No More Learning

What is the retrograde factor in a philosopher?
--He teaches that the qualities which he happens to possess are the only qualities that exist, that
they are indispensable to those who wish to attain
to the "highest good" (for instance, dialectics with
Plato). He would have all men raise themselves, gradatim, to his type as the highest. He de spises what is generally esteemed--by him a gulf
is cleft between the highest priestly values and the values of the world. He knows what is true, who
God what every one's goal should be, and the way thereto. The typical philosopher
thus an absolute dogmatist;--if requires scepti
? cism all only order dogmatically his principal purpose.
447.
able speak
When the philosopher confronted with his rival-science, for instance, he becomes sceptic;
then appropriates form knowledge which denies the man science; he goes hand
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? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
369
hand with the priest so that he may not be sus pected of atheism or materialism; he considers
an attack made upon himself as an attack upon morals, religion, virtue, and order--he knows how
to bring his opponents into repute by calling them "seducers" and "underminers": then he
shoulder with power.
war with other philosophers:
compel them appear like anarchists, disbelievers, opponents authority.
short, when he fights, he fights exactly like priest and like the priesthood.
THE TRUTHS AND ERRORS OF PHILOSOPHERS.
448.
Philosophy defined by Kant: "The science the limitations reason"! !
marches shoulder The philosopher
--he does his best
? 449.
According Aristotle, Philosophy
the art
discovering truth. On the other hand, the
Epicureans, who availed themselves Aristotle's
sensual theory knowledge, retorted ironical opposition the search for truth: "Philosophy
the art Life. " : 45O.
The three great naivete? s
Knowledge means happiness (as
VOL. A-
? ? I.
of to
3.
as a
of
to
of
2
of
if .
.
is
. );
is
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of in
ill of to
of
In
to at to
? 370
THE WILL TO POWER.
Knowledge as a means to virtue (as if . . . );
Knowledge as a means to the "denial of Life" --inasmuch as it leads to disappointment--(as if . . ).
45 I.
As if there were one "truth" which one could by some means approach !
452.
Error and ignorance are fatal. --The assump tion that truth has been found and that ignorance and error are at an end, constitutes one of the most seductive thoughts in the world. Granted that it be generally accepted, it paralyses the will to test, to investigate, to be cautious, and to
gather experience: it may even be regarded as
criminal--that is to say, as a doubt concerning truth. . . .
"Truth" is therefore more fatal than error and
ignorance, because it paralyses the forces which lead to enlightenment and knowledge. The
passion for idleness now stands up for "truth. " ("Thought is pain and misery ! "), as also do order, rule, the joy of possession, the pride of wisdom-- in fact, vanity:--it is easier to obey than to examine; it is more gratifying to think "I possess the truth," than to see only darkness in all direc tions; . . . but, above all, it is reassuring, it lends
? confidence, and alleviates life--it "improves" the
"Spirit ual peace," "a quiet conscience"--these things
character inasmuch as it reduces mistrust.
? ? ? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY,
ti 37I
are inventions which are only possible provided
"Truth be found. "--"By their fruits ye shall know them. " . . . "Truth" is the truth because it
makes men better. . . . The process goes on:
all goodness and all success is placed to the credit of "truth. "
This is the proof by success: the happiness, contentment, and the welfare of a community or
of an individual, are now understood to be the
result of the belief in morality. . . . Conversely: failure is ascribed to a lack of faith.
453.
The causes of error just much the good as the bad will of man :--in an incalculable
number cases he conceals reality from himself, he falsifies that he may not suffer from his
good bad will. God, for instance, considered the shaper man's destiny; interprets his
little lot though everything were intentionally
sent him for the salvation his soul,--this act ignorance "philology," which more
subtle intellect would seem unclean and false, done, the majority cases, with perfect good faith. Goodwill, "noble feelings," and "lofty states the soul" are just underhand and deceptive the means they use are the passions love, hatred, and revenge, which morality has repudiated and declared egotistic.
Errors are what mankind has had pay for most dearly; and taking them all, the errors which have resulted from goodwill are those which
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as as to
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or
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? THE WILL TO POWER.
have wrought the most harm. The illusion which makes people happy is more harmful than the illusion which is immediately followed by evil results: the latter increases keenness and mistrust, and purifies the understanding; the former merely narcoticises. . . .
Fine feelings and noble impulses ought, speak
372
ing physiologically,
to be classified with the
narcotics: their abuse is followed by precisely the
same results as the abuse of any other opiate-- weak nerves.
454.
Error is the most expensive luxury that man can indulge in : and if the error happen to be a physiological one, it is fatal to life. What has mankind paid for most dearly hitherto ? For its "truths": for every one of these were errors in
? physiologicis. *
. . .
