-dicting it (as a “symptom and sign” of decay), bourgeois - and above all socialist – morality! Merquior (whose Foucault we shall discuss later) properly observes (at p.101) that, unlike what all the over-zealously “romantic” neo-Nietzscheans believe, Nietzsche never indicted bourgeois culture for being “repressive” though he certainly at least indicated that it was “decadent”: – in other words, if Nietzsche declaimed bourgeois morality at all it was for not being “repressive” enough, and therefore for the exact opposite reason to that suggested by their “pre-posterous” interpretation of his Entwurf!

Dries’s complaint (in Nietzsche on Time and History) that “Nietzsche was much better at destroying theories than at constructing them” [p.11] also misses the point. In his insistence on “constructing a theory” (even a “meta-logic”!) that accounts “logically” for Nietzsche’s “skepticism”, Dries wholly loses sight of this fundamental Nietzschean perception: truth cannot be theorized – least of all “logically” - because it does not ec-sist either as “truth” or indeed as “logic”! But for Nietzsche to stop at this “skeptical doubt” would amount, in his own words, to espousing sheer “incomplete Nihilism” (refer to our discussion of Heidegger later in this Part). Herein lies the pointlessness of Dries’s discussion: – that his “staticist” de-finition of Nietzsche’s philosophy is itself the most “staticist” approach imaginable and fails completely to penetrate or “mimetise” (“embody”, if you like) the “in-commensurability” of the Wille zur Macht. Dries puts his well-nigh total incomprehension of Nietzsche’s agon absurdly on display when he summarises the aim of his work as a querulous call for a “third way” of logical analysis - what he calls (“for want of better terms”! [p.9]) the “adualistic-dialetheic approach” (even invoking characters like Strawson and Quine) - that would circum-vent its “either/or”, “neither/nor” and “both/and” dichotomies:

Staticism is false, as we saw following Nietzsche’s argument, as it leads to nihilism. Nietzsche was much better at criticizing false views than at constructing theories”!!! (Page11)

But it is the height of stupidity (leaving the thorough mis-interpretation of his philosophy to one side) to expect of Nietzsche that he construct a “theory” - in other words a “system”, a “logic”, yet another “staticist position”! – when his entire oeuvre, every ganglion and neuron in his brain has been devoted to the “de-struction” of just such “theories”! Such logico-reductionist approaches to Nietzsche are not just wrong because they assume the validity of “logical reasoning” that Nietzsche’s critique mercilessly demolishes: they are also contemptibly patronising because they seek to tame and emasculate the terrifying realism of the Wille zur Macht and its serious implications for understanding the bases of human society and for informing political action! Dries and the likes of him (Klossowski does this, too) would reduce Nietzsche’s “tragic” engagement with history into something of a personal tragedy and relegate him to the status of either a “sophist” (as with Fink) or a “logical crank or freak or curiosity”, perhaps even the equivalent of an anglo-analytical Oxbridge don! Reduced and traduced to a “problem of epistemology”, Nietzsche’s unprecedented insights into and terrifying demolition of the political and philosophical self-understanding of bourgeois society and its ontological, epistemological as well as ethical foundations would amount to nothing more than the vapid musings of a freakish professor of philology! We propose in what follows to identify and describe Nietzsche’s ontological pro-ject (Entwurf) as it arises from his understanding of historical experiences and forces. Again, the astounding realisations to which Nietzsche arrives concerning the onto-logical status of “logic and mathematics” will be examined in Part Two.

Historia Docet – What Life and the World Indicate

There is a continuous line of real forces that leads from the instincts to the psyche and from the individual psyche to human groupings and classes of society and then to nation-states. Otherwise described, this “line”, what Nietzsche calls “the ontogeny of thought”, leads from the body to the soul and then back to nihilism; or in other words still, it is a line that takes us physiologically from psychology to consciousness and Culture, conscience and material exchange, then to political institutions, and finally from science and rationalization back down to the “dis-enchantment” of “civilization”. It is important for Nietzsche above all to focus on the “origins”, physiological (Entstehung) and historical (Herkunft), of these forces that will help us understand our place in the cosmos. It is obvious that if we cannot com-prehend the cosmos (by definition, because we are part of it), then we may at least try to understand why some humans have attempted to engage in just such a “com-prehension”: - why and how they have sought to develop ideas, values and moralities aimed at under-standing the world, at finding a sub-stance and a telos, an essence and a meaning even when these are the proton pseudos – the archetypal lie. “The little old ego”, even if we shrank his bloated “Individualitat” to a mere “it” (the Freudian Id, for instance or the Husserlian “transcendental ego”) would still remain an “agency”, a “subject” that initiates action and thereby causes or is “responsible” for human activity or that at the very least “com-prehends” or “reflects upon” life and the world (cf. Husserl’s Lebenswelt) intellectually, that is, either intuitively or scientifically. But as Nietzsche has just inconfutably proved, such simple-minded attribution of either causality or comprehension in human history is easily confuted by the crudest skepticism.

Just as a doctor needs to “heal himself” before he can hope to diagnose a disease, we need to dispel our myths about “history” before we can hope to interpret it. And to do so we must turn to and examine history - but history understood as res gestae, history such as it was, as a record of events, without preconceived ideas, trusting our senses and highlighting “appearances”, with our gaze fixed firmly upon the “results” (Folge) and outcomes that we can then contrast with the record of human rationalizations and moralities to see if we can discern a rationale behind these ideas, to find out what “motivated” them and why. Quite clearly, these rationalizations will not reflect or explain reality, life and the world as they are, - for they are mere “symptoms” or “signs” of something else. But they may tell us what “strategies” human beings have adopted to exert their “instincts of freedom” and how their attempts to make sense of the cosmos, to give it a meaning, may reveal the manifestation of this Will to Power.

Untimely Meditations, par 8… If each success have come by a "rational necessity," and every event show the victory of logic or the "Idea," then—down on your knees quickly, and let every step in the ladder of “success” have its reverence! There are no more living mythologies, you say? Religions are at their last gasp? Look at the religion of the power of history, and the priests of the mythology of Ideas, with their scarred knees! Do not all the virtues follow in the train of the new faith? And shall we not call it unselfishness, when the historical man lets himself be turned into an "objective" mirror of all that is? Is it not magnanimity to renounce all power in heaven and earth in order to adore the mere fact of power? Is it not justice always to hold the balance [Wagschalen, scales] of forces in your hands and observe which one tilts it as the stronger and heavier? And what a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take

everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everything—makes one gentle and pliable. Even if a man brought up inTHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 73this school will show himself openly offended, one is just as pleased, knowing it is only meant in the artistic sense of ira et studium though it is really sine ira et studio.

UBHL, 8….Enthält jeder Erfolg in sich eine vernünftige Nothwendigkeit, ist jedes Ereigniss der Sieg des Logischen oder der „Idee“ — dann nur hurtig nieder auf die Kniee und nun die ganze Stufenleiter der „Erfolge“ abgekniet! Was, es gäbe keine herrschenden Mythologien mehr? Was, die Religionen wären im Aussterben? Seht euch nur die Religion der historischen Macht an, gebt Acht auf die Priester der Ideen-Mythologie und ihre zerschundenen Kniee! Sind nicht sogar alle Tugenden im Gefolge dieses neuen Glaubens? Oder ist es nicht Selbstlosigkeit, wenn der historische Mensch sich zum objectiven Spiegelglas ausblasen lässt? Ist es nicht Grossmuth, auf alle Gewalt im Himmel und auf Erden zu verzichten, dadurch dass man in jeder Gewalt die Gewalt an sich anbetet?Ist es nicht Gerechtigkeit, immer Wagschalen in den Händen zu haben und fein zuzusehen, welche als die stärkere und schwerere sich neigt? Und welche Schule der Wohlanständigkeit ist eine solche Betrachtung der Geschichte! Alles objectiv nehmen, über nichts zürnen, nichts lieben, alles begreifen, wie macht das sanft und schmiegsam: und selbst wenn ein in dieser Schule Aufgezogener öffentlich einmal zürnt und sich ärgert, so freut man sich daran, denn man weiss ja, es ist nur artistisch gemeint, es ist ira und studium und doch ganz und gar sine ira et studio.

For history to have any “meaning”, for the mere record of human deeds, the res gestae, to be worthy of “interpretation”, this “a-methodon hyle” (what the early Greek historians called the subject-matter of their istorein or “inquiries”), this “form-less” or “shape-less matter” must somehow dis-close a “truth” (the Greek meaning of “a-letheia”, unconcealment, remembrance) that follows or obeys an “intelligible pattern”, one that can be “de-ciphered” and “com-prehended” and eventually – this is the “telos” of history, its essential “goal” – be capable of “attainment”, of “realization”. Not only must the “meaning” or “truth” of history be “rational” to be “intelligible”, but it must also be “necessary” – because it would not be “possible” for us fully to com-prehend a process that is not “necessary”!

This “rational” approach to history wishes therefore at one and the same time to assert or posit the “freedom” of human actions, of the human “will” – because an entirely “necessary” process would be “meaning-less” in any case, for whatever is “necessary” cannot, eo ipso, be “meaningful”, it can only simply “be”; and also “understand” the “telos” or “meaning” of the historical process as a “rational necessity”, that is to say as a “per-fection”, a “com-pletion” of the goal pursued by the “free will” that must by definition entail its “abolition”, the super-session (Aufhebung) of the “freedom” (Freiheit) that the rational theory of history “necessarily postulated” at the beginning of its interpretation! At that precise point, “the renunciation of all power” can mean only that “everything that was and is, is as it ought to have been”! If we say, with Hegel, that “whatever is real is rational and whatever is rational is real”, then, retorts Nietzsche, there is no further need for “action” in history, and we may as well prostrate ourselves to its “dialectical necessity”.

But such “magnanimity” or “selflessness” or even “justice” would be tantamount to conceding that indeed there are no such “values” in history! One of two things: either “justice is “possible”, in which case it must be “necessary” and, by its very “necessity”

abolish itself, or else it consists merely of the imposition of a given standard by the strong over the weak. In the former case, no “justice” is visible or indeed possible, and in the latter case justice, like history, “becomes a compendium of actual immorality” – and history could lay no claim to being regarded as “the judge of this actual immorality”.

What old-fashioned thoughts I have on such a combination of virtue and mythology! But they must out, however one may laugh at them. I would even say that history always teaches—"it was once," and morality—"it ought not to be, or have been." So history becomes a compendium of actual immorality. But how wrong would one be to regard history as the judge of this actual immorality!

Was für veraltete Gedanken habe ich gegen einen solchen Complex von Mythologie und Tugend auf dem Herzen! Aber sie sollen einmal heraus, und man soll nur immer lachen. Ich würde also sagen: die Geschichte prägt immer ein: „es war einmal“, die Moral: „ihr sollt nicht“ oder „ihr hättet nicht sollen“.So wird die Geschichte zu einem Compendium der thatsächlichen Unmoral. Wie schwer würde sich der irren, der die Geschichte zugleich als Richterin dieser thatsächlichen Unmoral ansähe!

If “values” actually ec-sist, if they have an independent “reality”, then history, life and the world must be false! Because it is obvious enough that if these “values” had any “reality” or “force”, even as “justice”, then the “justice” that “balances its contrasting forces” would have become “real” already in our own day and age, in this time! But that is far from being the “case” (recall Wittgenstein’s definition of truth-value as “that which is the case”). The “case”, the “e-vent”, the “happenings” of history indicate (Anzeichen) otherwise:

260. In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is master-morality and slave-morality; -- I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the mediation [Vermittlung] of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.

260. Bei einer Wanderung durch die vielen feineren und gröberen Moralen, welche bisher auf Erden geherrscht haben oder noch herrschen, fand ich gewisse Züge regelmässig mit einander wiederkehrend und aneinander geknüpft: bis sich mir endlich zwei Grundtypen verriethen, und ein Grundunterschied heraussprang. Es giebt Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral; — ich füge sofort hinzu, dass in allen höheren und gemischteren Culturen auch Versuche der Vermittlung beider Moralen zum Vorschein kommen, noch öfter das Durcheinander derselben und gegenseitige Missverstehen, ja bisweilen ihr hartes Nebeneinander — sogar im selben Menschen, innerhalb Einer Seele. Die moralischen Werthunterscheidungen sind entweder unter einer herrschenden Art entstanden, welche sich ihres Unterschieds gegen die beherrschte mit Wohlgefühl bewusst wurde, — oder unter den Beherrschten, den Sklaven und Abhängigen jeden Grades.

All history is the history of violence, of domination and overpowering, of exploitation: of conquerors and vanquished. Moralities then are of two types depending on whether they originate from the rulers or the ruled. There may well be attempts at “mediating” the two moralities, but no “reconciliation” (Versohnung) is possible at all because they represent opposing and warring forces that cannot find a lasting meaningful and harmonious “pacification”.

260…In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the concept "good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as its distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank [Rangordnung, hierarchy]. The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable";--the antithesis "good" and "evil" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. "We truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised?" The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values. He honours whatever he recognises in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:--the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity [Mitleid], but rather from an impulse [Drang] generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast," says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: "He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one." The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees, precisely in sympathy [Mitleid], or in acting for the good of others, or in desinteressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."

The morality of the master cannot but be “self-referential”: to the extent that the master reflects on his mastery, it is only to assert his dominance as an “overflowing spirit”, one that is not the pro-duct of the dominant relationship with the slave, but rather sees in its very actus dominandi the source and justification of its power, its “self-glorification”.

--It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost instinctively in progress and the "future," and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge both only within the circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, raffinement of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be a good friend): all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realise, and also to unearth and disclose.

260… Im ersten Falle, wenn die Herrschenden es sind, die den Begriff „gut“ bestimmen, sind es die erhobenen stolzen Zustände der Seele, welche als das Auszeichnende und die Rangordnung Bestimmende empfunden werden. Der vornehmeMensch trennt die Wesen von sich ab, an denen das Gegentheil solcher gehobener stolzer Zustände zum Ausdruck kommt: er verachtet sie. Man bemerke sofort, dass in dieser ersten Art Moral der Gegensat „gut“ und „schlecht“ so viel bedeutet wie „vornehm“ und „verächtlich“: — der Gegensatz „gut“ und „böse“ ist anderer Herkunft. Verachtet wird der Feige, der Ängstliche, der Kleinliche, der an die enge Nützlichkeit Denkende; ebenso der Misstrauische mit seinem unfreien Blicke, der Sich-Erniedrigende, die Hunde-Art von Mensch, welche sich misshandeln lässt, der bettelnde Schmeichler, vor Allem der Lügner: — es ist ein Grundglaube aller Aristokraten, dass das gemeine Volk lügnerisch ist. „Wir Wahrhaftigen“ —so nannten sich im alten Griechenland die Adeligen. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die moralischen Werthbezeichnungen überall zuerst auf Menschen und erst abgeleitet und spät auf Handlungen gelegt worden sind: weshalb es ein arger Fehlgriff ist, wenn Moral-Historiker von Fragen den Ausgang nehmen wie „warum ist die mitleidige Handlung gelobt worden?“ Die vornehme Art Mensch fühlt sich als werthbestimmend, sie hat nicht nöthig, sich gutheissen zu lassen, sie urtheilt „was mir schädlich ist, das ist an sich schädlich“, sie weiss sich als Das, was überhaupt erst Ehre den Dingen verleiht, sie ist wertheschaffend. Alles, was sie an sich kennt, ehrt sie: eine solche Moral ist Selbstverherrlichung. Im Vordergrunde steht das Gefühl der Fülle, der Macht, die überströmen will, das Glück der hohen Spannung, das Bewusstsein eines Reichthums, der schenken und abgeben möchte: — auch der vornehme Mensch hilft dem Unglücklichen, aber nicht oder fast nicht aus Mitleid, sondern mehr aus einem Drang, den der Überfluss von Macht erzeugt. Der vornehme Mensch ehrt in sich den Mächtigen, auch Den, welcher Macht über sich selbst hat, der zu redden und zu schweigen versteht, der mit Lust Strenge und Härte gegen sich übt und Ehrerbietung vor allem Strengen und Harten hat. „Ein hartes Herz legte Wotan mir in die Brust“ heisst es in einer alten skandinavischen Saga: so ist es aus der Seele eines stolzen Wikingers heraus mit Recht gedichtet. Eine solche Art Mensch ist eben stolz darauf, nicht zum Mitleiden gemacht zu sein: weshalb der Held der Saga warnend hinzufügt „wer jung schon kein hartes Herz hat, dem wird es niemals hart“. Vornehme und Tapfere, welche so denken, sind am entferntesten von jener Moral, welche gerade im Mitleiden oder im Handeln für Andere oder im désintéressement das Abzeichen des Moralischen sieht; der Glaube an sich selbst, der Stolz auf sich selbst, eine Grundfeindschaft und Ironie gegen „Selbstlosigkeit“ gehört eben so bestimmt zur vornehmen Moral wie eine leichte Geringschätzung und Vorsicht vor den Mitgefühlen und dem „warmen Herzen“. Die Mächtigen sind es, welche zu ehren verstehen, es ist ihre Kunst, ihr Reich der Erfindung. Die tiefe Ehrfurcht vor dem Alter und vor dem Herkommen — das ganze Recht steht auf dieser doppelten Ehrfurcht —, der Glaube und das Vorurtheil zu Gunsten der Vorfahren und zu Ungunsten der Kommenden ist typisch in der Moral der Mächtigen; und wenn umgekehrt die Menschen der „modernen Ideen“ beinahe instinktiv an den „Fortschritt“ und „die Zukunft“ glauben und der Achtung vor dem Alter immer mehr ermangeln, so verräth sich damit genugsam schon die unvornehme Herkunft dieser „Ideen“. Am meisten ist aber eine Moral der Herrschenden dem gegenwärtigen Geschmacke fremd und peinlich in der Strenge ihres Grundsatzes, dass man nur gegen Seinesgleichen Pflichten habe; dass man gegen die Wesen niedrigeren Ranges, gegen alles Fremde nach Gutdünken oder „wie es das Herz will“ handeln dürfe und jedenfalls „jenseits von Gut und Böse“ —: hierhin mag Mitleiden und dergleichen gehören. Die Fähigkeit und Pflicht zu langer Dankbarkeit und langer Rache — beides nur innerhalb seines Gleichen —, die Feinheit in der Wiedervergeltung, das Begriffs-Raffinement in der Freundschaft, eine gewisse Nothwendigkeit, Feinde zu haben (gleichsam als Abzugsgräben für die Affekte Neid Streitsucht Übermuth, — im Grunde, um gut freund sein zu können): Alles das sind typische Merkmale der vornehmen Moral, welche, wie angedeutet, nicht die Moral der „modernen Ideen“ ist und deshalb heute schwer nachzufühlen, auch schwer auszugraben und aufzudecken ist.

It is otherwise with the slave. Whereas the master in his exuberance sees no need-necessity to seek justifications for his dominance except in the assertion of it, the slave, so far as he is conscious of being dominated, will seek to develop a “rationalization” of the reality of exploitation precisely by beginning to doubt and bring into question the “necessity” of this exploitation, by seeking to undermine its legitimacy and to attribute it to causes that are

“remediable” and “avoidable”, to “injustices” and usurpations of “rights”, natural or historical.

--It is otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-morality. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralise, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a scepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and "evil": --power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave- morality, a shade of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches itself to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendency, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good" and "stupid."--A last fundamental difference: the desire for freedom, the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.--Hence we can understand without further detail why love as a passion--it is our European specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself. (BGE)

260…— Es steht anders mit dem zweiten Typus der Moral, der Sklaven-Moral. Gesetzt, dass die Vergewaltigten, Gedrückten, Leidenden, Unfreien, Ihrer-selbst-Ungewissen und Müden moralisiren: was wird das Gleichartige ihrer moralischen Werthschätzungen sein? Wahrscheinlich wird ein pessimistischer Argwohn gegen die ganze Lage des Menschen zum Ausdruck kommen, vielleicht eine Verurtheilung des Menschen mitsammt seiner Lage. Der Blick des Sklaven ist abgünstig für die Tugenden des Mächtigen: er hat Skepsis und Misstrauen, er hat Feinheit des Misstrauens gegen alles „Gute“, was dort geehrt wird —, er möchte sich überreden, dass das Glück selbst dort nicht ächt sei. Umgekehrt werden die Eigenschaften hervorgezogen und mit Licht übergossen, welche dazu dienen, Leidenden das Dasein zu erleichtern: hier kommt das Mitleiden, die gefällige hülfbereite Hand, das warme Herz, die Geduld, der Fleiss, die Demuth, die Freundlichkeit zu Ehren —, denn das sind hier die nützlichsten Eigenschaften und beinahe die einzigen Mittel, den Druck des Daseins auszuhalten. Die Sklaven-Moralist wesentlich Nützlichkeits-Moral. Hier ist der Herd für die Entstehung jenes berühmten Gegensatzes „gut“ und „böse“: — in's Böse wird die Macht und Gefährlichkeit hinein empfunden, eine gewisse Furchtbarkeit, Feinheit und Stärke, welche die Verachtung nicht aufkommen lässt. Nach derSklaven-Moral erregt also der „Böse“ Furcht; nach der Herren-Moral ist es gerade der „Gute“, der Furcht erregt und erregen will, während der „schlechte“ Mensch als der verächtliche empfunden wird. Der Gegensatz kommt auf seine Spitze, wenn sich, gemäss der Sklavenmoral-Consequenz, zuletzt nun auch an den „Guten“ dieser Moral ein Hauch von Geringschätzung hängt — sie mag leicht und wohlwollend sein —, weil der Gute innerhalb der Sklaven-Denkweise jedenfalls der ungefährlicheMensch sein muss: er ist gutmüthig, leicht zu betrügen, ein bischen dumm vielleicht, un bonhomme. Überall, wo die Sklaven-Moral zum Übergewicht kommt, zeigt die Sprache eine Neigung, die Worte „gut“ und „dumm“ einander anzunähern. — Ein letzter Grundunterschied: das Verlangen nach Freiheit, der Instinkt für das Glück und die Feinheiten des Freiheits-Gefühls gehört ebenso nothwendig zur Sklaven-Moral und -Moralität, als die Kunst und Schwärmerei in der Ehrfurcht, in der

Hingebung das regelmässige Symptom einer aristokratischen Denk- und Werthungsweise ist. — Hieraus lässt sich ohne Weiteres verstehn, warum die Liebe als Passion — es ist unsre europäische Spezialität — schlechterdings vornehmer Abkunft sein muss: bekanntlich gehört ihre Erfindung den provençalischen Ritter-Dichtern zu, jenen prachtvollen erfinderischen Menschen des „gai saber“, denen Europa so Vieles und beinahe sich selbst verdankt. — (JGB)

Because he claims that the reality of mastery and slavery is not ineluctable and physio-logical, the slave will seek to separate and distinguish between the “being” of the master and the “actions” that manifest this “mastery”, in such a way that “being a master” or a “slave” is not a “physiological” attribute of the master and the slave but is rather a “historical accident” due to the “contingent actions”, to the “free will” of the master, who could and therefore should act differently to eliminate this contingent historical condition of slavery! The paradoxical result of this rationale may well be, as it has been since the rise of Christendom, that the slave-morality actually comes to prevail over the master-morality!

Georg Simmel agrees that this is “the fundamental thought of Nietzsche” – that “in the course of history, in particular since Christianity, the Majority, that naturally is constituted by the weak, the average and the insignificant, have obtained dominance inside and out over the Minority of the strong, the doers, the exceptional. Partly as the result and effect, partly as the cause thereof, the original moral values were entirely transfigured”.(“Der grundlegende Gedanke Nietzsches ist der: im Lauf der Geschichte, insbesondereseit dem Christentum, hat die Majorität, die naturgemäss aus den Schwachen,Mittelmässigen, Unbedeutenden besteht, die äussere und innere Herrschaft über dieMinorität der Starken, Vornehmen, Eigenartigen erlangt. Teils als Folge und Ausdruck, teils als Ursache davon sind die ursprünglichen moralischen Werte völlig umgewandelt worden,” [“Nietzsche: Eine Moralphilosophische Silhouette”, in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik. Neue Folge, 107. Bd. Heft 2, 1896, S. 202-215).

Simmel captures with remarkable acumen Nietzsche’s entire “problematic”: to explain how in the course of history the Will to Power which is the “universal condition” of life and the world could ever give rise to “the ontogeny of thought”, which is the opposite of the Will to Power – the “disintegration” (Disgregation) of the “Instinkte der Freiheit”! How, in other words, could the “slave-morality” ever impose itself and prevail historically, if certainly not “physiologically”, over the master-morality? How could the Will to Power succumb to the Entwertung (devaluation) of its incipience and therefore require Nietzsche’s Umwertung (trans-valuation of values)? It may be said that the key aim of this study is, in Nietzsche’s own words (!), “to interpret and utilise correctly” the manifestation of the capitalist Will to Power by re-orienting “strategically” its “spiritual and ideological” velleities (Heidegger and Jaspers refer to the Scholastic velle) toward its effective political and institutional rationalisation of the world (Rationalisierung).

This supreme intellectual and political pro-ject (Entwurf) is, alas, what most Nietzsche scholars overlook or misconstrue completely and steadfastly! Jaspers, in the chapter dedicated to “The Will to Power” in Section 5 of his Nietzsche, stops merely at noting the “ambiguity” of the notion, as does Fink who, at least, deepens its “ontological” importance with a detailed examen of the Zarathustra and the Eternal Return. But again both authors fall back into the “humanistic” reading of Nietzsche whose “antidote” we hope to provide with this study. Note for example that, as we shall amply discuss later, in advocating the voluntaristic generalization of the master-morality to the status of democratic or existential or “biopolitical” right, the post-

modernist readings of Nietzsche - from the phenomenological-existentialist “wing” of Heidegger, Jaspers and Fink to the late or “post-structuralist” current of Lefebvre and Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou and then Nancy and Agamben - completely misconstrue the blatantly “anti-dialectical” and purely “empirical” character of Nietzsche’s “genealogy” of morality and crucially of the concept of “freedom”. In interpreting the Will to Power as a potentially “liberating force” (“active” rather than “reactive”, one of “affirmation” rather than of “ressentiment” – a new Freiheit!), neo-Nietzscheans entirely ob-literate Nietzsche’s terrifying vision of the Will to Power as “Rationalisierung”, as an ineluctable “destiny” requiring a “grosse Politik” that can remedy the “diseased decadence” of bourgeois society which he attributed to precisely the kind of ludicrous “velleities” of a “bio-politics” espoused by these “beautiful souls”!

Nietzsche’s Conception of Entwicklung

This “abstraction” of actions from their “bearers” necessarily posits a potential and original “equality” between master and slave whose status is no longer due to “necessity” but to historical accident, chance and fortune. That is why “slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility”, because it posits a “general harmony of human interests”, a universal good, a summum bonum, a homo-noia achievable through the sanctioning of “universally advantageous” human actions. And so it is precisely this very “English” notion of “utility” (from the empiricists in natural philosophy and epistemology to the neo-classicals in economics) that Nietzsche attacks from the outset in the Genealogy of Morals, a work that Nietzsche intended as an elaboration of the “thesis” advanced in Aphorism 260 of Beyond Good and Evil:

Ess. 1, 1. Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin [Entstehungsgeschichte, not ‘Genealogie’!] of morality—these men, I say, offer us in their own personalities no paltry problem; — they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their books — they themselves are interesting!These English psychologists—what do they really mean? We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the partie honteuse of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive development [Entwicklung Entscheidende] in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the vis inertiae of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)—what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction ?

1. — Diese englischen Psychologen, denen man bisher auch die einzigen Versuche zu danken hat, es zu einer Entstehungsgeschichte der Moral zu bringen, — sie geben uns mit sich selbst kein kleines Räthsel auf; sie haben sogar, dass ich es gestehe, eben damit, als leibhaftige Räthsel, etwas Wesentliches vor ihrenBüchern voraus — sie selbst sind interessant! Diese englischen Psychologen — was wollen sie eigentlich? Man findet sie, sei es nun freiwillig oder unfreiwillig, immer am gleichen Werke, nämlich die partie honteuse unsrer inneren Welt in den Vordergrund zu drängen und gerade dort das eigentlich Wirksame, Leitende, für die Entwicklung Entscheidende zu suchen, wo der intellektuelle Stolz des Menschen es am letzten zu finden wünschte (zum Beispiel in der vis inertiae der Gewohnheit oder in der Vergesslichkeit oder in einer blinden

und zufälligen Ideen-Verhäkelung und -Mechanik oder in irgend etwas Rein-Passivem, Automatischem, Reflexmässigem, Molekularem und Gründlich-Stupidem) — was treibt diese Psychologen eigentlich immer gerade in diese Richtung?

The “passivity”, the reflexive and reactive (even “stupid”!), “contemplative” nature of “utility” is what Nietzsche declaims and derides in the “English” (Utilitarian) assessment of “value” and the “good” – a critique that extends equally to the “objective” notion of “value” in classical political economy that interprets “labour” as a quantifiable “factor of production”, and the Benthamite notion that turns utility into a socially calculable and measurable entity (Hayek and Foucault will deprecate the “totalitarian” [cf Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’] aspect of this), and then also to the “subjective” neoclassical version of it that finally privileges the market mechanism as the ultimate arbiter of “value-welfare” through the pricing system – the equilibrium of supply and demand in a process of “pure competitive” exchange.

All these “theories of value” invariably posit a “sub-stratum”, an “essence”, a “sub-stance”, a quidditas that lies “behind” or “beyond” or “beneath” or “under” (Latin sub) the “observable economic” behaviour of human beings – whether this “value” is constituted by utility or by labour – because the “value” of labour consists certainly not in its “being” as activity, but rather in the “goods” that it pro-duces, that it works, which explains the origins of the labour theory of value in British Utilitarianism (from Hobbes to Smith and Ricardo). Nietzsche denounces and derides these theories as sheer “metaphysics”, as pure and empty theoretical “formulations” of a much more “forceful reality”: - the reality of power, of conflicting wills to power or “instincts of freedom”.

2. All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the historical sense itself, that they themselves are quite deserted by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned philosophers, on thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The crass ineptitude of their genealogy of morals is immediately apparent when the question arises of ascertaining the origin * [Herkunft] of the idea and judgment of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, "praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint of those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were useful; subsequently the origin [Ursprung] of this praise was forgotten, and altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were praised as good, came also to be felt as good; —as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic goodness." The thing is obvious: — this initial derivation contains already all the typical and traits of the English psychologist-idiosyncrasy — we have "utility," "forgetting”, "habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis of a system of values [Werthschatzung], on which the higher man has up to the present prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. This pride must be brought low, this system of values must lose its values: is that attained?...

2. Alle Achtung also vor den guten Geistern, die in diesen Historikern der Moral walten mögen! Aber gewiss ist leider, dass ihnen der historische Geist selber abgeht, dass sie gerade von allen guten Geistern der Historie selbst in Stich gelassen worden sind! Sie denken allesammt, wie es nun einmal alter Philosophen-Brauch ist, wesentlich unhistorisch; daran ist kein Zweifel. Die Stümperei ihrer Moral-Genealogie kommt gleich am Anfang zu Tage, da, wo es sich darum handelt, dieHerkunft des Begriffs und Urtheils „gut“ zu ermitteln. „Man hat ursprünglich — so dekretieren sie — unegoistische Handlungen von Seiten Derer gelobt und gut genannt, denen sie erwiesen wurden, also denen sie nützlich waren; später hat man diesen Ursprung des Lobes vergessen und die unegoistischen Handlungen einfach, weil sie gewohnheitsmässig immer als gut gelobt wurden, auch als gut empfunden — wie als ob sie an sich etwas Gutes wären.“ Man sieht sofort: diese erste Ableitung enthält bereits alle typischen Züge der englischen Psychologen-Idiosynkrasie, — wir haben

„die Nützlichkeit“, „das Vergessen“, „die Gewohnheit“ und am Schluss „den Irrthum“, Alles als Unterlage einer Werthschätzung, auf welche der höhere Mensch bisher wie auf eine Art Vorrecht des Menschen überhaupt stolz gewesen ist. Dieser Stolz soll gedemüthigt, diese Werthschätzung entwerthet werden: ist das erreicht?…

Again we see Nietzsche attack “utility” for its mere “passivity”, for its inertia, for its “meta-physical” character: for how is it possible to attribute a “value” to something that “merely exists”, that is “merely there”, without thereby circumscribing the “active” ability of human beings “to create and seek” their own utilities or values? The notion of “exchange” cannot stand for such “passivity”, even as “exchange” of “goods” that are already in existence… - Because the “appropriation” of these “pre-existing goods” (such as the so-called “endowments” of Walrasian equilibrium) requires an “activity”, a “commandeering” or “overpowering” that effectively “appropriates” them, makes them “its own”!

But the essential, much more important point that Nietzsche is attacking is that according to this “idiosyncratic psychology” (or “humanitarian illusion” or “democratic idiosyncrasy”) the “value” of a “good” or an “action” (a service) is first “as-signed” or “e-valuated” by the recipients of that good or service! What this “explanation” of the “historical origin” (Herkunft) of “utility” or “good” pre-supposes is that there is some innate human pro-pensity to “reciprocation” and, above all, to “altruistic” (unegoistich) behaviour – and, worst of all, as a presupposition underlying these two, that this “system of values” applies “to man in general”! - Now, it is difficult enough for Nietzsche to verbalise the concept of “altruism”, which he often designates as “unegoistich”, as merely the ab-sence of “egoism” – a “negative”, passive definition. But it is utterly unacceptable to him that anywhere in “nature” it is the (passive) “recipients” who positively determine anything as “positive” as human “values”! And most unacceptably absurd to him is the “humanistic illusion” (humanistische Tauschend), “the sentimental weakness”, the “democratic idiosyncrasy” that these “values” posited by the recipients of the goods and services acquire thereby the status of “universal values” applicable to “man in general” – as if there could be a “general universal harmony” (either as human “agreement”, homo-noia, or as divine or cosmic pro-vidence, pro-noia) about such “values”!

Totally unfounded therefore is Fink’s charge that Nietzsche does not show why “all religion has to be neurotic and all morality vengeful” [Nietzsche’s Philosophy, p.117] – because the “egoistisch”, self-interested, indeed solipsistic character of the human operari is implicit in the very de-finition of the “Ego”, of the “Subject”, of the “self” as in-dividual, both as a-tom, as id-entity, and also as unity of perceptio and appetitus (Leibniz, encapsulating the earlier accounts of Spinoza and Hobbes) – from Descartes onwards and especially in Schopenhauer’s “reversal” (Verkehrung) of the Kantian “Thing-in-itself” into the “Will to Life”, which he intended as a corrective for the Hegelian and Fichtean distortions of Kant’s metaphysics! After Schopenhauer’s demolition of Kantian ethics (the Sollen), which itself follows faithfully Hobbes’s pessimism (see our study on ‘Civil Society’), and epistemology (the Reine Vernunft), and then, most “destructively”, Nietzsche’s ruthless critique,any idealistic invocations of “common humanity” and “sympathy” or “solidarity” sound pathetic long before they ring hollow. Something “else” will have to found the re-construction of the inter-esse.

If we remove ourselves from the immediacy of “values” that may be held to be universally “good” and concentrate on the possibly far larger sphere of “values” over which there is no “universal” agreement but rather ferocious conflict – for surely conflict and wars are testimony not just to their “per-sistence” but even to their “paramountcy” and, some will say, even to their “per-manence”, in the sense that they have always been with human existence and some even attribute them to “human nature” -, then it follows that the “dominant” or “hegemonic” values are always and everywhere likely to be those of the “master”, the “active party”, not the passive recipient. A distinction must be drawn therefore between a “master morality” that is aware of this reality and asserts it in social life, and, in opposition, a “slave morality” that seeks instead to disguise its “resentment” and “power-lessness” (Ohnmacht) by denouncing the other morality as “unjust” or “evil”.

Ess 1, 7….The knightly-aristocratic " values " are based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney — on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-noble mode of valuation is—we have seen—based on other hypotheses : it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet the priests are, as is notorious, the worst enemies—why? Because they are the weakest [ohnmachtigsten]. Their weakness [Ohnmacht] causes their hate to expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and most poisonous. (GM)

Die ritterlich-aristokratischen Werthurtheile haben zu ihrer Voraussetzung eine mächtige Leiblichkeit, eine blühende, reiche, selbst überschäumende Gesundheit, sammt dem, was deren Erhaltung bedingt, Krieg, Abenteuer, Jagd, Tanz, Kampfspiele und Alles überhaupt, was starkes, freies, frohgemuthes Handeln in sich schliesst. Die priesterlich-vornehme Werthungs-Weise hat — wir sahen es — andere Voraussetzungen: schlimm genug für sie, wenn es sich um Krieg handelt! Die Priester sind, wie bekannt, die bösesten Feinde — weshalb doch? Weil sie die ohnmächtigsten sind. Aus der Ohnmacht wächst bei ihnen der Hass in's Ungeheure und Unheimliche, in's Geistigste und Giftigste.

Once more, care must be taken not to interpret Nietzsche’s distinction of master and slave moralities as applying “generically” to all human beings at the same time, to “man in general”. Although he does not specify a precise “race” or “class” of human beings for whom “the master morality” is a “natural” or “organic” attribute, and although he points out that “one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul” (see Aph. 260, BGE above), Nietzsche is steadfastly consistent and insistent on the fact that wherever there is a “master” there must also be a “slave”! The two “conditions” go ineluctably together and are inseparable – because the master morality consists precisely in “appropriation and exploitation”, in “dominating” and “overpowering” – more broadly, in being “egoistic” and surely not “unegoistic”. Even in their abstract properties, all of Nietzsche’s analytical categories are never intended “spiritually”, never as “abstractions”: the very fact that they are meant to capture or describe physiological “changing realities”, trans-formations, meta-morphoses of “antagonistic values” means that they are not “descriptive qualities” but “active forces” that must at all times be “drawing to their own conclusions”, that is, find ex-pression and embodiment in one “guise” or another.

To require of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength.

It is both (!) weakness as well as strength that are trying “to express themselves as strength” – except that wherever there is “strength” there must also be weakness.

2…(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the masters : they say " this is that, and that," they seal finally every object and every event with a sound, and thereby at the same time take possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "good" is far from having any necessary connection with altruistic [unegoistische] acts, in accordance with the superstitious belief of these ‘moral philosophers' [Moralgenealogen]. On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values, that the antithesis between "egoistic" and "altruistic'' [unegoistich] presses more and more heavily on the human conscience [Gewissen] — it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct [Heerdeninstinkt] which finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways…

(Das Herrenrecht, Namen zu geben, geht so weit, dass man sich erlauben sollte, den Ursprung der Sprache selbst als Machtäusserung der Herrschenden zu fassen: sie sagen „das ist das und das“, sie siegeln jegliches Ding und Geschehen mit einem Laute ab und nehmen es dadurch gleichsam in Besitz.) Es liegt an diesem Ursprunge, dass das Wort „gut“ sich von vornherein durchaus nicht nothwendig „unegoistische“ Handlungen anknüpft: wie es der Aberglaube jener Moralgenealogen ist. Werthurtheile, dass sich dieser ganze Gegensatz „egoistisch“ „unegoistisch“ dem menschlichen Gewissen mehr und mehr aufdrängt, — es ist, um mich meiner Sprache zu bedienen, der Heerdeninstinkt, der mit ihm endlich zu Worte (auch zu Worten) kommt.

[On forgetfulness…] How much more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) which is represented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places the concept "good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," "purposive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind is simply summarising and investing with a sanction its unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concerning the "useful-purposive" and the "mischievous non- purposive." According to this theory, "good" is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be considered "valuable in the highest degree," “valuable in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and psychologically tenable.

2…Um wie viel vernünftiger ist jene entgegengesetzte Theorie (sie ist deshalb nicht wahrer — ), welche zum Beispiel von Herbert Spencer vertreten wird: der den Begriff „gut“ als wesensgleich mit dem Begriff „nützlich“, „zweckmässig“ ansetzt, so dass in den Urtheilen „gut“ und „schlecht“ die Menschheit gerade ihre unvergessnen und unvergessbaren Erfahrungen über nützlich-zweckmässig, über schädlich-unzweckmässig aufsummirt und sanktionirt habe. Gut ist, nach dieser Theorie, was sich von jeher als nützlich bewiesen hat: damit darf es als „werthvoll im höchsten Grade“, als „werthvoll an sich“ Geltung behaupten. Auch dieser Weg der Erklärung ist, wie gesagt, falsch, aber wenigstens ist die Erklärung selbst in sich vernünftig und psychologisch haltbar.

Even Spencer’s theory is “wrong” because it “reads back” into the notion of “good” an original “purpose”, an “adaptation” of human goals and finalities, a telos that is purely fictitious. By contrast, the “appropriation” or “affirmation” that Nietzsche invokes is not one that posits a “community of inter-ests” between humans, a “substratum” or an “essence”, an inter-esse or even only a “homo-logation” or “homo-noia” (agreement, harmony) that lies “behind” human activity and constitutes a common “goal” or “telos”: no such “pro-gress” is envisaged, no such “harmony” or “con-sensus”, no “uni-versality” is

possible. The philosopher of Rocken sees not the “system of needs” that permeates the Arbeit (labour), not the “ideality” of human purpose and action in “alienated” form that Hegel and Marx theorized. No such “dialectic” between human action and “the Object” or even the Schopenhauerian “World” is allowed. We are “in” the world and therefore cannot “value” it, or our “activity” within it, in any “purposive” or “teleological” sense! The aim of “Life” is to assert itself, to exert its “Will”.

The fact that something might be “useful” does not mean that it is “good” either in its “origins” (what brought it into existence [Entstehung] may be “bad”) or in its “future effects”, or indeed in its very “value” or “worth” whenever it is “exchanged” (the exchange can take place for “bad” reasons). There are no “ultimate or final” causes and effects. Every “meaning or sense and end or goal or purpose” is only “transitory” and “fungible”, “at-hand” (note the ante litteram “Heideggerian” terms in German, Vorhanden and Zu-Stand, as in the French for “now”, main-tenant, holding in one’s hand). In this constant “becoming and trans-formation” (Veranderung) that is a “commandeering, turning and transforming by an over-whelming force”, only a “hierarchy of values” can exist, one in constant, incessant trans-formation and overturning.

12. Perhaps there is no more pregnant principle for any kind of history than the following, which, difficult though it is to master, should none the less be mastered in every detail. - The cause[Ursache] of the origin [Entstehung – sprouting, emergence, springing] of a thing and its final utility, its practical application and incorporation in a system of ends [System von Zwecken], are toto caelo opposed to each other—everything, anything, which is “at-hand” [Vorhandenes] and which “comes to pass” [Zu-Stande-Gekommenes] anywhere, must always be put to new purposes [Ansichten] by a power superior to itself [uberlegenen Macht], will be commandeered afresh [neu in Beschlag genommen], will be turned and transformed to new uses; all "happening" [Geschehen – showing, apparition, manifestation] in the organic world consists of overpowering [Uberwaltigen], of dominating [Herrwerden], and again all overpowering and dominating is a new interpretation, a rectification [Zurechtmachen, adaptation], that must necessarily obscure or entirely extinguish the previous “meaning" [Sinn] and "end." [Zweck]... (GM, Essay2, par12)

12….vielmehr giebt es für alle Art Historie gar keinen wichtigeren Satz als jenen, der mit solcher Mühe errungen ist, aber auch wirklich errungen sein sollte, — dass nämlich die Ursache der Entstehung eines Dings und dessen schliessliche Nützlichkeit, dessen thatsächliche Verwendung und Einordnungin ein System von Zwecken toto coelo auseinander liegen; dass etwas Vorhandenes, irgendwie Zu-Stande-Gekommenes immer wieder von einer ihm überlegenen Macht auf neue Ansichten ausgelegt, neu in Beschlag genommen, zu einem neuen Nutzen umgebildet und umgerichtet wird; dass alles Geschehen in der organischen Welt ein Überwältigen, Herrwerden und dass wiederum alles Überwältigen und Herrwerden einNeu-Interpretieren, ein Zurechtmachen ist, bei dem der bisherige „Sinn“ und „Zweck“ nothwendig verdunkelt oder ganz ausgelöscht werden muss.

