Table Of Content

Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung w DE G Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung Herausgegeben von Mazzino Montinari · Wolfgang Müller-Lauter Heinz Wenzel Band 4 1977 Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge by Ruediger Hermann Grimm 1977 Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Anschriften der Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. Mazzino Montinari via d'Annun2Ìo 237,1-50135 Florenz Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Müller-Lauter Adolf-Martens-Straße 11, D-1000 Berlin 45 Prof. Dr. Heinz Wenzel Harnackstraße 16, D-1000 Berlin 33 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Grimm, Ruediger Hermann, 1947— Nietzsche's theory of knowledge. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung ; Band 4) Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900- Knowledge, Theory of. I. Title. II. Series. B3318.K7G74 121 76-51294 ISBN 3-11-006568-1 CIP-Kuntfitelaufnabme der Deutschen Bibliothek Grimm, Ruediger Hermann Nietzsche's theory of knowledge. — Berlin, New York : de Gruy- ter, 1977. (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung ; Band 4) ISBN 3-11-006568-1 © Copyright 1977 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., y ormala G. J. Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung — J. Guttentag, Verlagsbuchhandlung — Georg Reimer — Karl J. Trübner — Veit & Comp. — Printed in Germany — Alle Rechte des Nachdrucks, einschließlich des Rechtes der Herstellung yon Photokopien und Mikrofilmen, vorbehalten. Satz und Druck: Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin Bindearbeiten' Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Le Moyne College, for a generous financial grant which was instrumental in the publication of this work; to The Bodley Head, for permission to quote from Erich Heller, The Disinherited Mind·, to the Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd., for permission to quote from H. W. Walsh, Metaphysics; to Princeton University Press, for permission to quote from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Bollingen Series xx; to W. H. Freeman and Company, for permission to quote from Robert Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness (copyright 1972 by W. H. Freeman and Co.); to Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., for permission to quote from Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (copyright 1965 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.). If the author has incurred debts other than these in writing this book, he is unaware of them. PREFACE If one were to choose that modem thinker who has been more misunder- stood and maligned than any other, I have little doubt that a consensus of opinion would award that dubious honor to Friedrich Nietzsche. The name of Nietzsche has for years elicited a stream of invective from devout Christians (to name but one group), for whom Nietzsche took great pains to be as offensive as possible. I well remember my pious Bavarian grand- father muttering anathemas when that name was uttered by the careless student who was his grandson. And this is by no means simply the result of an innocent misunderstanding, for Nietzsche himself invited such abuse by his incendiary language and often lurid examples. Even in the intellectual world, the name of Nietzsche very often divides a group of scholars very neatly into two camps: those who make Nietzsche their patron antisaint and ape his healthy contempt for all that is mediocre (meaning anything which they happen to dislike),1 or those who make Nietzsche their whipping boy for all the cultural ills of the modern world2. Unfortunately, Nietzsche has probably suffered more at the hands of his admirers than of his detractors. There is no shortage of learned works on Nietzsche's provocative and incendiary moral philosophy, his vicious attack on Christianity, his vague but intoxicating ideal of the Übermensch, and a never-ending flood of articles on what precisely Nietzsche might have meant by the "eternal recurrence of the same". On the other hand, there is a conspicuous lack of scholarship (particularly in English) which penetrates beneath the mask of Nietzsche's flamboyant and deliberately offensive examples, and seeks to come to grips with the philosophical sub- structure which supports these examples, and of which they are illustrations. Even an otherwise commendable work such as Arthur Danto's Nietzsche as Philosopher is symptomatic of this, because by its very tide, this book suggests that there is something novel about regarding Nietzsche as a philosopher3. 1 E. g. H. L. Mencken, The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Port Washington, N.Y.,1967). 2 E. g. Frederick Copleston, S. J., Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher of Culture (London, 1942) ; Crane Brinton, Nietzsche (New York, 1965) ; Paul Elmer More, Nietzsche (Boston, 1912). 8 Arthur C. Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York, 1965). νπι Preface The often-treated themes of morality, Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, etc. are conspicuous in this work only by their absence. Themes such as these are, to be sure, important aspects of Nietzsche's thinking, and a full understanding of Nietzsche's work presupposes more than a casual acquain- tance with them. Nevertheless, they are symptoms and illustrations which arise out of a much more profound philosophical problematic than most commentators have suspected exists in Nietzsche's writings. This work is therefore not concerned with Nietzsche's views on religion, morality, politics, women, etc. but with those profound depths to which his philosophical insight penetrated. More specifically, we shall be concerned with Nietzsche's principle of the will to power as an epistemological paradigm, as a way of knowing. It might strike some readers as mildly incredible that Nietzsche incorporated in his writings anything as staid and proper as an ontology or an epistemology. This is but another instance of that prevalent unwillingness to take Nietzsche seriously, to regard him as a profound thinker in his own right, and to come to grips with that profound and enormously fruitful principle which forms the backbone of Nietzsche's thinking: the will to power. Without a grasp of how the will to power functions as a world-principle and without understanding that a remarkably original theory of knowledge is implicit within this principle one can at best only partially understand those more notorious of Nietzsche's utterances. There has been practically no work done in the area of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge. Obviously, this is a critical area for the adequate understanding of any philosopher, and the lack of such research with regard to Nietzsche has led, I feel, to serious misunderstandings of how such notions as the Übermensch, the critique of Christianity, the "eternal recurrence", etc. are to be understood within the whole of his work. Thus, it is partially for therapeutic reasons that I have undertaken a work of this nature, to provide that context within which these notions acquire their authentic meaning and intent. A term such as "epistemology", however, sounds very formidable, i. e. very systematic and scholarly, and this is precisely what Nietzsche wished to avoid. Nietzsche, of course, entertained only the liveliest horror with regard to "systems", and this may in part account for the fact that the more "systematic" portions of his own thinking have largely been ignored. Thus, my primary motive in undertaking this work was the isolation and elaboration of the Nietzschean theory of knowledge in its own right, as one of the most profound and fruitful treatments of the whole problematic of human knowing yet put forth. Nietzsche intends ".. . to construct a philosophy consistent with the extraordinary openness he felt was available to man, or Preface IX at least a philosophy that would entail this openness as one of its conse- quences"4. Nietzsche's treatment of the problem of knowledge demands a radical rethinking of our traditional epistemological categories. One result of this is that if we plunge immediately into Nietzsche's writings on knowledge per se, we are confronted with a whole host of alarming utterances, to the effect that there is no truth, there are no facts, there is no knowledge, etc. How, one may well ask, is one to construct a theory of knowledge out of this conceptual chaos? That is the task we have set for our- selves. In order to provide the proper context for an adequate discussion of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge, it was found necessary to first discuss the will to power in some detail as a world-principle, i. e., the will to power qua being. Once this is established, the will to power as a way of knowing can be more adequately discussed within its proper context. Even though we are primarily concerned with knowledge here, the reader must bear in mind that the will to power is an all-inclusive principle for Nietzsche, and ultimately embraces all the traditional philosophical categories of ontology, axiology, anthropology, as well as epistemology, and our discussion of knowledge makes frequent reference to these other areas. We are taking one of several valid approaches to that essential core which unifies all of Nietzsche's thinking, an approach which in itself is no more or no less valid than these other possible approaches. I have chosen the epistemological approach, however, because so few have done so before. In the elaboration of Nietzsche's theory of knowledge I have purposely concentrated on his later works and on the Nachlass of the 1880's, in which the notion of the will to power achieved its mature formulation. I have attempted, however, to show the origin of Nietzsche's mature epistemology in his earliest works and its subsequent development, so that the reader might become aware of the continuity and growth of Nietzsche's thinking, and that the principles developed here apply to Nietzsche's thinking as an organic whole. And if this is not the ultimate work on Nietzsche's theory of knowledge, I believe it is the most definitive to date. In conclusion, I should like to acknowledge my indebtedness to a number of persons who at some point were instrumental to the conception and execution of this work. It was Prof. Dr. Fritz Leist of the Universität München who helped me to overcome my youthful infatuation with Nietzsche, and armed me with the critical apparatus necessary for coming to terms with this most enigmatic of thinkers. I would like to thank Dr. Christoph Eykman who directed my doctoral dissertation on Nietzsche at 4 Danto, p. 12 f.