455.
Psychological confusions: the desire for belief is confounded with the "will to truth" (for instance, in Carlyle). But the desire for disbelief has also been confounded with the "will to truth" (a need of ridding one's self of a belief for a hundred reasons: in order to carry one's point against
certain "believers"). What is it that
inspires Sceptics # The hatred of dogmatists--or a need
of repose, weariness as in Pyrrho's case.
The advantages which were expected to come from truth, were the advantages resulting from
a belief in it: for, in itself, truth could have been
? ? ? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY,
thoroughly painful, harmful,
373
and even fatal. Likewise truth was combated only on account
of the advantages which a victory over it would
provide--for instance, emancipation yoke of the ruling powers.
from the
upon motives of truthfulness, but upon motives of power,
apon the desire to be superior.
How is truth proved? By means of the feeling of increased power-by means of utility,--by
means of indispensability,--in short, by means of
its advantages (that is to say, hypotheses con
cerning what truth should be like in order that
it may be embraced by us). But this involves prejudice: it is a sign that truth does not enter the
question at all. . . .
What is the meaning of the "will to truth," for instance in the Goncourts? and in the
naturalists? --A criticism of "objectivity. "
Why should we know: why should we not
prefer
needed was always belief--and not truth. . . .
Belief is created by means which are quite
opposed to the method of investigation: it even depends upon the exclusion of the latter.
456.
A certain degree of faith suffices to-day to give us an objection to what is believed--it does more, it makes us question the spiritual healthi ness of the believer.
The method of truth was not based
? to be deceived? . . . But what was
? ? ? 374
THE WILL TO POWER.
457.
Martyrs. --To combat anything that is based upon reverence, opponents must be possessed of both daring and recklessness, and be hindered
by no scruples. . . . Now, if one considers that for thousands of years man has sanctified as truths only those things which were in reality errors, and that he has branded any criticism of them with the hall-mark of badness, one will have to acknowledge, however reluctantly, that
a goodly amount of immoral deeds were necessary
in order to give the initiative to an attack--I mean to reason. . . . That these immoralists have
always posed as the "martyrs of truth" should be forgiven them: the truth of the matter is that they did not stand up and deny owing to an instinct for truth; but because of a love of dis solution, criminal scepticism, and the love of adventure. In other cases it is personal rancour which drives them into the province of problems --they only combat certain points of view in order to be able to carry their point against certain people. But, above all, it is revenge which has become scientifically useful -- the revenge of the oppressed, those who, thanks to
the truth that happens to be ruling, have been pressed aside and even smothered. . . .
Truth, that is to say the scientific method,
was grasped and favoured by such as recognised
that it was a useful weapon of war--an instru ment of destruction. . .
In order to be honoured as opponents, they
? ? ? ? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
375
were moreover obliged to use an apparatus
similar to that used by those whom they were
attacking: they therefore brandished the concept
"truth" as absolutely as their adversaries did--
they became fanatics at least in their poses,
because no other pose could be expected to be
taken seriously. What still remained to be done was left to persecution, to passion, and the un
certainty of the persecuted--hatred waxed great,
and the first impulse began to die away and to
leave the field entirely to science. Ultimately
all of them wanted to be right in the same absurd
way as their opponents. . . . The word "con viction," "faith," the pride of martyrdom--these
things are most unfavourable to knowledge. The adversaries of truth finally adopt the whole subjective manner of deciding about truth,-that is to say, by means of poses, sacrifices, and heroic resolutions,--and thus prolong the dominion of the
anti-scientific method. As martyrs they com promise their very own deed.
458.
The dangerous distinction between "theoretical" and "practical," in Kant for instance, but also
in the ancient philosophers:--they behave as if pure intellectuality presented them with the prob
? lems of science and metaphysics;--they behave as if practice should be judged by a measure of its own, whatever the judgment of theory may
be.
Against the first tendency I set up my
? ? ? 376
THE WILL TO POWER.
psychology of philosophers: their strangest calcula
tions and "intellectuality" are still but the last pallid impress of a physiological fact; spontaneity is absolutely lacking in them, everything is instinct,
everything is intended to follow a certain direction from the first. . . .
Against the second tendency I put my question:
acting correctly, besides that of thinking correctly; the last case is action, the first presupposes thought. Are we possessed of a means whereby we can
judge of the value of a method of life differently from the value of a theory: through induction or comparison? . . . Guileless people imagine that
in this respect we are better equipped, we know what is "good"--and the philosophers are content
to repeat this view. We conclude that some sort
of faith is at work in this matter, and nothing in Ore. .