The counter-argument to Nietzsche’s reasoning is all too easy to articulate: he himself does it, though facetiously, in Aphorism 9 of the First Essay of the Genealogie. In the very act of “reflection”, which is a “mnemonic” faculty of humans, the “idea” of trans-forming the present and pro-jecting its “ideal” into the future is itself (!) unavoidable – it is itself part of “Life”! Therefore it is irrelevant if not futile to object to “the vindictive guile of im-potence [Ohnmacht]”, for it may well be neither vindictive nor a guile or, indeed, not even a sign of “Ohnmacht”. Nietzsche is barking like a wolf at the moon! It is no objection, of

course, to contend (as Nietzsche does elsewhere [Gotzen-Dammerung, for example]) that his philosophy is more an “autopsia” or “divination”, more a “dia-gnosis” rather than a “pro-gnosis”, that he is more Epimenides or Etruscan haruspex than Thucydides and more Thucydides than Polybius, in that the slave-morality is a “symptom” of the decadent disease rather than its “cause”. Such a rationalization is consistent with Nietzsche’s account of the e-volution (Ent-wicklung, meta-morphosis) of “need-necessity” [the play on Not, need, and Notwendigkeit, necessity] in the mani-festation of the Will to Power as “Rationalisierung”, as ineluctable “destiny”. But the problem remains that if his “dia-gnosis” is to turn into “autourgeia” (into a “stimulus” or “urge”) or into “praxis”, it needs to make explicit its own physio-logical “pro-ject”, its own “ideal”. This is something that Nietzsche’s “onto-geny of thought” simply fails to do, as we shall see. Whilst Nietzsche’s uncompromising critique of Western metaphysics and science and morals is extremely useful in its de-structive ability to de-mystify and analyze their “ideo-logical” and “strategic” functions – indeed, their “rationalization”! -, it is far less useful in a con-structive, pro-jectual sense. (Hannah Arendt in her review of “Nietzsche’s Rejection of the Freedom of the Will” has suggested that Nietzsche overcomes this difficulty through what we may designate as “the bad infinity” of the Eternal Return of the Same. In this “circularity”, Nietzsche’s “ambiguity” [Fink and Jaspers] is indefinitely “suspended” – just as the Nazi dictatorship “suspended” the Weimar Constitution and never “abrogated” it. We will see that this critique of Nietzsche’s Eternal Return is unfounded.)

It would be foolish in the extreme, then, to abandon Nietzsche’s incomparably incisive and unprecedentedly penetrating and insightful critique – because as we shall see it leads us to the most earth-shattering discoveries in all spheres of human intellectual endeavour and on all fields of human praxis. For if indeed there is no telos behind human action – if there is no “worker” behind the work, then we need to explore what lies behind the “activity” of work itself, behind the operari, apart from mere survival perhaps. Nietzsche reduces just about all human action to “self-preservation” and “self-assertion” (which itself is indemonstrable and an evident tautology). But his “strategy” (for it cannot be “science”) leaves us with the task of identifying the “semeiotics” (the “signs”, the symbolism and symptomatology) of the exercise of “power”. Does “power” assume definite “forms”? Where may we locate its “source and origin” (fons et origo)? And what is the “content” of this “power”?

The vice and ultimate futility of the work of a Foucault, or Guattari and Deleuze, for instance, is that it fails to identify the “historical forms” of the “power” it deprecates and exposes, in a manner that is “actionable”, so that no “effective praxis” is indicated by their analyses or critiques; and, worst of all, by “diffusing” the notion of “power” to the point where it becomes an “ethereal presence”, a “kingdom of shadows” [Lefebvre], these theoreticians end up stultifying and emasculating the initial “intent” of their work and critiques! We shall pause on this later when we examine thoroughly the practical import of the Rationalisierung in the formation of an imponent capitalist response to the rise of the working class and socialist ideologies in Max Weber’s theorization of the leitender Geist and Pareto’s typology of “azioni e derivazioni” (see his Trattato di Sociologia Generale) both moving within the Grundlinien (groundlines) of the Neoclassical attack on Marxism.

“Utility” is clearly of “no use” when we look at “adaptation” from this “viewpoint”! We then understand “adaptation” rather as “evolution and development” or “trans-crescence”, or “growth-through-crisis”, a process of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter’s schopferische Zerstorung may safely be said to have originated with Nietzsche, as Lowith sharply intuits in Vom Hegel zu Nietzsche) that lends a whole new “dimension”, a “multi-versity” to the “uni-verse” of political economy, classical and neoclassical. This notion of “evolution” must be kept separate from the Hegelian concept of Auf-hebung which denotes a “dialectical pro-gression” or “extrinsication” of the Idea in the World – the Hegelian “Weisheit” (ruse of Reason). For Nietzsche, nothing survives in the destruction. The new creation is not “linked” or “cognate” to what has been conquered or destroyed. No “syn-thesis” emerges from the destruction as the “negation of the negation”: there is only domination and overpowering, “commandeering” for the new needs.

Ess 2, 12… But all ends and all utilities are only signs [Anzeichen] that a Will to Power has mastered a less powerful force, has impressed thereon out of its own self the meaning of a function; and the whole history of a "Thing," an organ, a custom, can on the same principle be regarded as a continuous "sign-chain" [Zeichen-Kette] of perpetually new interpretations and, adjustments, whose causes so far from needing to have even a mutual connection, sometimes follow and alternate with each other absolulely haphazard. Similarly, the evolution [“Entwicklung”] of a “thing", of a custom, is anything but its progressus to an end, still less a logical and direct progressus attained with the minimum expenditure of energy and cost : it is rather the succession of processes of overpowering [Uberwaltigungsprozessen] more or less profound, more or less mutually independent, which operate on the thing itself; it is further the resistance [Widerstand] which in each case , invariably displayed this subjugation, the Protean wriggles by way of defence and reaction, and, further, the results [Resultate] of successful counter-efforts…. (GM, Es2, par12)

Aber alle Zwecke, alle Nützlichkeiten sind nur Anzeichen davon, dass ein Wille zur Macht über etwas weniger Mächtiges Herr geworden ist und ihm von sich aus den Sinn einer Funktion aufgeprägt hat; und die ganze Geschichte eines „Dings“, eines Organs, eines Brauchs kann dergestalt eine fortgesetzte Zeichen-Kette von immer neuen Interpretationen und Zurechtmachungen sein, deren Ursachen selbst unter sich nicht im Zusammenhange zu sein brauchen, vielmehr unter Umständen sich bloss zufällig hinter einander folgen und ablösen. „Entwicklung“ eines Dings, eines Brauchs, eines Organs ist demgemäss nichts weniger als sein Progressus auf ein Ziel hin, noch weniger ein logischer und kürzester, mit dem kleinsten Aufwand von Kraft und Kosten erreichter progressus, — sondern die Aufeinanderfolge von mehr oder minder tiefgehenden, mehr oder minder von einander unabhängigen, an ihm sich abspielenden Überwältigungsprozessen, hinzugerechnet die dagegen jedes Mal aufgewendeten Widerstände, die versuchten Form-Verwandlungen zum Zweck der Vertheidigung und Reaktion, auch die Resultate gelungener Gegenaktionen.

Implicit in this is a devastating critique of Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis of natural selection and the survival of the fittest! As Nietzsche will remark later, Darwin would not be possible without Hegel, without, that is, a teleology implicit in the very tendentious “hypothesis” that whatever “survives” does so because it is “fit”! Yet as we have seen, Nietzsche is very quick and correct to object that “survival” is only the “passive” side of “adaptation” – and that indeed “survivors” may well be said to have actively secured their “fitness to survive”!

Ess.2, 12…The democratic idiosyncrasy against everything which rules and wishes to rule, the modern misarchism (to coin a bad word for a bad thing), has gradually but so thoroughly transformed itself into the guise of intellectualism, the most abstract intellectualism, that even nowadays it penetrates and has the right to penetrate step by step into the most exact and apparently the most objective sciences : this tendency has, in fact, in my view already dominated the whole of physiology and biology, and to their detriment, as is obvious, in so far as it has spirited away [eskamotiert habt] a fundamental concept [Grundbegriff], that of genuine activity [eigentlichen Aktivitat]. The tyranny of this idiosyncrasy, however, results in the theory of "adaptation” being pushed forward into the van of the argument, exploited ; adaptation—that means, a second-class activity, a mere capacity for "reacting"; in fact, life itself has been defined (by Herbert Spencer) as an increasingly effective internal adaptation to external circumstances. This definition, however, fails to realise the real essence of life, its will to power. It fails to appreciate the paramount superiority enjoyed by those plastic forces of spontaneity, aggression, and encroachment with their new interpretations and tendencies, to the operation*[Wirkung, working] of which “adaptation” is a result [“Anpassung” folgt]: consequently the sovereign role [Roll] of the highest functional organs [Funktionare] in the organism itself (among which the life-will [Lebenswille] appears as active and form-giving) is repudiated. One remembers Huxley's reproach to Spencer of his "administrative Nihilism": but it is a case of something much more than "administration." (GM)

Die demokratische Idiosynkrasie gegen Alles, was herrscht und herrschen will, der moderne Misarchismus (um ein schlechtes Wort für eine schlechte Sache zu bilden) hat sich allmählich dermaassen in's Geistige Geistigste umgesetzt und verkleidet, dass er heute Schritt für Schritt bereits in die strengsten, anscheinend objektivsten Wissenschaften eindringt, eindringen darf; ja er scheint mir schon über die ganze Physiologie und Lehre vom Leben Herr geworden zu sein, zu ihrem Schaden, wie sich von selbst versteht, indem er ihr einen Grundbegriff, den der eigentlichen Aktivität, eskamotirt hat. Man stellt dagegen unter dem Druck jener Idiosynkrasie die „Anpassung“ in den Vordergrund, das heisst eine Aktivität zweiten Ranges, eine blosseReaktivität, ja man hat das Leben selbst als eine immer zweckmässigere innere Anpassung an äussere Umstände definirt (Herbert Spencer). Damit ist aber das Wesen des Lebens verkannt, sein Wille zur Macht; damit ist der principielle Vorrang übersehn, den die spontanen, angreifenden, übergreifenden, neu-auslegenden, neu-richtenden und gestaltenden Kräfte haben, auf deren Wirkung erst die „Anpassung“ folgt; damit ist im Organismus selbst die herrschaftliche Rolle der höchsten Funktionäre abgeleugnet, in denen der Lebenswille aktiv und formgebend erscheint. Man erinnert sich, was Huxley Spencern zum Vorwurf gemacht hat, — seinen „administrativen Nihilismus“: aber es handelt sich noch um mehr als um's „Administriren“…

(Incidentally, one could not wish for more damning a refutation of the “post-modernist” attempts to reintegrate Nietzsche’s “critique” of Western metaphysics [of its Vollendung] within a “humanist” perspective!) What “the English and French Sociology” perceive as “desirable” is itself nothing more than the “status quo”. But this status quo has neither the moral “right” nor indeed and above all the physiological “permanence” or stability that it would need to be enshrined as “adaptation” or as some kind of “ideal”! The fault of “empiricist utilitarians” is therefore to erect not even “what is”, but rather a false and “decadent” interpretation of what they imagine to be “reality” to the status of “scientific observation”! What they ignore is that social and biological reality is in a continuous state of incessant “trans-formation” and “becoming” whereby all “values” – far from being “scientifically established or proven” – are constantly “trans-valued”! Nihilism is a “science” that fails to confront its own pre-suppositions, its pre-judices, its own “hierarchy of values” – its “Will to Power” – and seeks to dis-guise it as a “will to truth” instead. This is what the Nietzschean Umwertung is meant to un-mask:

Ess 1, 17 (fn)… In gauging values, the good [Wohl] of the majority and the good of the minority are antagonistic value-viewpoints [entgegensetzte Werth-Gesichtspunkte]: we leave it to the naivety of English biologists to regard the former value-viewpoint as intrinsically superior. All the sciences have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher ; this task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of value, that he has to fix the hierarchy of values [Rangordnung der Werthe].

Das Wohl der Meisten und das Wohl der Wenigsten sind entgegengesetzte Werth-Gesichtspunkte: an sich schon den ersteren für den höherwerthigen zu halten, wollen wir der Naivetät englischer Biologe überlassen… Alle Wissenschaften haben nunmehr der Zukunfts-Aufgabe des Philosophen vorzuarbeiten: diese Aufgabe dahin verstanden, dass der Philosoph das Problem vom Werthe zu lösen hat, dass er die Rangordnung der Werthe zu bestimmen hat. (GM)

Not a “Value” or “Values” therefore (contra Heidegger), but a “hierarchy of values”, a “ranked order” (Rangordnung) or “pecking order” consistent with the “becoming” of relations of power, of the “clash of wills”. Not a definitive “balance of forces”, not an “equi-librium”, but a precarious “act of balancing” (Wagschalen, scales), a constant “confrontation”, a “matching”, a perpetual “jousting”, a constant “assay” and “trial”, a “resultant of forces” vying and wrestling with one another. This “assay” is a “test”, it is a “measuring-against”, a “con-frontation”, a “com-parison” (Nietzsche calls it “Contrast-bild”, which recalls the Latin parare, to shield, to parry) that “en-ables” human beings to become “calculating”, to measure all things, to “name” and therefore “to keep their word” as a “sign” of their “value”, of their “being-good”. But the “responsibility” that comes from “keeping a promise” - being “a man of his word” – is not for Nietzsche a matter of “morality”, the “responsibility” of “guilt” or of the “bad conscience”. Such a notion of morality could never lead us to the physiological origin (Entstehung) of value, because it is a “moralistic” or “moralizing”, power-less circulus vitiosus: for Nietzsche’s entire aim here is to trace precisely the “gene-alogy of morals” – the “coming-into-being” (Greek, genes-omai, future tense of gi-gnomai, to become) from “something other than morals”! Rather, it is the “awareness of necessity”, the awareness of having to act in a “competent” manner – in a manner “consonant” and consistent with the “situation” as it presents itself. The person that promises must be “competent to promise”! This “necessity” is really the highest, most “responsible” form of “freedom”: it is the “need-necessity, the instinct of freedom”.

This is in nuce the import of Max Weber’s “lesson” in Politik als Beruf and indeed the basic Leitmotif in his entire oeuvre. Cf. Lowith’s treatment in Max Weber and Karl Marx of the great sociologist’s adoption of this “morality of responsibility” in his personal, professional and political conduct. One simply has to contrast this reading of “genealogy” to that of the charlatan-in-chief’s (Foucault’s in "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History") to appreciate how politically self-defeating, degenerate and aimless is the entire enterprise of the neo-Nietzscheans! Needless to say, this “problematic” of the intreccio of the historical “origins” of capitalist political and economic ideology with the institutional asset of capitalist social relations of production (clearly personified here in the figure of Max Weber [recall Raymond Aron’s description, “heir of Machiavelli, contemporary of Nietzsche”]) is the essential focus of this and of our other studies. This is not to deny, however, that Foucault’s discussion raises some interesting topics such as (right on the point) Nietzsche’s use of different words to denote “origin”. For the rest, as is often the case with him and his types, Foucault’s discussion of Nietzsche’s interpretation of history, hopelessly distorted by his own “idiosyncratic” (to

avoid the word “idiotic”) approach to epistemology, offers much less enlightenment than his voluble flourishes would induce a superficial reader to believe.

Let us follow Nietzsche’s thought carefully here – because this is one of those pivotal moments in the history of thought on which much of what we think and believe actually hinges. The relationship of force between wills is also a “hierarchy of values”. But it is not a “hierarchy” in any teleological sense, in the sense that a “subject” deals with an “object” and that this “relationship” can be “theorized” neatly with a beginning, an end, and a “purpose” or final utility in between! (Nietzsche will soon assail [Essay 2, par12] Jhering’s book on Der Zweck im Recht [the purpose in law].) The relationship is one of “force”, and that is all there is to it! To believe that every event has a “cause” (a subject) and an “effect” (an object) – even in physics where “lightning” causes the “flash” – is to attribute to the so-called “subject” a “causal responsibility” that it simply lacks – because we are “recording” an “e-vent”, a “happening” (Geschehe, apparition, showing, epiphany), that cannot be “attributed” to anything in particular: it simply “happens” – it is “Life”!

By insisting that every “balancing” (with “scales”) of distinct and irreconcilable “forces” must end up in a stable “balance”, an “equi-librium”, in a lasting “conciliation”, in a binding contractual “harmonious agreement” (homo-noia), the human thinking process seeks to make “familiar” and “in-nocuous” and above all “com-prehensible” what is unfamiliar and senseless, to turn “becoming” (gi-gnomai) into “knowing” (gi-gnosco, also think, resolve, resoluteness, whence the Latin gnosis, scire and finally “scientia”). From the “identification” of the Will with an esse, an intelligible freedom, to a subject, an ego and then a consciousness leading to logic and mathematics to causality and science – throughout this process of “self-distancing” and “mirroring” – “re-flecting” - that is a need-necessity dictated by the struggle against, the matching against, the confrontation, measuring and testing against, the calculation or calculus of pleasure and pain that enters relations with other organisms, and especially other humans – through this “ontogeny of thought”, this “chain” of conflict, human beings develop strategies that make their world “safe and calculable” and that transform the “balancing of forces” in the sense of weighing and testing the strength of conflicting forces into a “balance of forces”, an “equi-librium”, a state of rest, a conciliation, “a general harmony”, a homo-noia.

(JGB) 259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct [guten Sitte, good morals, ethical conduct] among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force [Kraftmengen] and degree of worth [Werthmaassen, measure and standard of value], and their co-relation within one organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay [Verfalls-Princip]. Here one must think profoundly [grundlich] to the very foundations [Grund] and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation [Aneignung], injury, overpowering [Uberwaltigung] of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation [Ausbeutung]…

259. Sich gegenseitig der Verletzung, der Gewalt, der Ausbeutung enthalten, seinen Willen dem des Andern gleich setzen: dies kann in einem gewissen groben Sinne zwischen Individuen zur guten Sitte werden, wenn die Bedingungen dazu gegeben sind (nämlich deren thatsächliche Ähnlichkeit in Kraftmengen und Werthmaassen und ihre Zusammengehörigkeit innerhalb Eines Körpers). Sobald man aber dies Princip weiter nehmen wollte und womöglich gar als Grundprincip der Gesellschaft, so würde es sich sofort erweisen als Das, was es ist: als Wille zur Verneinung des Lebens, als Auflösungs- und Verfalls-Princip. Hier muss man gründlich auf den Grund denken und sich aller empfindsamen Schwächlichkeit erwehren: Leben selbst ist wesentlich Aneignung, Verletzung, Überwältigung des Fremden und Schwächeren, Unterdrückung, Härte, Aufzwängung eigner Formen, Einverleibung und mindestens, mildestens, Ausbeutung, — aber wozu sollte man immer gerade solche Worte gebrauchen, denen von Alters her eine verleumderische Absicht eingeprägt ist?

Even from this “negative” side (refraining from harming others, the Schopenhauerian noli ledere, do no harm), the neoclassical “economic” notion of “utility” is abhorrent to Nietzsche – because it can no longer be attributed to a general harmony of self-interests ascertainable through “free and equal exchange”. And so is the labour theory of value of Classical Political Economy and of its Marxian-socialist critique that prophesies the socialist utopia of organized labour and of planned production. The notion of “utility” and the Marxian equivalent “use value” are always “passive” in the sense that they are the “effect” of a “good” (of a “thing”) on the consumer; the consumer “reacts” passively to the “good” (especially if it is considered to be “good in itself”!). By “consuming” the goods, the consumer “destroys” or “nullifies” them – and this includes the Arbeit at the centre of industrial production that “consumes” the means of production. (It is interesting to note here, as does Lowith in Saggi su Heidegger, that the word ‘nihilism’ was first coined by Fichte to refer to this Hegelian dialectical process of labour’s “annihilation of nature”, later adopted by the Karl Marx who offered to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin!)

It follows that an economic theory founded on “utility” or “labour value” is one oriented to explaining (metaphysically) the “consumption” or the “exchange” of existing goods (!) - even if we take them to be, as in the labour theory of value, mere “means of production” -, but does not seek to account for how “new goods” are pro-duced, are brought into being (genes-omai), except through the “dis-utility” of labour (which once again is merely a “compensation” for its pre-existing “cost”, for the prior “consumption or annihilation of goods” by the labourer) and for the “re-arrangement” of existing “resources”, ideally so as “to maximize” utility or welfare or use value. (In this fundamental respect, Nietzsche exposes already here the “metaphysical” character of all forms of the labour theory of value [including Marx’s] that will form the basis for the Neo-classical assault on it from Bohm-Bawerk onwards. Of course, Nietzsche is also exposing simultaneously the metaphysical basis of Neo-classical theory as well!)

Above all, neither “utility” nor “labour value” can explain what is “good” or “valuable” about a good that is exchanged. The notion of “utility” pre-supposes an “agreement”, a “harmony” (homo-noia) about the “value” or “utility” of something that is exchanged – a “good” – that allows this “exchange” to take place. The abstraction from the inert or passive “being” of a “good” to its active “valuation” presumes a “substratum”, a “common quality”, a “value” that the “goods” exchanged simply do not and cannot “possess”! Worst

of all, such a “common utility” or “use value” pre-suppose a universal human faculty and calculus of “utility” or “use-fulness” – indeed, a Hegelian “system of needs” - that simply does not exist and is purely phantomatic!

In pointed contrast, Nietzsche reminds us that “value”, both ethico-political and politico-economic, stands for “valour”, and “good” (Latin, bonus) stands for “strong” (or “whole”, and thence “hale and healthy”, “integral”, therefore “strong and true”). And this is precisely what he is saying! – That we need to inquire about the precise historical and institutional “forms” of this “valour” and this “strength” – but also of the “resistances” to it, the “defences and reactions” and “counter-actions”.

Ess 1, 5… I believe that I can explain the Latin bonus as the "warrior": my hypothesis is that I am right in deriving bonus from an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum= duen-lum, in which 'the word duonus appears to me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the man of discord, of variance, " entzweiung " (duo), as the warrior : one sees what in ancient Rome " the good" meant for a man. Must not our actualGerman word gut mean " the godlike, the man of godlike race " ? and be identical with the national name (originally the nobles' name) of the Goths ? (GM)

Das lateinische bonus glaube ich als „den Krieger“ auslegen zu dürfen: vorausgesetzt, dass ich mit Recht bonus auf ein älteres duonus zurückführe (vergleiche bellum = duellum = duen-lum, worin mir jenes duonus erhalten scheint). Bonus somit als Mann des Zwistes, der Entzweiung (duo), als Kriegsmann: man sieht, was im alten Rom an einem Manne seine „Güte“ ausmachte. Unser deutsches „Gut“ selbst: sollte es nicht „den Göttlichen“, den Mann „göttlichen Geschlechts“ bedeuten? Und mit dem Volks- (ursprünglich Adels-) Namen der Gothen identisch sein? Die Gründe zu dieser Vermuthung gehören nicht hierher. —

Not only does Nietzsche demolish the “utilitarian” conception of “value” because “utility” is incapable of supplying the origin both physical (Entstehung – physical source or “spring”) and historical (Herkunft - “basis” or “sub-stance”, pro-venance, the theoretical under-pinnings) of “value” in a theory of pure exchange; but also and above all he explodes the Marxian notion of “exploitation” (Ausbeutung) founded on the labour theory of value. “The fundamental principle of society” is not labour or the division of labour. Even if it were, the reality of the operari, of the Arbeit, would still be subordinate to that of the most primordial, “instinctive” need-necessity of human beings – those “Instinkte der Freiheit” that are “need-necessary” because of their “instinctive” origin (Entstehung), and are also “irrepressible” because of their “necessary instinct” for “freedom”, by which Nietzsche means “appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation”.

Far from being an aberration, a distortion, an “alien-ation” of some innate or “essential” aspect of human being, exploitation is the very fons et origo, the very essence of “life”: – it is life “seen from the inside”, from “within the Will” where even the instincts are at war with one another, meaning that no “harmony”, no “community” or “reconciliation” of the “instincts” is possible, no “freedom from the will” is available!

(JGB) 259… Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing

to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent: -- that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. “Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature [Wesen, physis] of the living being as an organic [physiological] primary function [Grundfunktion]; it is a result [Folge] of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life. — Gesetzt, dies ist als Theorie eine Neuerung, — als Realität ist es das Ur-Faktum aller Geschichte: man sei doch so weit gegen sich ehrlich! —

Auch jener Körper, innerhalb dessen, wie vorher angenommen wurde, die Einzelnen sich als gleich behandeln — es geschieht in jeder gesunden Aristokratie —, muss selber, falls er ein lebendiger und nicht ein absterbender Körper ist, alles Das gegen andre Körper thun, wessen sich die Einzelnen in ihm gegen einander enthalten: er wird der leibhafte Wille zur Macht sein müssen, er wird wachsen, um sich greifen, an sich ziehn, Übergewicht gewinnen wollen, — nicht aus irgend einer Moralität oder Immoralität heraus, sondern weil er lebt, und weil Leben eben Wille zur Macht ist. In keinem Punkte ist aber das gemeine Bewusstsein der Europäer widerwilliger gegen Belehrung, als hier; man schwärmt jetzt überall, unter wissenschaftlichen Verkleidungen sogar, von kommenden Zuständen der Gesellschaft, denen „der ausbeuterische Charakter“ abgehn soll: — das klingt in meinen Ohren, als ob man ein Leben zu erfinden verspräche, welches sich aller organischen Funktionen enthielte. Die „Ausbeutung“ gehört nicht einer verderbten oder unvollkommnen und primitiven Gesellschaft an: sie gehört in's Wesen des Lebendigen, als organische Grundfunktion, sie ist eine Folge des eigentlichen Willens zur Macht, der eben der Wille des Lebens ist. — Gesetzt, dies ist als Theorie eine Neuerung, — als Realität ist es das Ur-Faktum aller Geschichte: man sei doch so weit gegen sich ehrlich! —

“Exploitation” is intrinsic to “all organic functions”. Yet “people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science…” – and above all in “politics”, of course, in “socialism”! – “…about the coming conditions of society in which the ‘exploiting character’ is to be absent”. Nietzsche’s “political” intent, the clear “political motivation” of his entire philosophical critique is utterly evident here, if nowhere else! To wish to eliminate exploitation is equivalent to desiring to eliminate “life” itself! “Because life is precisely Will to Power”, and therefore it is a dominating (Herrwerden) and overpowering (Uberwaltigung).

This is perhaps Nietzsche’s most unambiguous, direct and unmistakeable statement and explication of the “Will to Power”: any and every attempt to re-interpret the utter brutality of this “philosophy”, to give it some “emancipatory” twist is contemptible in the extreme. Indeed, one may well argue that such spurious banalisations of Nietzsche’s deontology he himself would deride and deprecate as pathetic examples of the very “slave morality”, the cowardly “herd instinct”, “the humanitarian illusion”, “the sentimental weakness” that he so fastidiously execrates! We are the first to exalt Nietzsche’s acumen and the validity of his insights and critique. But equally we must be first to condemn the wanton bestiality of its “analytical perspective” and of its “exhortations”. It is contemptibly “pathetic” to argue that Nietzsche “resents” the ressentiment of slave-morality for its “duplication” of the master-morality through its “negativism”, for being a “reaction” to it. What Nietzsche “pitilessly” execrates in “slave-morality” instead is its attempt “to accuse” the master-morality of “guilt”. And of using “guilt” to pursue its own “will to power”! Contrary to the

European metaphysical tradition, Nietzsche’s aim is not “to abolish conflict” or “struggle”, “to pacify existence” (Hegel’s combined notions of Aufhebung and Versohnung): his aim is “to affirm” the ineluctability of “Antagonistic Values” and the manifest “decadence” of “Altruism”.

The “eristic” Heraclitean motivation of Nietzsche’s work is its most unquestionable feature: those who deny this show either that they care nothing for intellectual honesty (if acting in bad faith) or that they understand next to nothing of it (if acting in good faith)! In its political aspect, Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” is not an “affirmation” that carries or aims at an inter-esse, a project of human “general harmony” or at least “reconciliation”, as the despicable peddlers of Nietzschean proto-fascist vitalism seek to insinuate, in the name of some absurd “bio-political” vision hidden or latent in his philosophy. If there is one thing – one thing only! – that can be singled out as “the essence” of Nietzsche’s entire philosophy, and that is shared by these epigones, it is his intransigent, emphatic and absolute denial of any “inter-esse”, of any “species-conscious being-human” in the “instinct of freedom” or “will to power” – which remains “irreconcilable” with other “wills to power” in its inexhaustible and implacable self-affirmation!

It is important to stress even at this early stage of our study (this is a point that will emerge clearly from our elaboration) that the Will to Power is not an “entity” separate from its “physiological” mani-festations - a “sub-stance” or “essence” that can be abstracted or distilled from its material, physical expressions in life and the world. Rather, Nietzsche clearly intended the Will to Power as a “universal condition” of be-ing, that is, of being-as-becoming. Consequently, Nietzsche’s philosophy is atavistically “ontogenetic” because the exclusive “source” of human action for him are “the instincts” (Instinkte, Triebe, Wille) which are irreducibly “physical” (from Greek physis, nature) and “individual”. He violently and indefatigably opposes and scorns any suggestion of “phylogenetic” factors in human evolution – what Marx called “species-conscious being human”. [Quote from ‘WM’] The only “inter-action” that Nietzsche admits of is the inter-action of domination and exploitation, of violence and injury, of commandeering and subordination, in short, of master and slave.

It is evident now why Nietzsche preferred Lamarck’s onto-genetic theory of evolution to Darwin’s phylogenetic one. To summarise, Lamarck’s theory attributed genetic mutation to the vitalistic instinctual efforts of individual members of a species, with the eventual outcome that their progeny would then inherit those traits acquired by the parents. Needless to say, the theory is entirely fallacious in that it hypothesizes a causal link between individual activity and genetic mutation. By contrast, Darwin’s theory accounts rationally for genetic mutation either by the survival of individual species as against other species or by the gradual “selection” of the genetic traits of individuals within a species that “survive” to the exclusion of other less “fit” individuals. The Lamarckian theory has an evident “vitalistic” slant, yet at any rate it is just as evidently fallacious because the link it hypothesizes between individual activity and genetic inheritance is simply fanciful. Darwin’s theory instead, whilst lending itself to Nietzsche’s “teleological” criticism of “adaptation” and “natural selection”, at least has the merit of accounting plausibly for the scientifically-observed transmission of genetic traits. In any case, it need hardly be said that human faculties are far from being “individual” or ontogenetic, but are clearly “phylogenetic”. To give the most

obvious example, a human baby that (like the mythical Tarzan or “feral child”) by the remotest of chances grew up in the jungle, raised by a tribe of gorillas, would still retain by virtue of its phylogenetic make-up all of the “human” faculties that every human being shares: - the ability to speak, to laugh, to think and so forth. And that by virtue of the fact that such a “feral child” would have the same physiological characteristics as any other child, beginning with cerebral functions. (An entertaining elaboration of this point, if one is needed [!] is in Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures; another, even more illustrious, is of course in Volume One of Marx’s Das Kapital.)

If we accept that Darwin’s theory does open itself at least in part to the Nietzschean accusation that it is an ex post facto rationalization, then we can see why he could contend that those “English [utilitarian] psychologists [lack] the historical sense”! Because they “flatten” every social reality by transforming its “dia-chrony” into “syn-chrony”, by reducing “power” to “equi-valence” and “equality”, they “democratize” life; they remove “memory” and turn all historical realities into “platitudes” (platus, flat) giving them an “invariant” status as instances of “human nature” and dressing them up as “stages” in the march of “adaptation” and “pro-gress”. The same goes for the Darwinian and Spencerian “purposive” notion of “adaptation” that “reads back” or a-scribes, as-signs a “purpose” retro-spectively and retro-actively to what are active manifestations of life (events, happenings) – again, interpreting them “passively”, contrarily to the “trans-formation” (Ver-anderung) that Nietzsche “in-tends” (dia-noia), the “e-volution” (Ent-wicklung) that is not a “growth” or a “supersession” (Auf-hebung, as in Hegel and Marx), a “stage” toward a “goal” (Ziel), but rather a “trans-crescence”, a “growth-through-crisis”. Where Marx bemoans the “separation” (Trennung) of living labour from the “means of production” and its “concentration” by the capitalist, Nietzsche brutally dismisses such nostalgic reveries as “socialist decadence” and champions ruthlessly the right of the owners of capital “to organize, subordinate and superordinate”:

37….My objection against the whole of sociology in England and France remains that it knows from experience only the forms of social decay, and with perfect innocence accepts its own instincts of decay as the norm of sociological value-judgments. The decline of life, the atrophy of all organizing, that is to say separating [trennenden], tearing open clefts, subordinating and superordinating force [Kraft], has been formulated as the ideal in contemporary sociology. Our socialists are decadents, but Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent too: he sees the triumph of altruism as something worthy of being desired [Wunschwerthes]. (ToI)

37…Mein Einwand gegen die ganze Sociologie in England und Frankreich bleibt, dass sie nur die Verfalls-Gebilde der Societät aus Erfahrung kennt und vollkommen unschuldig die eigenen Verfalls-Instinkte als Norm des sociologischen Werthurteils nimmt. Das niedergehende Leben, die Abnahme aller organisirenden, das heist trennenden, Klüfte aufreissenden, unter- und überordnenden Kraft formulirt sich in der Sociologie von heute zum Ideal …Unsre Socialisten sind décadents, aber auch Herr Herbert Spencer ist ein décadent, — er sieht im Sieg des Altruismus etwas Wünschenswerthes!(ToI)

Just as with the Utilitarians, Nietzsche chastises the peddlers of socialist utopianism: It is naive – indeed a “pathetic”, “leveling”, “egalitarian”, “democratic idiosyncrasy” – to insist on the “abolition” (Marx’s Aufhebung) of the “separation” (Marx’s Trennung – on which see our ‘Civil Society’) of the workers from the means of production! This “socialist, altruistic and democratic wish” would lead to “the decline of life”, “the atrophy of the

employer’s force or power to organize, subordinate and superordinate [or re-structure]” industry! The market “exchange”, including the “exchange” of living labour or labour-power with dead labour or wages, refers not to the “labour value” or even “utility” of the goods, but rather to the “matching” of the respective “wills” of the parties to the exchange! Again, “utility” is only “part” of the calculus that enters the exchange: but in truth, much more is at stake in this trans-action, much more than the calculable and comfortable “reality” of utility or use value which “translates” life in “humanistic” terms, into the “progress” toward a benevolent, hedonistic future – into “adaptation” or a Schopehauerian “genius of the species”! The entirety of modern industry, the whole Vergesellschaftung (“socialization” of production) assumes now a truly revolutionary, even horrifying meaning in Nietzsche’s hands!

Cacciari (The Unpolitical, p.99) is perfectly right:

“Neither nostalgia for a return, as in Carlyle, to blessed precapitalistic work, nor even nostalgia to move forward toward a perfect militarization of work, understood as realization of its value, constitutes the power of Nietzsche’s critique; rather, it is the attack on the very idea of work as value, an attack led on the basis of the concrete, historically determined dissolution of this idea that constitutes, in fact, the motor of dialectical construction.”

And Cacciari is right also to insist that this “dialectical construction” is the very essence of “economic science” from Smith to the present, including (au fond) the Marxian critique. But with regard to this last Cacciari neglects and omits its most fundamental truth – the central thesis of our work: - namely, that “work” understood as living labour shapes and is shaped by our “species-conscious being”, which is an osmosis, a sym-biosis of all our vital faculties that turns us from “human beings” into “being human”. As we shall see, whilst Nietzsche’s Umwertung is “invaluable” for the reconstitution of our “philosophy of praxis”, our “use” of his critique of science, ethics and political economy requires us “to re-construct” on the fragmented debris of his “philosophizing with a hammer”, from his fundamental categories of de-structive critique.

The initial, “negative” objection to Nietzsche’s (and Cacciari’s) evidently “hortatory” philosophy is simple and devastating enough: if this is “life”, then why trouble even writing about it? Is it merely a question of “honesty toward ourselves” – and why would such “honesty” be better than self-deception (as Nietzsche will ask later in his critique of the Will to Truth)? Or is it a matter of “correcting the ordinary consciousness of unwilling Europeans”? And if the latter, why should this matter? Wherein lies “the great danger of mankind” [Aph5 and 6, Pr., GM]? Of what are you afraid? Nietzsche and Cacciari are right again: there is not and there cannot be an “objective value” behind the division of social labour. There is not and cannot be a “technological” resolution of human aspirations. But why must “techne’” be understood as an irremediably “ontogenetic” process, or even as a “mechanistic” one opposed to “artistic and artisanal poiesis”, when in fact both activities are most evidently “phylo-genetic”?

“The unpolitical denounces in small politics the desperate conservation of the regressive idea of a mutual universal recognition of subjects in work as value. But why is this reduction impracticable? Because it appears by now that it is almost impossible to reduce the practices to their mere technical foundation. The

doing (doing of techne’ irrevocably severed from poiein) is embodied in subjects that enact their own absence of home as a conflictual relation,” (p101).

But Cacciari is getting caught up in his own hopeless rhetorical logorrhoeia - the result of too long a time spent reading Heidegger! That Cacciari’s own “vision” is hopelessly caught in this “ontogenetic” trap, he himself makes crushingly obvious:

“The dangerous individual is the worker as impossible class, as a class that is aware of its own condition as impossible. But impossible in both senses: both because the conditions of its exploitation are a disgrace; and because its own individuality makes impossible the dialectical process of reduction and mediation, which is a condition of the power of the state form,” (p102).

It is quite astounding how a thinker of Cacciari’s intellectual perspicacity can fail to take into account the indispensable human inter-dependence so manifestly evident, so pellucid not just in the phylogenetic “reflexive” or “species-conscious” faculties of being human, but also – even if we wished to confine ourselves to the most reductive understanding of “pro-duction” – in the human division of social labour! Again, it is Cacciari’s impossibly “reductive and mediated” antitheses of “the worker” and “the class”, of “the state” and “politics” and of “value” and “work” that elicit his “phantasmagoria” of “the impossible class” and “the decaying dialectical state” as well as his epigonal advocacy of Nietzsche’s “Grand Politics”!

That the “working class” is “im-possible”, or in Nietzschean terms “self-dissolving” (selbst-aufgehoben), we are the last to deny. That “the state form” is also decaying and “impossible” precisely because its “strategic function” as a “reduction and mediation” of capitalist antagonism is failing, we are the first to assert! But Cacciari is obstinately and capriciously “postulating” the two horns of a dilemma that exists only in his own mind – only to be impaled by them both! – by insisting on the “individuality” of the “worker”! It is not surprising that his review of Nietzsche’s politics should conclude first (on p. 102) with an allusion to Wittgensteinian “mysticism” about language and “silence”, and then (pp.102-3) with a lyrical appeal to “the Wanderer” (from the last page of ‘HATH’) and his “ad-venturous existential frisson” worthy of Heidegger (or perhaps of the worst Sartre sipping coffee in St. Germain des Pres!).

“Disgraceful is not the priest, but the priest who states that his kingdom is of this world. If our announcement proclaims values, let our kingdom not be of this world. If our kingdom is nothing but this world, then let our language be that of politics without foundation. And let this language know how little does one say when one says it politically. Let it recognize its limitations – and how much silence embraces its every word,” (p102).

(Later, we will tackle punctiliously the far-reaching political and ethical implications of the figure of “the Wanderer” in Nietzsche’s philosophy.)

There is certainly a “dif-ference” between Nietzsche’s “critiques” of the Western metaphysical “construction” of reality, of which he searches the “physio-logical” origins or sources and foundations, and the “conclusions” that he derives from these critiques, if you like, the “politics” that he prescribes. But the prescription is an “active” one in the sense that the “conclusions” follow inexorably from his most “fundamental premises”

(Grundbegriffe). This is Nietzsche’s own unification of theory and practice! There is no “finality” and no “telos” in the deontology indicated by his “critique” of “values”. One could describe his “procedure” almost in medical terms: the dia-gnosis leads to pro-gnosis and prophylactic “indications” (Anzeichen) and “counter-indications”. Nietzsche is saying that if we “refuse to sign” when we “have the pen”, that is in itself a “sign” (Zeichen), an “indication” (Anzeichen) and a “symptom” of our being “diseased” (Erkranken) – a “symptom of retrogression” (Ruckgangssymptom). Not a “regression” in a historical sense, because “history” does not move with “linearity”; it is an “Eternal Return” of “Life”. There are no Spenglerian fatalistic echoes about the imminent “decline of the West” (Untergang des Abendlandes) or of Heideggerian apocalyptic “obscurcissement du monde” (in Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik) in Nietzsche. An illness (Krankheit) or disease (Erkrankung) is neither the “cause” nor the “effect” of “retro-gression”, of “decadence and decay” (Verfall) (although in Wille zur Macht Nietzsche uses the word “effect”, but points out that this word, together with “cause”, he understands as “pure concepts”, of no epistemological relevance). There is no aetiology of disease; no scientific “explanation” of its causation. Rather, a “disease” can only be “described” as a “symptom” of “decadence” in a “physiological” or “dia-gnostic” sense precisely because it is impossible to tell for sure, as with the medical diagnosis of a diseased organism, whether the disease will grow or disappear, whether the patient will live or die. (Again in Wille zur Macht he loosely likens his analysis to “astrology” – “reading” or “interpreting” the star signs.)

This is the meaning of “Krisis”. A medical condition is “critical” when the patient may either live or die. The “truth” of “life” will be decided… “in the event”, in the outcome (Erfolg, literally “success”), the “result” (Folge)! Only “after” shall we be able to determine, with the benefit of hind-sight, what the true state of affairs (Thatsachlichkeit) was. That is why, although it is not possible to determine in advance the “purpose” or “utility” of a reality, it is imperative that we will in a certain direction after having “de-ciphered the signs”! That is the meaning of being caught “between the walls of the past and of the present” (see the following section). That is the meaning (or “sense” - at once perception, reason and direction) of “amor fati”, of the Eternal Return – of the Wille zur Macht.

Nietzsche draws a clear distinction between “weakness” (Schwaschlichheit) and “power-lessness” (Ohnmacht) – the one denoting a “condition” and the other a “decadence” or “decay” (Verfall): the former is not the “cause”, and not even the “effect”, but rather the “symptom or sign” of the latter, so that a “willful” search for Power (Macht) is the only way to reverse this decay, this “corruption”. Once more, this explodes the thesis that Nietzsche intends his “physio-logy” in a “hortatory” sense: – pour encourager les faibles (!), as it were, - in order “to encourage the weak” to act nobly, eschew “resentment” and thereby achieve an egalitarian and “noble” society for all!

This is not at all the case! Rather, Nietzsche is saying that “weakness” (Schwaschlichkeit) is the ubiquitous counterpart to “strength” (Kraft), and the Will to Power entails the acceptance and “assertion” or “exertion” of this “physiological” reality! For Nietzsche, the very “ideal” of an “egalitarian and noble society”, of a pacified and harmonious world,

must end up with the nihilistic denial of life! Any attempt to mollify, to assuage, to hide or “mask” this “reality” such as it is – the reality of conflict and antagonism and error – in the name of reconciliation and truth, is itself a sign and symptom of incipient Ohnmacht, of decadence and decay, of corruption, the “acceptance” of which, the “acquiescence” in which, will lead infallibly to the atrophy of the “instinct of freedom”, of the “will to power”. No “reconciliation” of “wills to power” is possible. No “common goal”; no “utopia”. No “common humanity” – indeed, no “co-existence”, except insofar as “domination” (Herrwerden) and “overpowering” (Uberwaltigung) require the continued “ec-sistence” (being there, Da-sein, Ent-stehung) of the dominated and the subjugated without their “annihilation”! As we quoted above,

259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation [Ausbeutung], and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree[s] of worth [Werthmaassen, measures of value, valour], and their co-relation within one organisation).

Only when the amounts of force and the “measures of value or worth” between individuals are “similar” (see below for discussion of “exchange and equivalence of values” in Nietzsche) can there be a “truce” – but only between themselves or within their organ-ization or corporation (Korper – “body”, note the “physiological” terms). Indeed, this is precisely what the “herd instinct” and the “slave morality” together with their “ascetic ideals” manage to achieve for Nietzsche: they explain why the human species has not “devoured itself” like his paragon snake biting its tail; why humanity has not destroyed itself already! What allows the “instinct of freedom” to reach a “limit” of satiety is, in a first stage, nothing else than the full “submission” of the “herd”, of the “slaves” in a cataclysmic fury that he himself describes in lucid detail (see below on “origin of the State”); and, in a second stage, the “interiorisation” (Verinnerlichung, spiritualisation) of this “settlement” (Aus-gleich [Gleich, equal] or Vertrag [contract]) whereby the master-morality assumes an “ideological and strategic” aspect (Vergeistigung) and a political-institutional aspect (Rationalisierung). (Again, see below on “value and exchange”.)

259…[L]ife itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation [Ausbeutung]; -- but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy -- must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy - not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power .

The question remains then of how Nietzsche envisages the possibility and scope of action of the Will to Power as the rationalization of the world and of whether this constitutes (as Cacciari suggests above) “the concrete, historically determined dissolution of this idea” – of the inter-esse of species-conscious being human.

