The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche — Nietzsche — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche · en
When a man stubs his toe, for example, the facts that the injured
member swells and that it hurts most frightfully appear to him as
absolute certainties. If we deny that he actually knows these things
and maintain that the spectacle of the swelling and the sensation of
pain are mere creatures of his mind, we cast adrift from all order and
common-sense in the universe and go sailing upon a stormy sea of crazy
metaphysics and senseless contradictions. There are many things that
we do not know, and in the nature of things, never can know. We do not
know _why_ phosphorus has a tendency to combine with oxygen, but the
fact that it _has_ we _do_ know--and if we try to deny we _do_ know it,
we must deny that we are sentient beings, and in consequence, must
regard life and the universe as mere illusions. No man with a sound
mind makes any such denial. The things about us are real, just as our
feeling that we are alive is real.[4]
From this it must be plain that the superman will have the same guides
that we have, viz.: his instincts and senses. But in him they will be
more accurate and more acute than in us, because the whole tendency
of his scheme of things will be to fortify and develop them.[5] If
any race of Europe devoted a century to exercising its right arms,
its descendants, in the century following, would have right arms like
piston-rods. In the same way, the superman, by subordinating everything
else to his instinct to live, will make it evolve into something very
accurate and efficient. His whole concern, in brief, will be to live
as long as possible and so to avoid as much as possible all of those
things which shorten life--by injuring the body from without or by
using up energy within. As a result he will cease all effort to learn
_why_ the world exists and will devote himself to acquiring knowledge
_how_ it exists. This knowledge _how_ will be within his capacity even
more than it is within our capacity today. Our senses, as we have
seen, have given us absolute knowledge that stubbing the toe results
in swelling and pain. The superman's developed senses will give him
absolute knowledge about everything that exists on earth. He will know
exactly _how_ a tubercle bacillus attacks the lung tissue, he will know
exactly _how_ the blood fights the bacillus, and he will know exactly
_how_ to interfere in this battle in such a manner that the blood shall
be invariably victorious. In a word, he will be the possessor of exact
and complete knowledge regarding the working of all the benign and
malignant forces in the world about him, but he will not bother himself
about insoluble problems. He will waste no time speculating as to _why_
tubercle bacilli were sent into the world: his instinct to live will be
satisfied by his success in stamping them out.