PSYCHOLOGY AS THE QUEEN OF ALL SCIENCES

Dr. Sigmund Freud, to give him his due, openly admitted his indebtedness to Nietzsche. Perhaps, no other place in Nietzsche’s writings makes that indebtedness more overt and straightforward than Jenseits 23. So, let us go through it piece by piece, as it so much deserves. Ironically, it is not characteristic of Nietzsche’s controversial challenging style, being in fact too true, to be able to stir up much controversy. It is profound thinking on Nietzsche’s part, and also one of his truest and most incontrovertible statements, as long as we think about it long enough to comprehend its veracity.

23. All psychology so far has got stuck in moral prejudices and fears; it has not dared to descend into the depths.

Here is our first intriguing question: does psychology need to depart from Christian thought, divorce itself from religion, and become essentially atheistic, to be effective. There is little, if any, religion in Freud, but we already know that all ways in psychology are not exactly his ways. It is true, however, that at least one thing about psychology must be scientific: its departure from religious reverence and doctrinality. Without this precondition it will surely get stuck in moral prejudices and fears and will never dare to descend into Nietzsche’s depths.

Religious prejudices are primarily moral prejudices, and Nietzsche rightly writes about them as such:

“The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most spiritual world, that would seem to be the coldest and the most devoid of presuppositions and has obviously operated in an injurious, inhibiting, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious resistance in the heart of the investigator, it has the heart against it: even the doctrine of the reciprocal dependence of the “good” and the “wicked” drives, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still hale and hearty conscience--- still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from wicked ones. If, however, a person should regard even the affects of hatred, envy, covetousness, and the lust to rule, as conditions of life, as factors which fundamentally and essentially must be present in the general economy of life (and must therefore be further enhanced if life is to be further enhanced)--- he will suffer from such a view of things as from seasickness. And yet, even this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous insights; and so, there are in fact a hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it who---can.”

Where does that new dangerous course lead us? Nietzsche explains his own unique role in this journey:

“To understand it (psychology) as morphology and the doctrine of the development of the will to power, as I do-- nobody has yet come close to doing this even in thought-- in so far as it is permissible to recognize in what has been written so far a symptom of what has so far been kept silent.” He goes on to explain the kind of dangers awaiting us on that path:

“On the other hand, if one has once drifted there with one’s bark, well, all right, let us clench our teeth, let us open our eyes and keep our hand firm on the helm!--- We sail right over morality, we crush, we destroy, perhaps, the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage there…--- But what matter are we! Never yet did a profounder world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers…”

What Nietzsche is essentially saying here is that in order to take the fullest possible advantage of the tool of psychology, one must be liberated from all moral caveats and preconditions, which restrict our journey into the danger zone. Does this condition of its own dispense with religion as such? I do not think so. We do not put icons and other objects of religious veneration in an outhouse, as this would be extremely improper. But in a certain sense psychology is a mental outhouse of sorts, and so, the question here is not of compatibility, but of propriety. Our animalistic bodily functions of all sorts truly “sail right over morality,” but I will have to disagree with Nietzsche when he goes too far with this. I do not think that by sailing over morality in all such situations (our engagement in psychology as the study of our animalistic instincts and practices is obviously included), “we crush, we destroy.” All we do, I think, is suspend the laws of morality, until we are done with our animal study, and thereafter we shall return to these laws, as we resume our ways of life as moral human beings.

And finally, as Nietzsche crowns Ms. Psychology “the queen of all sciences,” my first and foremost comment is that it makes a lot of sense. Here is the conclusion of Jenseits 23:

“And the psychologist who thus “makes a sacrifice”(it is not the sacrifizio dell’ intelletto, on the contrary!) will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall be recognized again as the queen of the sciences for whose service and preparation the other sciences exist. For psychology is now again the path to the fundamental problems.” (Jenseits, 23).

In the spirit of teipse nosce, science, like charity and everything else, ought to begin at home. According to this principle, psychology is the first subject of interest to the scientist. But not only that, psychology is also indispensable to the historian and the philosopher. Herodotus was, in a manner of speaking, a psychologist. Socrates too was a psychologist, but the same cannot be said of Spinoza, or Kant, or Hegel. There is indeed a gap between the early philosophers and Nietzsche (although I think that Nietzsche may be too unkind to Hobbes in general, to notice the Englishman’s interest in poking into matters, yes, psychological!). So, why does Dr. Kaufmann, Nietzsche’s learned translator, seem to object to the word “again” occurring not once, but twice in this short passage? “Again is surely open to objections,” he writes in a footnote to Jenseits 23, without a word of explanation of what exactly he has in mind, whereas Nietzsche’s again comes out clearly and easy to understand.

Come to think of it, religion is also a very interesting subject for the psychologist (no wonder Nietzsche is so good at it!). And of course, for the teacher, psychology is not only the basic tool of studying his students, but it is also the conduit for driving his van right through the roadblocks and sinkholes to where the unloading zone is.