This ‘hortatory’ intention is the basis of Deleuze’s interpretation in Nietzsche et la Philosophie, a book whose central thesis is so ludicrous that it simply does not deserve the effort of a rebuke or, least of all, of a stroncatura. But this “disease” started much earlier with Heidegger’s own “humanistic” reading of Nietzsche as well as that of Henri Lefebvre and Klossowski and later Foucault. Indeed, anything of any use that Deleuze has to say on Nietzsche is said already in the work of these precursors. We shall discuss them later. Ultimately, what is false and deplorable in Nietzsche’s “philosophy” is precisely what we have sought to establish: - the thoroughgoing denial and execration of any and all inter-esse (not to be confused with the laughable Husserlian phenomenological notion of “intersubjectivity” that led Heidegger “to betray” his master and protector) that we may identify and pursue in our species-conscious “being-human”. The trap into which most “post-modernist” or “post-structuralist” analyses of Nietzsche’s philosophy fall is exactly this: – that in their absurd attempts “to objectify the subject”, they swallow whole Nietzsche’s “isolation” of human beings into “in-dividua”, his thoroughgoing rooted denial and execration of any and all “common physiological humanity” that human beings may share – something that is made evident from his “revulsion” at Schopenhauer’s clearly inconsistent but “hopeful” notion of “Mit-leid”, literally, “shared pain”! By so doing, the neo-Nietzscheans defeat the ostensible self-avowed aim of their exegesis! Nietzsche thoroughly and unequivocally denies and despises any and all suggestions that human beings can “share” anything at all, or indeed that they can “comm-unicate” meaningfully! We shall see how Nietzsche abhors and de-values [Ent-wertung] the entire concept of “consciousness” itself – which plays a central role in all “humanistic” deontologies. That is the entire meaning of his “Will to Power” as opposed to Schopenhauer’s “Will-to-Life”: - that whereas the latter leaves open the “possibility” of a com-unitas in the “striving” of the Will to Life in its very “indistinct”, “unitary”, “un-egoistic” (Nietzsche) and therefore “universal” character (Schopenhauer’s word for the ultima ratio of human intellectual freedom, the esse), the former is meant to re-affirm without any shadow of doubt the ir-reducible, ir-repressible, “necessary” Ur-Faktum – the “supreme fact” – of the individual will to power!

Be-tween the Walls of Past and Future – The Wille zur Macht in History and Time

That history is Nietzsche’s main and most forceful source of material, the “ground” from which nearly all of his philosophy originates both factually (as Ent-stehung) and thematically (as Her-kunft) is evinced not just by his philological formation or by his earliest major study, The Birth of Tragedy, but above all by the next series of “meditations” in which he provides the first sketch (Entwurf) of what will be his entire philosophy and in which he proclaims so early his “divorce” or “breakaway” from the idols of his youth – Wagner and Schopenhauer. The Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen are “un-timely” in a sense very far from that of being “ana-chronistic” (or “dys-synchronic”, as Deleuze and Agamben [‘What Is An Apparatus?’] construe them, going even so far as to opine a certain “dis-jointedness” in Nietzsche!), of being “in-appropriate” (un-gemasse) for their “time” (Zeit). If the “un-time-liness” of the Meditations could be con-fined to their being “non-contemporary” or “un-fashionable” (Deleuze and Agamben again – but they represent an almost ecumenical and platitudinous misinterpretation), then we would truly deliver Nietzsche to the rank and file of superficial philosophers (which philosophy is not “untimely”?).

Rather, the meditations are “un-timely” in a much more meta-physical sense – because they point to a revolutionary new intuition of time, a new way of understanding “time”. Hand in hand with the realization of the “eristic” a-spect of all life, which we have described already, Nietzsche tackles the problem of how it is possible for us to be “conscious” of the “value-lessness” of life and the world, of how it is “possible” to understand values – not just “moral”, but also “scientific” - in an “extra-moral” and in a “trans-valuational” sense.

The Untimely Meditations deal not just or merely with the “confutation” or rejection of the enlightened optimism implicit in Hegel’s rationalist trans-figuration of Kant’s “formal logic” (where A equals A, and therefore the two sides of the equation “annihilate” each other, end up as tautology) into his “concrete dialectical logic” of the Aufhebung (supersession), of Being-as-Becoming. They do not merely confute the Kantian and Schopenhauerian notion of the Freiheit, the intelligible freedom of the Will. The Meditations go much, much further than that! They completely revolutionise and invert our understanding of time itself! Only such an “inversion” (similar to the Verkehrung [reversal] performed by Schopenhauer on Kant’s metaphysics) can allow us to reach a “viewpoint”, an “a-spect”, a “per-spective” from which it will be possible to com-prehend life and the world coherently, “connectedly”. Nietzsche needs an “ontological” standpoint from which to be able “to view” and com-prehend the historical or “ontic” status of life and the world as he inter-prets them. Not that he ever pretended that any theoria could “en-compass” or en-capsulate” life and the world; but Nietzsche needed an ontological foundation upon which to justify coherently their “ontic”, intra-temporal and intra-mundane interpretation. He was far too brilliant and coherent a thinker – despite the apparent disjointedness of his aphoristic style – “to think disconnectedly”, to leave theory and practice to their separate destinies.

The Meditations are “un-zeit-gemasse” because they “stand outside” our conventional notion of time: they are “extra-temporal” and “extra-mundane” because they are the Entwurf (pro-ject, not “system”!) against which intra-temporal and intra-mundane events can be com-prehended. Just as Nietzsche’s critique of morality is “extra-moral” in that it com-prehends the “strategic” ontic status of moral “values”, so his Meditations are “extra-temporal” in the sense of “un-zeit-gemasse” in that they are not “measurable” (ge-masse, Mass, measure) by the conventional understanding or “metre” or “unit” of “time”. The tremendous change of perspective of time that this involves deserves close attention. Nietzsche seeks to e-nucleate it in what is doubtless one of the most beautifully enthralling passages in the entire Nietzschean oeuvre. Such is the disproportionate importance of this fragment of the Meditations for understanding Nietzsche’s philosophy - a passage more akin to poetry than to prose - that we propose to parse it carefully, “verse by verse”. (Heidegger will adopt this “a-spect” [Bild] ostensibly to re-interpret Kant’s epistemology, but in reality to hide the Nietzschean derivation of his phenomenology – only to avow it nearly ten years after the publication of Sein und Zeit and of the Kantbuch with his monumental work on Nietzsche. For a detailed discussion of the distinction of intra-temporal and intra-mundane as against extra-temporal and extra-mundane see our study on ‘Heidegger’s Kantbuch’.)

The reason why it is even “possible” for us to conceive that there are no “values” in history is that we have the ability to con-ceive of a “viewpoint” from which we can per-ceive history as “that which is” (Greek, to on, being) – a history resembling the a-methodon hyle (form-less matter) of Greek historiography. Such a perception or perspective of time involves a “mimesis” (Italian “im-medesimare” – to be at one, to be as one, to identify with, to em-body), an “em-bodi-ment” into life and the world such that “time” is intuited as the hic et nunc – the “now” that is separate from the moment that has just elapsed and the moment that is just to come.

Consider the herds that are feeding yonder : they know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety. Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all in vain, for he will not change places with it. He may ask the beast — "Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?" The beast wants to answer — "Because I always forget what I wished to say": but he forgets this answer too, and is silent; and the man is left to wonder.

Astounding is the similarity found here between Nietzsche’s opening lines to the “Historie fur das Leben” in the Meditations (“Betrachte die Heerde, die an dir voruberweidet; sie weiss nicht was Gestern, was Heute ist…”) and Cicero’s depiction (one of the rarest in Antiquity) of the “progress” of humanity from the time when “in agris homines bestiarum more vagabantur” (“men roamed in the fields like beasts”, De Inventione, I, 2). Contrarily to Cicero, Nietzsche decries, as he will do in all his future writings, the loss of “happiness” (Gluck) that the development of memory occasions in the human psyche. The dawn of “consciousness” in humans and of “the memory of the will”, the forced abandonment of “forgetfulness” implies the loss for humans of the ability “to id-entify”, to be “at one” - “the same entity”, as it were [Latin ens, being] - with the world. Just like our primordial “forgetfulness”, the “a-historical sense” of the Greeks made “action” possible and a-voided paralysis or the vis inertiae by making human action “spontaneous”, un-reflective, unencumbered and unalloyed by the burden of memory or the “distance” that consciousness and reflection inevitably introduce between thought and action (whence, “the Pathos of distance”). Above all, there is a loss of “innocence” (Unschuldigkeit) that this loss brings about, together with the parallel rise of “responsibility” (Verantwortlichkeit, answerability) and “conscience” (Gewissen, resolve) and their “negative” correlates, “guilt” and “bad conscience”.

Yet this is not to be read in the sense of a “deterioration” of the type a perfectione ad defectum that often surfaces in ancient historiography. In essence, the Eternal Return, opposed to what Nietzsche believed was the Christian “linear” concept of time, was meant to recuperate this bucolic state of Unschuldigkeit (the absence of blame, fault or flaw, in-nocuity rather than ‘innocence’, as the Nietzschean word is too often wrongly translated) – the mental state of the Ubermensch. What Nietzsche calls “the historical sense [Geist]” is not the ability to draw “lessons” from history, the ability to dis-cover a concealed “purpose” in it, either an accidental “agreement” or “harmony” (homo-noia) or a divine design or a telos (pro-noia), that attributes its “development” [Entwicklung] to a conscious

human “intention” or “pro-ject” (dia-noia), to a “merit” or “virtue” to which can be op-posed an accidental “fortune” as in classical historiography. To do this would be to fall from one error - the reductionist hypostasis of “utility” operated by the empiricist “English psychologists” -, into another error of opposite sign: - the reading back into history (understood as the journal of events, the log-book of res gestae, of “happenings” or Geschehen) of a “sense” or “purpose”, of a “Providence” [pro-noia] or “meaning”; - it would be to fall into the trap of “Historicismus”.

We discussed already the idea of “decadence” in Nietzsche as a “corruption”, a Dis-gregation of the “instinct of freedom” – which “instinct” is “tra-duced” and “mortified” (“le mort saisit le vif” seems the theme of the “debt” that communities “owe” to their “ancestors” [see below]) and “weakened” or rendered “power-less” (ohnmachtig) by the “interiorisation” (Verinnerlichung) operated by communal living and the erection of a “State”, the Ver-geistigung – which “interiorisation” or “spiritualization” con-cludes ultimately in the Ent-seelung of “consciousness” and “memory”, then “bad conscience” (schlechte Gewissen) and the ascetic ideal – into Nihilism. But again, this parallel Ent-wicklung (e-volution, meta-morphosis) is the “onto-geny of thought” that mani-fests the Will to Power as “the rationalization of the world”. Far from pining for a lost paradise, a tarnished “innocence”, Nietzsche is warning against the “voluntarism” that such “sentimental illusions” infuse, this diseased notion of “freedom of the will”, this faith in “the subject” which is itself “a sign, a symbol”, indeed a “symptom of decadence”, of a fall from grace, of a “slavish destiny”.

He wonders also about himself, that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he run, that chain runs with him. It isTHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. matter for wonder : the moment, that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later moment. A leaf is continually dropping out of the volume of time and fluttering away—and suddenly it flutters back into the man's lap. Then he says, "I remember . . . ," and envies the beast that forgets at once, and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished for ever.

The memory of the will inhibits forgetfulness and saddles man with the burden of the past even as he would wish to live in the moment, like the herd. This “conscious-ness” of the passing of time, this memory, that situ-ates and loc-ates (Ort [locus], not Raum [space]) our intuition of time also pre-vents our mimesis with nature, the burying or “sinking” of our be-ing “into night and mist, [where it is] extinguished for ever”. We cannot learn to forget; we cannot un-learn memory. But we still re-tain the “in-tuition” of time – “the moment, that is here and gone, that was no-thing before and no-thing after”. Time therefore is not the succession of moments as if they were things: time is “the” moment, the “now” in which “everything [not “every thing”] happens” – the e-vent or happening (Geschehe). In each moment, in this “intuition”, is encapsulated the “mimesis” of life and the world, the co-incidence of being and time – time as the “horizon”, the finest line of being, the “boundary” that con-tains all being. But this be-ing thus de-fined is a dimension that cannot be mistaken for a “sequence” or a “succession” of moments, of “nows” – and therefore in this “instantaneous be-ing”, in this Da-sein (being there), in this ec-sistence

everything, every event and happening, can re-cur because there is no “sense”, no meaning in a teleological sense and no direction (Richtung), no uni-verse to this “time”, to this be-ing.

It is Christianity that for Nietzsche uses the Parousia (the coming of Christ) to give a linear “sense” and “direction” to historical time – as in Augustine’s denunciation of the revolutio saeculorum [the pagan notion of eternity and the one of the Eternal Return dating from Antiquity] in Book XII of De Civitate Dei. And it is this “linearity” that allows the “spatial” and “cumulative” intuition of time as “duration”, as chronos rather than aion (Greek for aeon; Latin aevum, era) that Nietzsche confronts. Nietzsche eschews and refutes this “spatial” interpretation of time through which Newtonian science “measures” it in “units”. For “normal science”, for instance, two seconds equal two identical “inter-vals” of time called “seconds”. Yet it is precisely this “inter-val” that cannot be measured! The “distance” be-tween two “in-stants” in time is impossible to measure because time itself is “im-measurable”; it is in a “dimension” or locus (Ort) wholly distinct and dif-ferent from any notion of “measure” or indeed even “duration”. In this re-spect, Nietzsche’s vision of being and time differs significantly and dramatically from the related visions of Kant, Schopenhauer and Bergson and even Heidegger. (Again, we refer to our study ‘Umkehrung: Schopenhauer’s Reversal of Kant’s Metaphysics’.) For these three, despite their distinction between physical time and the “intuition” of time (or “duree” for Bergson), time still ec-sists in a Newtonian and Kantian “physical” or “spatial” dimension so that “the Body”, as “the objectification of the Will” and its “operari” are sub-jected to physical time like everything else in the “physical world” that is “re-presented” (recall Kant’s phenomena [appearances] and Schopenhauer’s Vorstellungen [representations]) to the Will. As a “meta-physical” entity, Schopenhauer’s Will is “the thing in itself” and lies wholly “out-side” the boundary or horizon of the physical world, of space and time as perceived by human intuition! (The same is valid for Bergson [Evolution Creatrice] who takes up entirely Schopenhauer’s approach and ignores Nietzsche’s contemporary critique.)

But for Nietzsche, instead (and in this he entirely anticipates Heidegger’s phenomenology) both time and space dif-fer “categorically” (toto caelo, he would say, borrowing a Schopenhauerian phrase) from their “scientific” or “physical” re-presentations (Vor-stellungen), which are “ontic” and sub-ordinate to a con-ception of life and the world that wholly e-lides the notion of be-ing as “coming-into-be-ing”, as “be-coming”, as active “dynamis” (Greek for “to be able”, power) rather than as a “static” essence, as quid-ditas, as “supreme being” or as a “chain of causality” ending in a causa causans, into an Aristotelian Demi-urgos or a “thing in itself”, a qualitas occulta. Nietzsche’s conception of the Eternal Return, of the amor fati, is all here: it is what allows him to interpret human history and institutions not “sub specie aeternitatis” but certainly in a “physical” or “physiological” sense, “like a number that leaves no curious remainder” - where the Greek physis prevails over nomos, spontaneity over reflection, action over contemplation, metabolism over stasis, growth over stagnation and paralysis, Being-as-Becoming (Wesen als Werden) over Nothingness.

Nietzsche reaches his most lyrical heights as he surveys with nostalgic languor the intransitable mimesis of philosophy and nature:

The beast lives unhistorically; for it "goes into" the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder. It cannot dissimulate, it conceals nothing; at every moment it seems what it actually is, and thus can be nothing that is not honest. But man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past; it presses him down, and bows his shoulders ; he travels with a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly disown, and is only too glad to disown in converse with his fellows—in order to excite their envy.

If one considers Nietzsche’s point that, for instance, the master and slave moralities can “co-exist” in a society and even in the same individual (!), that certainly does not mean that a “communion of wills” is possible (cf. his angry tirade against David Strauss [par7 of homonymous Meditation] on this very topic and his rejection of Schopenhauer’s Mit-leid and con-scientia!). Nor does it mean that these moralities can be dis-embodied and exist as “forces”, active and reactive, independently of their “physiological”, “material”, “historical” carriers (Trager)! (Such is the absurdity into which the “humanistic” and “bio-political” interpreters of Nietzsche’s Entwurf, from Fink to Deleuze, ignominiously fall [!], though Heidegger warns against just such error [v. Nietzsche, I, ch.7].) It means rather that no “progress” and therefore no “liberation” is possible in human history from the manifestation of the Will to Power because our “perspective” is necessarily “extra-temporal” and therefore “life” can be “com-prehended” only and absolutely from the individual intuition of time – through time as the horizon of being - through the affirmation of the Eternal Return. Be-tween “the first thing” (Genesis, birth) and “the last thing” (Eschaton, death) (the heading of the first section of ‘Human, All Too Human’) is the time and place that the Will to Power in-habits in life and the world. Yet there is no “distance” be-tween these two “places”; their dif-ference must not be perceived as a “space” (Raum) even though Nietzsche refers meta-phorically to “a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future”. For the now is rather a breadthless line, a dimension (Ort). “ The now, the moment”, the hic et nunc, the nunc stans, is not a “point” – it is an entirely “dif-ferent” dimension from “the sequence of now-moments” (Heidegger in Kantbuch) – not a space (Raum) but a place (Ort), a locus, a “horizon”; the horizon of ec-sistence (Da-sein) that reveals the be-ing of beings, or better “merely a continual ‘has been’, a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself”.

There is no “authenticity” for Nietzsche. Knowledge can only be “critical”, it can be only a matter of correctly interpreting and then utilizing the signs and symptoms of health and, above all, of disease, even as we are be-aware of the “need-necessity” of what ec-sists! Outside of or in the absence of such knowledge, all being is “authentic” because it is the “state-of-being” intra-temporally – being-in-the-now, that is, be-tween the now-past and the now-future, Her-kunft and An-kunft, as in the Exordium of “Use and Abuse of History” in ‘UB’: the moment, that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after.

Here it is the “intuition of time”, be-tween memory (a-letheia) and forgetfulness (lethe) that fixes the “horizon” of Being, like the Wanderer between the city walls and the desert wilderness, or the “innocence of the children”, and the Eternal Return.

And so it hurts him, like the thought of a lost Paradise, to see a herd grazing, or, nearer still, a child, that has nothing yet of the past to disown, and plays in a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future.

Deshalb ergreift es ihn, als ob er eines verlorenen Paradieses gedächte, die weidende Heerde oder, in vertrauterer Nähe, das Kind zu sehen, das noch nichts Vergangenes zu verläugnen hat und zwischen den Zäunen der Vergangenheit und der Zukunft in überseliger Blindheit spielt.

And yet its play must be disturbed, and only too soon will it be summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion. Then it learns to understand the words "once upon a time," the "open sesame" that lets in battle, suffering and weariness on mankind, and reminds them what their existence really is, an imperfect tense that never becomes a present. And when death brings at last the desired forget- THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.fulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.

Und doch muss ihm sein Spiel gestört werden: nur zu zeitig wird es aus der Vergessenheit heraufgerufen. Dann lernt es das Wort „es war“ zu verstehen, jenes Losungswort, mit dem Kampf, Leiden und Ueberdruss an den Menschen herankommen, ihn zu erinnern, was sein Dasein im Grunde ist — ein nie zu vollendendes Imperfectum. Bringt endlich der Tod das ersehnte Vergessen, so unterschlägt er doch zugleich dabei die Gegenwart und das Dasein und drückt damit das Siegel auf jene Erkenntniss, dass Dasein nur ein ununterbrochenes Gewesensein ist, ein Ding, das davon lebt, sich selbst zu verneinen und zu verzehren, sich selbst zu widersprechen.

The child is “nearer still” to time because, like the adult, it will learn to remember – and yet, like the herd, like other animals, it is “nearer still” to their mimetic status with life and the world in that the child has very few memories and does not need “to unlearn remembering” - “has nothing yet of the past to disown”. The child “plays in a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future”. These “walls” are very narrow indeed because “being is merely a continual ‘has been’” because our “existence really is, an imperfect tense that never becomes a present”. The pre-sent is so fleeting, the instant now so transitory that it cannot be described as “being” but only as “has been”.

A million times wrong, therefore, is the expression “Time is a device to stop everything from happening at once” – because “everything” in time does happen at once! Everything happens now! What stops everything from happening at once are memory and forgetfulness. Without forgetfulness, life and action would not be possible; without the memory of the will, history would not be possible. Children understand best the notion of history as an “Eternal Return” because they have no mnemonic historical re-cord (Latin, re.cor.dor, from cor, heart; literally, learning by heart, re-membering) that can in-duce them to con-fuse the past with a causal chain and sequence of events. (Similarly, Augustine in De Civitate Dei, will conceive of God’s perception of time from the outside, extra-temporally, [“ante omnia tempora tu est”, Bk.XIII] much like the way one recites a poem “recorded”, learnt by heart, and that therefore can be “re-called” at will in each word or in its entirety.) That is precisely the reason why children understand far better than adults the meaning of “once upon a time”:- because in fables “time” is just as much “past” as it is “future” – that is the meaning of “enchantment”. There is no “space” (Raum) be-tween historical events, and certainly no causal sequence or chain con-necting them. History is a locus or a topos (Ort, a place) that belongs to memory. The real “place” of

time is now, the moment be-tween the walls of past and present occupied by the oblivious play of children. And when this “play is disturbed… the little kingdom of oblivion” comes to an end.

If happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense the will to live, no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic's : for the beast's happiness, like that of the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad interval between ennui, desire, and privation.

But in the smallest and greatest happiness there is always one thing that makes it happiness: the power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase, the capacity of feeling "unhistorically" throughout its duration. 'One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything to make others happy.

False, then, are all those “values”, all those “eudaemonian” delusions that equate truth, virtue and happiness. This “summum bonum”, this “ideal equation” or con-comitance of the three cannot be found in this life and world – because the three simply do not co-incide therein, because the very “contingency” and trans-ience (passing through) of life and the world negates and nullifies them. Once more Nietzsche reminds us of his peculiar notion of “history”, which is not a sequence of conscious and “purposeful” human activity (Vico’s ‘verum ipsum factum’, and least of all Dilthey’s social-scientific research) to which a “finality” (Ziel) or “sense” (Sinn) or “direction” (Richtung) may be attributed (pro-noia, pro-videntia), or in which a “con-ciliation”, an agreement, a “harmony” (homo-noia) can be found or reached. The two “histories” (the double meaning of the Greek word istorein as “account” or res gestae and as “narrative”, historia rerum gestarum) run parallel but discrete lines of “development or evolution” (Entwicklung) – not a progressus, but a istoria (an in-quiry, in-quest) of struggle, synchronic and diachronic at once. The historical record cannot be “re-searched” with “scientific tools” – it is not an empeiria, a methodical search, but rather an autopsia, an in-quest into a com-pleted happening or action (Latin, gestum, from Greek bastaso, carry). Better still, history is a dia-gnosis, an examination (Italian dis-anima, out-souling) of a “body of e-vidence” that allows us “to recognize” (see our later discussion of the relationship between “becoming” and science as “recognition”, “familiarity”) a human condition or disease, not in an “aetio-logical” sense (as a tracing of a “causal chain” of e-vents), but rather as a “patho-logy” (pathos, suffering), in the same way as a disease, a virus is in the historical record but can lie “dormant” and be “inactive”, and therefore “out of time” for very long periods. From the dia-gnosis of disease, it is possible to locate and identify the disease itself, not to discover its “causes” (aetiology) but rather to venture a “pro-gnosis”, a prognostication as to its future course or even to indicate (anzeichen, sign) a remedy, a cure against its “symptoms”, the “decadence” of the body.

For Nietzsche, “history” is the process of tracing out the “deep origins” or “derivation” or “provenance” [Herkunft] of human “affects” (Affekte, emotions, feelings – see Heidegger’s discussion in Nietzsche, Vol.1, for his interpretation of “Wille zur Macht”) back to the “physio-logical” instincts whose real origins [Entstehung, sprouting] are as inscrutable and in-com-prehensible (un-graspable), in short, “un-historical” as “life” itself. What Nietzsche means by “history” therefore is the “un-earthing” of these “fossilized”

elemental forces, of a “nature”, a “physis”, whose “manifestations” or “happenings” [Geschehen] are “embedded” in and “ex-hibited” by the present conduct and behaviour of human beings, down to their beliefs, morality and institutions. Not a “history” in the scientific sense then – a de-finite subject-matter made up of “facts” (pragmata) that can be “researched” using specific “tools and methods”- is Nietzsche’s Entwurf; but rather an “archaeology of origins”, an “anthropology” (in ‘WM’ he will compare it to “astrology”; cf. Husserl’s lamenting Heidegger’s deviation from phenomenology to “philosophical anthropology”). His is above all a “Genealogie” – a “genetic research” into morals, remembering the “origin” (Her-kunft) of the word from “gaya” (earth) to “genesis” (birth) to the ancient dynastic and aristocratic “ghens” or “gens” (English “roots”; the Italian word for ancestry, “stirpe” [cf. Latin, ex-stirpate, up-root] is also faithful to these “genealogical roots”). All this is what makes “the Eternal Return” and the Amor Fati both possible and com-prehensible – not in a cosmic sense (the repetition of the exact-same events, palin-genesis) or in a historical sense (the recurrence of cycles or ana-kyklosis), but in an extra-temporal sense.

There is a certain hypostatization of “instincts” here. But Nietzsche is aiming “to hammer down” those “idols” he denounced – a task he announced early in the ‘HL’ essay of the “UB” when he sought to expose Cartesian transcendence and replace it with “immanence” (“cogito ergo sum” he turned into “vivo ergo cogito”). Indeed, the entire aim of Nietzsche’s work was to fulfil this task whereby “theory” and “practice” co-incide in a “history” (Geschichte) that is a “fate and destiny” (Geschick) and yet is simultaneously “decipherable” or interpretable from its “signs” or “indications” (Zeichen and Anzeichen) – its Semeiotik - and “symptomatology” (Symptomatologie). Just like the Etruscan haruspices who could divine the future from inspecting the entrails of animals, Nietzsche aims at a “physio-logy”, a Schematismus (Entwurf) or “classi-fication”, a taxonomy (Her-kunft, pro-venance) of its historical origins (Ent-stehung or “coming out” in the sense of “sprout” or “physical source ”, fons et origo).

Again, the nexus with Cicero and his treatise De Divinatione with its examination of signs and auguries, of Chaldeian astrologers and Etruscan haruspices is hard to overlook. Nietzsche associates Herkunft with “derivation” or provenance, and Entstehung (prefixed to Geschichte) with historical and physical genesis. The Entstehung/Herkunft distinction is reprised in Schumpeter’s Statik/Dynamik dichotomy in economic theory – the first tracing the “physiology” or “morphology” and the second the “evolution” [Entwicklung] of the economy. This perspective on history and historical perspective allows Nietzsche to combine “critically” (like Hegel and Marx or Schumpeter) the philosophy of history with the history of philosophy – histoire raisonnee with raisonnement historique.

There is also a devastating if implicit critique of Schopenhauer’s Entsagung (ascetic renunciation). Schopenhauer had made the error of “thinking historically”, of transforming the Will to Life into “a sleepless man” who is incapable of happiness because he cannot for-get, because in his denial of life and exclusive concentration on the “aim” of life, he bears the entire burden of life and the world – the “sym-pathy”, the “con-scientia”, the “guilt” of living, “the past to disown”.

The extreme case would be the man without any power to forget, who is condemned to see "becoming" everywhere. Such a man believes no more in himself or his own existence, he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise his finger. 'Forgetfulness is a property of all action; just as not only light but darkness is bound upTHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. Pwith the life of every organism.' One who wished to feel everything historically, would be like a man forcing himself to refrain from sleep, or a beast who had to live by chewing a continual cud.

Thus even a happy life is possible without remembrance, as the beast shows: but life in any true sense is absolutely impossible without forgetfulness. Or, to put my conclusion better, there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of "historical sense," that injures and finally destroys the living thing, be it a man or a people or a system of culture.

Happiness is accessible only to those who can forget, who therefore can “select” from experience and knowledge only those “bits” that are needed so that “action”, and “responsible action” especially, may be possible! Schopenhauer’s Nirvana is in-action, it is in-ertia, it is satis-faction, not in the beatific sense but as a ful-filment that paralyses all “activity” because it is “like a dyspeptic man who cannot forget and therefore assimilate experience”. Or else Nirvana is complete forgetfulness that, whilst allowing for a “cynical” happiness, does not admit of any “historical sense” or “action” or change. And as Hellenic historiography reminds us, the lack of metabole (assimilation, change) leads invariably to stasis (paralysis, stagnation, civil war) – to No-thingness. We shall turn next to Nietzsche’s “ontogeny of thought”, that is, to his account and analysis of how consciousness can arise from the instincts and develop into memory, then thinking, then into “resolve” (Gewissen, usually if inaccurately translated as “conscience”) and finally degenerate into “bad resolve” (schlechte Gewissen).

Consider the herds that are feeding yonder : they know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety.

Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast ; yet it is all in vain, for he will not change places with it. He may ask the beast — "Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?" The beast wants to answer — "Because I always forget what I wished to say": but he forgets this answer too, and is silent; and the man is left to wonder.

He wonders also about himself, that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he run, that chain runs with him. It isTHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. matter for wonder : the moment, that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later moment. A leaf is continually dropping out of the volume of time and fluttering away—and suddenly it flutters back into the man's lap. Then he says, "I remember . . . ," and envies the beast that forgets at once, and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished for ever.

The beast lives unhistorically; for it "goes into" the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder. It cannot dissimulate, it conceals nothing; at every moment it seems what it actually is, and thus

can be nothing that is not honest. But man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past; it presses him down, and bows his shoulders ; he travels with a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly disown, and is only too glad to disown in converse with his fellows—in order to excite their envy.

And so it hurts him, like the thought of a lost Paradise, to see a herd grazing, or, nearer still, a child, that has nothing yet of the past to disown, and plays in a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future. And yet its play must be disturbed, and only too soon will it be summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion. Then it learns to understand the words "once upon a time," the "open sesame" that lets in battle, suffering and weariness on mankind, and reminds them what their existence really is, an imperfect tense that never becomes a present. And when death brings at last the desired forget- THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.fulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.

If happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense the will to live, no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic's : for the beast's happiness, like that of the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad interval between ennui, desire, and privation.

But in the smallest and greatest happiness there is always one thing that makes it happiness: the power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase, the capacity of feeling " unhistorically " throughout its duration. 'One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything to make others happy.

The extreme case would be the man without any power to forget, who is condemned to see "becoming" everywhere. Such a man believes no more in himself or his own existence, he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise his finger. 'Forgetfulness is a property of all action; just as not only light but darkness is bound upTHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. Pwith the life of every organism.' One who wished to feel everything historically, would be like a man forcing himself to refrain from sleep, or a beast who had to live by chewing a continual cud.

Thus even a happy life is possible without remembrance, as the beast shows: but life in any true sense is absolutely impossible without forgetfulness. Or, to put my conclusion better, there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of "historical sense," that injures and finally destroys the living thing, be it a man or a people or a system of culture.

1. Betrachte die Heerde, die an dir vorüberweidet: sie weiss nicht was Gestern, was Heute ist, springt umher, frisst, ruht, verdaut, springt wieder, und so vom Morgen bis zur Nacht und von Tage zu Tage, kurz angebunden mit ihrer Lust und Unlust, nämlich an den Pflock des Augenblickes und deshalb weder schwermüthig noch überdrüssig. Dies zu sehen geht dem Menschen hart ein, weil er seines Menschenthums sich vor dem Thiere brüstet und doch nach seinem Glücke eifersüchtig hinblickt — denn das will er allein, gleich dem Thiere weder überdrüssig noch unter Schmerzen leben, und will es doch vergebens, weil er es nicht will wie das Thier. Der Mensch fragt wohl einmal das Thier: warum redest du mir nicht von deinem Glücke und siehst mich nur an? Das Their will auch antworten und sagen, das kommt daher dass ich immer gleich vergesse, was ich sagen wollte — da vergass es aber auch schon diese Antwort und schwieg: so dass der Mensch sich darob verwunderte.Er wundert sich aber auch über sich selbst, das Vergessen nicht lernen zu können und immerfort am Vergangenen zu hängen: mag er noch so weit, noch so schnell laufen, die Kette läuft mit. Es ist ein Wunder: der Augenblick, im Husch da, im Husch vorüber, vorher ein Nichts, nachher ein Nichts, kommt doch noch als Gespenst wieder und stört die Ruhe eines späteren Augenblicks. Fortwährend löst sich ein Blatt aus der Rolle der Zeit, fällt heraus, flattert fort — und flattert plötzlich wieder zurück, dem Menschen in den Schooss. Dann

sagt der Mensch „ich erinnere mich“ und beneidet das Thier, welches sofort vergisst und jeden Augenblick wirklich sterben, in Nebel und Nacht zurücksinken und auf immer erlöschen sieht. So lebt das Thier unhistorisch: denn es geht auf in der Gegenwart, wie eine Zahl, ohne dass ein wunderlicher Bruch übrig bleibt, es weiss sich nicht zu verstellen, verbirgt nichts und erscheint in jedem Momente ganz und gar als das was es ist, kann also gar nicht anders sein als ehrlich. Der Mensch hingegen stemmt sich gegen die grosse und immer grössere Last des Vergangenen: diese drückt ihn nieder oder beugt ihn seitwärts, diese beschwert seinen Gang als eine unsichtbare und dunkle Bürde, welche er zum Scheine einmal verläugnen kann, und welche er im Umgange mit seines Gleichen gar zu gern verläugnet: um ihren Neid zu wecken. Deshalb ergreift es ihn, als ob er eines verlorenen Paradieses gedächte, die weidende Heerde oder, in vertrauterer Nähe, das Kind zu sehen, das noch nichts Vergangenes zu verläugnen hat und zwischen den Zäunen der Vergangenheit und der Zukunft in überseliger Blindheit spielt. Und doch muss ihm sein Spiel gestört werden: nur zu zeitig wird es aus der Vergessenheit heraufgerufen. Dann lernt es das Wort „es war“ zu verstehen, jenes Losungswort, mit dem Kampf, Leiden und Ueberdruss an den Menschen herankommen, ihn zu erinnern, was sein Dasein im Grunde ist — ein nie zu vollendendes Imperfectum. Bringt endlich der Tod das ersehnte Vergessen, so unterschlägt er doch zugleich dabei die Gegenwart und das Dasein und drückt damit das Siegel auf jene Erkenntniss, dass Dasein nur ein ununterbrochenes Gewesensein ist, ein Ding, das davon lebt, sich selbst zu verneinen und zu verzehren, sich selbst zu widersprechen. Wenn ein Glück, wenn ein Haschen nach neuem Glück in irgend einem Sinne das ist, was den Lebenden im Leben festhält und zum Leben fortdrängt, so hat vielleicht kein Philosoph mehr Recht als der Cyniker: denn das Glück des Thieres, als des vollendeten Cynikers, ist der lebendige Beweis für das Recht des Cynismus. Das kleinste Glück, wenn es nur ununterbrochen da ist und glücklich macht, ist ohne Vergleich mehr Glück als das grösste, das nur als Episode, gleichsam als Laune, als toller Einfall, zwischen lauter Unlust, Begierde und Entbehren kommt. Bei dem kleinsten aber und bei dem grössten Glücke ist es immer Eines, wodurch Glück zum Glücke wird: das Vergessen-können oder, gelehrter ausgedrückt, das Vermögen, während seiner Dauer unhistorisch zu empfinden. Wer sich nicht auf der Schwelle des Augenblicks, alle Vergangenheiten vergessend, niederlassen kann, wer nicht auf einem Punkte wie eine Siegesgöttin ohne Schwindel und Furcht zu stehen vermag, der wird nie wissen, was Glück ist und noch schlimmer: er wird nie etwas thun, was Andere glücklich macht. Denkt euch das äusserste Beispiel, einen Menschen, der die Kraft zu vergessen gar nicht besässe, der verurtheilt wäre, überall ein Werden zu sehen: ein Solcher glaubt nicht mehr an sein eigenes Sein, glaubt nicht mehr an sich, sieht alles in bewegte Punkte auseinander fliessen und verliert sich in diesem Strome des Werdens: er wird wie der rechte Schüler Heraklits zuletzt kaum mehr wagen den Finger zu heben. Zu allem Handeln gehört Vergessen: wie zum Leben alles Organischen nicht nur Licht, sondern auch Dunkel gehört. Ein Mensch, der durch und durch nur historisch empfinden wollte, wäre dem ähnlich, der sich des Schlafens zu enthalten gezwungen würde, oder dem Thiere, das nur vom Wiederkäuen und immer wiederholten Wiederkäuen leben sollte. Also: es ist möglich, fast ohne Erinnerung zu leben, ja glücklich zu leben, wie das Thier zeigt; es ist aber ganz und gar unmöglich, ohne Vergessen überhaupt zu leben. Oder, um mich noch einfacher über mein Thema zu erklären: es giebt einen Grad von Schlaflosigkeit, von Wiederkäuen, von historischem Sinne, bei dem das Lebendige zu Schaden kommt, und zuletzt zu Grunde geht, sei es nun ein Mensch oder ein Volk oder eine Cultur.

Historiographical Excursus

We know that Nietzsche placed Thucydides and Machiavelli foremost among “what I owe to the ancients”. What both these “antiqui auctores” (Machiavelli’s own expression) do is present or “report” on actual events (reality) without seeking to find a “reason” or a “meaning” or a “telos” behind the events: they “inform” us as to “what is” (cf. Heidegger), they relate “stories” (istorein, Historie) so that we “know” (er-kennen, “are acquainted with”) the occurrences, without pre-tending or a-spiring to a “scientific knowledge” (Wissenschaft) or “understanding”

(Verstehen) or “interpretation” (exegesis) of these events – without a “moral narrative” or “in-struction”. For, just as “consciousness” is the false “reconciliation” of conflicting “impulses” or “instincts” (Triebe), so “historicism” is the equally false search for “ideal values” or “knowledge” (Wissen) to be “researched” from these events so as to a-scribe a “meaning” to history (istorein) that is “social” and not “natural”, “physical”. The greatness of Thucydides for Nietzsche lay in this, that he restricted himself to simple observation, to the analysis of “completed” events within their narrow confines (autopsia) and did not pretend to engage in “scientific research” (empeiria) for broader “meanings” or “significance” in a generic “interpretation” of human history, however eclectic or “hermeneutic”. From such a standpoint, Nietzsche could chastize the “historical school” of Roscher and Ranke and Niebuhr – Hegel’s history of “reflection” and Dilthey’s “Geisteswissenschaften” – for its post-Hegelian “emanationism”, for its idealism, for its “astute theology” (cf the second ‘Untimely Meditation’ – a critique and themes reprised in Weber’s ‘Knies und Roscher’).

2. What I Owe to the Ancients… My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli's Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality--not in "reason," still less in "morality." For the wretched embellishment of the Greeks into an ideal, which the "classically educated" youth carries into life as a prize for his classroom drill, there is no more complete cure than Thucydides. One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression--this inestimable movement amid the moralistic and idealistic swindle set loose on all sides by the Socratic schools. Greek philosophy: the decadence of the Greek instinct. Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Hellenes. In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things. (ToI)

It is of the utmost importance to realize that what Nietzsche opposes is not the “instrumental” approach to society and community: Nietzsche understands that not only is this “instrumentalism” possible, but it is also valid “as a tool or strategy of power”! This may sound surprising in a philosopher who spared no effort to lampoon British Empiricism in science whilst at the same time constructing his entire philosophical Entwurf on the reality of “happenings”, of “events and appearances” and of “becoming” against all “rationalisms” – something that would normally have brought him closer to the Empiricists and even to the Machian Menger and the Austrian School. But what Nietzsche does not admit of is the validity of the “values” – scientific (truth), moral (good or evil) and ethical (justice) – that the “historicists” and the empiricists and Machians alike seek to ascribe to the “reality” of the istorein. Far from being or representing a “value”, history is an amethodon hyle – the “formless matter” of Herodotus and Thucydides – that exemplifies, e-veniences the “nature” or “physis” of the “individuals” involved. There is no “virtue” (arete’) or even “providence” (Herodotean “pro-noia”) or “spirit” (Geist) in history, but there is “fate” which is certainly not “Tyche” or “fortuna” (chance!), but rather nothing more than, most important for Nietzsche

as we shall evince dramatically in Part Two of this work, the manifestation of the Will to Power as the Rationalisierung of life and the world!

Three kinds of “rationalities” are possible, therefore. One is the empiricist rationality of scientific research, another is the “teleological”, “idealist” rationality introduced by Hegel, and finally we have the Rationalisierung that Nietzsche expounds as the objectification of the Wille zur Macht. How difficult and confusing it may be to separate the three is perfectly illustrated by the most “philosophical” economic theoretician of the neoclassical and Austrian schools, Joseph Schumpeter, who combined a solid Machian background in the Vienna of Karl Renner with a Nietzschean vision of reality filtered through Max Weber. Schumpeter begins Chapter Two of his Theorie with this sweeping and suggestive summation:

“The social process which rationalizes our life and thought has led us away from the metaphysical treatment of social development and taught us to see the possibility of an empirical treatment; but it has done its work so imperfectly that we must be careful in dealing with the phenomenon itself, still more with the concept with which we comprehend it, and most of all with the word by which we designate the concept and whose associations may lead us astray in all manner of directions. Closely connected with the metaphysical preconception…. is every search for a ‘meaning’ of history. The same is true of the postulate that a nation, a civilization, or even the whole of mankind must show some kind of uniform unilinear development, as even such a matter-of-fact mind as Roscher assumed…” (p.57)

The footnote at “rationalizes” was expanded for the English translation and reads as follows:

“This is used in Max Weber’s sense. As the reader will see, “rational” and “empirical” here mean, if not identical, yet cognate, things. They are equally different from, and opposed to, “metaphysical”, which implies going beyond the reach of both “reason” and “facts”, beyond the realm, that is, of science. With some it has become a habit to use the word “rational” in much the same sense as we do “metaphysical”. Hence some warning against misunderstanding may not be out of place.”

Evident here is the maladroit manner and dis-comfort (not aided, and perhaps exacerbated, by the disjoint prose) with which Schumpeter approaches the question of the “meaning” of history. The Rationalisierung, which Schumpeter adopts from Weber, has made “possible” a scientific “empirical treatment” of “social development (Entwicklung)”, but has done so only “imperfectly”, not to such a degree that we are able to free ourselves entirely of “metaphysical” concepts – which is why “we must be careful in dealing with the phenomenon [Entwicklung] itself”. Nevertheless, Schumpeter believes that it is possible to leave “metaphysics” behind and to focus on “both ‘reason’ and ‘facts’”, and therefore on the “realm of science”. In true Machian empiricist tradition, Schumpeter completely fails to see the point that Weber was making in adopting the ante litteram Nietzschean conception of Rationalisierung to which he gave the name. “The social process which rationalizes” is an exquisitely Weberian expression: far from indicating that there is a “rational science” founded on “reason” and “facts” that can epistemologically and uncritically be opposed to a non-scientifc idealistic and “metaphysical rationalism”, Weber is saying what Nietzsche intended by the ex-ertion of the Will to Power as an ontological dimension of life and the world that “imposes” the “rationalization” of social processes and development in such a

manner that they can be subjected to mathesis, to “scientific control”! What Weber posits as a “practice”, one that has clear Nietzschean onto-logical (philosophical) and onto-genetic (biological) origins, Schumpeter mistakes for an “empirical” and “objective” process that is “rational” and “factual” at once – forgetting thus the very basis of Nietzsche’s critique of Roscher and “historicism”, - certainly not (!) because they are founded on “metaphysics” (!), but because they fail to “question critically” the necessarily meta-physical foundations of their “value-systems”, of their “historical truth” or “meaning”!

Far from positing a “scientific-rational”, “ob-jective” and “empirical” methodology from which Roscher and the German Historical School have “diverged” with their philo-Hegelian “rationalist teleology”, Nietzsche is attacking the foundations of any “scientific” study of “the social process” or “social development” that does not see it for what it is – Rationalisierung, that is, “rationalization of life and the world”, the ex-pression and mani-festation of the Wille zur Macht! By contrast, Schumpeter believes that the mere abandonment of any “linearity” in the interpretation of history, of any “progressus” (as Nietzsche calls it), is sufficient to “free” his “rational science” from the pitfalls of “metaphysics”!

This contrast between Nietzsche’s approach to the world of experience and perception and appearance as “becoming”, against the Machian “empiricist” approach to “scientific reality and fact and truth” is quite revealing: both Nietzsche and Mach start from the opposition of “experience” and “perception” to any “meta-physical reality” that may lie “beyond” the human perception of life and the world – including, even for Mach, the Newtonian conception of space and time! But, a most crucial distinction, whereas Mach still believes in the epistemological “reality” of Newtonian physics and of the “laws of science” tout court, Nietzsche in extreme and radical contrast comes to question the very “scientificity” of this “science” and of this “reality”, whether Newtonian or indeed Machian, questioning in the process even the Kantian epistemological foundations of logico-mathematics! (We shall pay the closest attention to these matters – which constitute the whole thrust and import of our present work – in Part Two of this study.)

Here it will suffice to reiterate that Nietzsche shares wholeheartedly – nay, makes it a point of pride of his philosophy dating from Birth of Tragedy - the anti-historical notion of “fate” not as “pro-noia” or pro-vidence, and not even as the “cyclical” and “pagan”, pre-Judaeo-Christian interpretation of historical time, but certainly against the mediaeval Scholastic “linear” interpretation of Christian millenarism. (Cf. Mazzarino, ‘PSC’, Vol.3, refs. to Nietzsche.) “Cyclicality”, whether in its cosmological version (the exact repetition of events or palingenesis with final apokatastasis) more attributable to Epimenides, with whose concept of “prophecy” Nietzsche would have disagreed, or even historical-analogical (the repetition of “cycles”, anakyklosis) as with Polybius and Vico (“corsi e ricorsi”), was certainly not what Nietzsche intended to oppose to his presumed Christian “linearity”, but rather the “a-historicity” or “realism” of a Thucydides or Machiavelli intent on the study of “completed actions” (autopsia, dia-gnosis).

