The Philosophy of Friedrich NietzscheMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900; Philosophy, German -- 19th century
Nietzsche's discussion of these problems is so abstruse and so much
complicated by changes in view that it would be impossible to make an
understandable summary of it in the space available here. In his first
important book, "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_" he devoted himself,
in the main, to pointing out errors made in the past, without laying
down any very definite scheme of thought for the future. In the early
stages of human progress, he said, men made the mistake of regarding
everything that was momentarily pleasant or beneficial as absolutely
and eternally true. Herein they manifested the very familiar human
weakness for rash and hasty generalization, and the equally familiar
tendency to render the ideas of a given time and place perpetual and
permanent by erecting them into codes of morality and putting them
into the mouths of gods. This, he pointed out, was harmful, for a
thing might be beneficial to the men of today and fatal to the men of
tomorrow. Therefore, he argued that while a certain idea's effect was a
good criterion, humanly speaking, of its present or current truth, it
was dangerous to assume that this effect would be always the same, and
that, in consequence, the idea itself would remain true forever.
Not until the days of Socrates, said Nietzsche, did men begin to notice
this difference between imminent truth and eternal truth. The notion
that such a distinction existed made its way very slowly, even after
great teachers began to teach it, but in the end it was accepted by
enough men to give it genuine weight. Since that day philosophy and
science, which were once merely different names for the same thing,
have signified two separate things. It is the object of philosophy
to analyze happiness, and by means of the knowledge thus gained, to
devise means for safeguarding and increasing it. In consequence, it is
necessary for philosophy to generalize--to assume that the thing which
makes men happy today will make them happy tomorrow. Science, on the
contrary, concerns itself, not with things of the uncertain future, but
with things of the certain present. Its object is to examine the world
as it exists today, to uncover as many of its secrets as possible, and
to study their effect upon human happiness. In other words, philosophy
first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world
to it, while science studies the world with no other object in view
than the increase of knowledge, and with full confidence that, in the
long run, this increase of knowledge will increase efficiency and in
consequence happiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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