Neither does the
practical
change on the basis of the theoretical, nor does the theoretical change on the basis of the practical: both change always simultaneously on the basis of their fundamental metaphysical position.
Heidegger - Nietzsche - v1-2
In Nietz- sche's view the value of a thing is measured by what it contributes to the enhancement of the actuality of beings.
That art is of more value than truth means that art, as "sensuous," is more in being than the supersensuous.
Granted that supersensuous being served heretofore as what is highest, if art is more in being, then it proves to be the being most in being, the basic occurrence within beings as a whole.
Yet what does "Being" mean, if the sensuous can be said to be more in being? What does "sensuous" mean here? What does it have to do with "truth"? How can it be even higher in value than truth? What does "truth" mean here? How does Nietzsche define its essence? At present all this is obscure. We do not see any way in which the fifth statement might be sufficiently grounded; we do not see how the statement can be grounded.
Such questionableness radiates over all the other statements, above all, the third, which obviously can be decided and grounded only when
Grounding the Five Statements on Art 141
the fifth statement has been grounded. But the fifth statement must be presupposed if we are to understand the fourth as well, according to which art is the countermovement to nihilism. For nihilism, i. e. , Platonism, posits the supersensuous as true being, on the basis of which all remaining beings are demoted to the level of proper nonbeing, demoted, denigrated, and declared nugatory. Thus everything hangs on the explanation and grounding of the fifth statement: art is worth more than truth. What is truth? In what does its essence consist?
That question is always already included in the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy. It runs ahead of them and yet is most intrinsic to these very questions. It is the primal question of philosophy.
19. The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art
That the question concerning art leads us directly to the one that is preliminary to all questions already suggests that in a distinctive sense it conceals in itself essential relations to the grounding and guiding questions of philosophy. Hence our previous clarification of the essence of art will also be brought to a fitting conclusion only in terms of the question of truth.
In order to discern the connection between art and truth right from the outset, the question concerning the essence of truth and the way in which Nietzsche poses and answers the question should be prepared. Such preparation is to occur through a discussion of what it is in the essence of art that calls forth the question concerning truth. To that end we should remember once more Nietzsche's words on the connec- tion between art and truth. He jotted them down in the year 1888 on the occasion of a meditation on his first book: "Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: and even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance" (XIV, 368).
The relation between art and truth is a discordance that arouses dread. * To what extent? How, and in what respects, does art come into relation to truth? In what sense is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? In order to see to what extent art as such comes into
*Ein Entsetzen erregender Zwiespalt. In the title of this section, Der erregende Zwiespalt zwischen Wahrheit und Kunst, the phrase erregende Zwiespalt is actually a condensation of the statement made here. That is to say, discordance between art and truth "rages" insofar as it arouses dread.
The Raging Discordance 143.
relation to truth, we must say more clearly than we have before what Nietzsche understands by "truth. " In our previous discussions we gave some hints in this direction. But we have not yet advanced as far as a conceptual definition of Nietzsche's notion of truth. For that we require a preparatory reflection.
A meditation on fundamentals concerning the realm in which we are moving becomes necessary whenever we speak the word "truth" in a way that is not altogether vacuous. For without insight into these contexts we lack all the prerequisites for understanding the point where all the bypaths of Nietzsche's metaphysical thought clearly converge. It is one thing if Nietzsche himself, under the burdens that oppressed him, did not achieve sufficient perspicuity here; it is another if we who follow him renounce the task of penetrating meditation.
Every time we try to achieve clarity with regard to such basic words as truth, beauty, Being, art, knowledge, history, and freedom, we must heed two things.
First, that a clarification is necessary here has its grounds in the concealment of the essence of what is named in such words. Such clarification becomes indispensable from the moment we experience the fact that human Dasein, insofar as it is-insofar as it is itself-is steered directly toward whatever is named in such basic words and is inextricably caught up in relations with them. That becomes manifest whenever human Dasein becomes historical, and that means whenever it comes to confront beings as such, in order to adopt a stance in their midst and to ground the site of that stance definitively. Depending on what knowledge retains essential proximity to what is named in such basic words, or lapses into distance from it, the content of the name, the realm of the word, and the compelling force of the naming power vary.