Nietzsche may well have approved of Karl Menger’s attack on “the errors of historicism” for its unwillingness “to theorise” mathematically certain social phenomena, economic ones in particular; but most certainly not in pursuit of a “scientific empeiria”, a factual “research” that could follow “empirical methodological or scientific standards”. Rather, he would stress the “instrumental”

nature of any such “mathesis”: in other words, he would insist that such “regularities and tendencies” as the neoclassical Menger and Jevons sought (the phrase is Keynes’s, who uses it to describe the latter’s innate “statistical” quest, in ‘Essays in Biography’) – a search joined even by Marx in his “scientistic” mode - exist not as “absolutes” or as “explanations”, but purely as “descriptions” of a “reality” that changes and is “trans-formed” continuously! This would explain Mazzarino’s “perplexity” [‘PSC’, Vol3, p.362] when confronting Nietzsche’s attack on Roscher for his “historicist” divergence from the Thucydidean focus on individual events and Menger’s equally virulent “anti-historicist” diatribe with this most “pro-Thucydidean” of German historians and his successor, Gustav Schmoller, for refusing to draw scientific generalizations from history because of their focus on just such individual events! Mazzarino’s perplexity can be overcome if one considers that whilst Nietzsche did not admit of a “linear history” from which a “telos” or a “scientific truth” could be deduced, nevertheless he could have agreed with Menger that “scientific instruments” could be applied in a “practical” or “strategic” sense to the study of a given “historical space” as nothing other than ex-ertions of the Will to Power, as “the rationalization of life and the world”!

It is most important to note at this juncture that, as we argue in our study on the origins of “The Neo-classical Revolution in Economics”, the Austrian and German Schools, however “heated” their controversy over the “methodology” of the social sciences (the famous “Methodenstreit”) constituted powerful forces in the concerted effort by capitalist bourgeois interests across Europe to counter the emergence of socialist parties and their ideologies in the name of an overall “methodological subjectivism” that displaced the entire focus of Political Economy from “Labour” to “individual Utility” and therefore from the dramatic transformation and concentration of the labour process (Taylorism and Fordism), of the composition of the working class (from the skilled [Gelernt]to the mass worker), and that of capital (the rise of large cartels and corporations vertically and horizontally integrated) in what has been generally described as “the Second Industrial Revolution” (see Alfred Chandler Jnr’s The Visible Hand), to a vision of the liberal “free and competitive” market that championed the Planlosigkeit (spontaneous plan-lessness, anarchical freedom) of bourgeois civil society (Ferguson’s and Hegel’s burgerliche Gesellschaft) against the regimentation of the “planned”, “organized” economy advanced by the Sozialismus. It is the “abandonment” of all “metaphysical illusions” – the better to conceal the greater illusion of “marginal utility” - that will allow the conceptual fusion by the German ruling elites in the period to World War Two and beyond of the German Historical School’s focus on “individual”, interventionist specific projects of German industrial domination in Europe, on one hand, and of the Austrian School’s elevation of “individual” consumer choices on the other. In this context, Nietzsche’s own philosophical Entwurf, together with the spread of Machism in science that subtended both the Austrian (Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises and Schumpeter, then Hayek) and the Lausanne (Walras and Pareto) Schools, must be seen as one co-ordinated and massive intellectual counter-attack by capital against the emergent working class whose political expression will culminate with the overarching intellectual vision of Max Weber. (For an initial outline of these arguments, see Cacciari’s “Sul Problema dell’Organizzazione” in ‘PNR’.)

The mathesis, which again will be the central theme of Part Two of this study, is a politically-charged praxis that Nietzsche brilliantly identified but failed to enucleate sufficiently. Despite vague warnings about the dangers of “scientisation” from far-

sighted critical thinkers such as Gunnar Myrdal (‘The Politics of Economic Theory’) and Hannah Arendt (in ‘The Human Condition’) and Jurgen Habermas (in ‘Theorie und Praxis’), no serious attempt has been made to date to “theorize” or “identify” and spell out its nature and import. (We shall have occasion to explain later why Heidegger’s conception of Technik is at once inapplicable and irrelevant to the critique of capitalist social relations despite his most valiant efforts in that direction [in Die Technik und die Kehre and in Brief am Humanismus], capably but unconvincingly supported by Cacciari [‘Confronto con Heidegger’ in ‘PNR’].)

Thus, to repeat, the “difference” between Nietzsche and Menger is that whilst the former denied the possibility of a “science” of history, he may have agreed on the “instrumental” use of scientific techniques to societies and of economics in particular – what constitutes the Rationalisierung –, whereas the latter took the “historicist” denial of the “possibility” of economic “science” as “erroneous”, just as did Schumpeter. Whilst Nietzsche would agree with Roscher’s “historicism” in exalting historical “uniqueness” (except perhaps for the “analogical cyclicality” of the Eternal Return), he would also agree with Menger that this “historicism” cannot prevent (except epistemologically) the adoption of certain scientific “techniques” as strategies (ideologies) in the overall Rationalisierung of life and the world. Menger, for his part, starting from a Machian position, would argue that these “techniques” are also “scientific”. So, whereas Nietzsche understands “historicism” as “historical science” and deprecates it, Menger interprets it as “refusal to be scientific in economic matters” – which Nietzsche would allow! Marx will go even further than Menger by “historicizing” the laws of motion of modes of production in a historical-materialist sense, which is why he could deride jokingly the philo-Hegelian idealist “emanationism” of “Thukydides-Roscher” (in ch.9, Vol.1 of Das Kapital).

But the fact that Nietzsche, who championed Thucydides for confining himself to “happenings”, could attack Roscher’s “historicism” whilst Marx could do the same (although from a “historico-materialist” perspective) by lambasting “Thukydides-Roscher” ought to have warned the philosopher of Rocken about the possible different interpretations of Thucydides, with Marx placing the Greek historian clearly in the “historicist” camp. Later, Hayek and Schumpeter will assume a position similar to Menger’s. Even the Mengerian assault on Roscher and the German Historical School is evidence of Nietzsche’s mistaken “strictures” on the compass of Thucydides’s historical method, which could lend itself to broader “historicist” use in the “reflexive history” tradition (Hegel) of what Dilthey sought to theorise as the hermeneutic “Geisteswissenschaften”. (For a review of the “hermeneutic” current of historical interpretation, the obligatory reference, although from a heavily Heideggerian “perspective”, is H. Gadamer’sWahrheit und Methode.)

As Mazzarino sharply perceives, Nietzsche’s entire false attribution of “a-historicity” to the Greeks and of “linearity” to Christian historiography – something that Weber (in ‘Knies und Roscher’) and Schumpeter (quoted above) also thought to glimpse in Roscher’s post-Hegelian “emanationism” and that Lowith later reprised (in The Meaning of History) – finds its real origin in Hegel’s own attempt to reconcile Spirit and Nature, Logic and History, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history and thence conclude (what Nietzsche abhorred most) that “whatever is real is rational and whatever is rational is real” (in Preface to Grundlinien der Rechtsphilosophie). In reality, no such notion of historical “linearity” can be found in pre-Hegelian Christian or pagan historiography, even in

Augustine for whom God is “outside” of time, and whose denunciation of the pagan cyclical notion of time rests still on the “decadence” of the civitas mundi and the coming of the civitas Dei at the end of history – a regressus, rather than a progressus, but with the Parousia [the Second Coming of Christ] marking the end of time and the requiem animarum with the entrance of the civitas Dei into the divine Empyrean of crystalline admiration of souls.

Again, note also Mazzarino’s account of how mediaeval “linearity” (if it ever existed, contra Nietzsche, Croce) was not that of “progress”, but that of a “regressus a perfectione ad defectum” where the finis is “anomie”. The mediaeval notion of “progress”, if anything, referred back to classical antiquity, as with the astounding similarity (remarked upon earlier) of Nietzsche’s opening lines of the “Historie fur das Leben” in ‘UB’ (“Betrachte die Heerde, die an dir voruberweidet; sie weiss nicht was Gestern, was Heute ist…”) to Cicero’s ascription of “progress” from the time when “in agris homines passim bestiarum more vagabantur” (De Inventione, I, 2, in Mazzarino, V3, p.357) – which is perhaps, together with Hegel’s idealism, another source of Nietzsche’s mistaken notion. Given Nietzsche’s proclivity for the “realism” of Thucydides and the sophists (in the quotation at the start of this excursus), it is “significant” that the “invention” to which Cicero attributes the “progress” of humanity from its beastly status was rhetoric or oratory as the practical foundation of political decision-making, of “resolve”. (Cf. the importance placed on oratory in the glorification of the polis by Hannah Arendt in Vita Activa.)

Consistently with his approach, the concept of “revolution” is virtually absent from Nietzsche’s conception of society and State. Change (metabole) occurs and “decline” or “disease” (malaise, cor-ruptio, the Ent-wertung) seen as a “Dis-gregation” of original primordial instincts or impulses. So it is always a question of conflicting “needs and instincts”, which Nietzsche unfailingly places at the origin of “psychological” evolution – the ontogeny of thought with its pathos of distance. Even the State is a “balance of forces” or “barter” or “exchange” – subject to corruption and decline and to “stasis” (“paralysis” seen classically as the effect of insurrection or civil war). (For all this, see Mazzarino, p.253.) Interestingly, despite his emphasis on “the Eternal Return”, there seems to be no reference by Nietzsche to anything like the “anakyklosis” of Polybius or to Vico’s “corsi e ricorsi” – no mention of palingenesia and apokatastasis, despite the equations “tradition=nomos, democracy=anomie” (again, Mazzarino, V3, pp.255ff). This we have attributed, as we are soon to discuss, to his novel intuition of time.

The Ontogeny of Thought – One

From Consciousness to Resolve

The point was made explicit as early as the “History Meditation”: quoting approvingly from a German philosopher, who also foreshadows the “balancing of forces”, Nietzsche writes:

Grillparzer goes so far as to say that "history is nothing but the manner in which the spirit of man apprehends facts that are obscure to him, links things together whose connection heaven only knows, replaces the unintelligible by something intelligible, puts his own ideas of causation into the external world, which can perhaps be explained only from within : and assumes the existence of chance, where thousands of small causes may be really at work. Each man has his own individual needs, and so millions of tendencies are running together, straight or crooked, parallel or across, forward or backward, helping or hindering each other. They have all the appearance of chance, and make it impossible, quite apart from all natural influences, to establish any universal lines on which past events must have run." (Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen, p.52, ch.6)

The vice of “replacing the unintelligible with the intelligible” is that “ideas of causation… which can perhaps be explained only from within”, that is, only through an examination of the “instincts”, are instead presented as “science”, as objective knowledge of “apprehended facts” that are then falsely attributed to “the external world”. “Science” therefore is conventionally seen as this “history” whereby man gradually attempts to free himself from and jettison what he misinterprets as the primitive “psychological trans-ferences” (or super-stitions) of humans. And in this presumed struggle toward “freedom”, which is in effect the attempt to make the Lebenswelt “free” from the arbitrary Will toward the “categorical imperatives” of Practical Reason (the Sollen), it is clear that the “obstacles” encountered will have to be given the ontological status of “chance and accident” – so that Tyche or Fortuna play a disproportionate role. What seems to be the operari of the Freiheit due to “the existence of chance”, is in reality something where “thousands of small causes may be really at work”. Nietzsche is saying that “science” has forgotten its “real” origins and now takes itself too seriously as “perfect”, as “exact science” with respect to the forum externum which we falsely regard as “external” and strange, whereas the psychological “awakening sciences” lag behind because they presume that it is “futile” to explore the forum internum – because we already know it!

355. The Origin of our Conception of Knowledge — I take this explanation from the street, I heard one of the people saying that "he knew me," so I asked myself: What do the people really understand by knowledge? what do they want when they seek "knowledge"? Nothing more than that what is strange is to be traced back to something known. And we philosophers—have we really understood anything more by knowledge? The known, that is to say, what we are accustomed to so that we no longer marvel at it, the commonplace, any kind of rule to which we are habituated, all and everything in which we know ourselves to be at home:—what? is our need of knowing not just this need of the known? the will to discover in everything strange, unusual, or questionable, something which no longer disquiets us? Is it not possible that it should be the instinct of fear which enjoins upon us to know ? Is it not possible that the rejoicing of the discerner should be just hisWE FEARLESS ONES 3OI (Wir, die Furchtlosen)rejoicing in the regained feeling of security ? . . .One philosopher imagined the world "known" when he had traced it back to the " idea ": alas, was it not because the idea was so known, so familiar to him ? because he had so much less fear of the "idea"—Oh, this moderation of the discerners! let us but look at their principles, and at their solutions of the riddle of the world in this connection ! When they again find aught in things, among things, or behind things that is unfortunately very well known to us, for example, our multiplication table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring, how happy they immediately are! For "what is known is understood": they are unanimous as to that. Even the most circumspect among them think that the known is

at least more easily understood than the strange; that for example, it is methodically ordered to proceed outward from the "inner world," from " the facts of consciousness," because it is the world which is better known to us ! Error of errors! The known is the accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to "understand," that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive as strange, distant, " outside of us." . . . The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of the elements ofconsciousness— unnatural sciences, as one might almost be entitled to call them—rests precisely on the fact that they take what is strange as their object: while it is almost like something contradictory and absurd to wish to take generally what is not strange as an object. . . . (Gaya Scienza)

What then is “consciousness”? Even consciousness must not be understood as an “inner world” to be opposed to “what is outside of us”, to an “Ob-ject” that stands over and against our “knowing activity”. For Nietzsche, “knowledge” is nothing more than “re-cognition”, the “familiarization” by the consciousness (nous) with the ever-changing world of “coming-into-being” (gi-gnomai, becoming) so as to make it “re-cognisable” (gi-gnosco, “I know”). “Knowledge” in the sense of “truth”, in the sense of a complete “penetration” or even of a mere “positing of the ob-ject of knowledge” as an “entity” that stands outside and op-posite (Gegen-Stand, German for object) of the “knowing activity” or “recognition” (gi-gnosco) of that which “comes-into-being” (gi-gnomai) is not possible. Knowledge “be-comes” (gi-gnomai), it “grows” and is “born” (ge-nesis) like everything else that is “generated” from life and the world – indeed, from the “earth” (gaya, ge’, gen). This is perhaps the reason why Nietzsche insisted on “Gaya Scienza” as the title for his major critique of orthodox “science” – this intriguing play between the Greek etymology of the words for “earth” (gaya, ge’, gen) from which all things are “generated” (ge-nesis) and “be-come” (gi-gnomai) so that our “consciousness” (nous) may assign them a “meaning” (noeo) and “recognize” them (gi-gnosco, whence “scio, scire, Latin root of “science”) so as to render them “familiar”. Only through this inter-pretation – this “con-scious” pathos of distance be-tween consciousness and the life and the world – can a “gaya scienza” be possible, quite literally, as a “re-cognition of the earth”, as an in-tention (Latin for stretching, tension, hence “tendency”, a directing of mind towards) and a pro-ject (both meanings of the Greek pro-noia) in life and the world.

Contrast this Nietzschean position with the “empiricist” acceptance of Newtonian space and time, of “nature” as the “ob-ject” of “knowledge”, of science that constitutes the epistemological “value” and foundation of the understanding of science from British empiricism (Hobbes, Locke, Hume) through to British (Berkeley, Mc Taggart) and German idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and phenomenalism from Schopenhauer to Mach. Of course, Nietzsche’s “perspectivism or phenomenalism” bears some resemblance to that of the last two. These matters are examined in Part Two. It is instructive to note here the chasm that separates Nietzsche’s “de-struction” of both the “sub-ject” and the “ob-ject” of scientific inquiry with the Kantian and, much worse, the Neo-Kantian “rational positing” of both!

Consciousness itself is a strange and foreign region that needs to be explored with every precaution. But the essential elements of analysis to this “riddle of the world” can be discerned from the world around us (“I take this explanation from the street!”) and from the immorality of history (Herkunft and Genealogie) in the sense (the physiological direction [Richtung] and origin [Entstehung] and perception [as in “the senses”]) in which Nietzsche understood it. (Fink, p127ff stresses this Nietzschean reliance on the life of

experience rather than on concepts or theory.) Here we meet a recurrent Nietzschean theme of “the balance of forces” (Unzeitg.Betrachtungen, p.72) whereby consciousness, like justice and the State, is “the resultant” (not the “equi-librium” or “conciliation”), as it were, only the outcome, imperfect and unstable, temporary and precarious, of conflicting “drives” or “forces” or “impulses”. One is reminded of Plato’s “charioteer myth” (in the Phaedrus) – with the same insuperable apory of how “anything” can “result” from “self-interested or blind impulses”. To quote from Grillparzer again, as Nietzsche does approvingly above,

“Each man has his own individual needs, and so millions of tendencies are running together, straight or crooked, parallel or across, forward or backward, helping or hindering each other. They have all the appearance of chance, and make it impossible, quite apart from all natural influences, to establish any universal lines on which past events must have run."

We have seen that the Individuum is in fact a Dividuum. The “self” is made up of various impulses and drives (Triebe) in conflict with one another. For these “drives” not to annul each other, a “resultant” force that can impose a truce is necessary, and this resulting “truce”, is a precarious, unstable “settlement” that allows the impulses “to maintain themselves in existence and retain their mutual rights [Recht]”. The “resultant” of this conflict of impulses, once it becomes stable, comes to be identified as “a sort of justice [Gerechtigkeit]”. Only the illusion (Tauschung – recall Freud’s The Future of An Illusion about religion) of “reconciliation” (the Hegelian “Versohnung”, no less!) is apparent to us in our “consciousness” as “the settling of accounts of these long processes”, and is apprehended by our “consciousness” as “something conciliating, just and good, something essentially antithetical to the impulses; whereas in reality “it is only a certain relation of the impulses to one another”: – this is the “reality”, the “effectuality” of the Spinozan “intellect”; this is what we call “consciousness” or “the ego”. This is Freud’s “Reality Principle” which hides beneath the superficial social presentation of the self, of the ego - a volcanic miasma of boiling impulses:

333. What does Knowing Mean? Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Nevertheless, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just the form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all at once? a result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of these impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of the object or event. The struggle of these one-sided views occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement all those impulses can maintain themselves in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation scenes and final settling of accounts of these long processes manifest themselves, think on that account that intelligere is something conciliating, just and good, something essentially antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation of the impulses [Trieben] to one another . For a very long time conscious thinking was regarded as the only thinking: it is now only that the truth dawns upon us that the greater part of our intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the impulses which are here in mutual conflict understand rightly how to make themselves felt by one another, and how to cause pain - the violent, sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers, may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of the battlefield). Aye, perhaps in our struggling interior there is much concealed heroism, but certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest, and on that account also the relatively mildest and quietest

mode of thinking: and thus it is precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled concerning the nature of knowledge. (Gaya Scientia)

333. Was heißt erkennen. — Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! sagt Spinoza, so schlicht und erhaben, wie es seine Art ist. Indessen: was ist dies intelligere im letzten Grunde Anderes, als die Form, in der uns eben jene Drei auf Einmal fühlbar werden? Ein Resultat aus den verschiedenen und sich widerstrebenden Trieben des Verlachen-, Beklagen-, Verwünschen-wollens? Bevor ein Erkennen möglich ist, muss jeder dieser Triebe erst seine einseitige Ansicht über das Ding oder Vorkommnis vorgebracht haben; hinterher entstand der Kampf dieser Einseitigkeiten und aus ihm bisweilen eine Mitte, eine Beruhigung, ein Rechtgeben nach allen drei Seiten, eine Art Gerechtigkeit und Vertrag: denn, vermöge der Gerechtigkeit und des Vertrags können alle diese Triebe sich im Dasein behaupten und mit einander Recht behalten. Wir, denen nur die letzten Versöhnungsszenen und Schluss-Abrechnungen dieses langen Prozesses zum Bewusstsein kommen, meinen demnach, intelligere sei etwas Versöhnliches, Gerechtes, Gutes, etwas wesentlich den Trieben Entgegengesetztes; während es nur ein gewisses Verhalten der Triebe zu einander ist. Die längsten Zeiten hindurch hat man bewusstes Denken als das Denken überhaupt betrachtet: jetzt erst dämmert uns die Wahrheit auf, dass der allergrößte Teil unseres geistigen Wirkens uns unbewusst, ungefühlt verläuft; ich meine aber, diese Triebe, die hier mit einander kämpfen, werden recht wohl verstehen, sich einander dabei fühlbar zu machen und wehe zu tun —: jene gewaltige plötzliche Erschöpfung, von der alle Denker heimgesucht werden, mag da ihren Ursprung haben (es ist die Erschöpfung auf dem Schlachtfelde). Ja, vielleicht gibt es in unserm kämpfenden Innern manches verborgene Heroentum, aber gewiss nichts Göttliches, Ewig-in-sich-Ruhendes, wie Spinoza meinte. Das bewusste Denken, und namentlich das des Philosophen, ist die unkräftigste und deshalb auch die verhältnismäßig mildeste und ruhigste Art des Denkens: und so kann gerade der Philosoph am leichtesten über die Natur des Erkennens irre geführt werden.

“The great part of our intellectual [conscious] activity [takes place] unconsciously, unfelt by us”: the “impulses” (Triebe) are the “stirring Acheronta” that will “bend the superior heights”. “I believe, however, that the impulses which are here in mutual conflict understand rightly how to make themselves felt by one another, and how to cause pain - the violent, sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers, may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of the battlefield).” Here Nietzsche’s thought reaches an emphatic climax: one can almost empathise with the exhaustion of the thinker striving to articulate and give vent to the most insidious, intrusive insights into the human psyche – something that cannot have eluded the attention of an undercover Sigmund Freud or, much earlier, of a Faustian Goethe. And consciousness itself is unconscious! - if it is true that it is the by-product or outcome of these ebullient impulses at war with one another.

Nietzsche begins by focusing on the practical implications of consciousness on human activity. Most of our lives we engage in activities that we perform almost “mechanically”, that is, without “thinking” or thinking only about the specific task that we are performing – without “reflecting” on what we are doing. Whenever we pause “to think about thinking”, whenever we stop “to reflect” on what we are doing, we then become “aware” of our activity in its “status-as-activity”, that is, we become “conscious” of it.

It follows that for us “to reflect” on our actions and thoughts we must observe them objectively, “detachedly”, from a “distance” – like an “out-of-body” experience, an ec-stasis. It is as if our minds could “observe” our actions “from a distance”, from “outside” our own minds and bodies – in other words, it is “as if” we were looking at our-selves from “outside ourselves”, as if in a “mirror”. What we see in a mirror is a “reflection” of ourselves; and this “reflection” is what Nietzsche intends by “consciousness”: it is “the pathos of distance”, the “distancing” of oneself from the original “mimesis” or

identification with nature and with other humans. It follows that “consciousness” is a “result”, a “resultant” of the organic forces, of the clash of instincts that occurs between human beings – a dynamic result of their interaction. It is an expression of the Will to Power. But in its “expression”, this specific manifestation of the instinct of freedom suffers a meta-morphosis, a trans-formation that leads to all those “sign-sequences” or symptomatologies that characterize “the perspective of the herd” – from morality to Kultur and Askesis to Science and Entseelung.

354- The " Genius of the Species^—The problem of consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise "act" in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need necessarily "come into consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as in fact even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without this mirroring,—and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher. What then is the purpose of consciousness generally, when it is in the main superfluous?

What indeed is the “purpose” of this “reflective consciousness”? It is of the highest importance once again that we do not understand Nietzsche here to say that “consciousness” is an effective “self-consciousness”, that is, something qualitatively “different” from the unconscious. Far from it! Those who mis-interpret Nietzsche thus understand little of his philosophy. Such “consciousness” is only a “functional” outgrowth of the unconscious, it is the “result” (as physiological in nature as the instincts) of our interaction with other human beings. If I need to reflect on my activity it is certainly for the purpose of being able “to objectify” it – it is here that the “operari” needs its “conscious subject” so that an “individual’s activity” may be “identified” and “attributed” to that individual. Consciousness is therefore needed in large part when one deals with “society”, with other “bodies”, the better to be able “to barter” or “to agree” on the conduct of one’s activities. We find, therefore, that just as the intellect is an “agreement” (homo-noia) or “pacification” or “reconciliation” of various “impulses” or “drives” that stir beneath its surface and of whose conflict and interplay it is the “resultant” – so in the “inter-action” of human beings, “consciousness” is the ability “to communicate” with other “consciousnesses”, a “communication” for which “reflection” (the “distancing” of one’s thought from oneself) is indispensable.

Language also is an “ex-pression” of this indispensable function. Above all, the purpose of consciousness is to command and obey; consciousness “reflects” in the double sense of “mirroring” and “thinking about”, the inevitable “pathos of distance” that inter-venes “need-necessarily”, “physio-logically”, be-tween different “instincts of freedom”. This “pathos of distance”, this “thinking process” constitutes the “in-tention”, the physiological “tendency”, and therefore the “pro-ject” or “plan”, the “dia-noia” of domination and overcoming that Nietzsche op-poses to the “homo-noia” (the harmonious agreement) of the transcendental subject of the philosophia perennis that was to receive its highest, most “desperate” expression in Husserl’s attempt to lay down a phenomenological “foundation” of scientific knowledge.

Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the capacity for communication of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the necessity for communication : the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known hisWE FEARLESS ONES 297 (Wir, die Furchtlosen)necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities. It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to whole races and successions of generations where necessity and need have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last acquired as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs; in like manner the orators, preachers, and authors: all of them men who come at the end of a long succession, "late-born" always, in the best sense of the word, and as has been said, squanderers by their very nature). Granted that this observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture that consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure of the necessity for communication - that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion to its utility. Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between man and man, — it is only as such that it has had to develop; the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it. The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range of our consciousness - at least a part of them — is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man's destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he needed 98 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, Vhis fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood — and for all this he needed " consciousness " first of all : he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how he felt, and to "know" what he thought. For, to repeat it once more, man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it; the thinking which is becoming conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst part :—for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, by means of which the origin of consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also the looks, the pressure and the gestures ; our becoming conscious of our sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the necessity has increased for communicating them to others by means of signs.

Consciousness therefore can in no guise be mis-construed as “the soul” or “the spirit” or “the self”. Notice that as Nietzsche “traverses” this “immanentistic” chain tracing the e-volution (Ent-wicklung) of thought, what he calls “the onto-geny of thought”, this physiological suc-cession and e-volution from “Triebe” (drive, instinct) to “Bewusstsein” (consciousness) and on to “Sprache” (language) and communication to “Gewissen” (“conscience”), “bad conscience” and then the A-skesis and finally “grosse Politik”, he never for one instant “reflects” on the “physical” consequences of this “inter-dependence” of human beings. In other words, Nietzsche never envisions human beings in a “species-conscious” role, in a way that reveals the reality of the “biological, phylogenetic” penetration of human inter-dependence down to “the very structure of our brain” (!), of the fact that “language” is not just a “utility” (see above) but rather a biological-genetic, physiological function of “being human”!

This is a point of the highest importance in understanding Nietzsche’s entire philosophy, and we must pause to reflect on it. Nietzsche always and everywhere sees human beings as “separate beings”, as “in-dividuals”, however much he may stress the “non-subjectivity” or

the “non-identity” or “non-self” or “dividuality” of their “impulses”. Always and forever, human beings remain “separate bodies” that cannot in any way be understood as “aspects of being human”, manifestations of a “common humanity”, as “species-conscious beings”. Remember: this is precisely what Nietzsche condemned bitterly in Schopenhauer – the latter’s “decadent” notion of a “commonality of unegoistich feeling”, of “com-passion”, of “sym-pathy”. (Similarly, Freud will refuse the notion of “oceanic feeling” advanced by Romain Rolland – on the very first page of Die Unbehagen.)

For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s “instinctive”, “vitalistic”, “irrepressible” Will to Life is alive and well! Like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche sees “the World” from the “inside”, from the side of the “Will”. Unlike Schopenhauer, however, he denies that the Will is what we know best: for the Will is very “complicated” because its “instincts”, its “drives” are inscrutable: they have to be – because the Will remains a “qualitas occulta” by reason of our inability to com-prehend the World! For that very reason, however, the instincts cannot possess any intrinsic quality that they may “share” with other instincts. In other words, each and every organism, each “functionary” (as Nietzsche calls a biological unit or organ) must act for its own self-preservation. Most important, there is not and cannot be any “inter-esse”, any communion of interests between different organisms except as such interaction serves the organism’s need for self-preservation or, more correctly, its “instinct of freedom”. Instincts, therefore, are by definition antagonistic, one-sided and blind in seeking their self-interest. Reason itself is merely “the act of reasoning”, it is an instrumental ability that need not even be “conscious”, but one that is “utilized” to ensure self-preservation.

What Nietzsche condemns in Schopenhauer is not his “metaphysics”, but rather the “intelligent freedom” of the “esse” on which his ethics are “rooted”. There is just as little reason to believe that the Will is “free” as there is for the opposite assertion. Worse still, the “freedom” of the esse, as Schopenhauer conceives it, reintroduces the Kantian problematic of how the Will is “to govern” its freedom, which leads back into the circulus vitiosus of Practical Reason. Most ridiculous of all for Nietzsche is the Schopenhauerian conclusion that we ought “to deny” the Will on account of its “willing”, of its “striving” – because he understands that to do so is to deny “life itself”! "We must go further in the pessimistic logic than the denial [he means Schopenhauer’s ethical exhortation to suppress the will, the Entsagung] of the will," he says in the ‘Goetzendammerung’, "we must deny Schopenhauer."

What Nietzsche execrates are the implications of the Entsagung for Schopenhauer’s “ethics”, his “pessimism” first – which denies the centrality of “the body” -, and the “sentimental” reversion of the operari into the “moralistic ideality” of Nirvana, of the Veil of Maya – Schopenhauer’s “reverence” for the insipid essentialism and subjectivism and moralism of western metaphysics, his miraculous rescue of “reflective reason” in extremis as the ethical and eschatological saviour of humanity!

The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man has learned to become conscious of himself,—he is doing so still, and doing so more and more. — As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but rather to the social and gregarious nature in him ; that, as follows therefrom, it is only in rela-

WE THE FEARLESS ONES 299tion to communal and gregarious utility that it is finely developed ; and that consequently each of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding himself as individually as possible, and of "knowing himself," will always just call into consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his "averageness" ;—that our thought itself is continuously as it were outvoted by the character of consciousness — by the imperious "genius of the species" therein and is translated back into the perspective of the herd . Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer. . . . This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it : the nature of animal consciousness involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world ;—that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby shallow, meagre, relatively stupid, — a generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd ; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficialisation, and generalisation.

Once again, Nietzsche denies that “consciousness” is a phylogenetic faculty of human beings as members of a “species” – as homo sapiens! For him, consciousness is “non-individual”, to be sure, but it remains solely and purely a “social” construction “that does not properly belong to the individual existence of man” – indeed, a “con-vention”, not a genetic endowment. It is a necessary development, even a physiological one just as much as the unconscious is, only when one has regard to the contingent “sociability” of human beings. And with this development “there is always combined… a symbol, a characteristic of the herd”. Consciousness arises out of the need-necessity of the unconscious organic functions yet must not be con-fused with them. It develops only and merely for adventitious and “conventional” reasons – purely as a “communal and gregarious utility”, as a mere dispensable appendage or appurtenance to the individual body, as a tool of communication, like language! It is impossible not to notice here how foolishly Nietzsche ignores the evident fact that at least language, if not consciousness, is a phylogenetic property of being human! Faced with the blatant reality of language, Nietzsche will go through the most insensate intellectual contortions to reduce consciousness to its “logical” and “instrumental” construction, as we will see later!

It follows that for Nietzsche the truly “individual”, the “bodily”, the “elemental” or “natural” or “primordial” properties in human existence are “unconscious” and therefore “natural”, “organic”, physiological in this ontogenetic sense – as confined to separate individual organisms and organs (Funktionare). And because these functions are “unconscious”, they are therefore “irresponsible”, “unaccountable”, and most of all, “blame-less”. In seeking “safety in numbers”, “bodies” learn how to barter and compromise, how to shelter behind “averageness”, like wildebeests thronging together so that the individual needs of the body “are translated back into the perspective of the herd” – even to the point that “scapegoats” are immolated to appease irate divinities! The greatest crime an individual can commit is “to break or breach” (Verbrecher, notes Nietzsche, is the German for criminal) the covenant, the bond (Schuld, obligation) that binds him to the community. This “collectivism of consciousness” serves “to outvote our thought itself” until it assumes the imperious peremptoriness of a Moral Law. “Fundamentally,” Nietzsche takes pains to stress, “our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we

translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer. . .” In fact, “translated into consciousness”, irreducibly “individual” actions are trans-figured into “con-science”, into “sym-pathy and com-passion” (Mit-leid) – which is what Schopenhauer, to Nietzsche’s endless annoyance, did with the “intelligible freedom”. This, then, is “the Genius of the Species” – not a “material” development, independent of our “consciousness” (thought, language, signs) and indeed “constituent” of it, “formative”. No! Rather, “the Genius of the Species” is a “deception”, a “ruse”, a “falsification” and even worse…

“This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it: the nature of animal consciousness involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalised and vulgarised world…” (above)

“The evolution of consciousness” separates us from the real “personal, unique and absolutely individual” character of our “actions” but not in absolute “reality” – only in “consciousness”! It follows therefore that it is impossible for there to be any “false (!) consciousness” or indeed any “authenticity” – instead, consciousness is “bad” only to the extent that it is identical with the expression of morality and resentment and only by its inability “to interpret correctly and to utilize” the signs and symptoms, the semeiotics of life and the world! Nietzsche has “no doubt about it”.

Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here concerned: I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the300 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, Vtoils of grammar (popular metaphysics). It is still less the antithesis of "thing in itself" and phenomenon, for we do not "know" enough to be entitled even to make such a distinction. Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowings or for "truth”: we "know" (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called "usefulness" is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined.

354. Vom "Genius der Gattung". — Das Problem des Bewusstseins (richtiger: des Sich-Bewusst-Werdens) tritt erst dann vor uns hin, wenn wir zu begreifen anfangen, inwiefern wir seiner entraten könnten: und an diesen Anfang des Begreifens stellt uns jetzt Physiologie und Tiergeschichte (welche also zwei Jahrhunderte nötig gehabt haben, um den vorausfliegenden Argwohn Leibnitzens einzuholen). Wir könnten nämlich denken, fühlen, wollen, uns erinnern, wir könnten ebenfalls "handeln" in jedem Sinne des Wortes: und trotzdem brauchte das Alles nicht uns "in's Bewusstsein zu treten" (wie man im Bilde sagt). Das ganze Leben wäre möglich, ohne dass es sich gleichsam im Spiegel sähe: wie ja tatsächlich auch jetzt noch bei uns der bei weitem überwiegende Teil dieses Lebens sich ohne diese Spiegelung abspielt —, und zwar auch unsres denkenden, fühlenden, wollenden Lebens, so beleidigend dies einem älteren Philosophen klingen mag. Wozu überhaupt Bewusstsein, wenn es in der Hauptsache überflüssig ist? — Nun scheint mir, wenn man meiner Antwort auf diese Frage und ihrer vielleicht ausschweifenden Vermutung Gehör geben will, die Feinheit und Stärke des Bewusstseins immer im Verhältnis zur Mitteilungs-Fähigkeit eines Menschen (oder Tiers) zu stehen, die Mitteilungs-Fähigkeit wiederum im Verhältnis zur Mitteilungs-Bedürftigkeit: letzteres nicht so verstanden, als ob gerade der einzelne Mensch selbst, welcher gerade Meister in der Mitteilung und Verständlichmachung seiner Bedürfnisse ist, zugleich auch mit seinen Bedürfnissen am meisten auf die Andern angewiesen sein müsste. Wohl aber scheint es mir so in Bezug auf ganze Rassen und Geschlechter-Ketten zu stehen: wo das Bedürfnis,die Not die Menschen lange gezwungen hat, sich mitzuteilen, sich gegenseitig rasch und fein zu verstehen, da ist endlich ein Überschuss dieser Kraft und Kunst der Mitteilung

da, gleichsam ein Vermögen, das sich allmählich aufgehäuft hat und nun eines Erben wartet, der es verschwenderisch ausgibt ( — die sogenannten Künstler sind diese Erben, insgleichen die Redner, Prediger, Schriftsteller, Alles Menschen, welche immer am Ende einer langen Kette kommen, "Spätgeborne" jedes Mal, im besten Verstande des Wortes, und, wie gesagt, ihrem Wesen nach Verschwender). Gesetzt, diese Beobachtung ist richtig, so darf ich zu der Vermutung weitergehen, dass Bewusstsein überhaupt sich nur unter dem Druck des Mitteilungs-Bedürfnisses entwickelt hat, — dass es von vornherein nur zwischen Mensch und Mensch (zwischen Befehlenden und Gehorchenden in Sonderheit) nötig war, nützlich war, und auch nur im Verhältnis zum Grade dieser Nützlichkeit sich entwickelt hat. Bewusstsein ist eigentlich nur ein Verbindungsnetz zwischen Mensch und Mensch, — nur als solches hat es sich entwickeln müssen: der einsiedlerische und raubtierhafte Mensch hätte seiner nicht bedurft. Dass uns unsre Handlungen, Gedanken, Gefühle, Bewegungen selbst in's Bewusstsein kommen — wenigstens ein Teil derselben —, das ist die Folge eines furchtbaren langen über dem Menschen waltenden "Muss": er brauchte, als das gefährdetste Tier, Hilfe, Schutz, er brauchte Seines-Gleichen, er musste seine Not auszudrücken, sich verständlich zu machen wissen — und zu dem Allen hatte er zuerst "Bewusstsein" nötig, also selbst zu "wissen" was ihm fehlt, zu "wissen", wie es ihm zu Mute ist, zu "wissen", was er denkt. Denn nochmals gesagt: der Mensch, wie jedes lebende Geschöpf, denkt immerfort, aber weiß es nicht; das bewusst werdende Denken ist nur der kleinste Teil davon, sagen wir: der oberflächlichste, der schlechteste Teil: — denn allein dieses bewusste Denken geschieht in Worten, das heißt in Mitteilungszeichen, womit sich die Herkunft des Bewusstseins selber aufdeckt. Kurz gesagt, die Entwicklung der Sprache und die Entwicklung des Bewusstseins (nicht der Vernunft, sondern allein des Sichbewusst-werdens der Vernunft) gehen Hand in Hand. Man nehme hinzu, dass nicht nur die Sprache zur Brücke zwischen Mensch und Mensch dient, sondern auch der Blick, der Druck, die Gebärde; das Bewusstwerden unserer Sinneseindrücke bei uns selbst, die Kraft, sie fixieren zu können und gleichsam außer uns zu stellen, hat in dem Maße zugenommen, als die Nötigung wuchs, sie Andern durch Zeichen zu übermitteln. Der Zeichen-erfindende Mensch ist zugleich der immer schärfer seiner selbst bewusste Mensch; erst als soziales Tier lernte der Mensch seiner selbst bewusst werden, — er tut es noch, er tut es immer mehr. — Mein Gedanke ist, wie man sieht: dass das Bewusstsein nicht eigentlich zur Individual-Existenz des Menschen gehört, vielmehr zu dem, was an ihm Gemeinschafts- und Herden-Natur ist; dass es, wie daraus folgt, auch nur in Bezug auf Gemeinschafts- und Herden-Nützlichkeit fein entwickelt ist, und dass folglich Jeder von uns, beim besten Willen, sich selbst so individuell wie möglich zu verstehen, "sich selbst zu kennen", doch immer nur gerade das Nicht-Individuelle an sich zum Bewusstsein bringen wird, sein "Durchschnittliches", — dass unser Gedanke selbst fortwährend durch den Charakter des Bewusstseins — durch den in ihm gebietenden "Genius der Gattung" — gleichsam majorisiert und in die Herden-Perspektive zurück-übersetzt wird. Unsre Handlungen sind im Grunde allesamt auf eine unvergleichliche Weise persönlich, einzig, unbegrenzt-individuell, es ist kein Zweifel; aber sobald wir sie in's Bewusstsein übersetzen, scheinen sie es nicht mehr ... Dies ist der eigentliche Phänomenalismus und Perspektivismus, wie ich ihn verstehe: die Natur des tierischen Bewusstseins bringt es mit sich, dass die Welt, deren wir bewusst werden können, nur eine Oberflächen- und Zeichenwelt ist, eine verallgemeinerte, eine vergemeinerte Welt, — dass Alles, was bewusst wird, ebendamit flach, dünn, relativ-dumm, generell, Zeichen, Herden-Merkzeichen wird, dass mit allem Bewusstwerden eine große gründliche Verderbnis, Fälschung, Veroberflächlichung und Generalisation verbunden ist. Zuletzt ist das wachsende Bewusstsein eine Gefahr; und wer unter den bewusstesten Europäern lebt, weiß sogar, dass es eine Krankheit ist. Es ist, wie man errät, nicht der Gegensatz von Subjekt und Objekt, der mich hier angeht: diese Unterscheidung überlasse ich den Erkenntnistheoretikern, welche in den Schlingen der Grammatik (der Volks-Metaphysik) hängen geblieben sind. Es ist erst recht nicht der Gegensatz von "Ding an sich" und Erscheinung: denn wir "erkennen" bei weitem nicht genug, um auch nur so scheiden zu dürfen. Wir haben eben gar kein Organ für das Erkennen, für die "Wahrheit": wir "wissen" (oder glauben oder bilden uns ein) gerade so viel als es im Interesse der Menschen-Herde, der Gattung, nützlich sein mag: und selbst, was hier "Nützlichkeit" genannt wird, ist zuletzt auch nur ein Glaube, eine Einbildung und vielleicht gerade jene verhängnisvollste Dummheit, an der wir einst zu Grunde gehen.

Critical Excursus

We must deal here with a “difficulty” or “ambi-guity” in Nietzsche’s reasoning that must have become evident by now. If indeed there are aspects of life and the world (of the Lebenswelt – Scheler) that are not strictly “organic” or “instinctive” but are mere “ramifications and developments” of the Will to Power that in turn give rise to “strategies” such as “consciousness” and “conscience”, then “bad conscience” and “resentment” and ultimately the ascetic ideal, morality and values and, finally the Will to Truth – if these “strategies” are “possible” in the Lebenswelt, then they are either human “actions” that are “free” or “cultural” or “voluntary”; or else they are still “necessary” within the overall “physio-logy” of the Wille zur Macht, and are dictated by it as the instinct of freedom. But if these “strategies” are strictly “physiological” (or organic or instinctive), then they are not “free” because they are “pre-destined” by their “physis”. In the latter case, Nietzsche’s “hortatory” aspect of “Will” would be superfluous in that there is no room left for “Will” in its “voluntary” (or “velleitary”) moment in “physiological” pre-destination! Conversely, if the Will to Power is “free”, then there is no room for “physiological pre-destination” or “instinctive need-necessity” in it! If the Will to Power or the instinct of freedom is “free”, then it simply abolishes or dissolves itself, because it has no “physiological” or instinctive quality, no “Power”. On the contrary, if it the Will to Power or instinct of freedom is “physiologically pre-destined” or “instinctively conditioned”, then it is not a “Will” or an instinct “of freedom” at all!

(Karl Jaspers, in his monumental Nietzsche, captures well this “tension” [the Latin intentio] in Nietzsche between the “rationality” or “grand reason” of his critique of morals, science and art, and the “ir-rationality” of history. But then, he too succumbs, like everyone else it seems, to the allure of the “artistic creativity” interpretation of the Will to Power, totally misconstruing Nietzsche’s radical “resolution” of this “tension”! The most that Jaspers can make of the eristic charge of the Wille zur Macht is to lament romantically its “destruction of reason” – neglecting like Lukacs the momentous thrust of the capitalist Rationalisierung that Nietzsche so incisively theorises! )

In Heideggerian terms, the “strategies” of the Will to Power are either “ontic”, and therefore part of the contingent and aleatory, fortuitous and voluntary play of “history” or the “nomos”; or else they are “ontological” and therefore pre-destined in the sense that they are stages of the “physis” (nature) that transforms “history” (Geschichte) into a “destiny” (Geschick), a “fate” that is an intrinsic part of the “being-as-becoming” (Wesen als Werden) that Nietzsche envisages. In the case of the master-morality, for instance, there is a “co-incidence” of the Wille zur Macht and the “morality” in that the “ontic” manifestation of the Will to Power, the master-morality, “co-incides” with the “organic” need-necessity of that Will to Power whose “ontological” validity Nietzsche has posited, whereas the slave-morality can be either part of a “strategy” (ideology), a “ruse” of the Wille zur Macht, or else it can be a real Wille zur Ohnmacht to the extent that slaves do not use their morality “consciously”. But the “ambiguity” is that in the case of the “master” there is no need at all for a “master morality”, and in the case of the slave the “slave morality” contradicts its physiological function as “Will to Power”. Once again, by positing a universal (ontological) Will to Power that has “differential” (ontic) historical or physiological outcomes (masters, slaves), Nietzsche is positing a “single” entity with “different” outcomes – hence the “ambi-guity” or “ambi-valence” – some would call it the “a-poria”.