"Men must act; consequently rules of conduct
are necessary"--this is what even the ancient Sceptics thought. The urgent need of a definite
decision in this department of knowledge is used as an argument in favour of regarding something as true! .
"Men must not act"--said their more con sistent brothers, the Buddhists, and then thought out a mode of conduct which would deliver man
from the yoke of action. .
To adapt one's self, to live as the "common man" lives, and to regard as right and proper what
he regards as right: this is submission to the gregarious instinct. One must carry one's courage
whether we know another method of
? ? ? ? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
377
and severity so far as to learn to consider such submission a disgrace. One should not live
according
not separate theory and practice . . .
to two standards! . . . One should
459.
Of all that which was formerly held to be true,
Everything which was formerly disdained as unholy, for
not one word is to be credited.
bidden, contemptible,
and fatal--all these
flowers now bloom on the most charming paths of truth.
The whole of this old morality concerns us no
longer:
worthy of respect. We have outlived it--we are no longer sufficiently coarse and guileless to be forced to allow ourselves to be lied to in this way. . . . In more polite language: we are too virtuous for it. . . . And if truth in the old sense
were "true" only because the old morality said
? it contains not one idea which is still
"yea" to and had follows that no truth
be of use to us.
right say "yea" it: the past can any longer
Our criterion of truth
certainly not morality: we refute an assertion
dependent upon morality and inspired by noble feelings.
46O.
All these values are empirical and conditioned. But he who believes them and who honours them, refuses acknowledge this aspect them.
when we show that
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? 378
THE WILL TO POWER.
All philosophers believe in these values, and one form their reverence takes is the endeavour to
make a priori truths out of them. The falsifying nature of reverence. . . .
Reverence is the supreme test of intellectual honesty: but in the whole history of philosophy
there is no such thing as intellectual honesty,--but the "love of goodness. . . . "
On the one hand, there is an absolute lack of
method in testing the value of these values;
secondly, there is a general disinclination either
to test them or to regard them as conditioned at
all. --All anti-scientific instincts assembled round
moral values in order to keep science out of this
department.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS IN THE CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
46 I.
? . . .
Why philosophers
and blind hostility of philosophers towards the senses--what an amount of mob and middle-class qualities
motive: the abuse must shown and inherent the principle.
necessary
are islanderers. --The artful
all this hatred
The crowd always believes that abuse
which feels the harmful results, constitutes an objection the thing which happens abused: insurrectionary movements against principles, whether politics agriculture, always follow line argument suggested by this ulterior
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in,
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!
? CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY,
379
It is a woeful history: mankind looks for a
principle, from the standpoint of which he will be able to contemn man--he invents a world in
order to be able to slander and throw mud at
this world: as a matter of fact, he snatches every
time at nothing, and construes this nothing as "God," as "Truth," and, in any case, as judge
and detractor of this existence. . . .
If one should require a proof of how deeply
and thoroughly the actually barbarous needs of
man, even in his present state of tameness and "civilisation," still seek gratification, one should
contemplate
evolution of philosophy:--a sort of revenge upon reality, a surreptitious process of destroying the
values by means of which men live, a dissatisfied soul to which the conditions of discipline is one of torture, and which takes a particular pleasure in
morbidly severing all the bonds that bind it to such a condition.
The history of philosophy is the story of a secret
and mad hatred of the prerequisities of Life, of
the feelings which make for the real values of Life, and of all partisanship in favour of Life.
the "leitmotifs" of the whole of the
? Philosophers
have never hesitated to affirm a
fanciful world, provided it contradicted this world,
and furnished them with a weapon wherewith
they could calumniate this world. Up to the
present, philosophy has been the grand school of
slander: and power has been great, that even to-day our science, which pretends the
advocate Life, has accepted the fundamental
position slander,
and treats this world
? ? of of
its
as
to be
so
? 38o
THE WILL TO POWER.
"appearance," and this chain of causes as though
it were only phenomenal. What is the hatred which is active here?
I fear that it is still the Circe of philosophers-- Morality, which plays them the trick of compelling
them to be ever slanderers. . . . They believed in moral "truths," in these they thought they had
found the highest values; what alternative had
they left, save that of denying existence ever more emphatically the more they got to know
about it? . . . For this life is immoral. . . .
And it is based upon immoral first principles: and morality says nay to Life.
Let us suppress the real world: and in order to do this, we must first suppress the highest values current hitherto--morals. . . . It is
enough to show that morality itself is immoral,
in the same sense as that in which immorality has been condemned heretofore. If an end be
thus made to the tyranny of the former values, if we have suppressed the "real world," a new order of values must follow of its own accord.