When we consider this state of affairs in relation to the word "truth" in an extrinsic and desultory manner, we are accustomed to saying that the word has sundry meanings which are not sharply distinguished from one another, meanings that belong together on the basis of a common ground which we are vaguely aware of but which we do not clearly perceive. The most extrinsic form in which we encounter the
144 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
ambiguity of the word is the "lexical. " In the dictionary the meanings are enumerated and exhibited for selection. The life of actual language consists in multiplicity of meaning. To relegate the animated, vigorous word to the immobility of a univocal, mechanically programmed se- quence of sighs would mean the death of language and the petrifaction and devastation of Dasein.
Why speak of such commonplaces here? Because the "lexical" repre- sentation of the multiplicity of meanings for such a basic word easily causes us to overlook the fact that here all the meanings and the differences among them are historical and therefore necessary. Accord- ingly, it can never be left to caprice, and can never be inconsequential, which of the word meanings we choose in our attempt to grasp the essence named-and thus already illuminated-in the basic word and to classify it as a key word for a given discipline and area of inquiry. Every attempt of this kind is a historical decision. The leading meaning of such a basic word, which speaks to us more or less clearly, is nothing evident, although our being accustomed to it seems to suggest that. Basic words are historical. That does not mean simply that they have various meanings for various ages which, because they are past, we can survey historically; it means that they ground history now and in the times to come in accordance with the interpretation of them that comes to prevail. The historicity of the basic words, understood in this fash- ion, is one of the things that must be heeded in thinking through those basic words.
Second, we must pay attention to the way such basic words vary in meaning. Here there are principal orbits or routes; but within them meanings may oscillate. Such oscillation is not mere laxity in linguistic usage. It is the breath of history. When Goethe or Hegel says the word "education," and when an educated man of the 1890s says it, not only is the formal content of the utterance different, but the kind of world encapsulated in the saying is different, though not unrelated. When Goethe says "nature," and when Holderlin speaks the same word, different worlds reign. Were language no more than a sequence of communicative signs, then it would remain something just as arbitrary and indifferent as the mere choice and application of such signs.
The Raging Discordance 145
But because in the very foundations of our being language as reso- nant signification roots us to our earth and transports and ties us to our world, meditation on language and its historical dominion is always the action that gives shape to Dasein itself. The will to originality, rigor, and measure in words is therefore no mere aesthetic pleasantry; it is the work that goes on in the essential nucleus of our Dasein, which is historical existence.
But in what sense are there what we have called principal orbits or routes for the historical expansion of meanings among the basic words? Our example will be the word "truth. " Without insight into these connections, the peculiarity, difficulty, and genuine excitement apropos of the question of truth remain closed to us; so does the possibility of understanding Nietzsche's deepest need with respect to the question of the relation of art and truth.