The answer to this “difficulty” is really quite simple within Nietzsche’s critique of occidental metaphysics (Heidegger’s metaphysica generalis) because Nietzsche makes it amply clear and wholly evident that every “happening” is physio-logical in that it mani-fests a “sign”, a “symptom” that we can “interpret” or “de-cipher” (cipher – sign!) and pursuant to this “divination” we can then “will” both the past and the future. Indeed, as we have seen, the Will to Power itself is “over-flowing spirit”, it “over-comes” only when it be-awares of its “con-dition” through the “sign-symbol-cipher” or the ancient “omen-augury” of whether we are in a state of “strength” (Macht) or “weakness” (Ohn-macht). The master morality is a Wille zur Macht, whereas the slave morality is a Wille zur Ohnmacht which is itself only a manifestation of “disease” (Krankheit, Erkrankung), unless it is used “consciously” and knowingly as a “strategy” for the Wille zur Macht. In this regard, Nietzsche’s “phenomenalism and perspectivism” becomes a “powerful” tool of political praxis that invites the “scientific” and “value-free” study of the “options” available for political “decision-making” or “responsibility” (Ver-antwort-lichkeit or “answerability”, accountability) – something that Nietzsche clearly admired in Thucydides and Machiavelli, and that was soon to be developed conceptually by Max Weber. Indeed, as we have adumbrated already and will outline painstakingly later, it is precisely this “co-incidence” of Will to Power and “Kultur” (or ideology), of Politik and Wissenschaft (Nietzsche’s “correct interpretation [Wissenschaft] and utilization [Politik]” of the “Symptomatologie” or “Semeiotik”) that opens up the “need-necessity” of the Rationalisierung! Differently put, Nietzsche’s “phenomenalism and perspectivism”, far from atrophying into a paralyzing eclecticism, offers a precise ontologically-grounded critique and trans-valuation of the values of bourgeois society in the era of the society of capital that allows the “critical” use of its historical means and methods to achieve specific political aims.

The point that is absolutely essential to grasp is that nearly all the interpretations of Nietzsche’s philosophy to date, with the sole and astoundingly brilliant exception of Massimo Cacciari’s, have entirely neglected the “materiality” of Nietzsche’s Entwurf – the “need-necessity” of the “instincts of freedom” that en-genders, “generates”, pro-duces the “need-necessity” of the “e-volution” (Entwicklung) of “the ontogeny of thought” which, in turn, occasions both the Ver-geistigung and the Ent-wertung (or Ent-seelung), the Rationalisierung of life and the world that is the “mani-festation” of the Will to Power! By failing to see or by neglecting almost entirely this “practical” or “pragmatic” dia-noia or in-tention of Nietzsche’s Entwurf, his philosophical pro-ject, nearly all the interpretations of Nietzsche’s philosophy end up con-fining it to a mere “hortatory” or ethical or even moralizing “critique” of existing “values” taking these simply as “values”, that is, as mere “ideologies” or as “idols” or “phantoms” or “shadows” that are entirely “voluntary” or “velleitary” or “ideological” or “artistically creative”, and lack therefore a real “material” basis in the physiological evolution of human beings!

We hardly need to recall that the first volume of Heidegger’s monumental study on Nietzsche is entitled “The Will to Power As Art”! As we are endeavouring to show unstintingly in this study, if there is one thing that the Will to Power is not, it is “mere art”! (Indeed, Heidegger’s lectures that compose this voluminous tome were delivered from 1936 until 1940, but not published until 1961. One shudders to think how “artistic” Heidegger’s exegesis of the Wille zur Macht would have

been, at least in tone, at the time of its delivery given Heidegger’s complicity in the murderous designs of the Nazi dictatorship!) One example out of a myriad will serve to illustrate conclusively Heidegger’s systematic incomprehension of Nietzsche’s problematic and in-tention (dia-noia) in this respect. This is from Volume One of Nietzsche, “The Structure of the ‘Major Work’”:

“Corruption” and “physiological decay” and similar things are not the cause of nihilism but constitute rather its consequences. Nihilism therefore cannot be overcome by eliminating these conditions… [a]lthough it is also a fundamental experience of the history of the positing of values to know that the positing of supreme values does not happen suddenly, that the eternal truth never appears in the space of a night and that no one people [Volk] saw its truth fall from the sky.

Of course, “voluntaristic” interpretations of Nietzsche such as these that privilege “values” over “instincts” or, as we call them “physiological need-necessity”, are the exact opposite of what we seek to demonstrate in this study; they entirely traduce and wholly misrepresent Nietzsche’s Entwurf – his “plan”, his “political in-tention” – which is not merely “to criticize” or “to hammer” existing “values”, but rather “to trans-value” them by completely – yes, even “systematically”! – “over-coming” and “over-turning” the “humanistic transcendentalism”, both the ethics and ontology and, much more importantly, the praxis and therefore the politics of life and the world in the most “radical” manner ever seen in the entire history of philosophy, almost on a par with Marx!

Nietzsche’s philosophy is more than just a “philosophy”, an “intellectualism”! It is a praxis! But a praxis that must be engaged not purely in “hortatory” or “exegetic” or “extra-moral” terms, in terms that (as Heidegger and Jaspers suggest) merely “re-place” one set of values with another, that merely “re-value” life and the world and therefore con-fine Nietzsche’s Umwertung to the ethical-moral and ideological, and above all the “creative” sphere of art! Seen in this “humanistic” light, it is not at all surprising that nearly all these previous readings of Nietzsche – from Heidegger and Jaspers and Fink down to Deleuze and Badiou or Agamben - end up championing the primacy of “values” and “art” and turning his philosophy into yet another humanistic, “intellectualistic interpretation” of life and the world!

Much rather and more “fundamentally and radically” for Nietzsche’s Entwurf and its Umwertung, the Will to Power seeks to re-define our entire “con-ception” of life and the world in a manner that is far from “voluntaristic” or “velleitary” or “volitional” or indeed “creative” and “artistic” (!) - in a manner that does not idiotically recite the trite homily about how each and every human being can “live affirmatively” and “authentically” by embracing “the master morality” much as one learns the Ten Commandments or takes up painting or a hobby or a sporting activity for leisurely Sunday afternoon indulgence!

Nietzsche always and everywhere understands the Will to Power as a “universal condition”, a condition of being-as-becoming, a cardinal point in life and the world – indeed, as an ineluctable “destiny”, as a “fate”, as a “need-necessity” that is much more than an “ontic” occurrence within life and the world, but much rather one that is the very onto-logical universal condition and foundation of life and the world, and one that constitutes the very “nature” (Wesen als Werden, physis) of life and the world as a manifestation of the Will to Power.

The Umwertung extends to “all values” (alle Werthe) including our very “con-ception” or “inter-pretation” of life and the world in a manner that, yes, must affect our con-duct, our praxis in them – but not in the sense of the Freiheit or of the Ich-heit! Always and everywhere, Nietzsche in-tends the Will to Power as an ineluctable destiny to which human beings are sub-jected independently of “values” and their “interpretations”, as well as the manifestation of physiological “need-necessity”! This is the meaning of “the Eternal Return”, of “Amor Fati”.

Those who fail to understand this have understood little of Nietzsche’s philosophy and absolutely nothing of his Entwurf and of the Umwertung it pro-poses and operates! The purpose of this section is to illustrate briefly how some of the major interpretations of Nietzsche’s dia-noia have failed miserably in this important regard. (Given that much of our work owes its reasoning and analysis – if, alas, not its acumen – to the early work of Cacciari, we will exclude him from this review to avoid repetition.)

A. Fink On Nietzsche

The reason why Fink finds this “difficulty” or “ambiguity” insuperable and a ground for accusing Nietzsche of “sophistry” is that he believes that Nietzsche is still locked or stuck behind the walls of the old occidental metaphysics, which treats the “Being of beings” as a “Supreme Being”, as a “fixed, immutable, timeless” essence against which Nietzsche can oppose only an “ambi-guous” Will that is a contradictory mixture of freedom and necessity. If that were so, then Nietzsche’s “tension” between “historical destiny” (Geschichte als Geschick, or physis) and “Will” (as individual voluntas and potentia, or nomos) would simply be untenable – because “willing” would belong to the humanistic Freiheit that cannot co-exist or co-incide with “fate and destiny” fixed by physio-logical “need-necessity”: human beings cannot both be “free” (as “souls”) and “not free” (as “bodies”, Korper). We would then fall back into the Schopenhauerian dichotomy of free esse and determined operari.

Just how distorted and inaccurate Fink’s interpretation of Nietzsche is can be illustrated wonderfully from Fink’s own summary of what he wrongly interprets Nietzsche as saying:

“Nietzsche gains an insight into life as the basis of all value by sublating the self-alienation of the human existence. Values exist only because they are posited by life. The human creation of values within life is a manifestation of the will to power. Man relates to himself either authentically (adopting the master morality), or unauthentically (adopting the slave morality). The will to power has so to speak a twofold appearance as power and lack of power. Wherever this opposition is mentioned in the context of the will to power, power and its opposite are understood in the ontic sense,” (p.115).

Because Fink (not Nietzsche!) starts erroneously from the notion of Will to Power as the “self-alienation of the human existence”, it is obvious that, once he has thus “equated” or “homologated” the bearers of the master morality and those of the slave morality as sharing equally in “the human existence”, it follows therefrom that their “antagonistic values” are the result of a common “self-

alienation” that, by definition, is a “distortion” of the aforesaid “human existence” and that can therefore have only an “ontic” or “historical”, contingent and accidental status, but not an overarching “ontological” reality! As a result, for Fink, both the master and the slave, equally partaking of this common “human existence”, must be ultimately free to abolish or to supersede their antagonistic values. It is then inevitable that for him there must be an “ambi-guity (he frankly means a “contra-diction”). All along, then, Fink assumes the conventional understanding of “Will” of the philosophia perennis, that is, of “free volition” or “liberum arbitrium”, according to which ultimately it is “human beings” in the abstract who are free to choose their destiny and therefore they are either masters or slaves depending on which “morality” they freely “adopt”! If they freely choose to live “authentically”, then they will all become “masters”; and if they freely choose “to adopt” the slave morality, then they will live “unauthentically” as “slaves”!

Put thus in Fink’s terms, it would be amazing indeed to find that anyone among us had “freely chosen the slave morality” and therefore to live “unauthentically as a slave”! With the wonderful result that surely, before this day is out, all slave moralities will be abolished and declared illegal and all of us will go to sleep safe in the Heideggerian “authentic” certainty that we all belong to a “master race”! Such is the pathetic nonsense to which Fink would reduce Nietzsche – perhaps the sharpest philosophical mind humanity has produced since Kant! The paradoxical and bathetic outcome of Fink’s misinterpretation of Nietzsche is that we then have a schizophrenic Will to Power, one with a split mentality, as it were, in its “twofold appearance as power and lack of power”!In reality, as we took pains to show earlier, there is no notion of “authenticity” or its opposite in Nietzsche because the Will to Power is a “universal condition” that necessarily manifests itself in “appropriation and exploitation” and, therefore, in its “ideological or strategic” guise of bad conscience and the ascetic ideal. The real origin of Fink’s confusion lies in his failure to understand how Nietzsche effectively overcomes the ontological presuppositions of the philosophia perennis that con-fine us to an abstract choice between “freedom” of the Will and “necessity” of its “Esse” or “Being”. To say it once more, this is the reason why Nietzsche describes the “Will” both as “instinct of freedom”, so as to emphasise the “physio-logical” need-necessity of the instincts in their organic quest for “freedom”, and also as “Will to Power”, to underline the “willfulness” of the instincts in their search for the “need-necessity” of “power”. Both these formulae express Nietzsche’s wish to balance “freedom” with the “necessity” of the instincts, and the “need-necessity” of “power” with the “volition” of the “Will”.

To say, as Fink does, that

“Nietzsche sees in all traditional philosophy what he does himself: reducing the ontological questions to questions of value, he investigates them all according to their implicit value judgements,” (p.111)

is tantamount to implying that Nietzsche remains tied to the “ontic” reality of “values” and is unable “to transcend” them ontologically. But in fact Nietzsche has “over-come” (that is the meaning [noeo], the in-tention [dia-noia] of the Uber-mensch, it is the Uber-windung!) this “dichotomy” that Fink wrongly attributes to him between “ontological” and “ontic”, all the better to retain the “immanentistic” or “materialist” perspectivism that he proposed from the outset, which is what allows him to reach a novel conception of the “Will”. Nietzsche’s entire conception

of “time” and “history” allows him to draw a firm “line” – a “hori-zon”! – be-tween the “intra-temporal” sequence of now-moments, to which our notions of “history” and “memory” belong – and, on the other side (almost literally!), the other dimension of “time”, the “extra-temporal” dimension that is the ultimate human intuition of “time” and that enables Nietzsche (be-tween the walls of past and future) to challenge the “linear” notion of “history” (as the sequence of now-moments) and contrast it to the “circular” one of Antiquity in which it was even surmised that the past would repeat itself e-venientially, as when Epimenides “prophesied the past”, or that it would re-cur in cycles (anakyklosis) as with Polybius and Vico. It may be instructive to note, with regard to Vico, that Nietzsche’s title for one of his most important works, La Gaya Scienza, may have been inspired by the title of the great Italian philosopher’s magnum opus, La Scienza Nuova, where the theory of historical “corsi e ricorsi” (occurrences and recurrencies) was first expounded, together with the notion of “verum ipsum factum”, the notion espoused also by Machiavelli that “facts” are the “makings” (Latin facere, to make) of human beings and therefore ought to be known better than “physical objects”. Nietzsche will similarly stress the retardation of “the awakening sciences” due to the apparent “familiarity” of psychological events.

In the process, Nietzsche clearly develops his own perspective of time and history which enables him to de-scribe and pre-scribe historical events, interpret and utilize antagonistic moralities. If anything, Nietzsche’s ontology is much to be preferred to Heidegger’s to the extent that the Wille zur Macht and the Amor Fati permit a conception of “physis” that is “physiological” in a material, Goethian sense, not a purely ontological one, and that leaves “space” for human “history” as the organic, materialistic “ramifications and developments” of the “instinct of freedom”, of the Will to Power. In pointed contrast, Heidegger’s ontological Da-sein is entirely con-fined to an ontological “intuition of primordial time” (wholly derived from Kant) that resembles Pascal’s “condition humaine” in that it “freezes” the Da-sein in a “sur-face” or “hori-zon of Being” (time) that simply does not allow physical “space” (again, Ort, not Raum) for that “physis” whose material de-velop-ment or un-fold-ing, trans-crescence or meta-morphosis, growth or e-volution in time we can meaningfully call “history”! (Karl Lowith lays out this critique of Heidegger’s ontology with enviable mastery in his Heidegger, Denker in durftiger Zeit. The further charge that Heidegger’s purely transcendental intuition of time excludes implicitly, though not avowedly, all notions of “space” and therefore “immanence” is made in our study on ‘Heidegger’s Kantbuch’. Also, Negri in ‘Spinoza essays’.)

Perspicuously realizing that Nietzsche places “conflict and strife”, indeed war, at the origins of language and consciousness, Fink then engages in a strenuous effort to sidestep the obvious “eristic” anti-humanistic consequences of this:

“Nietzsche’s cult of the genius assimilates traces of a hero worship. His superhuman understanding of genius and his function in a unified, primordial will of the world is almost obscured by the emphasis on a ‘greatness’ which portrays itself as a human achievement. The pathos of distance, of social rank order, determines the theory of culture on the surface.We have identified here an essential feature of Nietzsche: his concept of the human being is ambiguous. He is torn between a purely anthropocentric conception distinguishing the extremes of the creative and the impotent type, of the genius and the herd member, and a more profound conception of humanity that transcends humanism and understands man through his cosmic mission in which he becomes the

medium of universal truth. This tension in the concept of the human being remains always alive in the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Although he inquires into the ‘great man’ whenever he wishes to express the essence of humanity, his exposition of human greatness vacillates within the mentioned ambiguity,” (‘NP’, p. 27).

How radically this interpretation diverges from ours barely deserves discussion. Yet Fink’s approach is wonderfully illustrative of the “cosmic” stupidity that seems to envelop even the most erudite and perceptive minds when it comes to Nietzsche’s anthropology (his “physiological psychology”, so to speak). Fink is as wrong as wrong can be to opine that in Nietzsche there is anything even remotely resembling all these “grand notions” that Fink describes, starting with the complete nonsense of “[Nietzsche’s] superhuman understanding of genius and his function in a unified, primordial will”. As we have seen, there is no such “unified, primordial will” in Nietzsche, though there may be in Schopenhauer; indeed, it is precisely such “unity” of the will that Nietzsche attacks as the source of Schopenhauer’s delusions about “intelligible freedom”!

Yes. Fink is right to say that there is some “ambiguity” in Nietzsche’s “concept of the human being” – and we have traced its source to his ultimately “transcendental- philosophisch” ontology and to his ontogenetic approach, which we still preferred to Heidegger’s. But there can be absolutely no possibility whatsoever that Nietzsche ever overlooked the fundamental and irresoluble conflict between the “master morality of the superior race”, on one side, and the slave morality of “the impotent type,… the herd member” – that he ever contemplated overcoming this “separation” (Trennung) in the name of “alienated self-consciousness” (which Fink mentions earlier and then again discusses on p.47 and p. 49) and, most monstrously ludicrous of all, that he aimed at “a more profound conception of humanity that transcends humanism and understands man through his cosmic mission in which he becomes the medium of universal truth”! With this sentence alone, overflowing as it is with the most bathetic “humanistic” expressions, one feels completely defeated.

The facile manner in which Fink “flies over” in the twinkling of an eye Nietzsche’s most profound insights in the Second Untimely Meditation (at p. 30) that we have just discussed at length – merely to note, correctly, that his view of history is both “diagnostic” and “programmatic” (a “divination”, a clairvoyance, we have called it) – is most regrettable. To a great extent, Fink’s “diminution” of Nietzsche’s treatment of Greek philosophy (but how can one argue this when one considers Nietzsche’s profound learning on Heraclitus and Socrates?) has probably much to do with Heidegger’s own willful misinterpretation of Nietzsche in his attempt to claim originality for posing the question of “the being of Being”, something we steadfastly denied above:

“It is particularly obvious here how Nietzsche transforms (and perhaps must transform) all ontological questions into questions of value,” (pp. 31-2).

Once more, what is obvious instead is Fink’s total confusion – again, in acolytic and doctrinal subservience to Heidegger – of how those “questions of value” go right to the very foundations of occidental metaphysics, of the philosophia perennis. After noting the centrality of “children’s play”, of “creative destruction” in Nietzsche’s engagement with Heraclitus, Fink concludes predictably that Nietzsche ignores entirely the question of being in Parmenides:

“Nietzsche establishes a contrast to this view of Heraclitus which in its contrast is equally revealing. Parmenides relates to Heraclitus like ice to fire, like logical concept to intuition, like life to death. Nietzsche does not see Parmenides’s originality because he fails to see the speculative death of the ontological problem altogether. ‘Being’ is only an abstract term for a fiction of human imagination, for an ideal object without corresponding reality for him. Being is something fixed, immovable, rigid, lifeless and opposed to becoming for him. Nietzsche has made no attempt to overcome the common dichotomy and to think the opposition between being and becoming from within the ontological problem,” (pp. 32-3).

Once again, this is rank and utter nonsense from a disciple of Heidegger who now applies the most jejune obfuscations propagated by “the master” to discharge what he sees as his “tutorial duty” – betrayed by a pedantic “didactic” tone - with respect to Nietzsche – truly a “genius” of far superior speculative reach and depth than Fink’s or Heidegger’s -, as if he were marking an essay submitted by a callow undergraduate! To claim that for Nietzsche “‘Being’ is only an abstract term for a fiction of human imagination” is the closest thing to lunacy imaginable! To proceed and opine with unabashed stupidity that “Being is something fixed, immovable, rigid, lifeless and opposed to becoming for him” is certifiable and patented madness! Truly Fink is clasping at “shadows”! He takes Nietzsche’s veritable assault on the “fixity” of Western metaphysical notions of “Being” (substance, essence, substratum, ens realissimum, God) – he mistakes these “fictions of human imagination” for Nietzsche’s very understanding of “being-as-becoming”, of time as the horizon of being, and the children’s play as the “Unschuldig-keit”, the “eternally identical innocence” to which Fink himself has just alluded! What in heaven and on earth is Nietzsche’s “supreme metaphor” of the “eternally living fire [that like children and artists] plays, builds and destroys innocently – and in this, eternity itself is at play” – what can this be, except yet another description of time as our intuitive horizon of Being?

Fink then quotes from Nietzsche to illustrate his contention:

“ ‘But nobody tackles such terrifying abstractions as 'Being' and 'Non-Being' without punishment; the blood curdles if one touches them....Truth is now supposed to live only in the most pale, most abstract generalities , in the empty shells of the most indeterminate concepts, like in a house of cobwebs. And the philosopher sits next to such truth seemingly bloodless, like an abstraction, and trapped in formulas…’ ” (p. 33).

Yet, far from showing that he renounced or ignored or even failed to tackle the ontological demands imposed by his critical quest, Nietzsche here is ironically and quite appropriately voicing his indignant condemnation of the “blood-curdling” manner in which Western “philosophy” has from its earliest days reduced the “eternal fire” of our engagement with “Being” – with “life and the world”, as even Fink refers to it – to “the most pale, most abstract generalities,… the empty shells of the most indeterminate concepts” – a reduction egregiously exemplified by Heidegger with his monumentally dishonest attempt (in his Nietzsche) to confute Nietzsche’s originality and to“appropriate” his revolutionary “devaluation” (Ent-wertung) and “completion” (Vollendung) of metaphysics in the “transvaluation of all values” (Umwertung) well before the publication of ‘Sein und Zeit’! As is sadly well known, this was neither the first nor the last time that Heidegger displayed his appalling lack of the “authenticity” he theorised, culminating with his culpable

complicity with the Nazi regime and his even more despicable attempts to conceal it. (Cf. Lowith’s accounts on these matters.)

It is hard to imagine how anyone could characterise the earth-shattering un-hinging of the foundations of metaphysics that Nietzsche perpetrates in ‘HATH’ and then in the epoch-changing works after ‘Zarathustra’ as “a focus on the human condition” whereby “life is no longer understood metaphysically and mystically… but is understood as a biological concept” and as the application of “enlightenment scientific principles” [sic!] to the de-structive critique of “religion, metaphysics and art”! (Fink, pp. 36ff) Only somebody who has either not read Nietzsche’s works or is so intellectually smothered in the thrall of Heidegger’s self-serving and stultified misinterpretation of Nietzsche could ever advance such an outrageously misguided travesty of Nietzsche’s theses in ‘HATH’! It simply beggars belief that Fink could have missed so ignorantly Nietzsche’s devastating confrontation with the Vollendung (the completion, ful-filment, per-fection and therefore “shipwreck”) of metaphysics in the new A-skesis [literally, climbing and rise!] of the “scientific Will to Truth”! Metaphysics, religion and art – indeed “all values”! – crash into and shatter against the hard rock of Nihilism precisely because they have self-dissolved (Selbst-aufgehoben), because the very “science” to which the Rationalisierung has led them now finally re-veals their “decadence” and utter “dis-integration” (Dis-gregation) together with that of its own foundations except to the extent that science is the expression of Will to Power!

In other words, Nietzsche’s critique, far from being “scientific” and “enlightened”, deals the final and most lethal blow imaginable to the entire edifice of “scientific methodology” and its “values”, of morality and its “values”, of economics and its “values”, and even of art and its “values”! It is far more than an “unmasking [that] does not use the tools of any particular science”, - and so, by implication for Fink, one that uses generic “scientific tools”. Quite the opposite! It is true that Nietzsche applies the principles of “science” to the scientific enterprise: but that is done diabolically to sweep away in a few cataclysmic aphorisms the entire agon of two thousand years of Western metaphysical and scientific enquiry! And that not, as with Hume, in the name of a wanton, fastidious and formalistic scepticism, but rather with the unequivocal aim of re-constructing the practical foundations of ontology and epistemology, of psychology and not least of politics – without which no “transvaluation of all values” could be even imaginable! – So much for “Enlightenment” and “scientific positivism”!

Fink unbelievably mistakes Nietzsche’s “genealogy” as a revulsion against “idealisms” – totally forgetting that the “transvaluation” is aimed at “all” (!) values, including those of “science” first and foremost! Quite evidently, Nietzsche intends the “genealogy” of values and morals as an illustration of his “physio-logical” (not “biological”) perspectivism. The physis is intended to give pre-eminence to the “materialist” or “organic” – as against the “idealistic” and “decadent” - interpretation of life and the world always “from within the Will”. But this “from within” clearly stresses Nietzsche’s questioning of the foundations (Heidegger’s Grundlegungen) of metaphysics. The fact that life and the world cannot be “com-prehended” does not mean in the least that the intuition of “the being of beings” is abandoned or neglected, as Fink quite falsely or mistakenly asserts (p. 38). Far from it! It is the fundamental intuition of “being and time” that animates and motivates all of the Nietzschean oeuvre. One could say in fact that Nietzsche’s entire “philosophy” is an attempt to “instantiate” or “exemplify” the

“tragic” figure of the Wanderer (quoted by Fink, like Cacciari, on p. 52) – and at the same time to un-mask, not just the presuppositions of “values” (Fink, p. 43) but above all the ideological and strategic role sustained by the “values” of occidental thought, science and morality. Listen to Fink:

“Whatever seemed divine, or whatever seemed to transcend man and earth is [for Nietzsche] merely a creation of human existence,” (p. 45).

This is complete nonsense – a travesty of Nietzsche’s thought that reduces it to the existentialist musings and banality of Sartre’s “iron in the soul” or to Milan Kundera’s equally unbearable “unbearable lightness of being” – “…the expression of a new human thinking which has become conscious of his own freedom” (Fink, p. 45).

“Human freedom”! Could anyone who has read our account of Nietzsche’s clear indictment of the Freiheit countenance for a moment Fink’s interpretation of Nietzsche? Because Fink starts from the proton pseudes that Nietzsche’s critique is intended to elevate us to a “cosmic mission” toward “the universal truth… of man’s own freedom”, it is obvious that he finds Nietzsche’s “unmasking” of morality as the strictest “need-necessity” quite naive and unwarranted and that, indeed, ultimately what Nietzsche intends (or “ought” [!] to intend in Fink’s stultified interpretation) is the superseding of “self-alienation” – delivering Nietzsche safe and sound into the capable hands of Hegel (see p. 49)! And Comte! Fink goes so far as to classify Nietzsche’s ‘Gaya Scienza’ as “scientific positivism”!

We spent the better part of our work underlining Nietzsche’s revulsion at transcendentalism and his radical espousal of immanence: here is how Fink impertinently and impenitently mis-represents him instead:

“Man is conceived as a self-transcending being and idealism is inverted [in other words, man’s “self-alienation” is “overcome”]. Man recovers all transcendental attributes. He is given thus the utmost freedom of a bold mission,” (p. 50).

“The Zarathustra is the implied foundation of all subsequent treatises. Nietzsche wages a war, his Great War, against all kinds of self-alienation and enslaved human existence. He intends to struggle for human liberation,” (p.116)

Could anybody improve on such bold nonsense? Far from “struggling for human liberation”, Nietzsche’s entire philosophy is aimed at showing that no such liberation is possible! – Because the Will to Power will inevitably generate and re-generate (physis) masters and slaves, winners and losers, and the “over-coming” of this reality con-sists precisely in the devaluation (Ent-wertung) and transvaluation (Um-wertung) of “all values” that wish to deny and refute this “reality”, this “need-necessity”, the Wille zur Macht and its “rationalization of the world” as its own self-affirmation! The Wille zur Macht is not the “overcoming” of “self-alienation” and the achieving of “human liberation”: rather, it is the “renunciation” (Entsagung) of these (humanistic) “Values”, the “realization that God is dead”, and the affirmation of Life and the World – the Amor Fati, the Eternal Return of the Same in the novel Nietzschean intuition of being, time and history.

B. Heidegger’s Interpretation

Where Fink finally and gratifyingly overcomes his devotion to Heidegger and Husserl is in the final part of his book where his assessment of Nietzsche’s philosophy comes much closer to our own. Consequently, it surpasses the equally “humanistic” reading, almost identical to Fink’s first half of his book but vaguer and more “oracular”, in Heidegger’s article on ‘Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” wherein Heidegger first “universalizes” or “ontologises” Nietzsche’s notion of “revenge” or ressentiment to a moment of the human condition and then adduces it as evidence of his still being “chained” to the “ontic completion” of Western metaphysics! Despite seemingly engaging with Nietzsche’s novel conception of time, Heidegger simply refuses to relinquish his prejudice that Nietzsche’s Being-as-Becoming is yet another “ontic” characterization of the question of Being and even goes so far as to compare Nietzsche’s notion of Will to Power to Schelling’s conception of the Will! As Cacciari puts it, Heidegger, as against Fink in his long discussion of the Zarathustra, fails to notice that the Ubermensch (Zarathustra) is no longer the “Subject” of Western metaphysics, as it still was for Schelling and Schopenhauer: at the same time, Cacciari absolves Fink from this charge and in fact praises him for the insight (‘PNR’, p.49 – but see below for fuller discussion).

Heidegger’s related attempt to confine Nietzsche to the sphere of “Values” and “metaphysics” – in “The Meaning of ‘God Is Dead’” in Holzwege (p.157), but see also chapter 5 of Vol.1 of Nietzsche – on the obvious ground that the “transvaluation” of values does not ipso facto “overcome” Value but merely negates the “supersensory” and therefore, by reflex, also the sensory and remains within the “sphere” of the “ontic”, again fails to grasp the fact that Nietzsche does theorise a new conception of Being-as-Becoming that precedes Heidegger’s own intuition of time as the horizon of Being in Sein und Zeit. Just consider with what inveterate and consummate charlatanry Heidegger attempts to relegate Nietzsche’s most profound critique and reformulation of the very quest of metaphysics back to the point where Schopenhauer began his critique of Kant!

“It is clear from this sentence [“God is dead”] that Nietzsche, in speaking about the death of God, means the Christian God. But it is no less certain and no less to be kept in mind beforehand that Nietzsche uses the names "God" and "Christian God" to indicate the supersensory world in general. God is the name for the realm of ideas and the ideal. Since Plato, or more accurately, since the late Greek and the Christian interpretations of the Platonic philosophy, this realm of the supersensory has been considered the true and actually real world. In contrast to it, the sensory world is only the unreal this-worldly world, the changeable and therefore the merely apparent world. The this-worldly world is the vale of tears in contrast to the mountain of eternal bliss of the other side. If, as is still the case in Kant, we call the sensory world the physical world in the broadest sense, then the supersensory world is the metaphysical world. "God is dead" means: the supersensory world has no effective power. It does not bestow life. Metaphysics, which for Nietzsche is Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end. Nietzsche understands his own philosophy as the countermovement against metaphysics, i.e., for him, against Platonism.As a mere countermovement, however, it necessarily remains trapped, like everything anti-, in the essence of what it is challenging. Since all it does is turn metaphysics upside down, Nietzsche's countermovement against metaphysics remains embroiled in it and has no way out; in fact it is embroiled in it to such a degree that it is sealed off from its essence and, as metaphysics, is unable ever to think its own essence. This is the reason that, for and through metaphysics, there remains hidden what actually happens in and as metaphysics itself,” (Holzwege, pp.162-3).

In one fell swoop, Heidegger attempts to caricature Nietzsche as a brash Sunday-mass atheistic brat who has lost, not just “God”, but his marbles too! To say that Nietzsche was merely “countering Platonism” is a statement of such bestial effrontery as to deserve no further evaluation. But it may be interesting to ask

what Heidegger himself thinks “supersensory world” means, for us to see whether his curtailment of Nietzsche is appropriate or even fair:

“Metaphysics is the space of history in which it becomes destiny for the supersensory world, ideas, God, moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, and civilization to forfeit their constructive power and to become void. We are calling this essential ruin of supersensory its putrefaction. Unbelief in the sense of apostasy from the Christian doctrine of faith is therefore never the essence or the ground of nihilism; rather, it is always only a consequence of nihilism: for it could be that Christianity itself represents a consequence and a form of nihilism…,” (p.165).

“In contrast to this, it is above all essential that we reflect. That is why we will now ask Nietzsche himself what he understands by nihilism; to begin with, we will leave it an open question whether with this understanding Nietzsche has already caught the essence of nihilism or whether he can catch it.In a note from 1887, Nietzsche poses the question (The Will to Power, aphorism no. 2): "What does nihilism mean?" He gives the answer: "That the highest values devalue themselves."This answer is emphasized and a supplementary explanation is provided: "The goal is missing; the answer to 'why?' is missing." Nietzsche, accordingly, comprehends nihilism as a historical process. He interprets this process as the devaluation of the hitherto highest values. God, the supersensory world as the world that truly is and that determines everything, ideals and ideas, the goals and grounds that determine and support all beings and human life in particular: all these are represented here in the meaning of the "highest values." According to a view current even now, what one understands by that term is truth, goodness, and beauty: truth, i.e., that which truly is; goodness, i.e., what everything is everywhere dependent upon; beauty, i.e., the order and unity of beings in their entirety,” (p.166).

Now, it is patently obvious that by “supersensory world” Heidegger intends a class or genus of “ideas and ideals” that in no guise correspond to what Nietzsche had in mind as the ultimate “objective” of his critique and “pro-ject”. Not only! But Heidegger even insinuates that Nietzsche conceived of these “ideas and ideals” purely “as [part of] a historical process” and that therefore he contemplated them from a merely “ontic” philosophical standpoint! Yet it ought to be absolutely blindingly obvious from our careful analysis of what Nietzsche himself intended by “history” and “time” that such “conventional” or “ontic” notions of time and history are as far from Nietzsche’s mind as a black hole is from light! If “God is dead”, what has “died” with “God” is not simply and only “the guarantee” of all that we believe – all our “highest values” or the “supersensory world” -, but also and necessarily the very “notion” of a “substance” or “sub-stratum” or “essence” or “quidditas” or Being that sub-tends or sublates and sustains existence and reality, life and the world! What dies with “God” is not just the “supersensory world of ideas and ideals” – that world had already been “annihilated” by the “incomplete nihilism” that Nietzsche discusses.

“Thus "incomplete nihilism" arises, about which Nietzsche writes (The Will to Power, no. 28, from 1887): "Incomplete nihilism, its forms: we live right in their midst. The attempts to escape nihilism without revaluing the former values: they produce the opposite, make the problem more acute." We can grasp Nietzsche's thoughts about incomplete nihilism more clearly and acutely by saying: incomplete nihilism indeed replaces the former values by others, but it always puts them in the old place, which is, as it were, preserved as the ideal region of the supersensory. Complete nihilism, however, must eliminate even the place of value itself, the supersensory as a realm; and it must accordingly alter and revalue values differently,” (pp.168-9).

Breathtaking, the chicanery with which Heidegger misinterprets Nietzsche! For if indeed Nietzsche’s answer to “incomplete nihilism” is simplistically “to replace” it with a “complete nihilism” (whatever else?), then it follows inevitably that

“[c]omplete nihilism … must eliminate even the place of value itself, the supersensory as a realm; and it must accordingly alter and revalue values differently”! In other words, even before Heidegger examines what Nietzsche means by “transvaluation of all values” (poorly translated here as “revaluation”), he has already decreed that, whatever else it may mean, “it must… alter and revalue values differently” – and therefore necessarily “remain” in the “realm” of “values”, that is to say, of that “suprasensory world” that Heidegger had just “emptied” for “replacement” with “altered”, albeit “revalued”, values! Small wonder that Heidegger saddles Nietzsche with the same old metaphysics of the philosophia perennis, however much he may “magnanimously” concede to him the “completion” (Vollendung) of this same old metaphysics! (Similarly, chapter 5 of Volume One is titled “Nietzsche’s Manner of Thinking As Reversal”. But again this ‘Umkehrung’ [Reversal] describes rather Schopenhauer’s “substitution” or “replacement” of Kant’s “objective” thing-in-itself with the Will-to-Life! Again, we refer to our study ‘Umkehrung: Schopenhauer’s Reversal of Kant’s Metaphysics”.) In no way can this apply to Nietzsche’s Will to Power and the “intuition of time and place” that corresponds to its being a “universal condition” and that Nietzsche calls “the Eternal Return”!

It is entirely obvious that what Nietzsche meant by “incomplete nihilism” was not a defective or deficient nihilism that he himself was going somehow to make “complete” (!), but rather a nihilism that was “incomplete” as a critique of those “supreme values” and their “supersensory world” – Schopenhauer’s “metaphysical need”! - precisely because it failed “to com-prehend” the “origins” (ontic and ontological) of the “values” it purported to refute! To opine, furtively and oafishly as does Heidegger, that the entire extent of Nietzsche’s unprecedented “challenge” to our understanding of the foundations of being – being understood as “becoming”, as the com-prehension of life and the world, of time and history – was to ex-cogitate yet another “intellectualistic” scale of values, however “altered and revalued”, is absurd even before it is ridiculous! Nor can Heidegger be accused of excessive subtlety in his “attempt” (a dart at him from the subtitle of Nietzsche’s Will to Power: An ‘Attempt’ at the Transvaluation of All Values”) to pre-empt the issue by “saddling” Nietzsche with the burden of “traditional metaphysics” (the title of chapter 6 of Vol.1 of his Nietzsche).

Just how profoundly Heidegger misconstrues Nietzsche’s entire problematic and Entwurf is illustrated drastically and dramatically in chapter 12 of Vol.1 of Nietzsche, where this extraordinary statement is to be found:

“According to Nietzsche’s interpretation, the supreme principle of morality, of Christian religion and of the philosophy expounded by Plato, states as follows: this world has no value; there is a ‘better’ world than this one so chained to sensible things; there is another world superior to it that is the ‘true’ world; the supersensory world; the world of the senses is only one of appearances….Nietzsche says instead: this “true world” of morality is an invention; this truth, the supersensory one, is an error. The sensible world, the one that in Platonic terms is the world of appearance and falsehood, of error, is the true world.”

One simply has to brace in horror at the appalling ignorance that Heidegger displays here of Nietzsche’s meaning on what is the most essential point of his entire philosophy! Heidegger would have Nietzsche say that “the world of the

senses is ‘the true world’”! Yet the entire thrust of Nietzsche’s philosophy is precisely this: - that there is no (!) truth! There is no truth whether in the “sensory” world or in the (Platonic) “suprasensory” world! For Nietzsche, to seek “the truth” is – precisely! – tantamount to attempting to give life and the world a “Value” that they simply do not (!) have! Small wonder, then, that Heidegger can conclude that Nietzsche is still “stuck” in the “idealist” world of “traditional metaphysics”! More execrably misconceived misinterpretation and usurpation of Nietzsche’s philosophy could not be achieved even by the most clueless of parish priests! Heidegger has simply misunderstood completely the frighteningly far-reaching implications – practical, political, epistemological even more than ontological and ethical - of this Nietzschean vision, - implications that will form the object of our study in Part Two.

Having thus “defined” – crippled, in fact, and wholly unjustifiably - Nietzsche’s conception of the Will to Power, Heidegger is then free to argue (again in chapter 6 of Vol.1) what he needed to prove: – that the Will to Power is another “Value”, another quidditas, another “whatness” that defines the “fundamental character of all beings” but does not question their “being”! And this, as we know, is the defect of all “traditional metaphysics” that, for Heidegger, precede his ontology:

We said by way of anticipation that Will to Power is a name for the fundamental character of all beings. It means precisely what properly constitutes the being of beings.

Yet we have amply shown that Heidegger’s “interpretation” is baseless. In the words of Karl Lowith (‘Interpretation of what remains unsaid in the saying “God is dead”’, in Heidegger ):

Nietzsche did not then remove the dignity of Being by imposing a “value” on it: on the contrary, it is Heidegger who subtracts from the central thought of Nietzsche its peculiarity, referring it interpretatively to “the era of the completion [Vollendung] of subjectivity”.

Far from “confining” himself to these “deadbeat” concepts or to Heidegger’s stringent sense of “the historical process” – both easier to defenestrate than a Papal Encyclic -, Nietzsche actually “positions” his critique of those “idols” and these metaphysical realities from a purely “ontological” perspective that “calls into question” both the “ideas and ideals” as well as the “time and history” within which they ec-sist “ontically”! Nietzsche “hammers” these “idols” not at all (!) for their being “supersensory” or merely “illusory”, but much rather for their assuming a “strategic” role within his overall metaphysical re-interpretation of life and the world – of “reality” – “from within the Will”, with the Will to Power as “the universal condition” of life and the world (Lowith calls it “universal conception”) that finds its “instinctive”, “organic” and “physio-logical” manifestation in the “ontogeny of thought”, in the Rationalisierung as the “destiny” of life and the world! This is something that Heidegger seems to be either too incompetent or too biased to comprehend!

“Hence Nietzsche says (“The Will to Power”, no. 14, from 1887): “Values and their alteration stand in relation to the growth in power of the one that sets values."

With this it becomes clear: values are the conditions, posited by the will to power itself, of the will to power itself. It is not until the will to power comes to light as the fundamental trait of all that is real, i.e., only when it becomes true and is accordingly conceived as the reality of all that is real, that we see where values originate from and by what means all value-estimation is supported and directed. The principle of dispensing values has now been discerned. The dispensation of values can be accomplished in the future "in principle," i.e., on the basis of being as the ground of beings.This is why the will to power, as this principle that has been discerned and therefore willed, is at the same time the principle of a new dispensation of value - new because it is now achieved for the first time knowingly, in the knowledge of its principle. The dispensation of value is new because it itself makes its principle secure and at the same time holds fast to this securement as a value established on the basis of its principle. As the principle of the new dispensation of value, however, the will to power is also (in relation to the former values) the principle of the revaluation of all former values. Yet because the hitherto highest values ruled the sensory from the height of the supersensory, and because metaphysics is what structured that rule, to establish the new principle of the revaluation of all values is to bring about the reversal of all metaphysics. Nietzsche takes this reversal as the overcoming of metaphysics. However, every reversal of this kind will only be a self-blinding entanglement in what is the same though become unrecognizable,” (p.173)

But the only mind succumbing to “a self-blinding [self-deluding] entanglement” here is plainly Heidegger’s own! With insolent obstinacy, Heidegger insists on whipping the dead horse of “the Will to Power as positing values”! It is true that for Nietzsche “the manifestation” of the Will to Power in life and the world entails the positing of values – although, as we have taken care to emphasise, not “necessarily”, not in a “logical” or even “onto-logical” sense but rather in a “physio-psychological” or organicist or even “instinctual” sense, as displayed by the “evolution” or “onto-geny of thought” – which is why we have spoken of “need-necessity”. Yet it is equally obvious even to the most pedantic critic that this in no way implies that the Will to Power itself (!) is sub-ordinated to the sphere of “values”! As Cacciari himself (a proud exponent, and undoubtedly the most capable, of the left-Heideggerian camp) argues quite correctly (at p.49, ‘PNR’), the Will to Power must be seen as a “condizione universale” and not as a concept “de-fined” by “values”! Quite astounding and unforgivable is Heidegger’s mulish insistence on exploiting Nietzsche’s human “embodiment” of the Will to Power in the Ubermensch as an obvious in-stance of what he calls the “subjectity” [its being a “subject”] of the Will to Power – something akin perhaps even to the Christian velle (will)!

“With the consciousness that "God is dead" a consciousness begins to form of a radical revaluation of the hitherto highest values. After such consciousness, man himself moves into another history that is higher because in it the principle of all dispensation of value, the will to power, is specifically experienced and undertaken as the reality of what is real, as the being of beings. Self-consciousness, in which modern humanity has its essence, thereby takes the final step. It wills itself as the enforcer of the absolute will to power. The decline of normative values is at an end. Nihilism - "that the highest values devalue themselves" - is overcome. The humanity that wills its own being-human as the will to power and finds this being human to be at home in the reality determined in its entirety by the will to power is determined by a form of human essence that goes beyond erstwhile man.The name for this form of humanity's essence that goes beyond the previous race is "the overman,"” (p.187).

Heidegger’s references to the Will to Power as falling still within the purview of “self-consciousness”, of “humanity’s essence”, of “a higher history” - “because in it the principle of all dispensation of value, the will to power, is specifically experienced and undertaken as the reality of what is real, as the being of beings”, demonstrates already Heidegger’s in-comprehension of the Will to Power; – indeed, they exhibit his own Will to Power (!) (an accusation this whose gravity is

alleviated by Lowith’s own iteration) to compress Nietzsche’s notion as yet-another “being among beings” that does not “overcome” the very “ontic fixity” of Being that Nietzsche deprecated so unsparingly! Yet again, as Cacciari notes with a hint of exasperation, and nodding approvingly to Fink, Heidegger

“nella sua attenzione per il rapporto tra Nietzsche e la metafisica della soggettivita’, intravvede soltanto l’Umwertung dello Zarathustra: non coglie il fatto che il Super-Uomo non e’ piu’ Soggetto,” (‘PNR’, p.49).

