Whatever happened to the good old
Advocatus Diaboli? Has he completely
lost his legitimacy to exist? Are we all reduced to yes or no answers, with
objective reasoning anathemized?
One of the worst mistakes of
Nietzsche’s critics would be to read his iconoclastic attacks on conventional
values as his value judgments of these values, and, whenever he has nothing
nice to say about such values, to ascribe to him negative attitudes toward
them. In our conventional wisdom we are overly accustomed to equate positive
statements with valuations as good, and conversely negative statements
with valuations as bad, or evil. However, by his own explicit
admission, Nietzsche always speaks extra-morally, Jenseits von Gut und Böse,
and having no reason not to take him at his word, it follows that he does
not view Christianity, or its ascetic ideal, as bad things. What
concerns him most about religion and all dogma is that it uses its higher
authority to impose certain definitive value judgments on things that do not
deserve (one way or the other) these particular valuations.
The reason for such a preamble to
the present entry is that our object of comment is the Third Essay of
his Genealogie, which discusses at great length what he has called the
ascetic ideal. It is important to keep in mind that Nietzsche is not
denigrating the ascetic ideal, but moving in to restrain its power of imprimatur,
or anathema, for that matter.
Our case in point is the
religious dogma positing that instinct (read: religious faith) is
superior to reason to such a degree that only through revelation, an act
of faith, is it possible to attain to the absolute truth. The limitations of
reason in this case are so severe that, should reason find itself at odds with
faith, reason must back off and know its subordinate place.
What follows from this dogma is
the denial to reason of the ability to attain to the truth. As we shall see in
the following Nietzschean passage, from Genealogie-3-12, dogmatically
speaking, there is a realm of truth and being, but reason is excluded from
it. (I imagine an army of scientists scoffing, in unison, at this idea,
but, personally, I am not so sure myself that the truth is attainable by reason
alone, or, to put this even more shockingly, by reason at all!)
But let us now partake of
Nietzsche’s exquisitely literate wisdom:
Suppose
such an incarnate will to contradiction and anti-naturalness (the ascetic
priest’s will) is induced to philosophize: upon what will it vent innermost
contrariness? Upon what is felt most certainly to be real and actual: it will
look for error precisely where the instinct of life most unconditionally posits
truth. It is, like the ascetics of the Vedanta philosophy, going to downgrade
physicality to an illusion; likewise, pain, multiplicity, the entire conceptual
antithesis of subject and object, nothing but errors! To renounce belief in
one’s ego, to deny one’s own reality,-- what a triumph!--- not merely over the
senses, over appearance, but a much higher kind of triumph, a violation and
cruelty against reason, a voluptuous pleasure that reaches its height when the
ascetic contempt and self-mockery of reason declares--- “There is a realm of
truth and being, but reason is excluded from it.” Even in the Kantian concept
of the intelligible character of things, something remains of this ascetic
discord of reason against reason, for the intelligible character signifies that
things are so constituted that the intellect comprehends just enough of them to
know that for itself, the intellect, they are utterly incomprehensible. But
precisely because we are seeking knowledge, let us not be ungrateful to such
resolute reversals of accustomed perspectives and valuations. To see
differently, to want to see differently, is no small discipline… so that one
knows how to employ a variety of perspectives in the service of knowledge.
Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on our guard against the dangerous
old conceptual fiction that posited a pure will-less, painless, timeless
knowing subject; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts
as pure reason, absolute spirituality, or ‘knowledge an-Sich’: these always
demand that we think of an eye which is completely unthinkable, turned in no
particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces,-- through
which alone seeing becomes seeing something,--are supposed to be lacking;--
these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense.-- There is only a
perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’, and the more affects we allow
to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe
one thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our objectivity,
be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect,
supposing we were capable of this-- what would that mean but to castrate the
intellect!
Admiring as we undoubtedly should
be Nietzsche’s magnificent style, let us not lose track of two things that he
is talking about. The ascetic attack on reason is one of them, and it must be
perfectly clear to us why faith chooses reason as its target: apparently it
apprehends and deeply loathes competition from reason, as well as it recognizes
its own inadequacy in tackling matters, at which reason is a much better
tackler. Significantly, however, Nietzsche does not strike back at faith, in
his defense of reason. On the contrary, he encourages an array of different
approaches: reason, instinct, or faith, and what not: “the
more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete
will our concept of this thing, our objectivity, be.”
But there is a question remaining,
sooner or later to be addressed by us, so why not here and right now? It boils
down to this: Can it be that the ascetic attack on reason is at least in part
justified? Is reason competent enough to embark on a search for truth all by
itself, or is such a journey doomed from the start? Honestly, I believe that
the ascetic attack hits the mark here: reason on its own has no competence in
the realm of truth. This does not mean, though, that truth and reason are
totally incompatible. No, reason cannot lead us to the truth, but, having found
truth, mainly by instinct, we would not be able to comprehend it without our
reason. This little conundrum can perhaps be elucidated by using the following
metaphor:
Stating now my position on the
compatibility of truth and reason, reason is like an instrument allowing us to
break the ore and extract the precious mineral from it, but not to find the ore
deposit itself, for which a good “nose,” that is, instinct, is
needed…
And
lastly, as a postscript to the above, what is the proper correlation between instinct
and faith? Religion oftentimes does indeed impose itself over this
matter, superimposing faith on instinct as if instinct without
faith cannot exist. This is a reprehensible practice, and Nietzsche is
completely within his rights, to attack religion for it. I have no objection to
the assertion that strong faith may sharpen the instinct and produce the unique
phenomenon known as revelation. We know from theology and hagiography,
and, especially, from the Scriptures that revelation is in most instances a
product of faith. But it does not follow from this that the preexistence of
faith is a necessary condition; or that there can be no revelation where faith
is absent. As a matter of fact, the personal experience of Saul/Paul on the
road to Damascus is a powerful faith-producing revelation in an enemy of faith!
(We are talking, of course, within the parameters of the Christian faith per
se.) Now, what should we call such a revelation in the absence of faith, if not
instinct? In case a better word for it can be found, it does not make
the word instinct wrong in this context, but only less adequate than the
other one, which we may like more, but this is already an argument about
personal preferences, rather than about the essence of things. In other words, faith
is by no means a substitute for instinct, and here we have the
authority of the Christian Bible to prove it!
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