The assertion "Among Goethe's accomplishments in the field of science the theory of colors also belongs" is true. With the statement we have at our disposal something that is true. We are, as we say, in possession of "a truth. " The assertion 2 X 2 = 4 is true. With this statement we have another "truth. " Thus there are many truths of many kinds: things we determine in our everyday existence, truths of natural science, truths of the historical sciences. To what extent are these truths what their name says they are? To the extent that they satisfy generally and in advance whatever is proper to a "truth. " Such is what makes a true assertion true. Just as we call the essence of the
just "justice," the essence of the cowardly "cowardice," and the essence of the beautiful "beauty," so must we call the essence of the true "truth. " But truth, conceived as the essence of the true, is solely one. For the essence of something is that in which everything of that kind-in our case, everything true-dovetails. If truth suggests the essence of the true, then truth is but one: it becomes impossible to talk about "truths. "
Thus we already have two meanings for the word "truth," basically different but related to one another. If the word "truth" is meant in the sense which admits of no multiplicity, it names the essence of the true. On the contrary, if we take the word in the sense where a plurality
146 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
is meant, then the word "truth" means not the essence of the true but any given truth as such. The essence of a matter can be conceived principally or exclusively as what may be attributed to anything that satisfies the essence of the matter. If one restricts himself to this plausible conception of essence, which, however, is neither the sole nor the original conception, as the one which is valid for many, the follow- ing may be readily deduced concerning the essential word "truth. " Because being true may be asserted of every true statement as such, an abbreviated form of thought and speech can also call what is true itself a "truth. " But what is meant here is "something true. " Something true now is called simply "truth. " The name "truth" is in an essential sense ambiguous. Truth means the one essence and also the many which satisfy the essence. Language itself has a peculiar predilection for that sort of ambiguity. We therefore encounter it early on and constantly. The inner grounds for the ambiguity are these: inasmuch as we speak, and that means comport ourselves to beings through speech, speaking on the basis of beings and with reference back to them, we mean for the most part beings themselves. The being in question is always this or that individual and specific being. At the same time it is a being as such, that is, it is of such a genus and species, such an essence. This house as such is of the essence and species "house. "
When we mean something true, we of course understand the essence of truth along with it. We must understand the latter if, whenever we intend something true, we are to know what we have in front of us. Although the essence itself is not expressly and especially named, but always only previewed and implied, the word "truth," which names the essence, is nevertheless used for true things themselves. The name for the essence glides unobtrusively into our naming such things that participate in that essence. Such slippage is aided and abetted by the fact that for the most part we let ourselves be determined by beings themselves and not by their essence as such.
The manner in which we examine the basic words therefore moves along two principal routes: the route of the essence, and that which veers away from the essence and yet is related back to it. But an interpretation which is as old as our traditional Western logic and
The Raging Discordance 147
grammar makes this apparently simple state of affairs even simpler and therefore more ordinary. It is said that the essence-here the essence of the true, which makes everything true be what it is-because it is valid for many true things, is the generally and universally valid. The truth of the essence consists in nothing else than such universal validity. Thus truth, as the essence of the true, is the universal. However, the "truth" which is one of a plurality, "truths," the individual truth, true propositions, are "cases" that fall under the universal. Nothing is clear- er than that. But there are various kinds of clarity and transparency, among them a kind that thrives on the fact that what seems to be lucid is really vacuous, that the least possible amount of thought goes into it, the danger of obscurity being thwarted in that way. But so it is when one designates the essence of a thing as the universal concept. That in certain realms-not all-the essence of something holds for many particular items (manifold validity} is a consequence of the essence, but it does not hit upon its essentiality.
The equating of essence with the character of the universal, even as an essential conclusion which has but conditional validity, would of itself not have been so fatal had it not for centuries barred the way to a decisive question. The essence of the true holds for the particular assertions and propositions which, as individuals, differ greatly from one another according to content and structure. The true is in each case something various, but the essence, as the universal which is valid for many, is one. But universal validity, which is valid for many things that belong together, is now made what is universally valid without qualifi- cation. "Universally valid" now means not only valid for many particu- lar items that belong together, but also what is always and everywhere valid in itself, immutable and eternal, transcending time.
The result is the proposition of the immutability of essences, includ- ing the essence of truth. The proposition is logically correct but meta-· physically untrue. Viewed in terms of the particular "cases" of the many true statements, the essence of the true is that in which the many dovetail. The essence in which the many dovetail must be one and the same thing for them. But from that it by no means follows that the essence in itself cannot be changeable. For, supposing that the essence
148 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
of truth did change, that which changes could always still be a "one" which holds for "many," the transformation not disturbing that rela- tionship. But what is preserved in the metamorphosis is what is un- changeable in the essence, which essentially unfolds in its very transformation. The essentiality of essence, its inexhaustibility, is there- by affirmed, and also its genuine selfhood and selfsameness. The latter stands in sharp contrast to the vapid selfsameness of the monotonous, which is the only way the unity of essence can be thought when it is taken merely as the universal. If one stands by the conception of the selfsameness of the essence of truth which is derived from traditional logic, he will immediately (and from that point of view quite correctly) say: "The notion of a change of essence leads to relativism; there is only one truth and it is the same for everybody; every relativism is disruptive of the general order and leads to sheer caprice and anarchy. " But the right to such an objection to the essential transformation of truth stands and falls with the appropriateness of the representation of the "one" and the "same" therein presupposed, which is called the abso- lute, and with the right to define the essentiality of essence as manifold validity. The objection that essential transformation leads to relativism is possible only on the basis of deception concerning the essence of the absolute and the essentiality of essence.