(in his preoccupation [sit venia verbo!] to establish the nexus between Nietzsche and the metaphysics of subjectivity [“subjectity”, Heidegger] can glimpse only the “transvaluation” [of all values, often mis-translated as “re-valuation”] in Zarathustra: he fails to notice the fact that the Ubermensch is no longer Subject)

As we shall see in Part Two, the “overcoming” of both the “subject” and of “subjective-ness” (or “subjectity” in this translation of Heidegger) is one of Nietzsche’s most pressing preoccupations – as even a glance at Aphorisms 481 to 492 of ‘Wille zur Macht’ will make overwhelmingly obvious. Karl Lowith, in tones far more temperate and cadenced than ours (in Heidegger. Denker in durftiger Zeit), remarks in terms and for reasons nearly identical to ours on Heidegger’s strained interpretation of precisely these particular Aphorisms to highlight his sophistry and exegetical extremism. To be entirely brutal, Lowith shows Heidegger too much deference in this regard: for it is no exaggeration to say that Heidegger’s effort here is so pedestrian, so jejune and invidious, so unworthy of a great thinker – witness the absurdly ridiculous contortions and sophistries to which he descends in the pages just preceding the passage quoted above - as to be even beneath our dignity to condemn. Anyone who has read and understood our presentation on Nietzsche’s conception of his “pro-ject” or Entwurf of philosophical reflection will know that there is absolutely no basis on which Heidegger could advance these arguments save as to seek to buttress his unfounded claim to originality in this particular aspect of philosophical reflection!

With the attention-seeking insecurity of a childish prankster, Heidegger summarises his own argument in perhaps the most self-defeating manner imaginable:

“What is going on with being? With being nothing is going on. And what if it is only in that nothing that the formerly disguised essence of nihilism announces itself? Would thinking in values then be pure nihilism? But yet Nietzsche grasps the metaphysics of the will to power precisely as the overcoming of nihilism. And indeed, the metaphysics of the will to power is an overcoming of nihilism - provided that nihilism is understood only as the devaluation of the highest values and the will to power as the principle of the revaluation of all values on the basis of a new dispensation [value-positing] of values. However, in this overcoming of nihilism, value-thinking is elevated into a principle”(p.193).

A sophist he may be – but Heidegger is no logician (it may be appropriate here, albeit tangentially, to refer to the controversy with Rudolf Carnap as to the “meaninglessness” of certain Heideggerian propositions). If indeed we define the Will to Power as “the overcoming of nihilism” and nihilism itself as “the devaluation [Entwertung] of values”, “the ineffectiveness of values”, the shipwreck of the intrinsic “insubstantiality”, “ir-reality” of values, their “self-dissolution” (Selbst-Aufhebung, to quote Nietzsche) – something that Heidegger himself perceived and showed ably earlier in this piece –, it follows inexorably therefrom that “the overcoming of nihilism” must be concerned with “the positing

of something that can replace values”, something that can occupy the void left by the devaluation (Entwertung – emptying out) of values. And that “something” is for Nietzsche “the transvaluation of all values”. But Heidegger has mistaken here this “trans-valuation of all values” with “the will to power as the principle of the re-valuation of all values on the basis of a new dispensation [better translated as “value-positing”] of values”! This is an illation that he has no right to make, - although it may be due to his (perhaps “willful”) con-flation and con-fusion of “transvaluation” with “revaluation”, as the dominant translations indicate!

And even if we agreed with him to define this “re-placement” as something that follows in the premises of our reasoning just as night follows day (or “as a true bears its fruit”, Nietzsche would say) and that “constrains” the Will to Power, in its very “overcoming” (Uberwindung) of values, also thereby “to elevate value-thinking into a principle”, Heidegger would still have jumped the gun and drawn a false illation. For what he has failed to demonstrate, as he should but cannot, is that such “value-thinking” necessarily implies that the Will to Power is itself a Value! True it is that the Will to Power “challenges” ec-sisting values that indeed “de-value” themselves or “self-dissolve” and lead inexorably to nihilism (recall the passage, “it is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their impulses for and against”). But that is very far from saying that by that token, by its “value-thinking” (or “value-positing”) or even by its “imposition” (dispensation) of values (which, again, is only “need-necessary” - physiologically not apodictically “necessary” -, in the ontogeny of thought), the Will to Power also is a Value! As Nietzsche stresses again and again, we must not confuse “thoughts” with “thinking”, and then “thinking” with “a subject that thinks” - or an event with a cause or an effect! (See, for instance, Aph.477 in ‘WM’: “both the agent and the agency are fanciful!”) This would be a little like saying that a “law” designed to prevent and punish a crime actually necessarily engenders (“dispenses” or “posits” or “thinks”) crimes and, worse still, is necessarily itself a crime – because it is “crime-thinking” or “crime-positing”! (George Orwell himself could not conceive of more absurd “doublespeak”!) Nietzsche himself attacks the “physical laws” of cause and effect, but he never thereby con-fuses or conflates the two events or indeed the two separate “concepts”, as Heidegger does here!

The irony in all this is that, at the end of this piece in the Holzwege, it is actually Heidegger who is still “looking for God” (see p.199), and therefore reviving the notion of that Being “that gives” as the “presenc-ing”, rather than “is given” or “is there” (Heidegger’s intentional equivocation of “es gibt”) as a “present-ment” of human Da-sein (being-there, ec-sistence) in its abysmal state as “being-toward-death”. As we have argued repeatedly here, in just about every respect – not least the ontological, but also in the philosophy of mathematics and of science, in psychoanalysis and in the socio-political and cultural sphere - Nietzsche’s genius, the depth and intensity - above all the acuity and concreteness - of his insights, far exceed anything that Heidegger has to offer, as Part Two of this study will make amply evident, for no other reason than that Nietzsche is prepared to grapple with the “materiality” of being human to a much greater extent than his successor.

(It may be noted in passing that this tenor of self-serving and self-seeking behaviour represents a sad and deplorable constant in Heidegger’s entire iter intellectualis: – from his treacherous treatment of his mentor and benefactor,

Edmund Husserl, to his public denigration of the eminent German Jewish scholar Ernst Cassirer, to his enthusiastic embrace of Nazi ideology [see Lowith’s testimony], to his dishonest attempt to amend the historical record [regarding pro-Nazi enunciations in Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik], to his refusal to accept responsibility for his complicity with the Nazi regime [refer to Jurgen Habermas’s essay on this] and in various other instances too numerous to list here.)

C. Structuralist Neo-Nietzscheans - Pre, Post, and Pre-Posterous

“A fetishism! Consciousness and its cultural creations are fetishistic!” the postmodernists cry out: “Here is Nietzsche’s equivalent of Marx’s and Hegel’s ‘false consciousness’, the ‘royaume des ombres’ – in the double sense of ‘idolatrous’ (kingdom) and ‘mystifying’ (shadows) like the Hades of Antiquity.” But they are sorely mistaken, as we have shown! Hegel and Marx insisted on the innate, phylogenetic human ability for “reflection”, for self-consciousness, of which “false consciousness” was only a historical product in the course of human interaction with the World (including other human beings), - a dis-tortion and per-version, an alienation of the “inter-esse” of being human. Nietzsche by contrast reduces “consciousness” to a historically specific human praxis (from religion to metaphysics to “science”), as a “communal and gregarious utility”, therefore as an “instrumentality” and ultimately - through language, logic and science - as expression of the Will to Power, the “rationalization of the world” - thus relegating this most intrinsically human, all too human of faculties in all its manifestations to the status of “the perspective of the herd”, of Ohn-Macht, of “power-lessness”. - But not “inauthenticity” (as Heidegger [man, Un-eigentlichkeit] and Sartre [mauvaise foi] will do later). Recall, in this regard, Sartre’s inability to maintain his promise to define “authenticity” just as Heidegger could describe it in extremis only as “being-before-death” (cf. Negri’s critique in Spinoza essays), precisely because of the “impossibility” of these ontologies to understand human reality as anything other than “condition humaine” (see Lowith’s ‘Heidegger’)! By contrast, as Cacciari notes with superb critical acumen and as we will discuss soon, Nietzsche’s and Weber’s concept of Rationalisierung is light years more advanced in its “political” application and alertness to the antagonistic reality and needs of capitalist society (Cacciari, ‘PNeR’, p.72).

For the philosopher from Rocken, as we shall see in great detail, whilst science remains inevitably a narrow corner of human experience, it remains a “practice” that can take many forms and directions once we “be-aware” of its possible “uses” and “deep sources” and also of its purely “instrumental” relation with the “tools” of logico-mathematics and remember to keep these separate from all velleities of “mathesis universalis”. Again, there is no “Zerstorung der Vernunft” precisely because - therefore (!) - there is no “salvation” from Rationalisierung and Entseelung, as every “idealistic” Vergeistigung like Lukacs’s Hegelian Marxism or, the other face of the coin, post-modernist readings of Nietzsche, wish to reassure us. The former pounds Nietzsche with the idealist bludgeon of “Reason”, and the latter sanctify him with the equally stultified late-romantic “Grand Refusal” of “subjective liberation from (instrumental or technological) Reason” (a “straw man”

for Nietzsche if ever he imagined one!) – what Cacciari (‘K’, p.66) rightfully mocks as “tardo-romantiche, geniali ‘creativita’”.

This Marcusean link between Foucault first and then, as a “radicalization” of his approach, people like Deleuze, is sharply drawn by JG Merquior in his delightful “stroncatura” [Umberto Eco’s word for critical “truncation”] of Foucault’s inveterate charlatanry in an erudite work titled ‘Foucault’ (at pp.100-101). But Merquior fails to distinguish, as we are vigourously attempting to do here, between Nietzsche’s own uncompromising “eristic” denial of anything resembling a “common humanity” or of ludicrous notions such as “the irreducible variety of human nature” - let alone Marx’s species-conscious being! - and the absurd post-structuralist parody of his work in just such an “emancipatory” light.

(As with Deleuze, we shall not trouble with Giorgio Agamben’s delirious nonsense either. Utterly ludicrous is his maladroit and “gauche” [even before it is “gauchiste”!] attempt at the critique of capitalism in his ‘What Is An Apparatus?’’ which takes up Foucault’s original confabulatory notion of “dispositif”. One cannot but laugh at the pathetic manner in which all these “philosophes” seek to depict themselves as opponents of capitalism without having even the slightest clue as to what “capitalism” actually “is”! One can only imagine the loud laughter bellowing out of Westminster and Whitehall or Montecitorio and Palazzo Chigi by the representatives of the European bourgeoisie if indeed the insurgent forces in Europe had only the ideas of people such as these with which to oppose the capitalist Leviathan! By contrast, Antonio Negri’s own peccadillos [with the lamentable Michael Hardt] in this regard need quite deservedly to be excused in light of the vital political support he received from the Parisian neo-Nietzschean and Althusserian academic circles in his terrifyng fight to avoid a lifetime jail sentence in Italy – something to which I was witness in a Paris encounter with Negri in July 1988. Negri’s own independent efforts before his exile and, after his return to Italy, his studies on Spinoza, deserve far greater credit and will be reviewed in our study on Marx’s ‘Grundrisse’.)

Merquior is right to point out that paradoxically the very post-structuralist “de-construction” of the Subject (mirroring and extending the earlier structuralist ob-literation of it in reified “structures” or “semiology”) ends up re-introducing all the nauseous nonsense about “the liberation of man” and the absurd dilution of “power” to a meaningless ubi-quity (“power under the table”, I once dubbed it, but see Merquior’s devastating critique of Foucault’s vapid vapourisation of the concept in Ch.8 of his study). Justly poking as much fun as he can at these laughable notions, Merquior, quoting Hayden White, speaks of “the subjectification of objectification”!

“Alienating history, therefore, works as a full prop of the Foucauldian purpose: the critical grasp of modernity as a mode of existence. [Hayden] White puts Foucault in a structuralist wing which he labels ‘dispersive’ because it glories in the ‘mystery’ of the ‘irreducible variety of human nature’. Instead of integrating differences into a common humanitas, ‘dispersive’ structuralists rejoice in cultural heterogeneity, in the social dispersal and differentiation of man,” (p.72).

It is precisely such a generic (necessarily and paradoxically “humanistic” – whence “the subjectification of objectification”) notion of “man” that Nietzsche would have condemned fiercely! Just how little Foucault understood Nietzsche – and how much he distorted his philosophy – can be discerned from one of his early essays (1964,

a contribution to the well-known Cahier de Royaumont on Nietzsche) encyclopaedically titled ‘Nietzsche, Freud, Marx’ (surely an allusion to the Master, Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Hegel-Marx-Nietzsche’?) in which, writes Merquior,

“Foucault attributes to the trio a position which in fact belongs eminently to Nietzsche. The position consists in holding that every interpretandum is already an interpretation. The death of interpretation, says Foucault, is the belief that there are signs of something, that is to say, some hidden essence waiting for us at the end of our interpretive journeys; ‘the life of interpretation is, on the contrary, to believe that there are only interpretations,” (p.74).

Yet we know very well from our present study – and again it is a distinction that Merquior fails to draw - that even Nietzsche (let alone Marx, in whose regard Foucault’s comments are simply laughable) does believe that there are “signs”, and “symptoms” and “symbols” aplenty that can be “interpreted” pragmatically in history! Nietzsche, to say it once more, was far too penetrating and serious a thinker not to see that “elephants all the way down” (Lukacs’s derisive reference in ‘GuK’ to “the critical mind” that when told how “the earth rests on the back of an elephant” queries on what the elephant rests and is satisfied with the answer that the elephant stands on the back of another elephant!) is nothing on which to build a philosophy, let alone a life, as he did! True it is, as Merquior cites Foucault, that for Nietzsche “interpretation has become an infinite task”: – but this must be read in the context of “the Eternal Return” and its precise ontological context in which “interpretations” belong in the “intra-temporal” and “intra-mundane” (or “ontic”) sphere of life and the world which is, in turn, en-compassed by Nietzsche’s entirely original vision of the Will to Power as the new Weltprincip: “It is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their impulses for and against,” (Aph.481, ‘Will To Power’).

“Needs” inter-pret the world, that is, stand between us and the world – certainly not “values” or “interpretations”! This is the vice of all neo-Nietzschean readings of Nietzsche – that they ignore completely the “physiology” of his ontology, the “materiality” of his Entwurf, and therefore the “pragmatism” of his “Semeiotik” or “Symptomatologie” (remember that CS Peirce, one of the founders of “semeiotics”, was also a “pragmatist”). Alain Badiou is yet another paragon of this appalling mis-interpretation (see his L’ Anti-philosophie de Nietzsche):

Il faut donc l’entendre au sens fort: lorsque Nietzsche dit «ce qui a besoin d’être prouvé ne vaut pas grand-chose », c’est un jugement essentiel, parce que, bien entendu, le valoir, l’évaluation est justement l’opération clé chez Nietzsche, car … la philosophie nietzschéenne est fondamentalement une philosophie de l’évaluation, de la transvaluation et, en tant que ses 2 opérations sont les 2 opérations clé de cette pensée, elle s’adresse à ce qui vaut de manière essentielle ou elle interroge tout ce qui est en tant qu’il vaut,” (pp4-5).

But Badiou clearly contradicts himself in mid-sentence! Because if “Nietzsche’s philosophy addresses all that has essential value or it interrogates whatever is to the extent that it has value”, then it is as clear as daylight that Nietzsche’s philosophy goes well beyond “values” because “it addresses… essential value” and “it interrogates whatever is” – which is to say that it is far more than “a philosophy of evaluation”, a mere “critique of values”, but aims instead at an ontological yet pragmatic de-finition of life and the world by way of a “trans-valuation of all values”!

When finally Badiou confronts the question of Da-sein (“il y a”), he acknowledges that this “being there” is “inevaluable” (ineffable), and that all attempts to name it, to assign a “value” to being, amount to assertions of power (the infamous Foucauldian “enonce’”). Charlatanry of this magnitude never ceases to amaze and stupefy, nor should it! The entire “problem” of course, is precisely not to “value” the “inevaluable” or to name the “ineffable” – just as one should not try to stop the unstoppable force! -, but to delineate pragmatically the manifestations and forms of being, of life and the world, so that philosophy may suggest a way of life! Contrasted to Badiou’s and Deleuze’s cretinously delirious sophistry, Nietzsche’s “ontogeny of thought” is a paradigm of incisive sociological acumen that these pathetic epigones can only dimly perceive, let alone comprehend!

(Just to exemplify the bizarre stupidity of Badiou, he pretends to show that Nietzsche was not a “counter-revolutionary” by arguing that he chastised past revolutionaries only because “they were failed revolutionaries”! [See the section on “l’interpretation heidegerienne”.] Mystifyingly, Badiou, hoping perhaps for the next succes de scandale, devotes nearly his entire study to a serious analysis of Nietzsche’s writings, letters and notes dated 1888, a year when sadly the philosopher of Rocken had already succumbed to mental illness! Faced with such nonsense, one begins to understand why French philosophes cut so miserable a figure vis-a-vis the majesty of their German counterparts. Badiou’s discussion of the motley collection on Nietzsche that goes under the title of Cahier de Royaumont [under the title “acte et nihilisme”, see also reference above to Foucault’s contribution discussed by Merquior, which Badiou also treats next under the title “Nietzsche par Foucault”], and particularly the absurd praise he heaps on Deleuze’s utterly insensate concluding remarks [which he quotes at length!] must rank among the most bathetic exercises in sycophancy in the history of philosophy!)

Again, returning to Merquior, he cunningly cites Max Weber’s allusion to Nietzsche, “history enjoys eternal youth”, explaining that “it amounts to a permanent creation, knowing neither causal law nor final goal” (p.72). As a “negative” description of Nietzsche’s vision of history and time, this is in perfect harmony with our interpretation. But it leaves out the most important part – the “positive” part (in ontological terms) about the role of the Wille zur Macht and (in terms of social analysis) its “embodiment” (or Entseelung) as Rationalisierung in the “Entwicklung” of life and the world, in the Eternal Return which is, as we expounded earlier, neither a “cosmological” (exact) nor a “historical” (cyclical) re-currence of historical events.

Merquior is entirely right to warn that with Nietzsche “truth is overpowered by wanton will – and history as a former knowledge becomes just a free-for-all for warring perspectives,” (p.74). Yet, and this may be taken to be the entire rationale of our work, such “humanistic” protestations, however “admirable” and “principled”, are easily countered and dismissed as sheer Wille zur Ohnmacht not just “theoretically” by Nietzsche or even by us, but worse still by the very crushing “reality” of the historical record itself (one may wish to recall here James Joyce’s devastating vision of history in Ulysses as “a nightmare from which I am yet to awake”), and worst of all by present forces, still horrifyingly active and real (those that instill “the worst fear that can ever be hurled, […] threatening my baby,

unborn and unnamed”, Bob Dylan in Masters of War) and for whom Nietzsche’s philosophy is a veritable “operation manual” on how to rule the world! Much more than humanistic shibboleths are needed to counter Nietzsche’s challenge – for in Nietzsche the negatives Denken finds that unity of theory and practice that Marx may be said to have sketched for the party of human emancipation and that Gramsci called “the philosophy of praxis”.

Squarely on this point, one where Merquior again hits the mark, is his derisively contemptuous and sardonic “stroncatura” of the Foucauldian well-nigh meaningless concept of “discourse” (and “statement”, enonce’) and its “neo-Nietzschean” per-version of Nietzsche’s valiant and astonishingly insightful description of “the Will to Truth”:

“In no time the leader of the growing legion of neo-Nietzscheans would salute in Foucault ‘the conquistador of this terra incognita where a literary form, a scientific proposition, a daily sentence, a schizophrenic nonsense, etc. are equally statements, despite their lack of a common measure. As Deleuze explains in the same breath, the flaw in Bachelard is that he still insisted on separating science from poetry. Nobody runs such a risk with neo-Nietzscheans,” [!] (pp.83-4).

(One is reminded here of Althusser’s analogous literally extravagant claim that Marx had discovered “a new continent of knowledge” – which he proceeded to substantiate [one should say, “excoriate”!] with the most appalling “structuralist” charlatanry [cf. his ‘Reading Capital’].)

We can only characterize as “inqualifiable” Deleuze’s insistence in Nietzsche et la Philosophie that Nietzsche’s philosophy is not about “struggle” – supported (would you believe?) by a solitary allusion to the German philosopher’s saying that he was “much too well-bred to struggle”! To prove that we are not making this up and to illustrate Deleuze’s “temerary” imbecility, we can do no more than quote him in full:

“One cannot overemphasise the extent to which the notions of struggle, war, rivalry or even comparison are foreign to Nietzsche and to his conception of the will to power, (p.82, Deleuze’s emphasis!)

In his stultified attempt to shield Nietzsche from the consequences of his eristic philosophy, Deleuze’s “beautiful soul” conveniently forgets (something that Nietzsche would view with contempt) that struggle, strife and conflict are the very essence of the negatives Denken (from Schopenhauer onwards) and of Nietzsche’s “ontogeny of thought”, that in Nietzsche’s unforgettable words (already quoted earlier, but re-proposed here to dismiss Deleuze’s charlatanry once and for all): -

259…[L]ife itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation [Ausbeutung]; -- but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy -- must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire

ascendancy - not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power . (BGE)

We refuse adamantly to fathom the oceanic depths of execrable stupidity that Deleuze’s work has “inspired” in his acolytes and epigones (from Nancy to Agamben to Hardt).

As this study is hopefully making clear, and will do so more emphatically and precisely in the pages that follow, for Nietzsche “the rationalization of the world”, its dis-enchantment and de-spiritualisation are an ineluctable “destiny” within the “logic of the Wille zur Macht” (see Part Two) dictated by the “need-necessity” of the “ontology of thought” that we have traced out. Far from crudely denying the scientific process as an illusory figment or imaginary fabrication or a mere “discourse” or “statement”, we will show how Nietzsche identified the frightful “effectiveness” of mathesis as an instrument of the Will to Power. Nietzsche draws no distinction between “consciousness” as an inevitable aspect of “socialization”, as a “distancing” of thinking from “the body”, from the “instincts” as a consequence of social interaction – inevitable because of “need-necessity” -, and, at the same time, the “Cultur” (the mirror-imaging) to which this “socialization” gives rise and that provides the fertile soil on which the “bad conscience” of ressentiment and the nihilistic-rationalistic Entseelung will flourish. But this latter development still leaves room “effectively” for “resolve” (Gewissen) which is the Will exercising its Power in the “distance of Pathos” whereby the “instincts” manifest their affirmation of their “freedom”, intended as domination and overpowering and “overcoming”.

Thus, consciousness (whence Schopenhauer’s con-scientia and sym-pathy are derived) must be distinguished from resolve (Gewissen - Nietzsche’s “distance of Pathos” or “competence to promise”) not as states of “false consciousness” and “authenticity”, respectively, as all the romantic idealists from Lukacs to Foucault would have them. Although ideally, so to speak, Nietzsche hankered for that “forgetful” and “blame-less” state of the herd in the fields, for the “mimesis” with “nature” (“naturalism of morality”) where the Will to Power still presides and rules but without the “reflective distancing”, the “mirroring”, the “out-of-body” experience of consciousness, - he never lost sight of the “reality of the Rationalisierung” – of its “effectiveness”! – as the imposition of the Will to Power. In Heidegger’s languorous words (Nietzsche, Vol 2 p.148), “at the end of Nietzsche’s metaphysics stands the statement: ‘Homo est brutum bestiale’”.

It is this resolve (or conscience) that makes possible the terrifying state of mind of the Wanderer (to be discussed later in Part Two). And in this lies the fundamental importance of “tragedy” for Nietzsche, namely, in the fact that this consciousness and this Cultur with its Rationalisierung disguised first, in its ascendant phase, as Vergeistigung (the pro-gress of the Spirit in the world as Hegel’s “ruse of reason” or Weltweisheit) and then, in its “bureaucratic and technological” phase, as Entseelung (Weber’s dis-enchantment, alienation), becomes the necessary instrument and vehicle (Trager) of the social and cultural affirmation of the Will to Power by “those who know” and who do not “misunderstand the body” – by the Ubermenschen of the grosse Politik! The greatness of Nietzsche is to have theorised this inextricable double aspect (Doppelcharakter) of “Cultur and Zivilisation”, as Ver-geistigung (the ascetic-idealistic aspect of “interiorisation”

[Verinnerlichung]) and Ent-seelung (the institutional “iron cage” [stahlhartes Gehause] of Weberian fame), where his confused neo-Nietzschean hagiographers, from Lefebvre to Klossowski and Agamben, champion him as the romantic opponent of the latter and the humanist messiah of a “biopolitical” version of the former!

The Ontogeny of Thought – TwoNietzsche’s Eristic Genealogy of Law and Political Economy

A. Will to Power As Resolve and Standard of Value

Nietzsche's Knowledge, Reading, and Critique of Political EconomyThomas H. BrobjerJournal of Nietzsche StudiesNo. 18 (FALL 1999), pp. 56-70

Not only is “consciousness”, this simulacrum of “sociability”, this velleity of “humanity”, this patina of civility, this “everyday self” – this Vermittlung (mediation) of different “instincts of freedom”, of Wills to Power -, not only is it a “danger”, a “disease”, but it is so for a far greater reason than the “epistemological” or even “metaphysical” rodomontades of idealist philosophy, “the toils of grammar” (subject, object), or the “obscure veil” of “noumena” and “phenomena”, of which we cannot even speak (cf. Wittgenstein). It is so because this shadowy, mystified world of “Sprache-Metaphysik” (language metaphysics) and “reverences”, of “idolatry” and “slave morality” – this “most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined” - is “politically harmful”, because it induces us to accept and even pro-mote the Demokratisierung, the behaviour of the “Man-Herd”, the “Species”: - a behaviour, a “politics” that even its Rationalisierung and its pragmatic “utility” cannot redeem (an allusion perhaps to Peirce and James) and one that, in its “political manifestations” such as the Demokratisierung, actually pre-vents or emasculates the grosse Politik.

To be able to act politically, in relation to other humans, man must be able “to digest” experiences – to select from the totality of past moments, those that are important and those that are not. Without “memory” action would be impossible because (as for Benjamin Colton in William Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury’) without the power “to retain” experiences, life would be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Yet similarly, action would also not be possible without forgetfulness, because like a man who cannot digest, such dyspepsia of the mind would not allow the “meta-bolism” (Greek for “change and assimilation”) necessary for the “selection” of past moments now “frozen” in historical time. So the “paradox” arises of how “memory” is possible, given that forgetfulness must have been, by analogy with the rest of the animal world, the original condition of human beings.

Ess2,1. The breeding of an animal that can promise - is not this just that very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is that not the very problem of man? The fact that this problem has been to a great extent solved, must appear all the more phenomenal to one who can estimate at its full

value that force of forgetfulness which works in opposition to it. Forgetfulness is no mere vis inertiae, as the superficial believe, rather is it a power of obstruction, active and in the strictest sense of the word, positive — a power responsible for the fact that what we have lived, experienced, taken into ourselves, no more enters into consciousness during the process of digestion (it might be called psychic absorption) than all the whole manifold process by which our physical nutrition, the so-called "incorporation," is carried on. The temporary shutting of the doors and windows of consciousness, the relief from the clamant alarums and excursions, with which our subconscious world of servant organs works in mutual co-operation and antagonism; a little quietude, a little tabula rasa of the consciousness so as to make room again for the new, and above all for the more noble functions and functionaries, room for government and foresight, predetermination (for our organism is an oligarchic model) – this is the utility, as I have said, of the active forgetfulness - which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why, it is that there can exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real present, without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is something more than a comparison—he can "get rid of" nothing. But this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of robust health, has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check—in the cases, namely, where promises have to be made;—so that it is by no means a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which one cannot dispose of, but an active refusal to get rid of it, a continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual memory of the will, so that between the original "I will," “I shall do” and the actual discharge of the will, its act we can easily interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will.

But what is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How thoroughly, in order to be able to regulate the future in this way, must man have first learnt to distinguish between necessitated and accidental phenomena, to think causally, to see the distant as present and to anticipate it, to fix with certainty what is the end, and what is the means to that end; above all, to reckon, to have power to calculate — how thoroughly must man have first become calculable, disciplined, necessitated even for himself and his own conception of himself, that, like a man entering into a promise, he could guarantee himself as a future.

1. Ein Thier heranzüchten, das versprechen darf — ist das nicht gerade jene paradoxe Aufgabe selbst, welche sich die Natur in Hinsicht auf den Menschen gestellt hat? ist es nicht das eigentliche Problem vom Menschen?… Dass dies Problem bis zu einem hohen Grad gelöst ist, muss Dem um so erstaunlicher erscheinen, der die entgegen wirkende Kraft, die der Vergesslichkeit, vollauf zu würdigen weiss. Vergesslichkeit ist keine blosse vis inertiae, wie die Oberflächlichen glauben, sie ist vielmehr ein aktives, im strengsten Sinne positives Hemmungsvermögen, dem es zuzuschreiben ist, dass was nur von uns erlebt, erfahren, in uns hineingenommen wird, uns im Zustande der Verdauung (man dürfte ihn „Einverseelung“ nennen) ebenso wenig in's Bewusstsein tritt, als der ganze tausendfältige Prozess, mit dem sich unsre leibliche Ernährung, die sogenannte „Einverleibung“ abspielt. Die Thüren und Fenster des Bewusstseins zeitweilig schliessen; von dem Lärm und Kampf, mit dem unsre Unterwelt von dienstbaren Organen für und gegen einander arbeitet, unbehelligt bleiben; ein wenig Stille, ein wenig tabula rasa des Bewusstseins, damit wieder Platz wird für Neues, vor Allem für die vornehmeren Funktionen und Funktionäre, für Regieren, Voraussehn, Vorausbestimmen (denn unser Organismus ist oligarchisch eingerichtet) — das ist der Nutzen der, wie gesagt, aktiven Vergesslichkeit, einer Thürwärterin gleichsam, einer Aufrechterhalterin der seelischen Ordnung, der Ruhe, der Etiquette: womit sofort abzusehn ist, inwiefern es kein Glück, keine Heiterkeit, keine Hoffnung, keinen Stolz, keine Gegenwart geben könnte ohne Vergesslichkeit. Der Mensch, in dem dieser Hemmungsapparat beschädigt wird und aussetzt, ist einem Dyspeptiker zu vergleichen (und nicht nur zu vergleichen — ) er wird mit Nichts „fertig“ … Eben dieses nothwendig vergessliche Thier, an dem das Vergessen eine Kraft, eine Form der starken Gesundheit darstellt, hat sich nun ein Gegenvermögen angezüchtet, ein Gedächtniss, mit Hülfe dessen für gewisse Fälle die Vergesslichkeit ausgehängt wird, — für die Fälle nämlich, dass versprochen werden soll: somit keineswegs bloss ein passivisches Nicht-wieder-los-werden-können des einmal eingeritzten Eindrucks, nicht bloss die Indigestion an einem ein Mal verpfändeten Wort, mit dem man nicht wieder fertig wird, sondern ein aktives Nicht-wieder-los-werden-wollen, ein Fort- und Fortwollen des ein Mal Gewollten, ein eigentliches Gedächtniss des Willens: so dass zwischen das ursprüngliche „ich will“ „ich werde thun“ und die eigentliche Entladung des Willens, seinen Akt, unbedenklich eine Welt von neuen fremden Dingen, Umständen, selbst Willensakten dazwischengelegt

werden darf, ohne dass diese lange Kette des Willens springt. Was setzt das aber Alles voraus! Wie muss der Mensch, um dermaassen über die Zukunft voraus zu verfügen, erst gelernt haben, das nothwendige vom zufälligen Geschehen scheiden, causal denken, das Ferne wie gegenwärtig sehn und vorwegnehmen, was Zweck ist, was Mittel dazu ist, mit Sicherheit ansetzen, überhaupt rechnen, berechnen können, — wie muss dazu der Mensch selbst vorerst berechenbar, regelmässig, nothwendig geworden sein, auch sich selbst für seine eigne Vorstellung, um endlich dergestalt, wie es ein Versprechender thut, für sich als Zukunft gut sagen zu konnen!

An aphorism this, to ironise Nietzsche’s reasoning here, of “incalculable” importance! To think causally! It is the interaction with other “wills”, then, the exchange of promises, that occasions the development of memory; and it is the measurement and calculability of the surrounding world that allows the pro-jection of future actions and exchanges (literally, in financial parlance, of “futures”). In actual fact, as a matter of pure observation or perception, without “memory” life would be for humans truly “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury” – and just as lack of memory is the essential characteristic of “idiocy” (as in William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury”), equally it is the presence of memory that makes possible what Nietzsche will occasionally deprecate as the “calculability” and “regimentation” that industrial and commercial society brings (as in Jason Colton, to return to Faulkner, the infamously cynical character in his novel whose mind is “glued” to the Wall Street “ticker”; in BGE Nietzsche will poke fun at this “regimentation” of metropolitan life in the New World).

The inability “to draw causal links between events” because of the limited “mnemonic” powers or “forgetfulness” of the “idiot” (the term is used in its psychological acceptation, of course) is counterbalanced by the “memory” that can permit the attribution of calculation and causality – the essential ingredients of “responsibility”. Only through “forgetfulness” is it possible “to act”: a human being that does not forget is like one who is not able to sleep or to digest (“Use and Abuse of History”, ‘UB’, Aph.1, and quotation above). Action requires only so much “historical sense”. Too much of it and “knowledge will overpower life” and make action impossible. Forgetfulness is our most “natural state”; and “memory” had to be “conquered” by an immense effort of will – a “memory of the will” – that enabled human beings “to make promises”, to become “competent to promise” and therefore “reliable”, “calculating” and “measuring” – and thereby “to think causally”!

2. This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable….

2. Eben das ist die lange Geschichte von der Herkunft der Verantwortlichkeit. Jene Aufgabe, ein Thier heranzuzüchten, das versprechen darf, schliesst, wie wir bereits begriffen haben, als Bedingung und Vorbereitung die nähere Aufgabe in sich, den Menschen zuerst bis zu einem gewissen Grade nothwendig, einförmig, gleich unter Gleichen, regelmässig und folglich berechenbar zu machen. (GM)

2…If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom [Sittlichkeit der Sitte] finally bring to light that to which it was only the means [Mittel], then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous " super-moral " individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually exclusive terms),—in short, the man of

the personal [eignen, intrinsic], long and independent will, competent to promise [der versprechen darf] and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom [Macht- und Freiheits-Bewusstsein], a feeling of human perfection [Vollendungs-Gefuhl] in general….

Stellen wir uns dagegen an's Ende des ungeheuren Prozesses, dorthin, wo der Baum endlich seine Früchte zeitigt, wo die Societät und ihre Sittlichkeit der Sitte endlich zu Tage bringt, wozu sie nur das Mittel war: so finden wir als reifste Frucht an ihrem Baum das souveraine Individuum, das nur sich selbst gleiche, das von der Sittlichkeit der Sitte wieder losgekommene, das autonome übersittliche Individuum (denn „autonom“ und „sittlich“ schliesst sich aus), kurz den Menschen des eignen unabhängigen langen Willens, der versprechen darf — und in ihm ein stolzes, in allen Muskeln zuckendes Bewusstsein davon, was da endlich errungen und in ihm leibhaft geworden ist, ein eigentliches Macht- und Freiheits-Bewusstsein, ein Vollendungs-Gefühl des Menschen überhaupt. (GM)

And, as already adumbrated above, the whole genealogy of “retaliation” and “obligation” and “conscience”, culminating in the notion of “responsibility” calls for a re-examination of the “freedom of the will” – because the “Will to Power” or “the instinct of freedom” bears little resemblance to the Freiheit of Western metaphysics. The very fact that “responsibility” is a “duty” or a “calling” that represents the culmination, the apex, of an entire sequence of “physio-logical, natural events” (the tree bearing fruit) and institutions whose entire ec-sistence (Entstehung, “origin” as sprouting or “coming-into-being”) was effectively to be a means (Mittel) so that the person who is “competent to promise”, the “sovereign individual” can e-merge or “sprout” from such a “soil”, - this very “primordial fact” (Ur-Faktum) must entail that this sovereign individual musters the pre-existing or “stored-up force” (aufgestauter Kraft) at his disposal that pre-conditions the choices available to him! Again, in the Gaya Scienza Nietzsche lays emphasis on this critical “advance” of his (Fortschritt, forward step; one that will play a central role in Weber’s political theory):

360. Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded.— It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances [Fortschritt] that I have learned to distinguish the cause of an action generally from the cause of an action in a particular manner, say, in this direction [Richtung], with this aim [Ziel]. The first kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force [aufgestauter Kraft], which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and definite manner: the Lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder.Among those insignificant hazards and Lucifer-matches I count all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called "occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed to see the impelling force [triebende Kraft] precisely in the aim (object, calling, &c.), according to a primeval error,—but it is only the directing force, the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And yet it is not even always a steersman, the directing force [dirigiende Kraft] .... Is the "aim", the "purpose," [“Zweck”] not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said that the ship follows the stream into which it has accidentally run? That it "wills" to go that way, because it must go that way? That it has a direction [Richtung], sure enough, but—not a steersman? We still require a criticism of the conception of "purpose." (GS)

360. Zwei Arten Ursache, die man verwechselt. — Das erscheint mir als einer meiner wesentlichsten Schritte und Fortschritte: ich lernte die Ursache des Handelns unterscheiden von der Ursache des So- und So-Handelns, des In-dieser Richtung-, Auf-dieses Ziel hin-Handelns. Die erste Art Ursache ist ein Quantum von

aufgestauter Kraft, welches darauf wartet, irgend wie, irgend wozu verbraucht zu werden; die zweite Art ist dagegen etwas an dieser Kraft gemessen ganz Unbedeutendes, ein kleiner Zufall zumeist, gemäss dem jenes Quantum sich nunmehr auf Eine und bestimmte Weise „auslöst“: das Streichholz im Verhältniss zur Pulvertonne. Unter diese kleinen Zufälle und Streichhölzer rechne ich alle sogenannten „Zwecke“, ebenso die noch viel sogenannteren „Lebensberufe“: sie sind relativ beliebig, willkürlich, fast gleichgültig im Verhältniss zu dem ungeheuren Quantum Kraft, welches darnach drängt, wie gesagt, irgendwie aufgebraucht zu werden. Man sieht es gemeinhin anders an: man ist gewohnt, gerade in dem Ziele (Zwecke, Berufe u.s.w.) die treibende Kraft zu sehn, gemäss einem uralten Irrthume, — aber er ist nur die dirigirende Kraft, man hat dabei den Steuermann und den Dampf verwechselt. Und noch nicht einmal immer den Steuermann, die dirigirende Kraft… Ist das „Ziel“, der „Zweck“ nicht oft genug nur ein beschönigender Vorwand, eine nachträgliche Selbstverblendung der Eitelkeit, die es nicht Wort haben will, dass das Schiff der Strömung folgt, in die es zufällig gerathen ist? Dass es dorthin „will“, weil es dorthin — muss? Dass es wohl eine Richtung hat, aber ganz und gar — keinen Steuermann? — Man bedarf noch einer Kritik des Begriffs „Zweck“.

That is why Nietzsche, when speaking of this “Steuermann”, places “free” in inverted commas – because it is a special “kind” [Art] of “freedom” that he considers. “Freedom” is merely a “store of force”, a “potentiality”, an incalculable energy that can be “exercised” or “ad-opted” responsibly by those who have the necessary “resolve” (Ge-wissen, “certainty”, often but not very accurately translated as “conscience”), who are aware of the “limits” of their “aim” or “purpose”, those who are “competent to promise”. And it is precisely this “resolve”, this mixture of certainty and a-wareness – this “responsibility” or “accountability” –, this “resolute conscience” that determines the ultimate “test” of wills, the “measure” of force against force, - the measure or “standard of value”.

2…The “free man”, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds this possession his standard of value : looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the “ teeth of fate,” [“gegen das Schicksal”] — so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over destiny [Geschick], has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct - what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience [Gewissen]…

Der „freie“ Mensch, der Inhaber eines langen unzerbrechlichen Willens, hat in diesem Besitz auch sein Werthmaass: von sich aus nach den Andern hinblickend, ehrt er oder verachtet er; und eben so nothwendig als er die ihm Gleichen, die Starken und Zuverlässigen (die welche versprechen dürfen) ehrt, — also Jedermann, der wie ein Souverain verspricht, schwer, selten, langsam, der mit seinem Vertrauen geizt, der auszeichnet, wenn er vertraut, der sein Wort giebt als Etwas, auf das Verlass ist, weil er sich stark genug weiss, es selbst gegen Unfälle, selbst „gegen das Schicksal“ aufrecht zu halten —: eben so nothwendig wird er seinen Fusstritt für die schmächtigen Windhunde bereit halten, welche versprechen, ohne es zu dürfen, und seine Zuchtruthe für den Lügner, der sein Wort bricht, im Augenblick schon, wo er es im Munde hat. Das stolze Wissen um das ausserordentliche Privilegium der Verantwortlichkeit, das Bewusstsein dieser seltenen Freiheit, dieser Macht über sich und das Geschick hat sich bei ihm bis in seine unterste Tiefe hinabgesenk und ist zum Instinkt geworden, zum dominirenden Instinkt: — wie wird er ihn heissen, diesen dominirenden Instinkt, gesetzt, dass er ein Wort dafür bei sich nöthig hat? Aber es ist kein Zweifel: dieser souveraine Mensch heisst ihn sein Gewissen…

So this is “the standard of value” – indeed “the measure of value” [Werthmaass]: it is “responsibility”, the “consciousness of the sovereign individual [who has] this power over destiny [that] has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct”! This is the meaning of “resolve” (“conscience”, Gewissen). It is deceptive here to translate Nietzsche’s word “Gewissen” with “con-science”. The word “con-science” (con-scientia, common knowledge) is too redolent of that “inter-subjectivity”, of that universal “oceanic feeling”, of the “sym-pathy” or “com-passion” (Mit-Leid) that Schopenhauer names and indicates as the ultimate “root” (Wurzel) of ethics and moral behaviour. Clearly, Nietzsche would never tolerate such a “universal humanistic” notion. By “Ge-wissen” Nietzsche intends the “literal” meaning of the word – “certainty”, firm knowledge. This “Ge-wissen”, this “certainty” represents the opposite of the “moral com-pulsion” denoted by “con-science”. On the contrary, Nietzsche wishes to emphasise the “internal im-pulsion”, the “drive” or “motive” that “im-pels” the maker of a “promise”, the “ower”, from the height of his “competence to promise”, to be “certain” of being able to keep it!

B. Price As Punishment

Whereas “conscience” preserves the “intelligible freedom” of the Will, of one’s conscience or “soul”, “Gewissen” stresses the “certainty”, the necessary awareness and “drive” that comes from the “instinct of freedom”, from the “Will to Power”.

4… Have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral idea of "ought" originates from the very material idea of "owe"? Or that punishment developed as a retaliation absolutely independently of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or un-freedom of the will?...

Haben sich diese bisherigen Genealogen der Moral auch nur von Ferne Etwas davon träumen lassen, dass zum Beispiel jener moralische Hauptbegriff „Schuld“ seine Herkunft aus denn sehr materiellen Begriff „Schulden“ genommen hat? Oder dass die Strafe als eine Vergeltung sich vollkommen abseits von jederVoraussetzung über Freiheit oder Unfreiheit des Willens entwickelt hat?

Throughout the longest period of human history, punishment was never based on the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action, and was consequently not based on the hypothesis that only the guilty should be punished ;—on the contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days for the same reason that parents punish their children even nowadays, out of anger at an injury that they have suffered, an anger which vents itself spontaneously [sich auslasst] on the author of the injury — but this anger is kept in bounds and modified through the idea that every injury has somewhere or other its equivalent price, and can really be paid off, even though it be by means of pain to the author. Whence is it that this ancient deep-rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has drawn its strength, this idea of an equivalency between injury and pain? I have already revealed its origin, in the contractual relationship between creditor and ower, that is as old as the existence of “legal rights” at all, and in its turn points back to the primary forms of purchase, sale, barter, and trade.

Es ist die längste Zeit der menschlichen Geschichte hindurch durchaus nicht gestraft worden, weil man den Übelanstifter für seine That verantwortlich machte, also nicht unter der Voraussetzung, dass nur der Schuldige zu strafen sei: — vielmehr, so wie jetzt noch Eltern ihre Kinder strafen, aus Zorn über einen erlittenen Schaden, der sich am Schädiger auslässt, — dieser Zorn aber in Schranken gehalten und modifizirt durch die Idee, dass jeder Schaden irgend worin sein Äquivalent habe und wirklich abgezahlt werden könne,

sei es selbst durch einen Schmerz des Schädigers. Woher diese uralte, tiefgewurzelte, vielleicht jetzt nicht mehr ausrottbare Idee ihre Macht genommen hat, die Idee einer Äquivalenz von Schaden und Schmerz? Ich habe es bereits verrathen: in dem Vertragsverhältniss zwischen Gläubiger und Schuldner, das so alt ist als es überhaupt „Rechtssubjekte“ giebt und seinerseits wieder auf die Grundformen von Kauf, Verkauf, Tausch, Handel und Wandel zurückweist.

Extraordinary stuff! (Even more extraordinary is the complete, total, “idiotic” inability of people like Deleuze or Foucault or Derrida so much as to mention [!] this entire “onto-geny” [“paradoxical”, Nietzsche calls it], let alone [psycho]-analyse it!) Not only is there no “freedom of will” involved here; not only is “retaliation” a purely “mechanical” retributive response – but also Nietzsche makes obvious again and again that he is not talking about “history” in the “historicist sense” (!), but rather of “the longest time”, of “destiny and fate”, of “innermost depths”, of “instincts” – to which, with ferocious realism and antithesis, he even gives the name of “conscience” (almost a piercing sarcastic dart thrown at Schopenhauer’s “con-scientia”)!

