There have been many books and articles written about Nietzsche with the common thread among them being that they rarely agree on how to understand him. This could be said with many philosophers, but it is particularly true with Nietzsche. Not only are the interpretations not in agreement with one another, but they can differ very widely indeed, so that one can hardly see that they are speaking of the same philosopher. The cause for this lies partly in Nietzsche’s writing itself. Nietzsche is not a philosopher who can have a single position attributed to him on the basis of the sum of his texts, because in each text he is rethinking the issues which he has discussed before as well as coming up with new ideas. He is a creative philosopher — so his books differ very widely, in their content if not in their style. Interpretations of Nietzsche are particularly fraught when an author combines the material in the notebooks with theses that are articulated scattered in the published texts. Nietzsche is constantly trying out new ideas, and the notebooks are full of ideas that never made it into texts. Thus if one tries to combine the two, as most all interpreters do, what one will get is whatever the interpreter wants. One can manufacture in this way any interpretation of Nietzsche one likes, by selective quotation, and by incorporating the discarded material that is in the notebooks — from naturalist to projectionist to sceptic. There will always be contrary passages not cited or noted.

Thus most of the characteristic views that are attributed to Nietzsche are not true in the incautious way that they are usually stated. Take for example his view that ‘God is dead’, as asserted in The Gay Science, and then reasserted in Thus Spake Zarathustra. This is the view with which Nietzsche is most commonly associated in the popular mind, but it is simply not his view, not stated this sweepingly. His view, stated clearly in The Anti-Christ, is that he is not against the existence of all or any God, he is only opposed to the existence of the Christian God. It is the Christian God that he feels doesn’t exist, or perhaps one should say, as he does say, that the Christian God is not even worthy to exist. The Christian conception is an enfeebling concept of God. Thus:

47. — What sets us apart in not that we recognise no God, either in history or in nature or behind nature — but that we find that which has been reverenced as God not ‘godlike’ but pitiable, absurd, harmful, not merely an error but a crime against life . . . We deny God as God . . . If this God of the Christians were ever proved to us to exist, we should know even less how to believe in him. — In a formula: Deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio.

The Anti-Christ

In fact, in his own life, Nietzsche does seem to have had a belief, however tentative and experimental, in the god Dionysus. He was known to dance as Dionysus’ worshippers were meant to dance, but did so behind closed doors; he wrote poems to Dionysus as a God, he spoke sometimes of being Dionysus. Of course one could argue that this does not constitute evidence of a full belief in Dionysus as an existent being, that it is play-acting a belief — and perhaps that is how it should be interpreted. But one has to say his behaviour is surprisingly close to that of a devout acolyte. This is rarely ever said, although those who know Nietzsche’s works well can’t fail to know it — but the popular atheist view (promoted in the main by Walter Kaufmann) has been allowed to linger in the zeitgeist without qualification.

The same could be said of Nietzsche’s ideas about the Will to Power, present through Nietzsche’s early works and up to Zarathustra, but not emphasised in the later works. This was given a spurious centrality by being the title of a volume edited together from the Notebooks by Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth as though it represented Nietzsche’s final thoughts, when it was no such thing. Kaufmann himself complained in the following terms.

The claim that these notes rather than the books Nietzsche finished represent his legacy is as untenable as the boast that this — or any — arrangement can claim the sanction of Nietzsche’s own intentions. WP p. xviii

WP p. xviii

Kaufmann’s judicious dismantling of the claims that can be made on the book’s behalf have not however led to the proper attitude of critical distance. The concept of the Will to Power has been pushed forward, along with the Superman, as though it represents Nietzsche’s most mature statement of his position — whereas it had been abandoned in 1888,

And yet for all this we find very clearly stated in the Twilight of the Idols the denial of the idea that Will exists in any form: Will is a psychological phantom, a chimera. What are we to make of this? The best they can be said is that the Will to Power is an idea that Nietzsche flirted with, on and off, but that his final (and published) view was that it, along with the will to anything, rested on a mistake. As he himself said in Twilight of the Idols, section 7 of The Four Great Errors:

The whole of the old-style psychology, the psychology of will, has as its precondition the desire of its authors, the priests at the head of the ancient communities, to create for themselves a right to ordain punishments — or their desire to create for God a right to do so. . . . Men were thought of as ‘free’ so that they could become guilty: consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness (— whereby the most  fundamental  falsification  in psychologicis was made into the very principle of psychology). . . . 

Twilight of the Idols, section 7 of The Four Great Errors:

Nietzsche goes on to deny other aspects of what has been called Folk Psychology. The idea that we can inspect our own thoughts and understand them, see them, take them as they appear. His view is that all of this is an invented nonsense. Beliefs, desires, thoughts, are a superficial description of phænomenon that we project onto our own consciousness as a way of explaining our own behaviour; they are a vulgar mental physics on a par with the Greek idea that everything is water and fire. The real origins of our behaviour are a mystery to us. Given this attitude as expressed in Twilight of the Idols it is inconceivable that he would title his final book ‘The Will to Power’.