That digression must suffice for our present effort to unfold what Nietzsche in his discussions of the relation between art and truth understands by "truth. " According to what we have shown, we must first ask upon which route of meaning the word "truth" moves for Nietzsche in the context of his discussions of the relationship between art and truth. The answer is that it moves along the route which deviates from the essential route. That. means that in the fundamental question which arouses dread Nietzsche nevertheless does not arrive at the proper question of truth, in the sense of a discussion of the essence of the true. That essence is presupposed as evident. For Nietzsche truth is not the essence of the true but the true itself, which satisfies the essence of truth. It is of decisive importance to know that Nietzsche does not pose the question of truth proper, the question concerning the essence of the true and the truth of essence, and with it the question
The Raging Discordance 149
of the ineluctable possibility of its essential transformation. Nor does he ever stake out the domain of the question. This we must know, not only in order to judge Nietzsche's position with regard to the question of the relation of art and truth, but above all in order to estimate and measure in a fundamental way the degree of originality of the inquiry encompassed by Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. That the question of the essence of truth is missing in Nietzsche's thought is an oversight unlike any other; it cannot be blamed on him alone, or him first of all-if it can be blamed on anyone. The "oversight" pervades the entire history of Occidental philosophy since Plato and Aristotle.
That many thinkers have concerned themselves with the concept of truth; that Descartes interprets truth as certitude; that Kant, not inde- pendent of that tendency, distinguishes an empirical and a transcenden- tal truth; that Hegel defines anew the important distinction between abstract and concrete truth, i. e. , truth of science and truth of specula- tion; that Nietzsche says "truth" is error; all these are advances of thoughtful inquiry. And yet! They all leave untouched the essence of truth itself. No matter how far removed Nietzsche is from Descartes and no matter how much he emphasizes the distance between them, in what is essential he still stands close to Descartes. All the same, it would be pedantic to insist that the use of the word "truth" be kept within the strict bounds of particular routes of meaning. For as a basic word it is at the same time a universal word; thus it is entrenched in the laxity of linguistic usage.
We must ask with greater penetration what Nietzsche understands by truth. Above we said that he means the true. Yet what is the true? What is it here that satisfies the essence of truth; in what is that essence itself determined? The true is true being, what is in truth actual. What does "in truth" mean here? Answer: what is in truth known. For our knowing is what can be true or false right from the start. Truth is truth· of knowledge. Knowledge is so intrinsically the residence of truth that a knowing which is untrue cannot be considered knowledge. But knowl- edge is a way of access to beings; the true is what is truly known, the actual. The true is established as something true in, by, and for knowl- edge alone. Truth is proper to the realm of knowledge. Here decisions
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are made about the true and the untrue. And depending on the way the essence of knowledge is demarcated, the essential concept of truth is defined.