The notion that “value” or “price” constitutes a “balance or exchange of utilities” between seller and purchaser is thus exploded! “The price to be paid” refers to the “penalty” that the injurer (ower) must “suffer” so as to “satisfy” the “injured” party (the creditor). (Cf. here the Italian “pena”, which stands for “pain” and “punishment” to compensate for “injury”.) Nor does “price” constitute a “balance of forces or of values” – for no such “equi-librium” or “Aquivalenz” is possible with Nietzsche! Once again, Nietzsche understands by “balance of forces” not their “equi-valence” or “mutual neutralization”, but the active “matching” of one force against the other as judged by the holder of the “balance”, the “scales” (Wagschalen) that can be likened also to the “scales of justice”! (With remarkable perspicuity, Merquior detects this subtle and rare interpretation of Nietzsche’s expression “the balance of forces” in the Meditations: “Has he not taught that truth is not objectivity but a will to ‘justice’ [Thoughts Out of Season, II, 6]? Justice, to be sure, in the hands of hanging judges, strong personalities whose very vitality puts them high above the mass of mankind” [p.74].)

“Price” and “debt” always and everywhere must be approached from the “active” side – just as “law” and “justice” must: and the active side is that of the strong who impose the price on the weak without the prior intervention or “mediation” of a “free will”: - “punishment” is a “pain” that is inflicted by the “injured” party (creditor) as an “anger that vents itself mechanically on the author (of the “debt”, the “ower” or “Schuldner”, the party at fault)!

No equi-valence, no equality of “values”, no equi-librium is possible in contractual transactions – for the simple and overwhelming reason that there is no “sub-stratum of value” that can make such “equi-valence” possible! There is no “balance-of-forces” because the “forces” do not respond to a “common” metre or measure, they cannot be “reconciled”. Rather, there is a “resultant of forces” that “vye with one another”, that joust incessantly for domination and overpowering that has no “common” object or stake or prize or “utility” or goal or purpose. Similarly, no “reconciliation”, however dialectically “mediated” (as in Hegel), or phenomenologically (in Heidegger) or “bio-politically” (Foucault) is allowed in the act of “consciousness” – there is no “Aufhebung”, no negation,

or negation of the negation, no “authenticity”, no “liberation” because there is no “inter-esse” over which different “wills” may hope “to reconcile” themselves or to be reconciled!

The “Will to Power”, the “instinct of freedom” is a “stored-up force” that is “physio-logical” in nature, a force that contains in its “material” traits the “genealogy” of its “destiny” – a “drive” that can be “traced back historically”, like a “fossil” that is still extant, like a virus neither dead nor living; - not through its passive “function” or as-signed “utility”, but rather through its “self-assertion”, its “instinctive-ness”, its irrepressible violence. In this regard, Nietzsche’s conception of “genealogical history” – and here one is reminded of his preoccupation with the origins of the Greek “ghens” or nobility, whence “gene” and “genealogy” – is comparable to psycho-analytic anamnesis (recollection) or analepsis (flash-back), or even hypnosis used in the reconstruction and the interpretation of dreams. In this praxis, “disease/malaise” or “illness” (Erkrankung, Krankenheit) are as “a-historical” as buried memories, - just like a virus or a gene, they have a “source” and “mutations” but no “history” because they are not human constructs; they can be “frozen in time” and hibernate, lie dormant like Camus’s plague. The same goes for the “history of the instincts”: this is a “force” that is not “com-mensurable” with any other, except in its “opposition” to others, except in its “conflict”, in its constant struggle to overwhelm, overturn and dominate another force, another Will!

5. The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as would be already expected from our previous observations), a great deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society which made or sanctioned them. In this society promises will be made ; in this society the object is to provide the promiser with a memory; in this society, so may we suspect, there will be full scope for hardness, cruelty, and pain: the "ower," in order to induce credit in his promise of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order to drill into his own conscience the duty, the solemn duty, of repayment, will, by virtue of a contract with his creditor to meet the contingency of his not paying, pledge something that he still possesses, something that he still has in his power, for instance, his life or his wife, or his freedom or his body…

5. Die Vergegenwärtigung dieser Vertragsverhältnisse weckt allerdings, wie es nach dem Voraus-Bemerkten von vornherein zu erwarten steht, gegen die ältere Menschheit, die sie schuf oder gestattete, mancherlei Verdacht und Widerstand. Hier gerade wird versprochen; hier gerade handelt es sich darum, Dem, der verspricht, ein Gedächtniss zu machen; hier gerade, so darf man argwöhnen, wird eine Fundstätte für Hartes, Grausames, Peinliches sein. Der Schuldner, um Vertrauen für sein Versprechen der Zurückbezahlung einzuflössen, um eine Bürgschaft für den Ernst und die Heiligkeit seines Versprechens zu geben, um bei sich selbst die Zurückbezahlung als Pflicht, Verpflichtung seinem Gewissen einzuschärfen, verpfändet Kraft eines Vertrags dem Gläubiger für den Fall, dass er nicht zahlt, Etwas, das er sonst noch „besitzt“, über das er sonst noch Gewalt hat, zum Beispiel seinen Leib oder sein Weib oder seine Freiheit oder auch sein Leben…

Let us make the logic of the whole of this equalisation process clear; it is strange enough. The equivalence consists in this : instead of an advantage directly compensatory of his injury (that is, instead of an equalisation in money, lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor is granted by way of repayment and compensation a certain sensation of satisfaction—the satisfaction of being able to vent, without any trouble, his power on one who is powerless,…

Machen wir uns die Logik dieser ganzen Ausgleichungsform klar: sie ist fremdartig genug. Die Äquivalenz ist damit gegeben, dass an Stelle eines gegen den Schaden direct aufkommenden Vortheils (also an Stelle eines Ausgleichs in Geld, Land, Besitz irgend welcher Art) dem Gläubiger eine Art Wohlgefühl als Rückzahlung und Ausgleich zugestanden wird, — das Wohlgefühl, seine Macht an einem Machtlosen unbedenklich auslassen zu dürfen,…

6. It is then in this sphere of the law of contract [Obligationen-Rechte] that we find the cradle [Entstehungsheerd – spring or source] of the whole moral world of the ideas of " guilt," " conscience," "duty," the "sacredness of duty," — their commencement, like the commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and continuously saturated with blood…

6. In dieser Sphäre, im Obligationen-Rechte also, hat die moralische Begriffswelt „Schuld“, „Gewissen“, „Pflicht“, „Heiligkeit der Pflicht“ ihren Entstehungsheerd, — ihr Anfang ist, wie der Anfang alles Grossen auf Erden, gründlich und lange mit Blut begossen worden…

In other words, long before our notions of “justice” and “compensation” and “fairness” became “pacified” with the “quantitative exchange” of commercial “values” (money, land), the primordial “equivalence” was the infliction of “violence”, the exertion of one’s “power” over a power-less “breaker of the promise” (Ver-brecher, “breaker”, the German word for “criminal”). Again, “contract” here does not even remotely stand for “agreement”, for a “meeting of minds” (the legal periphrasis for “contract” is itself most “revealing”), for “conciliation or reconciliation”! It stands for its opposite – for “obligation”, for “bond”, for “promises” founded on mutual fear and aggression. Contract is “war pursued by other means” (to invert VonClausewitz). It resembles in its realism Hobbes’s notion of the status civilis as a “contractual cessation of hostilities”, a suspension of civil war: – except that where Hobbes still admitted of a “forum internum” of reason and utility that founded the individual decision “to alienate” his “natural rights” so as to put a “contractual” end to civil war, Nietzsche cannot admit of such a “state by institution” but only of a “state by acquisition”, or rather “a state by violent, brutal imposition”. The “logic” of Nietzsche’s “contract” is the ability “to vent power [and punishment] on the powerless…” The world of morality, “like all great things in the world…is thoroughly and continuously saturated with blood…”! Far from being the “consensual fruits” of “utility and adaptation”, “all the great things in the world” originate from violence and struggle (recall Marx’s description of the rise of the bourgeoisie, “oozing blood from head to toe”!).

The historical origin of this “competence to promise”, of this “conscience-as-certainty”, of “resolve” and “responsibility”, can be found in “the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower”. It is in this “contractual” and exquisitely “economic” sphere that “person confronted person”, “person matched himself against person”! Far from an “agreement” or “co-operation” or “con-sensus”, let alone “conciliation”, we have “confrontation” and “combat” (“matching against”)!

8. The feeling of "ought," of personal obligation [Verpflichtung, impellent duty] (to take up again the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and ower: here it was that individual confronted individual, and that individual matched himself against individual. There has not yet been found a grade of civilization [Civilisation] so low, as not to manifest some trace of this relationship. Making prices, assessing values, thinking out equivalents, exchanging— that is what preoccupied the primal thinking [Denken] of man in such measure [in einem solche Maasse], that this in a certain sense is thinking itself: it was here that was trained the oldest form of sagacity, it was here in this sphere that we can perhaps trace the first commencement of man's pride, of his feeling of superiority over other animals.

8. Das Gefühl der Schuld, der persönlichen Verpflichtung, um den Gang unsrer Untersuchung wieder aufzunehmen, hat, wie wir sahen, seinen Ursprung in dem ältesten und ursprünglichsten

Personen-Verhältniss, das es giebt, gehabt, in dem Verhältniss zwischen Käufer und Verkäufer, Gläubiger und Schuldner: hier trat zuerst Person gegen Person, hier mass sich zuerst Person an Person. Man hat keinen noch so niedren Grad von Civilisation aufgefunden, in dem nicht schon Etwas von diesem Verhältnisse bemerkbar würde. Preise machen, Werthe abmessen, Äquivalente ausdenken, tauschen — das hat in einem solchen Maasse das allereste Denken des Menschen präoccupirt, dass es in einem gewissen Sinne das Denken ist: hier ist die älteste Art Scharfsinn herangezüchtet worden, hier möchte ebenfalls der erste Ansatz des menschlichen Stolzes, seines Vorrangs-Gefühls in Hinsicht auf anderes Gethier zu vermuthen sein.

So here is what marks the difference between Civilisation (Zivilisation) and Culture (Kultur)! The ability “to fight back” forgetfulness so as to become “competent to promise”, so as to abide by one’s “resolve” (Gewissen), the e-mergence of a “memory of the will” is connected with the “antagonism” that comes from a “clash of wills”. From this “clash”, this “conflict”, from the exertion of the “instinct of freedom”, human beings are forced to stake out their “need-necessity” against those of other human beings. And part of the self-preservation of humans consists in their ability to enter into agreements and therefore “to bind themselves” by means of “personal obligations” or contracts (Obligationen-Rechte). Memory or the fight against forgetfulness plays a vital role in the institutional “out-growth” or “result” (Folge) of these promises, of this conscience-as-certainty. And the “out-growth”, the “out-come” or “result” of this process is “Civilisation”.

Every exchange, trade and commerce and “the market” itself, are not a simple matter of “do ut des” (I give so that you may give), a mutually beneficial “utilitarian” exchange: there is much more “antagonism of values” than that! “Exchange” is the “clash” of op-posing wills. Every “sale and purchase”, no matter how “mutually beneficial” or “con-sensual”, involves a constant “confrontation of individual against individual” (“Person gegen Person”): “hier mach sich zuerst…” – here for the first time individual “measured” or “matched” himself against individual! Society and its institutions are nothing more than a physio-logical means (Mittel) to this “outcome” (Folge, result) – like a tree that bears fruit!

Not only! But this constant “measuring and matching” of wills, of “instincts of freedom”, becomes so intense, it “preoccupies the primal thoughts of man to such an extent that in a certain sense it is thinking itself”! In other words, the very ability “to think”, which involves that “struggle against forgetfulness”, that “will to remember” whereby “memory” introduces “history” to humanity and to that extent re-duces its ability for “happiness” – that “memory” that enables causal links to be made from the “measurement and matching” of “Person against Person” – that (!) is the very origin (Ursprung) of the human capacity for “thought”! And, as we have seen, also for the ability “to promise”, to enter binding commitments or “bonds” or “obligations”!

Nietzsche insists on the point so much that he stresses that not only did this occur in the remotest past, but also (much more important) it persists to the present: “dass es in einem gewissen Sinne das Denken ist [!]”) – “that is what in a certain sense ‘thinking’ is…” - to this day! And despite the consequent loss of “happiness” (Gluck) that memory begets, this complex “evolution” of thought and memory gave humans their sense of superiority over animals:

8… Perhaps our word "Mensch" (manas) still expresses just something of this self-pride: man denoted himself as the being who measures values, who values and measures, as the "assessing" animal par excellence [das „abschätzende Thier an sich“]. Sale and purchase, together with their psychological concomitants, are older than the origins of any form of social organisation and union : it is rather from the most rudimentary form of individual right that the budding consciousness [Gefuhl, feeling] of exchange, commerce, debt, right, obligation, compensation was first transferred to the rudest and most elementary of the social complexes (in their relation to similar complexes), together with the habit of comparing, measuring and calculating force with force, [better translation: zugleich mit der Gewohnheit, Macht an Macht zu vergleichen, zu messen, zu berechnen]. His eye was now focussed to this perspective ; and with that ponderous consistency characteristic of ancient thought, which, though set in motion with difficulty, yet proceeds inflexibly along the line on which it has started, man soon arrived at the great generalisation, "everything has its price, all can be paid for," the oldest and most naive moral canon of justice, the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity " in the world.

Justice in this initial phase is the goodwill among people of about equal power to come to terms with one another [sich mit einander abzufinden], to come to an “understanding” [“Verstandigen”] again by means of a settlement [Ausgleich], and with regard to the less powerful, to compel them to agree among themselves to a settlement.

8.…Vielleicht drückt noch unser Wort „Mensch“ (manas) gerade etwas von diesem Selbstgefühl aus: der Mensch bezeichnete sich als das Wesen, welches Werthe misst, werthet und misst, als das „abschätzende Thier an sich“. Kauf und Verkauf, sammt ihrem psychologischen Zubehör, sind älter als selbst die Anfänge irgend welcher gesellschaftlichen Organisationsformen und Verbände: aus der rudimentärsten Form desPersonen-Rechts hat sich vielmehr das keimende Gefühl von Tausch, Vertrag, Schuld, Recht, Verpflichtung, Ausgleich erst auf die gröbsten und anfänglichsten Gemeinschafts-Complexe (in deren Verhältniss zu ähnlichen Complexen) übertragen, zugleich mit der Gewohnheit, Macht an Macht zu vergleichen, zu messen, zu berechnen. Das Auge war nun einmal für diese Perspektive eingestellt: und mit jener plumpen Consequenz, die dem schwerbeweglichen, aber dann unerbittlich in gleicher Richtung weitergehenden Denken der älteren Menschheit eigenthümlich ist, langte man alsbald bei der grossen Verallgemeinerung an „jedes Ding hat ein Preis; Alles kann abgezahlt werden“ — dem ältesten und naivsten Moral-Kanon der Gerechtigkeit, dem Anfange aller „Gutmüthigkeit“, aller „Billigkeit“, alles „guten Willens“, aller „Objektivität“ auf Erden.Gerechtigkeit auf dieser ersten Stufe ist der gute Wille unter ungefähr Gleichmächtigen, sich mit einander abzufinden, sich durch einen Ausgleich wieder zu „verständigen“— und, in Bezug auf weniger Mächtige, diese unter sich zu einem Ausgleich zu zwingen. (GM)

C. Nietzsche and the Sphere of Exchange

As we saw earlier, justice is a “balance of forces”, not at all in the sense that these “forces” have found a “natural, harmonious and lasting equi-librium” – but in the sense that “justice” is the “balance” (or “scales”, Wagschalen!) with which the “op-posing and con-flicting forces” are “weighed”! Justice is likened to the “scales” that “weigh up”, not the different “rights” of the opposing parties, but their different, even “ir-reconcilable”, “weight (Wichtigkeit) and strength (Kraft)”! Justice is therefore only a temporary truce, yet another tactic or stratagem in the overall “strategies” of the warring factions, imposed by the dominant and overpowering party to secure the subservience of the dominated and overpowered.

At the core of all the “metaphysical needs” that Nietzsche denounces even in Schopenhauer’s “reversal” of the Kantian “thing-in-itself” with his own “Will-to-Life” is

this ultimate goal, this supreme attempt to find in life and the world a “homo-noia”, an “agreement” and “harmony”, an “equi-librium” - a “commutative justice”! – that “homo-logates”, that enables the “translation” and equi-paration of every element of the cosmos into every other element – a Leibnizian mathesis universalis, a “pre-established harmony” that is the apex of the Ratio-Ordo. Even Schopenhauer (!), the philosopher of Eris, the prophet of Heraclitean struggle and conflict, of Strife, had preferred in the end the renunciation (Entsagung) of the endless irrepressible strife of the Will-to-Life in the name of this “harmony”, this “homo-noia” – this Nirvana! – that is nothing other than the absurd “preference” for a metaphysical “Value” that he himself had agreed could not be found in life and the world (“Where is it written?” he asked Kant), but that he nevertheless chooses and wills as the ultimate goal of Life!

Nietzsche sees in this Schopenhauerian Wille zur Ohn-macht (Will to Powerlessness) the very same “metaphysical need” that the “English and French psychologists”, from Darwin to Spencer and Comte, locate in “Utility” and that the Socialists measure in “Labour”. Such is their Wille zur Ohn-macht, pursued in the name of an Objective Truth, a Will-to-Truth, a search for “Value” that is nothing more that a Will-to-Death, a manifestation of the Will to Power in its “nihilistic” interiorisation (Verinnerlichung) that chooses and wills to renounce life and the world for the sake of a different world, of an “ascetic Ideal”!

In reality, the Instinct of Freedom, the Will to Power is the only real “need-necessity” of choice, the competence to promise, the responsibility to decide – it is a “need-necessity” in an “affirmative” sense – a “resolve” (Gewissen), the resoluteness of decision!

Contemporaneously with the rise of the neoclassical theory of marginal utility, both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche devalue and discount even the possibility of “labour” forming the basis of the inter-esse, of the com-unitas, of the social synthesis. Far from being a “Value” or “the source and measure of value”, for the negatives Denken living labour is only a means to satisfy a “need-necessity” intended in a passive, “negative” sense – not as a “utility” but rather as a “dis-utility” – as the instant gratification of this “need-necessity”! Labour understood as “bare”, “destitute” living labour separated (Marx’s Trennung or “alienation”) from its “means of pro-duction or object-ification”, can only work and thus consume its “object”, its “means of production” and its “means of subsistence” (Lebensmittel, life-means, food – the classical and neoclassical “wage fund”). Only those capable of “renouncing” this need, of post-poning it, of “denying” the Will-to-Life – its agon or conatus or appetitus – can absolve themselves from the “need-necessity” of the Arbeit, from its “pain” (Leid), from its “reification” into brute “labour power” (Kraft; Heinrich Gossen, the founder of marginal utility, will employ the phrase “Arbeits-leid” interchangeably with “Arbeits-kraft”) by means of their “endowments” or “wealth” to which they can lay rightful claim of “ownership” due to their earlier “abstinence” or “sacrifice” or “abnegation”: – in this consists the A-skesis, the a-scent to and the reward of Nirvana!

In similar vein, in his attempt to define the “subject-matter” of Economics, Robbins will observe that “Nirvana is not necessarily single bliss. It is merely the complete satisfaction of all requirements,” (in Essay, p.13). In other words, Nirvana is “freedom from want”, the very opposite of the Arbeit with its “need-necessity”! Nirvana is “not having to choose”!

But this is the contrary of the agon of the Economics: for Robbins, economics is the science of choice between the alternative uses of scarce resources (see ibid., p.15). It follows that Nirvana is also the “freedom from the hard choices” to which “scarcity” forces us. Nirvana is freedom from the compulsion of Economics. Robbins cites Karl Menger’s pathbreaking work introducing the concept of marginal utility right on this point (p.13, fn.1). And then, to stress his point further, he prefers Irving Fisher’s “analytical” definition of capital as “an aspect of wealth” to Adam Smith’s “classificatory” one as “a kind of wealth” (ibid., p.16).

From this entirely Nietzschean “perspective” (one that belongs properly to the negatives Denken), living labour must be dis-placed from its role as the sole source of “value” in Classical Political Economy to the ancillary role of “factor of production” in Neoclassical Theory! Already with Schopenhauer, the operari, the “striving” for happiness and satisfaction by the Will-to-Life was “de-valued” (hence the Entwertung) as a self-defeating exercise because the “pleasure” induced by the achievement of the Will’s aims was inevitably nullified in the very act of its satis-faction (Latin, satis, enough, and facere, to make), in its ful-filment, in its com-pletion (plenus, full). The “renunciation” of the Will (Ent-sagung), then, became itself an active operari, an active “quest” or “a-scension” (A-skesis), a “climbing” toward the Freiheit of the esse, of Nirvana – “the complete satisfaction of all requirements”! Whence, to say it again, the “de-valuation” (Entwertung) of the Arbeit, its dis-utility in contrast with the “utility” of capital, of “already-objectified labour” as “capital”, as a mere appendage or “aspect of wealth”.

It is obvious that for this Economics the “Political” of Classical Political Economy has been totally eclipsed by the abstract quantitative analysis of the adequation of axiomatically defined means and ends; and so the “advantage” to be derived from “society” is reduced only to what can be derived from the ability “to exchange” these endowed resources so as to maximize one’s “requirements”, to ensure their “complete satisfaction”, to secure one’s Freiheit. But the active “pro-duction” of those “requirements” is the result of a “science of choice”, an “axiology” or “praxeology” that ineluctably involves “human action” – importantly, individual action! – considered abstractly, axiomatically. Consequently, neoclassical theory eliminates “social labour” and its “division” from all analysis of the Economics. (On all this, we refer to our study on ‘The Pure Logic of Choice’.)

Robbins (at p.19) is quite explicit in this regard: “it is clear that the phenomena of the exchange economy itself can only be explained by going behind such [exchange] relationships and invoking the operation of those laws of choice which are best seen when contemplating the behaviour of the isolated individual”! In this analytical framework, (as Robbins implies in this quotation) Walrasian equilibrium will form only the extension or “generalization” to “the market” of what are strictly “individual choices and actions” (which explains the expression “general equilibrium analysis”)! In reply to Schumpeter’s “Walrasian” formulation of “economics” (in Hauptinhalt), Robbins objects: “But it is one thing to generalise the notion of exchange as a construction. It is another to use it in this sense as a criterion [of Economics],” (p.20). (Recall that for Schumpeter, Walras was “the greatest of economists”. Nevertheless, he himself was to abandon the Walrasian ‘Statik’

analysis in favour of the much more Nietzschean notion of Entwicklung with its ‘Dynamik’ approach centred on the Unternehmergeist, the “entrepreneurial spirit” as the source of the capitalist Innovationsprozess. We discuss this in our ‘Entwicklung: Capitalism as Trans-crescence’, a study devoted to the Austrian economist.)

This “science of choice” leaves to one side all considerations of “ownership” and “entitlement” to what it calls “scarce” – decidedly not “social”! – resources by calling them (individual) “endowments”! At the same time, however, by “reducing” itself to a “pure logic of choice” (Hayek’s phrase), to a “science”, such an Economics rapidly loses its “practical” character – what allows it to be a “choice” (this will be von Mises’s bitter recrimination against Hayek) – and therefore turns itself into a formal mathematical or engineering exercise. (In the case of Walrasian equilibrium, for instance, Hayek will show conclusively that its equations can apply “practically” only to a single individual who can be taken to process the information they contain simultaneously, like a totalitarian, omniscient socialist “planner”.)

As Nietzsche notes with customary sagacity, far from being a purely “negative” state of pure “contemplation”, the a-void-ance of the Will-to-Life, Nirvana is the A-skesis, its active operari, the reward for the deferral of consumption – its abnegation! The opposite of “hedonism” (Greek hede, now), its renunciation (Entsagung), is placed thus at the centre of limitless capitalist accumulation, as the ascetic Ideal – Nirvana, “the complete satisfaction of all requirements” (Robbins). In effect, the “freedom from want” that Nirvana represents is freedom from the Arbeit understood as “toil”, as “dis-utility”: it is Will to Power over living labour! Except that all the “priests”, all the “pessimists”, all the peddlers of the “ascetic ideal” wish to disguise “ideologically” its clear “choice” or “resolve” to accumulate social resources as “pious renunciation”, as “abnegation”, as “entrepreneurship”.

Cf. Weber’s Protestantische Ethik. Even Weber overlooks, except perhaps at the very end of his monograph when he alludes to the new thrust of entrepreneurial capitalism, this dis-guised Will to Power beneath the veil of the religious Askesis whereby the positive urge to accumulate capital, the Spirit of Capitalism, is camouflaged as the Protestant Ethic! This is a Will to Power that de Mandeville had exposed scabrously in The Fable of the Bees as “Private Vices, Publick Benefits”, and whose “Hobbesian” origins were lately rediscovered by Hannah Arendt, in Vol.I of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt fails to detect, however, the infinite superiority, in complexity and sophistication and philosophical depth and insight, of the Nietzschean formulation of the antagonistic bases of capitalist social relations of production. These themes are canvassed in our Catallaxia study.

Conversely, the “socialist” glorification of “labour” in its alienated form under capitalism becomes the cruel parody of “communist” aspirations for human emancipation. The “con-fusion” of all “labour” with “toil” or “alienated labour”, that is, the failure to distinguish the two, is one of the most disappointing denouements of many recent “left-wing” studies.

As we shall soon see, Nietzsche understood perfectly this “apory” of neoclassical and classical economic analysis – their “ideological” Eskamotage to remove all conflict and

antagonism from economic categories. Yet rather than tackle this ideology, he completely side-steps the corpus of the relationship creditor-debtor when he considers the relationship between individual and community – so much so that he even mis-construes “poverty” (Elend) in the quotation below as the mere “exclusion” by outlawing or ostracism of the individual from the community! Completely elided or sublated is what surely must be the most essential “advantage” of human society, of “civil society” – the “expanded reproduction of needs” by means of the division of social labour! Beyond “civil society”, Nietzsche ultimately ignores the fact that it is impossible to conceive of a human being without its “phylogenetic” attributes that turn it into a “being human”.

9. Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to its members in that important and radical relationship of creditor to his "owers." Man lives in a community, man enjoys the advantages of a community (and what advantages! we occasionally underestimate them nowadays), man lives protected, spared, in peace and trust, secure from certain injuries and enmities, to which the man outside the community, the "peaceless" man, is exposed, —a German understands the original meaning of "Elend" [misery, poverty] (elend) — secure because he has entered into pledges and obligations to the community in respect of these very injuries and enmities. What happens when this is not the case? The community, the defrauded creditor, will get itself paid, as well as it can, one can reckon on that. In this case the question of the direct damage done by the offender is quite subsidiary: quite apart from this the criminal* [Verbrecher] is above all a breaker, a breaker of word and covenant to the whole, as regards all the advantages and amenities of the communal life in which up to that time he had participated. The criminal [Verbrecher] is an "ower" [Brecher] who not only fails to repay the advances and advantages that have been given to him, but even sets out to attack his creditor: consequently he is in the future not only, as is fair, deprived of all these advantages and amenities — he is in addition reminded of the importance of those advantages. The wrath of the injured creditor, of the community, puts him back in the wild and outlawed status from which he was previously protected : the community repudiates him — and now every kind of enmity can vent itself on him. Punishment is in this stage of civilisation simply the copy, the mimic, of the normal treatment of the hated, disdained, and conquered enemy, who is not only deprived of every right and protection but of every mercy; so we have the martial law and triumphant festival of the vae victis! in all its mercilessness and cruelty. This shows why war itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history.

9. Immer mit dem Maasse der Vorzeit gemessen (welche Vorzeit übrigens zu allen Zeiten da ist oder wieder möglich ist): so steht auch das Gemeinwesen zu seinen Gliedern in jenem wichtigen Grundverhältnisse, dem des Gläubigers zu seinen Schuldnern. Man lebt in einem Gemeinwesen, man geniesst die Vortheile eines Gemeinwesens (oh was für Vortheile! wir unterschätzen es heute mitunter), man wohnt geschützt, geschont, im Frieden und Vertrauen, sorglos in Hinsicht auf gewisse Schädigungen und Feindseligkeiten, denen der Mensch ausserhalb, der „Friedlose“, ausgesetzt ist — ein Deutscher versteht, was „Elend“, êlend ursprünglich besagen will —, wie man sich gerate in Hinsicht auf diese Schädigungen und Feindseligkeiten der Gemeinde verpfändet und verpflichtet hat. Was wird im andren Fall geschehn? Die Gemeinschaft, der getäuschte Gläubiger, wird sich bezahlt machen, so gut er kann, darauf darf man rechnen. Es handelt sich hier am wengisten um den unmittelbaren Schaden, den der Schädiger angestiftet hat: von ihm noch abgesehn, ist der Verbrecher vor allem ein „Brecher“, ein Vertrags- und Wortbrüchiger gegen das Ganze, in Bezug auf alle Güter und Annehmlichkeiten des Gemeinlebens, an denen er bis dahin Antheil gehabt hat. DerVerbrecher ist ein Schuldner, der die ihm erwiesenen Vortheile und Vorschüsse nicht nur nicht zurückzahlt, sondern sich sogar an seinem Gläubiger vergreift: daher geht er von nun an, wie billig, nicht nur aller dieser Güter und Vortheile verlustig, — er wird vielmehr jetzt daran erinnert, was es mit diesen Gütern auf sich hat. Der Zorn des geschädigten Gläubigers, des Gemeinwesens giebt ihn dem wilden und vogelfreienZustande wieder zurück, vor dem er bisher behütet war: es stösst ihn von sich, — und nun darf sich jede Art Feindseligkeit an ihm auslassen. Die „Strafe“ ist auf dieser Stufe der Gesittung einfach das Abbild, der Mimus des normalen Verhaltens gegen den gehassten, wehrlos gemachten, niedergeworfnen Feind, der nicht

nur jedes Rechtes und Schutzes, sondern auch jeder Gnade verlustig gegangen ist; also das Kriegsrecht und Siegesfest des vae victis! in aller Schonungslosigkeit und Grausamkeit: — woraus es sich erklärt, dass der Krieg selbst (eingerechnet der kriegerische Opferkult) alle die Formen hergegeben hat, unter denen die Strafe in der Geschichte auftritt.

There is no “satisfaction” of the opposing forces in this “balancing act”, there is no extinction of antagonism – there is only a dynamic “vying and wrestling with and against one another” to produce a “resultant force”, a result that is a success and a succession (a play on Folge, result, and Erfolg, success, and Aufeinanderfolge, succession, that is, a fresh outcome) – an overpowering (Uberwaltigung) that is a “commandeering”, a “putting to new use”. This applies not merely between individual and individual, but first and foremost between individual and community – from antiquity to the present, and is “again possible at all periods”. (For all this section, see our fundamental study, ‘Catallaxia: Philosophical Antecedents of the Sphere of Exchange’.)

The notion of “equal and free exchange” or “barter”, in fact turns out to be much more complex than what it sounds in the sense that “equal” denotes “commutative justice” which, as Nietzsche demonstrates, is a far from straightforward concept:

92… Justice (fairness) originates among approximately equal powers [Gleichmachtigen], as Thucydides (in the horrifying conversation between the Athenian and Melian envoys)30 rightly understood. When there is no clearly recognizable supreme power and a battle would lead to fruitless and mutual injury, one begins to think of reaching an understanding and negotiating the claims on both sides: the initial character of justice is barter. (HATH)

Barter or exchange involve a notion of “equal powers”, of “value”, whether this be use value or exchange value: exchange is a “relation” between people. Because Nietzsche always sees the world sub specie individui, “ontogenetically” and not “phylogenetically”, he can see only the “exchange” but not its “basis” (even “biological”!), not its “inter-esse”, not the division of social labour. Therefore he fails to see that the “inter-dependence” of the “exchange” need not be “destructive”, depending on how this “exchange” takes place. Even the entire basis of knowledge, communication and consciousness is not immune to these eristic forces (the same “Gesichtspunkt” or “gene-alogy” characterizes Schopenhauer’s “social” philosophy and Freud’s psychoanalysis).

This element comes out weightily in the “inter-esse” that is required to ensure that a “market” is “competitive”. The market is the “place” where “competing parties”, just like competing “impulses” or “drives”, gather so as to exchange their “endowments” or “values”. Whether or not “the market” remains “competitive” depends entirely on the kind of “relations” that obtain between the parties. It is meaningless therefore to insist on “free and fair competition”, on “free and equal exchange” because these terms “pre-suppose” an agreement on the “rules” of the “com-petition” that is not “natural” or “automatic” or “objective”, but one that is eminently “social” – because “exchange” involves “equal powers” which involve a “social relation”. Yet this social relation, this “value”, is for Nietzsche the “valor”, the antagonistic “strength” of the “relating” or competing parties, as in a knightly mediaeval joust.

Quite perceptively, Nietzsche’s concept of “barter” or “agreement” makes absolutely clear that the “market exchange” of classical political economy (its “utilitarian” version) which assumes the “equality” and “freedom” of commutative justice, is simply not possible if the “individuals” involved in the exchange are presumed to act on the basis of their “self-interest” alone! Because otherwise these “unmediated” self-interests would quite simply annihilate one another or not be capable of any “exchange” at all! Even the antagonism of com-petition must have an agreed foundation on which it can proceed without mutual annihilation. But this can be the case only if we define “self-interest” further, because “self interest” on its own cannot be “enlightened”: by definition, it can only be “one-sided” [einseitig] and therefore “irreconcilable”!

“Competition” is the one “activity” that is supposed to lead to “growth” through greater specialization. Now, first we would need to specify what “the aim” or “goal” of competition is. Even assuming that it is “utility maximization” until equilibrium is reached, the insurmountable problem remains that if “self-interested individuals” seek to exchange their goods to maximize their private “utilities”, then it is obvious that because they are “self-interested” they will seek to hide market information or engage in other conduct that will give them a “competitive advantage” over other self-interested individuals. But then, either no-one obtains any “advantage” out of this “competitive activity”, in which case competition cannot lead to “growth” or trans-crescence; or else some individuals do succeed in obtaining an advantage, but in that case their “competitive activities” will eventually lead to the establishment of a “monopoly”, which is the antithesis of “competition” and leads us therefore to an insoluble “antinomy”! (Note, by the way, that the term “monopoly” itself presumes the existence of a “market” that has been “monopolized”. This means that the concepts of “market” and “competition” in economic theory live or die together!)

“Enlightenment” or “intelligible freedom” when applied to “self-interest” pre-supposes what remains to be established, namely, the “agreement” and therefore the “inter-esse” of the “self-interested individuals”! This “impossible” aspect of “competition”, free trade or “market” theory, is discussed by Nietzsche in ‘HATH’, where he draws the analogy with Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

25 Private- and World-Morality…The older morality, namely Kant's ,25 demands from the individual those actions that one desires from all men--a nice, naive idea, as if everyone without further ado would know which manner of action would benefit the whole of mankind, that is, which actions were desirable at all. It is a theory like that of free trade, which assumes that a general harmony would have to result of itself, according to innate laws of melioration. (HATH)

25. Privat- und Welt-Moral. — Seitdem der Glaube aufgehört hat, dass ein Gott die Schicksale der Welt im Großen leite und, trotz aller anscheinenden Krümmungen im Pfade der Menschheit, sie doch herrlich hinausführe, müssen die Menschen selber sich ökumenische, die ganze Erde umspannende Ziele stellen. Die ältere Moral, namentlich die Kant's, verlangt vom Einzelnen Handlungen, welche man von allen Menschen wünscht: das war eine schöne naive Sache; als ob ein Jeder ohne Weiteres wüsste, bei welcher Handlungsweise das Ganze der Menschheit wohlfahre, also welche Handlungen überhaupt wünschenswert seien; es ist eine Theorie wie die vom Freihandel, voraussetzend, dass die allgemeine

Harmonie sich nach eingeborenen Gesetzen des Besserwerdens von selbst ergeben müsse. Vielleicht lässt es ein zukünftiger Überblick über die Bedürfnisse der Menschheit durchaus nicht wünschenswert erscheinen, dass alle Menschen gleich handeln, vielmehr dürften im Interesse ökumenischer Ziele für ganze Strecken der Menschheit specielle, vielleicht unter Umständen sogar böse Aufgaben zu stellen sein. — Jedenfalls muss, wenn die Menschheit sich nicht durch eine solche bewusste Gesamtregierung zu Grunde richten soll, vorher eine alle bisherigen Grade übersteigende Kenntnis der Bedingungen der Kultur, als wissenschaftlicher Maßstab für ökumenische Ziele, gefunden sein. Hierin liegt die ungeheure Aufgabe der großen Geister des nächsten Jahrhunderts.

In the absence of an “inter-esse” that allows us to agree on the “rules of competition” in the “market”, no “self-regulating market” is possible. A meaningful notion of “com-petition” must therefore set out “the inter-esse”, the agreement or “the goal” (Zweck) of the competitive game, even when the inter-esse remains antagonistic at any given historical stage. But this runs counter to economic theory, both Classical and Neoclassical, because the “spelling out” of these rules would presuppose a real political foundation of “inter-ests” between the market participants that precedes market exchange and competition and that fundamentally distorts and vitiates the putative “equality” of “self-interested individuals” that underpins bourgeois economic theory! This is what Cacciari would call “politics without foundation”. (The entire project of the Freiburg School of “regulating” capitalism in accordance with a “scientifically-constituted liberal order” must founder on the rock of this reality! The same fate is met by the attempts of the “New Institutional Economics”, inspired by Douglass North, to identify a historical and theoretical “legal foundation” for capitalism. See Giulio Palermo’s excellent review of Alchian-Demsetz called ‘Misconceptions of Power’.)

Ultimately, in the absence of such an “inter-esse”, the economic notion of “competition” cannot form the basis of the “self-regulating market” and its “free and equal exchange”, which are therefore unmasked as specific antagonistic historical institutions. In Nietzsche’s words, these concepts are analogous to “a snake that bites its own tail” – in our own words, they are “autophagous”, they “eat themselves” – because either we say that they are “purposeless” (abulic) in that they have “no aim or goal” outside themselves (!), in which case they cease to be “com-petitive” (Latin for “seeking the same things”), or else we say that the goal of competition is… “to destroy the competition” (!), in which case it is an “aporetic” notion, one that cannot sub-sist practically as “self-regulationg”! Here is Nietzsche’s identical conclusion by analogy with the pursuit of “art for art’s sake”:

24. L’Art pour l’art…When the end of the ethical preacher and improver of mankind has been excluded from art, it does not at all follow that art in itself is without an end, without a goal, meaningless ; in short, L’ art pour L’ art is a serpent which bites its own tail. ‘No end at all, rather than a moral end!’ - thus speaks pure passion. A psychologist [Nietzsche means himself as the analyst examining art as an activity], on the other hand, asks, what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not bring into prominence? In each of these cases it strengthens or weakens certain valuations [Werthschatzungen] ... (ToI)

Wenn man den Zweck des Moralpredigens und Menschen-Verbesserns von der Kunst ausgeschlossen hat, so folgt daraus noch lange nicht, dass die Kunst überhaupt zwecklos, ziellos, sinnlos, kurz l'art pour l'art — ein Wurm, der sich in den Schwanz beisst — ist. „Lieber gar keinen Zweck als einen moralischen Zweck!” — so redet die blosse Leidenschaft. Ein Psycholog fragt dagegen: was thut alle Kunst? lobt sie nicht? verherrlicht

sie nicht? wählt sie nicht aus? zieht sie nicht hervor? Mit dem Allen stärkt oder schwächt sie gewisse Werthschätzungen ...

An activity that does not make explicit its “goal” (Ziel) and therefore its “premises” will inexorably be without an “end” – without “target”, aim or purpose (Zweck) – Nietzsche incorrectly speaks of “meaning” in this quotation. Indeed, the very fact that human beings “engage” in the “activity” of exchange and barter, sale and purchase, and “promising” (through contracts or obligations or bonds) – that fact itself (!) shows that there is a “need-necessity” in the “exchange relationship” itself – because there would be no “exchange or barter” without a “need-necessity” behind it as a “motive”, as an “impulse”, a “drive” – an “instinct”! It cannot be said therefore that “exchange and barter” can ever be “free”. The “freedom of the will” is brought into question ipso facto – by the very deed!

Remember that Adam Smith attributed the division of labour to the “act” or “propensity” of human beings to exchange, truck and barter. Similarly, Nietzsche begins his entire analysis of “Value” – indeed, of the entire “onto-geny of thought”! - from this primordial “exchange and barter”. Like Smith, he treats the division of labour as the product of “individual actions”, even though unlike Smith he does not believe that these “individual actions” are “free”. Both Nietzsche’s as well as Smith’s analyses of “exchange and barter” are founded entirely on an “ontogenetic” conception of human being – one that excludes ab initio and absolutely the “phylogenetic” notion of “species-conscious being-human”! For Adam Smith, it is the natural human tendency to truck, barter and exchange that induces “specialization” and the division of labour (see the famous Ch.2 of The Wealth of Nations).

But Smith misses the obvious objection that no “truck, barter, and exchange” is possible without a pre-existing “specialization”, that is to say, without the “division of social labour”! In other words, and contra Adam Smith, not only is the activity of “exchange and barter” not “free”, as Nietzsche correctly perceives; not only is it not “equal”, as Nietzsche also explains; but above all this lack of “freedom and equality” in human interaction arises from the “phylogenetic inter-dependence of human beings” – from our existence as “species-conscious being-human”!

Little wonder then that equilibrium analysis with its notion of “pure competition” excludes any and all activities that come under the definition of “competition” (Hayek in Individualism & Economic Order, discussed by Demsetz in “Competition”) so that, like Kant’s thoughts without human intuitive senses, it remains an “empty category”. Empty and blind - in fact purposeless, because given that self-interested individuals are not at equilibrium, it is impossible for them to know how to price their endowments for exchange. (Purposeless but not meaningless, pace Myrdal, because the very “mathesis” of reality that equilibrium analysis carries out is itself a “strategy” that allows its practitioners “to act effectively” on that reality. This fundamental insight is enucleated in our Pure Logic of Choice and in our Catallaxia.) This is so because there are no “rules” to agree on the “valuation” of these endowments, which can be valued only if their “prices” are already known! - The classic circulus vitiosus.

Little wonder also that equilibrium analysis cannot admit of “time” – because “everything” must happen “at once”! (See Hayek, ‘I&EO’, on this.) Expressed in terms of “equilibrium analysis”, market participants would need to have all the information available at equilibrium for them to fix their prices accordingly. – Which is why Hayek correctly points out that Walrasian equilibrium can really apply only to one individual, not to a “market” case with separate individuals in competition with one another! Because the “self-interests” of these theoretically separate individuals co-incide by definition, and therefore they are axiomatically already at equilibrium (!), which defeats the purpose of the whole analysis – namely, to determine the “content” of prices not as simple exchange-ratios or relative prices but rather in terms of “what makes the goods commensurable” and therefore what the basis and purpose, the “value” of the exchange is! As with Robbins, the bourgeois “hypostatization” of economic relations ends up “devouring” their “materiality”, their corpus, their “practical object and substance”, literally, their “subject-matter”:

“For it is not the materiality of even material means of gratification which gives them their status as economic goods; it is their relation to valuations. It is their form rather than their substance which is significant,” (Essay, p.21)

For Nietzsche, this “circularity” of “science”, this “auto-phagy” or “anti-nomy”, this loss of “sense” as direction [Richtung] and purpose [Ziel, Zweck], of “will” (a-bulia) – indeed, of “materiality”, and therefore their “hypostatization” - not in a “voluntaristic”, “decisionist” or “arbitrary”, but in a “physiological” sense as Will to Power - , is the ultimate meaning of scientific “Nihilism”! The very “pursuit of truth”, the “search for objectivity”, for “value-neutrality”, undermines the very “(interested!) motive” or “impulse” of the quest! What Nietzsche does here, his greatest service even to us, is to un-mask the “metaphysics of utility”, the fact that marginal utility theory is itself pure metaphysics, just as much as the labour theory of value that it was supposed to replace!

In a study we are preparing (The Pure Logic of Choice), where we examine these matters systematically, we discuss how Wittgenstein likened the “impossibility” of this concept to that of “moving” a vector (a car, a wheel, or simply walking) on a perfectly smooth surface: it cannot be done without “friction” (in Philosophical Investigations, par.107). And the “friction”, far from being “exogenous” or “accidental” or “adventitious” to the analysis, constitutes the very “meaning and purpose” of “competition”: the “friction”, that is to say, the conflict of interests, the antagonism of values, the clash of impulses or instincts is what we need to study! Frank Hahn, quoted in T. Lawson, ‘The (Confused) State of Equilibrium Analysis’, concedes that equilibrium analysis involves the setting of conditions that can yield a given outcome, namely, the existence of equilibrium: in other words, the “game” is “rigged” from the outset. But the essential point, the one that Lawson fails completely to appreciate despite his honest efforts, is that, as we shall soon see in Part Two extrapolating Nietzsche’s reflections on logic to Wittgenstein’s on language, the outcome of general equilibrium analysis is “inexorable”! (For a full discussion of these themes, see also our Catallaxia study.)