The world of appearance and the world of lies: this constitutes the contradiction. The latter
hitherto has been the "real world," "truth," "God. "
This is the one which we still have to suppress. The logic of my conception:
(1) Morality as the highest value master all the phases philosophy, even
the Sceptics). Result: this world no good, not the "real world. "
? highest What, sooth, morality? --It
(2) What that determines the value here?
? ? in
is it
is
of is
is
(it it ofis
is
of
? throughout its history.
->
CRITICISM of PHILOSOPHY,
381
the instinct of decadence; it is the means whereby
the exhausted and the degenerate revenge them
selves. Historical proof: philosophers have
(3) It is the instinct of decadence coming to
the fore as will to power. Proof: the absolute immorality of the means employed by morality
always
been decadents . . . in the service of nihilistic religions.
General aspect: the values which have been highest hitherto constitute a specific case of the will to power; morality itself is a specific case of immorality.
462.
The principal innovations : Instead of "moral values," nothing but naturalistic values. Natural isation of morality.
In the place of "sociology," a doctrine of the
forms ofdominion.
In the place of "society," the complex whole of
culture, which is my chief interest (whether in entirety parts).
the place the "theory knowledge,"
doctrine which laid down the value of the passions (to this hierarchy the passions would belong: the passions transfigured: their superior rank, their "spirituality").
the place "metaphysics" and religion, the
doctrine Eternal Recurrence (this being regarded means the breeding and selection
men).
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? THE WILL TO POWER. 463.
My precursors: Schopenhauer.
I deepened pessimism, and first brought full
meaning within my grasp, by means its most extreme opposite.
Likewise: the higher Europeans, the pioneers great politics.
Likewise: the Greeks and their genesis.
464.
have named those who were unconsciously my workers and precursors. But what direc tion may turn with any hope finding my particular kind philosophers themselves,
least my yearning for new philosophers? that
direction, alone, where noble attitude of mind
prevails,
382
an attitude mind which believes
slavery and manifold orders rank,
requisites any high degree
direction, alone, where
culture. creative attitude
prevails, an attitude
gard the world
"Sabbath Sabbaths" an end be desired, and which, even peace, honours the means which lead new wars; an attitude mind which would prescribe laws for the future, which for the sake the future would treat everything that exists to-day with harshness and even tyranny;
daring and "immoral" attitude mind, which would wish see both the good and the evil qualities man developed their fullest extent,
To what extent
? the pre that mind mind which does not re happiness and repose, the
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much more favourable the education mighty, extensive, subtle, rash, and daring
CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
383
because it would feel itself able to put each in right place--that say, that place which
each would need the other. But what prospect has he finding what he seeks, who goes
search philosophers to-day? not probable that, even with the best Diogenes-lantern his
hand, he will wander about by night and day vain? This age possessed the opposite in stincts. What wants, above all, comfort;
secondly, wants publicity and the deafening din
of actors' voices, the big drum which appeals
its Bank-Holiday tastes; thirdly, that every one
should on his belly utter subjection before the greatest all lies--which "the equality men"--and should honour only those virtues which make men equal and place them equal positions. But this way, the rise the philo sopher, understand him, made completely
impossible--despite the fact that many may re
gard the present tendencies rather favourable his advent. As matter fact, the whole world mourns, to-day, the hard times that philo
sophers used have, hemmed between the fear the stake, guilty conscience, and the presump tuous wisdom of the Fathers of the Church: but
the truth that precisely these conditions were
? intellect than the conditions
prevailing to-day.
At present another kind intellect, the intellect the demagogue, the actor, and perhaps the
beaver- and ant-like scholar too, finds the best possible conditions for development. But even
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? 384
// THE WILL TO POWER.
for artists of a superior calibre the conditions are
already far from favourable: for does not every one of them, almost, perish owing to his want of discipline? They are no longer tyrannised
over by an outside power--by the tables of absolute values enforced by a Church or by a monarch: and thus they no longer learn to de velop their "inner tyrant," their will. And what holds good of artists also holds good, to a greater and more fatal degree, of philosophers. Where,
then, are free spirits to be found to-day ? Let any one show me a free spirit to-day !
465.
Under "Spiritual freedom" I understand some
thing very definite: it is a state in which one is a
hundred times superior to philosophers and other
disciples of "truth" in one's severity towards one's self, in one's uprightness, in one's courage, and
in one's absolute will to say nay even when it is dangerous to say nay. I regard the philosophers
that have appeared heretofore as contemptible
libertines hiding behind the petticoats of the female "Truth. "
END OF WOL, R,
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