The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IVNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Nihilism (Philosophy); Power (Philosophy); Values
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism--in fact all religions in which a
_conscious_ god is worshipped, are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche
as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and
wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the
imaginary world beyond (eternal soul), and to make it even the deity
itself (God Omniscient).
With the question of Truth we find Nietzsche quite as ready to uphold
his thesis as with all other questions. He frankly declares that "the
criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power"
(Aph. 534), and thus stands in diametrical opposition to Spencer, who
makes constraint or inability the criterion of truth. (See _Principles
of Psychology,_ new edition, chapter ix.... "the unconceivableness of
its negation is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition.")
However paradoxical Nietzsche's view may seem, we shall find that
it is actually substantiated by experience; for the activity of our
senses certainly convinces us more or less according to the degree to
which it is provoked. Thus, if we walked for long round a completely
dark room, and everything yielded, however slightly, to our touch, we
should remain quite unconvinced that we were in a room at all, more
particularly if--to suppose a still more impossible case--the floor
yielded too. What provokes great activity in the bulbs of our fingers,
then, likewise generates the sensation of truth.
From this Nietzsche proceeds to argue that what provokes the strongest
sentiments in ourselves is also true to us, and, from the standpoint of
thought, "that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength"
(Aph. 533).
The provocation of intense emotion, and therefore the provocation
of that state in which the body is above the normal in power, thus
becomes the index to truth; and it is a very remarkable thing that two
prominent English thinkers should, at the very end of their careers,
have practically admitted this, despite the fact that all their
philosophical productions had been based upon a completely different
belief. I refer, of course, to Spencer and Buckle, who both upheld the
view that in a system of thought the emotional factor is of the highest
importance.
It follows from all this, that lies and false doctrines may quite
conceivably prove to be even more preservative to species than truth
itself, and although this is a view we have already encountered in the
opening aphorisms of _Beyond Good and Evil,_ in Aph, 538 this volume
we find it further elucidated by Nietzsche's useful demonstration
of the fact that "the easier way of thinking always triumphs over
the more difficult way"; and that logic, inasmuch as it facilitated
classification and orderly thought, ultimately "got to act like truths."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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