Because “self-interest” can never be the foundation of “equal exchange”, of commutative justice in the “self-regulating market”, Nietzsche genially re-defines “exchange”, “sale and purchase” or “barter” as the “settlement” of “equal powers”, as an unresolved and

irresoluble “antagonism of values”, a “clash of impulses, instincts or wills’ to which only a “temporary truce” is applicable in an unending struggle for supremacy, for “overpowering” and “domination”. For him, only this “friction”, this ongoing, incessant “conflict” can give “meaning” (we would say “purpose”) to the act of exchange, sale and purchase, or barter - never as a “final extinguishment of the “need-necessity” in the act of “exchange”, but only as a “trans-formation” (Veranderung) of these “Antagonistic Values” or “impulses”, this continuous “ordering of rank” (Rangordnung) of values! Once again, as we quoted above, the “temporary”, “precarious”, “critical” result (Folge) is

a sort of justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement all those impulses [Triebe, drives] can maintain themselves in existence and retain their mutual rights.

95 Morality of the mature individual. Until now man has taken the true sign of a moral act to be its impersonal nature; and it has been shown that in the beginning all impersonal acts were praised and distinguished in respect to the common good [allgemeinen Nutzen, utility]. Might not a significant transformation of these views be at hand, now when we see with ever greater clarity that precisely in the most personal respect [personliche Rucksicht, personal hindsight] the common good [Nutzen fur die Allgemeine] is also greatest; so that now it is precisely the strictly personal action [streng personliche Handeln] which corresponds to the current concept of morality (as a common profit [allgemeinen Nutzlichkeit])? To make a whole person of oneself and keep in mind that person's greatest good [hochstes Wohl] in everything one does--this takes us further than any pitying impulses [mitleidigen Regungen] and actions for the sake of others. To be sure, we all still suffer from too slight a regard for our own personal need; it has been poorly developed. Let us admit that our mind has instead been forcibly diverted from it and offered in sacrifice to the state, to science, to the needy, as if it were something bad which had to be sacrificed. Now too we wish to work for our fellow men, but only insofar as we find our own highest advantage [Vorteil, share] in this work [Arbeit]; no more, no less. It depends only on what one understands by his advantage. The immature, undeveloped, crude individual will also understand it most crudely. (HATH)

95. Moral des reifen Individuums. — Man hat bisher als das eigentliche Kennzeichen der moralischen Handlung das Unpersönliche angesehen; und es ist nachgewiesen, dass zu Anfang die Rücksicht auf den allgemeinen Nutzen es war, derentwegen man alle unpersönlichen Handlungen lobte und auszeichnete. Sollte nicht eine bedeutende Umwandelung dieser Ansichten bevorstehen, jetzt wo immer besser eingesehen wird, dass gerade in der möglichst persönlichen Rücksicht auch der Nutzen für das Allgemeine am größten ist: so dass gerade das streng persönliche Handeln dem jetzigen Begriff der Moralität (als einer allgemeinen Nützlichkeit) entspricht? Aus sich eine ganze Person machen und in Allem, was man tut, deren höchstes Wohl in's Auge fassen — das bringt weiter, als jene mitleidigen Regungen und Handlungen zu Gunsten Anderer. Wir Alle leiden freilich noch immer an der allzugeringen Beachtung des Persönlichen an uns, es ist schlecht ausgebildet, — gestehen wir es uns ein: man hat vielmehr unsern Sinn gewaltsam von ihm abgezogen und dem Staate, der Wissenschaft, dem Hilfebedürftigen zum Opfer angeboten, wie als ob es das Schlechte wäre, das geopfert werden müsste. Auch jetzt wollen wir für unsere Mitmenschen arbeiten, aber nur so weit, als wir unsern eigenen höchsten Vorteil in dieser Arbeit finden, nicht mehr, nicht weniger. Es kommt nur darauf an, was man als seinen Vorteil versteht; gerade das unreife, unentwickelte, rohe Individuum wird ihn auch am rohesten verstehen.

As we have emphasised, no “Automatik”, no “general harmony”, no “co-incidence” of “personal action” or “self-interest” and “common profit” is possible for Nietzsche. Yet he is advocating the supremacy or paramountcy of “the person’s greatest good… [which has been] forcibly diverted… and offered in sacrifice to the state, to science, to the needy”. It is not a utilitarian summum bonum that he seeks, then, but rather a system of “strictly personal action which corresponds to the current concept of morality (as a common

profit)”. Nowhere does he discuss or explain how “the person’s greatest good” can simultaneously lead to “a common profit”. Nietzsche here as in the discussion of “justice and equality” seems to believe that self-assertion and self-interest may still lead to each person’s “own highest advantage in this work”, so long as this is not understood “most crudely” as it is bound to be by “the immature, undeveloped, crude individual”. There is the seed here of the “ideal” that Nietzsche will seek to articulate later: - the yearning for an “unanswerable state of blamelessness” or “irresponsible state of innocence”. Again, such “spontaneous order” or even “settlement” (Ausgleich) could never be more than a chimaera.

In order to go “beyond good and evil”, Nietzsche has to posit history, not as a “pro-gress”, an evolving “inter-esse”, but rather as a “physis” as manifest “nature” (Wesen als Werden) in-comprehensible to human beings who are “within life”, “in the world”, intra-mundane, and therefore incapable of “valuing” life and the world. And yet, for humans to be aware of this need-necessity of physis and to accept and affirm the need-necessity of this awareness, it is evident that history must either remain “meaningless” or else “repeat itself indefinitely”, “ana-logically”. Even in a purely “pragmatical” sense, it can be argued that Nietzsche is wrong “in the e-vent” (!), in the historical “e-venience” or “de-velop-ment” or “e-volution” of material forms of inter-dependence through “social labour” – be it “mechanical” (“soul-less”, “dis-enchanted” Rationalisierung) or “organic” (communal solidarity or sym-biosis). (We are reversing here, of course, the Durkheimian terminology of “solidarity” in the division of social labour.)

And although he is able to show the “historicity” of human traits and connotations both physical and mental, he is never quite equal to the task of focusing on their “phylogenesis” as opposed to “ontogenesis”. His historical remarks refer almost exclusively to a stage of human evolution that belongs clearly to homo sapiens and even then are restricted to the documented phase of our history (especially from pre-Socratic times).

35. Critique of the morality of decadence. -- An "altruistic" morality--a morality in which self-interest wilts away--remains a bad sign [Anzeichen, indication] under all circumstances. This is true of individuals; it is particularly true of nations. The best is lacking when self-interest begins to be lacking. Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by "disinterested" motives, that is virtually the formula of decadence. "Not to seek one's own advantage"--that is merely the moral fig leaf for quite a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: "I no longer know how to find my own advantage." Disintegration [Disgregation] of the instincts! Man is finished when he becomes altruistic. Instead of saying naively, "I am no longer worth anything," the moral lie in the mouth of the decadent says, "Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth anything." Such a judgment always remains very dangerous, it is contagious: throughout the morbid soil of society it soon proliferates into a tropical vegetation of concepts--now as a religion (Christianity), now as a philosophy (Schopenhauerism). Sometimes the poisonous vegetation which has grown out of such decomposition poisons life itself for millennia with its fumes.

35. Kritik der Décadence-Moral. — Eine „altruistische” Moral, eine Moral, bei der die Selbstsucht verkümmert —, bleibt unter allen Umständen ein schlechtes Anzeichen. Dies gilt vom Einzelnen, dies gilt namentlich von Völkern. Es fehlt am Besten, wenn es an der Selbstsucht zu fehlen beginnt. Instinktiv das Sich-Schädliche wählen, Gelockt-werden durch „uninteressirte” Motive giebt beinahe die Formel ab für décadence. „Nicht seinen Nutzen suchen” — das ist bloss das moralische Feigenblatt für eine ganz andere, nämlich physiologische Thatsächlichkeit: „ich weiss meinen Nutzen nicht mehr zu finden” ... Disgregation der Instinkte! — Es ist zu Ende mit ihm, wenn der Mensch altruistisch wird. — Statt naiv zu sagen, „ich bin

nichts mehr werth,” sagt die Moral Lüge im Munde des décadent: „Nichts ist etwas werth, — das Leben ist nichts werth” ... Ein solches Urtheil bleibt zuletzt eine grosse Gefahr, es wirkt ansteckend, — auf dem ganzen morbiden Boden der Gesellschaft wuchert es bald zu tropischer Begriffs-Vegetation empor, bald als Religion (Christenthum), bald als Philosophie (Schopenhauerei). Unter Umständen vergiftet eine solche aus Fäulniss gewachsene Giftbaum-Vegetation mit ihrem Dunste weithin, auf Jahrtausende hin das Leben ...

The time fast approaches when we must ask what this “actual man” is: what can be the object of the “gaya scienza”? For does not the obliteration of “trans-valuation of values” leave a vacuum, moral as well as material? What Zivilisation do we choose to have? For after all, living is “necessarily” evaluating! Or is it that we do not have a “choice”? Nietzsche seems to fall back on a curious mixture of “naturalism” and “spontaneity” (spontaneous order?) in the concluding aphorism of “First and Last Thing”:

34 Some reassurance. But does not our philosophy then turn into tragedy? Does not truth become an enemy of life, an enemy of what is better? A question seems to weigh down our tongues, and yet not want to be uttered: whether one is capable of consciously remaining in untruth, or, if one had to do so, whether death would not be preferable? For there is no "ought" anymore. Morality to the extent that it was an "ought" has been destroyed by our way of reflection, every bit as much as religion. Knowledge can allow only pleasure and unpleasure, benefit and harm, as motives. But how will these motives come to terms with the feeling for truth? These motives, too, have to do with errors (to the extent that inclination and disinclination, and their very unfair measurements, essentially determine, as we have said, our pleasure and unpleasure). All human life is sunk deep in untruth; the individual cannot pull it out of this well without growing profoundly annoyed with his entire past, without finding his present motives (like honor) senseless, and without opposing scorn and disdain to the passions that urge one on to the future and to the happiness in it. If this is true, is there only one way of thought left, with despair as a personal end and a philosophy of destruction as a theoretical end?

I believe that a man's temperament determines the aftereffect of knowledge; although the aftereffect described above is possible in some natures, I could just as well imagine a different one, which would give rise to a life much more simple, more free of affects than the present one. The old motives of intense desire would still be strong at first, due to old, inherited habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under the influence of cleansing knowledge. Finally one would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praise, reproaches, overzealousness, delighting in many things as in a spectacle that one formerly had only to fear. One would be free of appearance 32 and would no longer feel the goading thought that one was not simply nature, or that one was more than nature. (HATH)

“A spectacle that one formerly had to fear”: Nietzsche seems to distinguish between institutions that allow the affirmation of life and those that seek to repress it. He even seems to be tempted by “enlightened self-interest” at times, for providing the “spontaneity” he seeks: “to be free of appearance”, “no longer [to] feel the goading thought that one was not simply nature, or that one was more than nature”. Nietzsche is almost “physiologically” impelled to read “physis” or “nature” as a “destiny” of conflict and strife, as “Will to Power” - not over life itself, but “at one” with life, in mimetic unison and harmony with it. Yet it is his “perspectivism” and “naturalism” that become problematic – engender a nostalgic paralysis, even nihilism – because it is impossible to evaluate “life” out of “need-necessity” or “fate”, and then “to be conscious or aware” of such need-necessity – and then again believe in the necessity of such evaluation or even will it! Whilst Nietzsche may well refrain from evaluating “life” in the past, as it has transpired historically, he must then decide whether to accept the present as it is – and therefore

“preserve” it as “substance”, as permanence, against the “becoming” he exalts -, or else to trans-form it by pro-jecting (dia-noia) its “ad-vantageous” elements into the future.

There are times when he clearly wishes he did not have to make a “choice” – and is tempted, cosmically, to affirm the “cyclical” returning of the Dyonisian mysteries to which all life is bound and, socially, to accept the “automaticity”, the “self-regulation” of the “market mechanism”.

3… This tremendous inward tension then discharged itself in terrible and ruthless hostility to the outside world: the city-states tore each other to pieces so that the citizens of each might find peace from themselves. One needed to be strong: danger was near, it lurked everywhere. The magnificent physical suppleness, the audacious realism and immoralism which distinguished the Hellene constituted a need, not "nature." It only resulted, it was not there from the start. And with festivals and the arts they also aimed at nothing other than to feel on top, to show themselves on top. These are means of glorifying oneself, and in certain cases, of inspiring fear of oneself…For it is only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian state, that the basic fact of the Hellenic instinct finds expression - its "will to life." What was it that the Hellene guaranteed himself by means of these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal return of life, the future promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yes to life beyond all death and change; true life as the overall continuation of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality. (ToI)

Morality as ‘Strategy’ – Nietzsche’s Unity of Theory and Practice

By insisting that every “balancing” of distinct and irreconcilable “forces” must end up in a “net weight”, a stable “equi-librium”, in a lasting “conciliation”, in a binding contractual “agreement”, the human thinking process seeks to make “familiar” and “innocuous” and above all “com-prehensible” what is unfamiliar and senseless. From the “identification” of the Will with an “esse”, an intelligible freedom, to a subject, an ego and then a consciousness leading to logic and mathematics to causality and science – throughout this process of “self-distancing” and “mirroring” that is a need-necessity dictated by the struggle against, the matching against, the confrontation, measuring and testing against, the calculation or calculus of pleasure and pain that enters relations with other organisms, and especially other humans – through this “chain” of conflict human beings develop strategies that make their world “safe and calculable” and that transform the “balancing of forces” in the sense of weighing and testing the strength of conflicting forces into a “balance of forces”, an “equi-librium”, a state of rest, a conciliation, “a general harmony”.

The “end” or “goal” of a possible economic system needs to be “con-vened”, to be agreed: it is political and institutional – “con-ventional”. Either it is an “extrinsic” goal in that it falls outside any human inter-est; or else it is “intrinsic” in that it “per-fects” human inter-

esse. Perhaps Nietzsche’s greatest insight was to unmask the very “search for scientific truth” - for “objectivity” that is not a temporary “settlement of antagonistic values”, the “measurement and mathematisation of every human reality” in search of a “truth” that will bring about “a general harmony” - as being itself a potentially pernicious form of Nihilism: a “Rationalisierung”, an “objectivism” or “scientism” that may be exploited “ideologically” to further other antagonistic interests – a “Will to Power” that has “turned inwards” to become a “Will to Death”.

On one side, we have the ressentiment of the slaves who wish to blame their condition on the “unfairness” or the “injustice” of a social reality that they do not see as “necessary” or as “destiny” – this is the source of “bad conscience” (bad resolve). On the other side, we have the temptation of the masters to wish “to justify” social reality and to preserve society and the State by emphasizing – precisely! – the “fairness” and “mutual advantage” of the market Economy, and the “progress” and “equality” of each individual in the Empyrean of the liberal State, of the Political! Here, at the summit of bourgeois society, this “interiorisation” of its conflict and antagonism is “rationalized” in the Vergeistigung (the “spiritualisation”) of Political Economy, that is to say, the “homologation” of market mechanism and civil society, of bourgeois and citizen, of self-interest and its “representation”, mediation and “reconciliation” in the liberal State. It is this combined process of Demokratisierung that Nietzsche wishes to attack. But to do so, he has first to expose how these “idealistic” aims, this “spiritualization” or “internalization” (Verinnerlichung) are tied up with the “denial” of this Life and its substitution with the other-worldly quest for “Truth” – the ascetic ideal, the A-skesis.

The dira necessitas imposed by the Wille zur Macht, and of which it is itself an expression, applies to the Arbeit not as the inter-esse of a “Subject”, of alienated humanity, but rather as a “need-necessity” to which the Arbeiter themselves are subjected! The worker is no longer, as in Hegel or Marx, a “consciousness” that “mediates” between the Herr and the “Object” by exempting him from the compulsion of work to satisfy “common” though “alienated” needs upon which “values” can be assigned to the pro-ducts of human labour. Instead, there is an irreducible “antagonism” between “master” and “servant” (Herr und Knecht) over who is to dominate (Herrwerden) and therefore assign “values”. (In all the babble about “consumerism”, we tend to forget that it is the capitalist who decides what gets produced and how and when – a fact brilliantly emphasized by Schumpeter in his account of the capitalist Innovationsprozess [in the Theorie; see our study on Schumpeter, ‘Entwicklung: Capitalism as Trans-crescence’ ].) Therefore it cannot be the Arbeiter and his operari that creates or assigns “Value”. To believe that “the doer” or “the worker” can subtract itself to its “destiny”, not on an individual basis – because that would be to deny the very “instinct of freedom” that Nietzsche is theorizing in his “genealogy” -, but rather through the very “necessity” of “mastery” and “domination” by ascribing or as-signing it to “merit” or “virtue” – in short, to a “subjective element” that is therefore “historical” and subject to the vagaries and accidents of “chance” (Zufall) and of “fortune” (Gluck): to do all this would itself be a “sign and symptom” of the very “decadent disease”, of the “slave morality”, of the “ressentiment” that Nietzsche is indicting! This perspective on the social relationship of force in the wage relation is commented upon in Aph.40 of “Gaya Scienza”:

(GS) 40. The Lack of a noble Presence.—Soldiers and their leaders have always a much higher mode of comportment toward one another than workmen and their employers. At present at least, all militarily established civilisation still stands high above all so-called industrial civilisation; the latter, in its present form, is in general the meanest mode of existence that has ever been. It is simply the law of necessity that operates here: people want to live, and have to sell themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity and purchases the workman. It is curious that the subjection to powerful, fear-inspiring, and even dreadful individuals, to tyrants and leaders of armies, is not at all felt so painfully as the subjection to such undistinguished and uninteresting persons as the captains of industry; in the employer the workman usually sees merely a crafty, blood-sucking dog of a man, speculating on every necessity, whose name, form, character, and reputation are altogether indifferent to him. It is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce have hitherto lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a superior race, which alone make persons interesting; if they had had the nobility of the nobly-born in their looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. For these are really ready for slavery of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and born to command—by its noble presence! The commonest man feels that nobility is not to be improvised, and that it is his part to honour it as the fruit of protracted race-culture - but the absence of superior presence, and the notorious vulgarity of manufacturers with red, fat hands, brings up the thought to him that it is only chance [Zufall] and fortune [Gluck] that has here elevated the one above the other; well then - so he reasons with himself - let us in our turn tempt chance and fortune! Let us in our turn throw the dice! - and socialism commences.

40. Vom Mangel der vornehmen Form. — Soldaten und Führer haben immer noch ein viel höheres Verhalten zu einander, als Arbeiter und Arbeitgeber. Einstweilen wenigstens steht alle militärisch begründete Cultur noch hoch über aller sogenannten industriellen Cultur: letztere in ihrer jetzigen Gestalt ist überhaupt die gemeinste Daseinsform, die es bisher gegeben hat. Hier wirkt einfach das Gesetz der Noth: man will leben und muss sich verkaufen, aber man verachtet Den, der diese Noth ausnützt und sich den Arbeiter kauft. Es ist seltsam, dass die Unterwerfung unter mächtige, furchterregende, ja schreckliche Personen, unter Tyrannen und Heerführer, bei Weitem nicht so peinlich empfunden wird, als diese Unterwerfung unter unbekannte und uninteressante Personen, wie es alle Grössen der Industrie sind: in dem Arbeitgeber sieht der Arbeiter gewöhnlich nur einen listigen, aussaugenden, auf alle Noth speculirenden Hund von Menschen, dessen Name, Gestalt, Sitte und Ruf ihm ganz gleichgültig sind. Den Fabricanten und Gross-Unternehmern des Handels fehlten bisher wahrscheinlich allzusehr alle jene Formen und Abzeichen der höheren Rasse, welche erst die Personen interessant werden lassen; hätten sie die Vornehmheit des Geburts-Adels im Blick und in der Gebärde, so gäbe es vielleicht keinen Socialismus der Massen. Denn diese sind im Grunde bereit zur Sclaverei jeder Art, vorausgesetzt, dass der Höhere über ihnen sich beständig als höher, als zum Befehlen geboren legitimirt — durch die vornehme Form! Der gemeinste Mann fühlt, dass die Vornehmheit nicht zu improvisiren ist und dass er in ihr die Frucht langer Zeiten zu ehren hat, — aber die Abwesenheit der höheren Form und die berüchtigte Fabricanten-Vulgarität mit rothen, feisten Händen, bringen ihn auf den Gedanken, dass nur Zufall und Glück hier den Einen über den Andern erhoben habe: wohlan, so schliesst er bei sich, versuchen wir einmal den Zufall und das Glück! Werfen wir einmal die Würfel! — und der Socialismus beginnt.

Note (however revolting and pathetic he may sound here) that Nietzsche always insinuates a certain “inclination” on the part of “slaves”… to slavery (!) in the form of a fatalistic “pre-disposition”. And that this inclination “to honour nobility” is obstructed if not defeated by the “lack of presence [Form]” on the part of the bourgeoisie! Nevertheless, it is by ignoring “wilfully” – because even “slave morality” is an ex-pression, a “sign”, of a repressed “instinct of freedom” – the “need-necessity”, the “fatality” (not to be mistaken with an “accident”!) of domination and exploitation as irrefragable elements of “life” – it is thus that the “slave morality” in-tends to over-turn (ap-propriately, but not right-fully or cor-rect-ly) through dis-simulation, through the “invention” of morality, of eternal values

attributable to “actions” and therefore “separable” from the very “being” of their “agents”, the affirmation of the Will to Power of the “master”!

By isolating the “need-necessity” of the will to power, of the “stored-up force” of the “instinct of freedom”, from the master, its “carrier”, the slave is seeking to reduce the ineluctable reality of the master (its “happening”, manifestation), his “domination”, to a mere contingent “accident of history”, to a conscious pro-duct and arte-fact of his “free” will! The organic functions of the capitalist master then become an “office”, a mere accoutrement or emolument; an empty and adventitious, mechanical operari; a dispensable “bureau” that is the pro-duct of chance and historical accident. At the same time, the fact that the entire “object” or “sub-stance” of the capitalist-worker relationship is the pro-duct itself (the goods and services), in-duces the “worker” wrongly to view this as “his product”, the fruit of “his labour”; and thereby “to equate” or “homologate” what is a need-necessity into an accident “caused” by the “agency”, merit or demerit of the capitalist, and forced thereby upon the “worker” seen this time as the “object-victim” of the employment relationship.

Small wonder, then, that workers conjure up velleities of “substituting” their industrial masters in the ideology of “socialism”. – As if “socialism” could ever (!) become reality! – Because for Nietzsche this wish denotes a will to subvert “life” itself, to defeat the “will to power”! But although such “in-tention”, such “historicist” reading of human reality, Socialism itself, its “spread”, also constitute the effective expression of a Will to Power, to the degree that they ignore or conceal their “need-necessity” they are the “signs and symptoms” of disease (Freud’s malaise), of the “decadence” of a “superior race” and indeed of a culture or of a nation. Not on the workers is Sozialismus to be blamed, for they are “ready or predisposed for every kind of slavery”: and their very “ressentiment” is an unmistakeable “symptom” of their decadence and decay, of their Ohnmacht! Rather, it is the bourgeoisie itself that lacks the “noble characteristics” of a “superior race” because it has fooled itself into thinking that its “industrial enterprise”, its Political Economy with its utilitarian values and the ideal of free markets and trade – that all these could be a substitute for the Will to Power! Indeed, to be entirely true to his philosophy, Nietzsche would argue that this “decadence” of the bourgeoisie is not itself the “cause” but the “symptom” of its own “decline and decay”.

The Ohnmacht of the operari is articulated defensively as “resentment” that by reflex “negates” and refutes “life” by erecting “counter-values” aiming at fortifying the will of the “weak” against the ravages of the “strong” and by assigning “moral responsibility” as “culpability” or “guilt” to their acts of domination. But the assigning of “moral responsibility” and “culpability” requires the erection or foundation or establishment of an “objective standard” by means of which in effect, by mere virtue of the “equiparation of forces”, these forces are no longer seen in their “physio-logical” dimension, as the expression of organic vital functions but rather as being – precisely! – “equi-parable”, “homo-logated”, “measurable” by a (“common”) standard! This process of “equating” gives rise to the ob-literation of “differences” and the “equation” of values, to the “commensurability” of physiological functions that are absolutely sui generis and in-commensurable, in-comparable: indeed, Nietzsche uses the word “Contrast-bild” (contrast position) to denote “com-parison” (Latin parare, to shield)! It is thus that both bourgeois

liberalism and working-class socialism come to share a common Kultur of decadence: all “differences” evaporate to leave space for the clamour for “equality”! This is the “inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subject [which] is typical of ‘resentment’”!

10… The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment [ressentiment] becoming creative, giving birth to values — a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," " different from itself and "not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint—this inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subject is typical of "resentment": the "slave-morality” requires as the condition of its existence an external and objective world; to employ physiological terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable of action at all— its action is fundamentally a reaction. The contrary is the case when we come to the aristocrat's system of values : it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant “yes” to its own self;—its negative conception, "low," "vulgar " "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison [Contrastbild] with its positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it is with life and passion), of " we aristocrats, we good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones.”

10. Der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral beginnt damit, dass das Ressentiment selbst schöpferisch wird und Werthe gebiert: das Ressentiment solcher Wesen, denen die eigentliche Reaktion, die der That versagt ist, die sich nur durch eine imaginäre Rache schadlos halten. Während alle vornehme Moral aus eine triumphirenden Ja-sagen zu sich selber herauswächst, sagt die Sklaven-Moral von vornherein Nein zu einem „Ausserhalb“, zu einem „Anders“, zu einem „Nicht-selbst“: und dies Nein ist ihre schöpferische That. Diese Umkehrung des werthesetzenden Blicks — diese nothwendige Richtung nach Aussen statt zurück auf sich selber gehört eben zum Ressentiment: die Sklaven-Moral bedarf, um zu entstehn, immer zuerst einer Gegen- un Aussenwelt, sie bedarf, physiologisch gesprochen, äusserer Reize, um überhaupt zu agiren, — ihre Aktion ist von Grund aus Reaktion. Das Umgekehrte ist bei der vornehmen Werthungsweise der Fall: sie agirt und wächst spontan, sie sucht ihren Gegensatz nur auf, um zu sich selber noch dankbarer, noch frohlockender Ja zu sagen, — ihr negativer Begriff „niedrig“ „gemein“ „schlecht“ ist nur ein nachgebornes blasses Contrastbild im Verhältniss zu ihrem positiven, durch und durch mit Leben und Leidenschaft durchtränkten Grundbegriff „wir Vornehmen, wir Guten, wir Schönen, wir Glücklichen!”

Belief in the tenets of morality is Ohn-Macht, it is a sign and symptom of decadence and decay; yet, the real import or effect of its “manifestation” or “activity” is still the Wille zur Macht, for no “force” or “will” other than the Will to Power can exist! The reflex defense of the weak is to deflect their inferior Will to Power, their effective Ohnmacht, onto “reactive envy” or “ressentiment” into deontologies and ideologies – “strategies” - that seek to exalt and glorify Ohnmacht itself. By breaking the “necessary link” arising from the exertion of the Will to Power, from “life”, the weak seek to re-order “reality”, “that-which-is” (Heidegger), into a “causal” sequence linking culpable subject to innocent object-victim, that attributes “agency” to the former and therefore turns “responsibility” (Verantwortlichkeit) into “culpability”, and “flaw-lessness” (Unschuldigkeit) into “guilt”, therefore turning “passivity” into “in-nocence” (also, Unschuldig-keit).

Yet even as “reactions”, morality and the ascetic ideal are “strategies” or ideologies (“viewpoints”, “perspectives”) that seek to impose the Will to Power of their holders onto others! It is the aim of the weak to give vent to their own will to power in dis-guise not as

“instinct of freedom” but rather as the idealistic “freedom of the will” in the attempt to subtract themselves from the necessity of the operari, of the Arbeit. This “morality” or “genealogy of morals” extends to the “laws” of science that are meant thereby “to anthropo-morphise” life itself, to assign “values” to life, “to democratize” the world by finding “equations” and therefore “equi-valence” in every “e-vent” or “happening” seen as “phenomena”, as “appearances” that need to be “linked” to an under-lying “reality” made up of “meaningful laws of nature” connecting “causes” or “agents” or “subjects” and “effects” or “objects”.

13. But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the good—of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out—demands its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb, — is he not good ? " then there is nothing to cavil at in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, " We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them : nothing is tastier than a tender lamb." To require of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength. A quantum of force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action—rather it is nothing else than just those very phenomena of moving, willing, acting, and can only appear otherwise in the misleading errors of language (and the fundamental fallacies of reason which have become petrified therein), which understands, and understands wrongly, all working as conditioned by a worker, by a “subject." And just exactly as the people separate the lightning from its flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called lightning, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength as though behind the strong man there existed some indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no such substratum, there is no "being" behind doing, working, becoming; "the doer" is a mere appannage to the action. The action is everything. In point of fact, the people duplicate the doing, when they make the lightning lighten, that is a "doing-doing": they make the same phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, "Force moves, force causes," and so on. Our whole science is still in spite of all its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded" in getting rid of that superstitious changeling “the subject” (the atom, to give another instance, is such a changeling, just as the Kantian "Thing-in-itself"). What wonder, if the suppressed and stealthily simmering passions of revenge and hatred exploit for their own advantage this belief and indeed hold no belief with a more steadfast enthusiasm than this—"that the strong has the option of being weak, and the bird of prey of Being a lamb." Thereby do they win for themselves the right of attributing to the birds of prey the responsibility for being birds of prey : when the oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to themselves with the vindictive guile of weakness [Ohnmacht],…

This kind of man finds the belief in a neutral, free-choosing "subject" necessary from an instinct of self-preservation, of self-assertion, in which every lie is fain to sanctify itself. The subject (or, to use popular language, the “soul”) has perhaps proved itself the best dogma in the world simply because it rendered possible to the horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals of every kind, that most sublime specimen of self-deception, the interpretation of weakness as freedom, of being this or being that, as merit .

13. — Doch kommen wir zurück: das Problem vom andren Ursprung des „Guten“, vom Guten, wie ihn der Mensch des Ressentiment sich ausgedacht hat, verlangt nach seinem Abschluss. — Dass die Lämmer den grossen Raubvögeln gram sind, das befremdet nicht: nur liegt darin kein Grund, es den grossen Raubvögeln zu verargen, dass sie sich kleine Lämmer holen. Und wenn die Lämmer unter sich sagen „diese Raubvögel

sind böse; und wer so wenig als möglich ein Raubvogel ist, vielmehr deren Gegenstück, ein Lamm, — sollte der nicht gut sein?“ so ist an dieser Aufrichtung eines Ideals Nichts auszusetzen, sei es auch, dass die Raubvögel dazu ein wenig spöttisch blacken werden und vielleicht sich sagen: „wir sind ihnen gar nicht gram, diesen guten Lämmern, wir lieben sie sogar: nichts ist schmackhafter als ein zartes Lamm.“ — Von der Stärke verlangen, dass sie sich nicht als Stärke äussere, dass sie nicht ein Überwältigen-Wollen, ei Niederwerfen-Wollen, ein Herrwerden-Wollen, ein Durst nach Feinden und Widerständen und Triumphen sei, ist gerade so widersinnig als von der Schwäche verlangen, dass sie sich als Stärke äussere. Ein Quantum Kraft ist ein eben solches Quantum Trieb, Wille, Wirken — vielmehr, es ist gar nichts anderes als eben dieses Treiben, Wollen, Wirken selbst, und nur unter der Verführung der Sprache (und der in ihr versteinerten Grundirrthümer der Vernunft), welche alles Wirken als bedingt durch ein Wirkendes, durch ein „Subjekt“ versteht und missversteht, kann es anders erscheinen. Ebenso nämlich, wie das Volk den Blitz von seinem Leuchten trennt und letzteres als Thun, als Wirkung eines Subjekts nimmt, das Blitz heisst, so trennt die Volks-Moral auch die Stärke von den Äusserungen der Stärke ab, wie als ob es hinter demStarken ein indifferentes Substrat gäbe, dem es freistünde, Stärke zu äussern oder auch nicht. Aber es giebt kein solches Substrat; es giebt kein „Sein“ hinter dem Thun, Wirken, Werden; „der Thäter“ ist zum Thu bloss hinzugedichtet, — das Thun ist Alles. Das Volk verdoppelt im Grunde das Thun, wenn es den Blitz leuchten lässt, das ist ein Thun-Thun: es setzt dasselbe Geschehen einmal als Ursache und dann noch einmal als deren Wirkung. Die Naturforscher machen es nicht besser, wenn sie sagen „die Kraft bewegt, die Kraft verursacht“ und dergleichen, — unsre ganze Wissenschaft steht noch, trotz aller ihrer Kühle, ihrer Freiheit vom Affekt, unter der Verführung der Sprache und ist die untergeschobenen Wechselbälge, die „Subjekte, nicht losgeworden (das Atom ist zum Beispiel ein solcher Wechselbalg, insgleichen das Kantische „Ding an sich“): was Wunder, wenn die zurückgetretenen, versteckt glimmenden Affekte Rache und Hass diese Glauben für sich ausnützen und im Grunde sogar keinen Glauben inbrünstiger aufrecht erhalten als den, es stehe dem Starken frei, schwach, und dem Raubvogel, Lamm zu sein: — damit gewinnen sie ja bei sich das Recht, dem Raubvogel es zuzurechnen, Raubvogel zu sein… Wenn die Unterdrückten, Niedergetretenen Vergewaltigten aus der rachsüchtigen List der Ohnmacht heraus sich zureden…

This is yet another pivotal moment in Nietzsche’s philosophy that must be understood thoroughly. The Rationalisierung is a process of “homologation” and “interiorisation” of the world – a process that is meant “to master” the world but simultaneously “to familiarize” or “interiorize” it, removing its “differences”, its physiological “strife”, its ineluctable Eris – all in the very act of “overpowering and domination” that “dis-enchants” and “alienates” both master and slave from the world. (But remember that this is no philo-Hegelian “self-alienation” that can be “super-seded” in a dialectic of “reconciliation”! Such dialectical notions of “mediation” or “synthesis” of “thesis and antithesis” are anathema to Nietzsche’s perspectivism.) By conjuring a con-nection, a link and nexus be-tween separate “happenings’ or “e-vents” (Geschehen) in the guise of “cause” and “effect”, we are performing two “intellectual” or “spiritual” (psycho-logical, rather than physio-logical) and therefore “arbitrary”, un-necessary “operations”: the first is “to homologate” the two separate events by attributing to them a “sub-stratum”, a commonality or “medium” by means of which they can be “con-nected” and “equi-parated”, by means of which a “nexus” and a “common measure” between them can ec-sist; and the second is to attribute to the “cause” an “agency”, a voluntary and arbitrary “merit” or “demerit” – in any case, a “responsibility” for “causing” the “ef-fect”, the “doing” or “working”, that it could not possibly have outside of our own arbitrary, fictitious “attribution” of such agency or causality! This is the origin of the “bad conscience” and of its “resentment”.

Nietzsche is not making “moral judgements” here: he is not saying that the “bad conscience” or the “ascetic ideal” are “bad” or (most absurd for him) “evil”! If anything, it is the “bad conscience”, the slave-morality that is “judging” the cause and thereby “being

unjust”! As a result, the “worker” attributes (awards) the pro-duct of the labour process to “his labour”; and then turns around and attributes (blames) the capitalist employer for his condition as “worker”. Nietzsche’s “teaching” is that even the “bad conscience” of the slave or the ascetic ideal or the “Will to Truth” are manifestations, “actualities” or ex-pressions of the Will to Power.

Make no mistake! It is not the “instrumental” use of these “perspectives” or “viewpoints” or “judgements” or “rationalizations” (we would call them “ideologies” or “strategies”) such as “science” or “knowledge” or “the intellect” or “Socialism” or “Christianity” that runs counter to the “Will to Life” and the “Wille zur Macht” and so also against “the Body” (Korper). Not at all! It is the “deception” that comes from attributing or “concealing” this “instrumental logic” into “things”, into “the world”, into “life”, and trans-substantiating or hypostatizing that into the “Logos” – this “Tauschung” (illusion), this “Verstellungskunst” (mystique of the “appearance”) that is the real “Wille zur Wahrheit” turning into “Wille zum Tode”! As Cacciari puts it, for Nietzsche,

“[d]isgraceful is not the priest, but the priest who states that his kingdom is of this world. If our announcement proclaims values, let our kingdom not be of this world. If our kingdom is nothing but this world, then let our language be that of politics without foundation,” (p102). It would be pointless and absurd – indeed “power-less” (ohnmachtig) – for Nietzsche to pontificate vainly about how “wrong” these “perspectives” truly are! Because he knows all along – that is what he is saying! – that they are “perspectives”, they are “one-sided”, “self-interested viewpoints” and therefore “need-necessary” from the “viewpoint” of their proponents. Yet this does not obviate or remove the “need” for us “to un-mask” them for what they are! – Symptoms, signs, “affects” of “disease, decay and decadence” to the extent that they deny what is their very essence and prime mover – the Will to Power! Nietzsche even advocates “studying” their “semeiotics”, their “sign-language” (Zeichen-rede) or “sign-series” (Zeichen-Kette) – their “ideological genealogy”, if you like. We have dealt above, in connection with “Consciousness”, with the problem of how it is possible for Nietzsche to maintain this “meta-perspective” that is his “true phenomenalism and perspectivism” as the practical fusion of freedom and necessity in the new intuition of time and space. And it is this “meta-perspective”, therefore, that enables Nietzsche to take a practical “Position” or “viewpoint” with regard to other “values” or “strategies”, to assess their “strategic” role in the exertion of the Will to Power.

1…Moral judgments are therefore never to be taken literally: so understood, they are always merely absurd. Semiotically, however, they remain invaluable: they reveal, at least for those who can interpret them, the most valuable realities of cultures and psychologies that did not know how to "understand" [verstehen] themselves. Morality is only a language of signs [Zeichenrede], a symptomatology [Symptomatologie]: one must know how to interpret them correctly to utilize them [um von ihr Nutzen zu ziehen]. (GM)

“For those who can interpret them”! There are clear unmistakeable echoes here of Machiavelli: “Quelli che sanno!” (Those who know! – The expression is Gramsci’s in Note sul Machiavelli [‘La Scienza della Politica’, pp.10ff] and we discuss its significance below.) “One must know how to interpret [the signs] correctly [so as] to draw their usefulness”! Two things are necessary, then: - correct interpretation, and correct utilization

– theory and practice! The counter-revolutionary reply to Lenin will not wait long: Weber is well on the way! Verstehen of “values”, and “responsibility” of the leitender Geist: here is Max Weber’s monumental enterprise in a nutshell! The “calling” of the scientist who studies and “under-stands” the available options (politics as the art of the possible), and that of the political leader who is competent to make the “responsible” choice!

Again the obligatory reference is to Weber’s fundamental distinction between “politics of conviction” and “politics of responsibility” in Politik als Beruf. And again, see Lowith’s Max Weber and Karl Marx for a discussion of how Weber sought to abide by this “calling of responsibility”in his own life. Mario Tronti’s Operai e Stato, supplemented by Cacciari in PNeR, is the original source for this linking of Nietzsche and Weber. Cf. also Pareto’s parallel theorization and classification of “ideologies” into “azioni e derivazioni”, actions and derivations, that repropose faithfully the eristic instinctual matrix of the negatives Denken in the context of a political theory of elites [in Vol.I of his Trattato di Sociologia Generale] – and his adherence to Machian scientific methodology in the shadow of the Lausanne School, with Walras. On Pareto, see Norberto Bobbio’s studies in Saggi sulla Scienza Politica in Italia. Our own study on Weber and these political themes is in preparation.

This is a point over which Nietzsche has been much misunderstood. Granted that his “perspectivism” does in fact “rationalize” the existence of a life and world that are “contrary” to human “species-conscious being” because he sees all attempts at “rectifying” or “ameliorating” this “state of affairs” or “actuality” (Thatsachlichkeit) as being “futile”, as being “against fate or destiny” – nevertheless Nietzsche’s ex-hortation “to read the physiological symptoms and signs of disease” and then “to will” their reversal, is intended for the few! The “overturning”, the “trans-valuation” and “overcoming” (Uberwindung) in favour of what he interprets as signs of “health” and “affirmation of life” and of “Will to Power” are intended for “those who can interpret [the signs] correctly to utilize them” – that is, “for the few” who have the necessary “resolve” and can bear the “responsibility” for “die grosse Politik”! This is a point that is absolutely essential to understand how and why Nietzsche’s entire philosophy could be so radically founded upon and saturated with politics – indeed be so “Machiavellian” - and yet he could steadfastly deny having any concern with “politics” as such – in Cacciari’s phrase, he was “Unpolitical”. – Contrarily to Machiavelli who, as Gramsci reminds us, wrote “per chi non sa” (for those who do not know) to open their eyes to the ultimate practices of domination such as la ragion di stato, la raison d’etat, die Staatsrason, Realpolitik. The same applies to “industrial government”, that is, to capitalist enterprise. Nietzsche never thought of his “critique” as “political” because its entire meaning and thrust, its very “self-understanding” was as a “divination”, as an “astrological horoscope” or “semeiotic study” or even as a “pathology” – as a “reading” of signs and symptoms, much as the Etruscan “haruspices” read the “entrails” of animals to prophesy the future or as Epimenides “divined the past”: - because, remember, we are stuck “between the walls of the past and the future”, in a “place” (Ort) so narrow that our “room for manoeuvre” is strictly limited.

It is this Doppelcharakter that explains the apparent “ambi-guity” in Nietzsche’s Entwurf between, on one hand, the ontological reality of the Will to Power as “universal condition” in life and the world and, on the other hand, the apparent historical, truly “Darwinian”, “institutional” triumph in the “onto-logy of thought” of the Vergeistigung, of the

“spiritualization” and “internalization” (Verinnerlichung) of the “instinct of freedom” – first, in the “ideological” manifestation of the Will to Power as Freiheit (freedom of the will), as Will to Truth and there-fore as ascetic ideal (A-skesis) and nihilistic Will to Death; and second, in the “institutional” Rationalisierung that results in the Entwertung (the “disintegration” [Dis-gregation] or “devaluation” of the instincts) and the Ent-seelung, the “dis-enchantment” of Culture and above all Zivilisation with its Demokratisierung, with its Technik (Heidegger), “bureaucratization” and Parlamentarisierung (Weber) that lead finally to the idolatry of the State!

Nietzsche’s entire colossal critical effort to effect a “tran-valuation” of those “values” that represent an ontogenetic Entwertung (degradation or devaluation) and Disgregation (disintegration) of the “Instinkte der Freiheit” paradoxically brought about by the “inception” or mani-festation of the “logic of the Will to Power”, the Rationalisierung, of life and the world, must then confront the reality that the Will to Power can now ec-sist practically and historically, that is, politically as “competence to promise”, as “resolve”, as “responsibility” over and against the “illusions” and “sentimental weakness” and even the “nihilism” of the Vergeistigung. At the height of the need-necessity, of the Will to Power as the rationalization of the world, lies the Weberian leitender Geist, the spirit of leadership of the charismatic Ubermensch that is “competent” to lead and implement the grosse Politik.

This is Nietzsche’s answer to Hegel and Marx: for his own belief that the “linearity” of history as against Greek “cyclicality” dated back to the inception of Christendom (a belief we have shown to be entirely mistaken) was in fact due to his “re-action” to Hegel’s idealist cosmology and rationalism. Only with Hegel, for the first time in historiography, is history presented as a dialectical progressus – and, as we have seen, for Nietzsche there is no Darwin - or Marx - without Hegel!

The next Part of our study must then consider how the Will to Power as the Rationalisierung of the world is possible and what this entails politically for Nietzsche and “for those who do not know” (!), for those who like us hold dear the fate of this Demokratisierung.

Which brings us to Carl Schmitt and “the exception”, Donoso Cortes with dictatorship as “miracle” or “suspension” of “the laws of nature” - the Dezisionismus that is already made evident by Nietzsche and then by Max Weber for whom there are no “laws of nature”, and therefore every decision is “a miracle”, “an exception”. This is why for Nietzsche both the Demokratisierung and the Parlamentarisierung are so “im-possible” – because they are based on either “pro-noia” or “homo-noia”, but not on his “extra-temporal” vision of time which reduces historical time to mere “memory” – but a “memory” that “reads the leaves of time” in a physio-logical and dia-gnostic and therefore dia-noiac manner.

Hence, the Will to Power is not “free” because there is no Subject, no “intelligible freedom”; yet it is not “un-free” because time is not “determined”, it is an “Eternal

Return of the Same” whereby “decisions” are “necessarily made” according to need-necessity, not according to any causality ascertainable “scientifically”! A “necessary decision” is the equivalent of a “con-ditioned Will” – a Will to Power as “universal condition”, not Subject. Incidentally, as Heidegger notes, Zarathustra “speaks” and there-fore “legislates” (Greek legein) or “teaches”, but not what is “past” (history as a tale or as pro-vidence) but what is “eternally recurrent”; – neither an ana-kyklosis nor a palin-genesis, then, but what is an extra-temporal and extra-mundane pro-ject, a resolve, an in-tention (dia-noia) – the Will to Power.}