Similar reservations can to be made about the concept of the Superman, or the Übermensch. At various points, particularly in The Improvers of Mankind, Nietzsche announces that mankind can’t be improved. Therefore, mankind can’t attain or be advised to attain to the level of the superman. What then is Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Superman? It seems to be, at best, a description of himself as Zarathustra, or within the Zarathustra mythos, rather than a view which is being recommended for others to adopt. He gives no instructions on how someone who is not Zarathustra might become a superman in terms of recommendations in which he believes, and his idea that these are the beliefs of  the superman do not then constitute a recommendation that others could follow. Let them become Zarathustra, if they can! Saying: ‘I teach the Superman’ is not helpful advice, if it is intended to be advice at all. It is an inspired rush of ecstatic poetry, in the Dionysian mode, but it is certainly not an instruction manual. If anything Nietzsche seems to be hoping that his words might bring the Superman forth, by a form of incantatory magic!

That which gives wings to asses and milks lionesses, all praise to that unruly spirit that comes to all present and all the mob like a storm-wind,

– that is enemy to all thistle-heads and prying noses and to all withered leaves and weeds: all praise to that wild, good, free storm-spirit that dances upon swamps and afflictions as upon meadows!

Zarathustra, Of the Higher Man, §20.

In fact, by the Twilight of the Idols, the concept of the Superman seems to have dropped out to a very large extent (it is mentioned only once), just as the Will to Power has dropped out. What we have arrived at in the final works of 1888 is a psychology where the mind is unknowable, and not within our scope to change. In a very clear sense we no longer know who we are, our internal states are completely mysterious, and only superficial manifestations, which may be wholly unlike their real causes, are evident to us. We could not bring anything forth in ourselves by any deliberate means. We lack a correct theory — or even a theory of a theory — of what we are.

In the same way: though Nietzsche obviously thinks that Christian morality is a very bad thing for mankind, it’s very unclear that he thinks that there is no morality at all. Sometimes he says things which very clearly suggests this. On the other hand, he often seems to be making moral recommendations, for example that courage and nobility are virtues, one might say Roman martial virtues — and it does seem as though the Superman, when that was being recommended, would have a different morality. (It may be rejoined that Nietzsche takes the Superman to have no morality at all, but is that really so?) It may be seen that this confusion runs through much of his work. It is present almost everywhere. If he is saying that there is no objective right and wrong and that what we believe here is mere projection then it makes no sense to say that Christian morality is an especially wrong morality. For on this view they should all be wrong equally including his own beliefs that Christian beliefs are morally wrong. Thus he swings between impossible extremes. In this way he sometimes comes across as a nihilist, and yet when he discusses nihilism, he finds it intolerable. He is a moralising anti-moralist — just as he is a religiously ecstatic anti-theist. But though he is opposed to Christian morality and in theory, celebrates a wild, impassioned rejection of Christian mercy or kindness, he himself seems not to have been given to barbarism or cruelty, or to condone it, even in the Übermensch. Out of this, a skilful interpreter can construct any view he or she wishes. And yet one can picture Nietzsche turning in his grave at some — perhaps most — of the interpretations that have been foisted on his words. (His reaction to Nazi Germany can easily be predicted from the damning things he has to say about Bizmarck’s Germany.)

Given the problems of understanding Nietzsche through the scattering of headline-making topics my intention here is to focus on what he says in his last work with a substantial amount of metaphysics: Twilight of the Idols. The metaphysics elaborated in this work is far deeper and more interesting than what has often been attributed to him. The aim is to show that his thinking on these matters was almost clairvoyant.

On the question of what does and does not exist he has this to say.

One knows my demand of philosophers that they place themselves beyond good and evil — that they have the illusion of moral judgement beneath them. This demand follows from an insight first formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. Morality is only an interpretation of certain phænomena, more precisely a misinterpretation.

Of course the idea that there are no moral facts was formulated long before Nietzsche, by David Hume, as Nietzsche was aware. (He knew Hume’s writings and referred to him directly in The Gay Science.) But the main point that I would make here is that this passage strongly suggests that there is a world, it is just that it is not a world that has spiritual or moral aspects to it. There are phænomena, and those phænomena can be interpreted wrongly by us to seem to have moral or spiritual aspects. Thus the question is: what was Nietzsche’s attitude to that world, to its metaphysics — even if he may have balked sometimes at this way of putting it.

Just as Nietzsche mirrored Hume in the latter’s denial of moral facts, so he also mirrored him in the claim that there are no necessary connections we can discern, that causation is something whose inner workings are mysterious to us. We see events regularly occurring, but not the why of it? And, just as in Hume, this is used as a way of showing the problem with the concept of will.

