Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism
Nietzsche · en
The last half-century has been an age of unprecedented progress in
science and we would expect that with all the wonderful successes and
triumphs of scientific invention this age of science ought to find its
consummation in the adoption of a philosophy of science. But no! The
mass of mankind is weary of science, and anti-scientific tendencies
grow up like mushrooms, finding spokesmen in philosophers like William
James and Henri Bergson who have the ear of large masses, proclaiming
the superiority of subjectivism over objectivism, and the advantages of
animal instinct over human reason.
These subjective philosophies if considered as expressions of
sentiment, as sentimental attitudes toward the world, as poetical
effusions of a semi-philosophical nature, are perfectly legitimate and
can be indulged in as well as the several religions which in allegories
attune the minds of their followers toward the All of which they are
parts. There is no need to condemn arts or emotions for they have a
right to exist just as they are.
We protest against subjectivism in philosophy only when it denies the
possibility of an objective philosophy. We do not deny that the masses
of the world are not, cannot be and never will be scientific thinkers.
Science is the prerogative of the few, and the large masses of mankind
will always be of a pragmatist type. If the pragmatist considered
himself as a psychologist pure and simple showing how the majority
of mankind argues, how people are influenced by their own interest
and how their thoughts are warped by what they wish the facts to be,
pragmatism would be a commendable branch of the science of the soul.
Pragmatism explains the errors of philosophy and we can learn much from
a consideration of its principles. It becomes objectionable only in so
far as it claims to be philosophy in the strict sense of the word.
The name philosophy is used in two senses, first as we defined it
above, as a world-conception based upon critically sifted knowledge;
and secondly it is used in a vague general sense as wisdom in the
practical affairs of life. And if pragmatism claims to be a philosophy
in this second sense it ought not to deny that philosophy as a science
is possible.
Philosophy as a science is philosophy _par excellence_. It is the only
philosophy of objective validity. All other philosophies are effusions
of subjective points of view, of attitudes, of sentiment. But we must
insist that these two contrasts may exist side by side just as art does
not render mathematics supererogatory, and as a physicist who in his
profession devotes himself to a study of nature according to methods of
an objective exactness may in his leisure hours paint a _Stimmungsbild_
to give an artistic expression to a subjective mood.