It is this which sees everywhere deed and doer; this which believes in Will as cause in general; this which believes in the ‘I,’ in the I  as Being, in the I  as substance, and which projects its belief in the I -substance on to all things — only thus does it create the concept ‘thing’. . . . Being is everywhere thought in,  foisted on, as cause; it is only from the concept ‘I’ that there follows, derivatively, the concept ‘Being’. . . . At the beginning stands the great fateful error that the will is something which produces an effect — that will is a faculty. . . . Today we know it is merely a word. . . . .

TWI, ‘Reason’ in Philosophy §5.

The ‘inner world’ is full of phantoms and false lights: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, consequently no longer explains anything — it merely accompanies events, it can also be absent. The so-called ‘motive’: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment to an act, which conceals rather than exposes the antecedentia of the act. And as for the ego! It has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has totally ceased to think, to feel and to will! . . . .

TWI, The Four Great Errors §3.

Nietzsche’s idea is that we have invented a phantom (Will) which is a non-existent intermediary between physical events. This illusory faculty is then used to create the secondary illusions of self (ego) and moral responsibility. This is not evading the idea of moral responsibility through a classical form of hard determinism, it is something much more radical with far deeper consequences. This is a metaphysical view which undercuts to a very large extent the earlier work that Nietzsche had done. Both the Superman and the Will to Power have been cut adrift. Even the perspectivism of Beyond Good and Evil is no longer maintainable. What is projection if not some kind of causal process in the mind’s interaction with the world?

It is no longer clear that we can say anything definitive about how events are caused, nor can we say anything definitive as to what cause is. The Holism, and the Monism suggest there is a serious difficulty in understanding whether there could be actions at all or indeed, change at all, just as there was for Parmenides himself. We seem to have in the Monism a return to the Eleatic problem. The view that we reach, then in Twilight of the Idols, could be said to be a repudiation of much of the earlier philosophy, either in whole, or in part. In this respect Nietzsche’s conclusions are more radical than were those of Hume, who did not see that he was undermining his own Empiricism — though I would argue that he was. Nietzsche sees clearly that empiricism — pursued to its logical conclusion — has undermined itself.

The whole of the alleged empiricism which affirmed them has gone to the devil! Thatis what follows! — And we had made a nice misuse of that ‘empiricism’, we hadcreated the world on the basis of it as a world of causes, as a world of will, as a world of spirit.

TWI, The Four Great Errors §3.

Obviously the target here can’t be Hume, but who is intended? Mach perhaps? Whatever the answer to that question, Nietzsche failed to draw the conclusion that his notion of projection had also been undermined. Thus he continued:

The oldest and longest-lived psychology was at work here — indeed it has done nothing else: every event was to it an action, every action the effect of a will, the world became for it a multiplicity of agents, an agent (‘subject’) foisted itself upon every event. Man projected his three ‘inner facts’, that in which he believed more firmly than in anything else, will, spirit, ego, outside himself — he derived the concept ‘being’ only from the concept ‘ego’, he posited ‘things’ as possessing being according to his own image, according to his concept of the ego as cause.

But how can it be known that we definitively have something in the mind that is being projected, rather than that we are seeing what is there, or we have no idea that either of these apply. Psychological explanations have no foundation, and thus its categories vanish. Projection must vanish also. The only thing that could sustain the idea of projection is the conviction that there is a world of merely ‘physical’ events that are devoid of these qualities. Is Nietzsche entitled to that conviction? If he is not then Nietzsche’s evolutionary story is just that — a statement of how things could be with nothing that compels belief.

This invites a logical question: is it possible to have a projection that is not a projection onto something? I would suggest that it is not. Projection not only requires a causal process to be activated it requires a screen on which to project. Projection is nothing other than a metaphor for a causal process in which a seeming reality appears on a surface to give the illusion of something existent. Without the screen, projection is not possible. (What about a hologram? it may be protested. A hologram projects one light field onto another light field where this second is scattered off objects, for example air. It would not be possible in empty space.) Thus the idea that there may be no screen at all is impossible. But then it may be asked if dreams are not projections? I would suggest that they are not: they are events in the sleeping brain, but no projection is involved. (If one has them while awake then they are confused with, or intermingle with, ordinary perceptions.) Thus a sweeping view that declares that everything is projection is not possible. Sometimes Nietzsche seems to be reaching for such a view but I think ultimately he realises that it is unintelligible.

Can we find other passages that broaden Nietzsche’s point?

We can start with the surprising statement Nietzsche makes about Heraclitus.

2.  I set apart with high honour the name of  Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosopher folk rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity. Heraclitus too was unjust to the senses, which lie neither in the way the Eleatics believe nor as he believed — they do not lie at all. It is what we make of their evidence that first introduces a lie into it, for example the lie of unity, the lie of materiality, of substance, of duration. . . . ‘Reason’ is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie. . . . But Heraclitus will always be eternally right in this, that Being is an empty fiction. The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘real world’ is simply a lying addition. . . . ^*

TWI ‘Reason’ in Philosophy

We can see from this that he is very clearly against a dualistic metaphysics, what one could call a Two World-ism — and this is consistent from his earliest writings to the last.

(To be continued)