Our knowing as such is always an approximation to what is to be known, a measuring of itself upon something. As a consequence of the character of measurement, knowing implies a relation to some sort of standard. The standard, and our relation to it, can be interpreted in various ways. In order to clarify the interpretive possibilities with re- gard to the essence of knowing, we will describe the principal trait of two basically different types. By way of exception, and for the sake of brevity, we will take up two terms which are not to suggest any more than what we will make of them here: the conceptions of knowledge in "Platonism" and "Positivism. "
20. Truth in Platonism and Positivism. Nietzsche's Attempt to Overturn Platonism on the Basis of the Fundamental Experience of Nihilism
We say "Platonism," and not Plato, because here we are dealing with the conception of knowledge that corresponds to that term, not by way of an original and detailed examination of Plato's works, but only by setting in rough relief one particular aspect of his work. Knowing is approximation to what is to be known. What is to be known? The being itself. Of what does it consist? Where is its Being determined? On the basis of the Ideas and as the ideai. They "are" what is apprehended when we look at things to see how they look, to see what they give themselves out to be, to see their what-being (to ti estin). What makes a table a table, table-being, can be seen; to be sure, not with the sensory eye of the body, but with the eye of the soul. Such sight is apprehension of what a matter is, its Idea. What is so seen is something nonsensuous. But because it is that in the light of which we first come to know what is sensuous-that thing there, as a table-the nonsensuous at the same time stands above the sensuous. It is the supersensuous and the proper what-being and Being of the being. Therefore, knowledge must mea- sure itself against the supersensuous, the Idea; it must somehow bring forward what is not sensuously visible for a face-to-face encounter: it must put forward or present. * Knowledge is presentative measurement
*"To put forward or present" is an attempt to translate the hyphenated word voT- stellen, which without the hyphen is usually translated as "to represent. "
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of self upon the supersensuous. Pure nonsensuous presentation, which unfolds in a mediating relation that derives from what is represented, is called theoria. Knowledge is in essence theoretical.
The conception of knowledge as "theoretical" is undergirded by a particular interpretation of Being; such a conception has meaning and is correct only on the basis of metaphysics. To preach the "eternally immutable essence of science" is therefore either to employ an empty turn of phrase that does not take seriously what it says, or to mistake the basic facts concerning the origin of the concept of Western science. The "theoretical" is not merely something distinguished and differenti- ated from the "practical," but is itself grounded in a particular basic experience of Being. The same is true also of the "practical," which for its part is juxtaposed to the "theoretical. " Both of these, and the difference between them, are to be grasped solely from the essence of Being which is relevant in each case, which is to say, they are to be grasped metaphysically.
Neither does the practical change on the basis of the theoretical, nor does the theoretical change on the basis of the practical: both change always simultaneously on the basis of their fundamental metaphysical position.
The interpretation of knowledge in positivism differs from that in Platonism. To be sure, knowing here too is a measuring. But the standard which representation must respect, right from the start and constantly, differs: it is what lies before us from the outset, what is constantly placed before us, the positum. The latter is what is given in sensation, the sensuous. Here too measurement is an immediate presenting or putting forward ("sensing"), which is defined by a me- diating interrelation of what is given by way of sensation, a judging. The essence of judgment in turn can itself be interpreted in various ways-a matter we will not pursue any further here.
Without deciding prematurely that Nietzsche's conception of knowledge takes one of these two basic directions-Platonism or posi- tivism-or is a hybrid of both, we can say that the word "truth" for him means as much as the true, and the true what is known in truth. Knowing is a theoretical-scientific grasp of the actual in the broadest sense.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 153
That suggests in a general way that Nietzsche's conception of the essence of truth keeps to the realm of the long tradition of Western thought, no matter how much Nietzsche's particular interpretations of that conception deviate from earlier ones. But also in relation to our particular question concerning the relation of art and truth, we have just now taken a decisive step. According to our clarification of the guiding conception of truth, what are here brought into relation are, putting it more strictly, on the one hand, art, and on the other, theoreti- cal-scientific knowledge. Art, grasped in Nietzsche's sense in terms of the artist, is creation; creation is related to beauty. Correspondingly, truth is the object related to knowledge. Thus the relation of art and truth that is here in question, the one which arouses dread, must be conceived as the relation of art and scientific knowledge, and correla- tively the relation of beauty and truth.
But to what extent is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? To what extent do art and knowledge, beauty and truth at all enter into noteworthy relation? Surely not on the basis of the wholly extrinsic grounds, definitive for the usual philosophies and sciences of culture, that art exists and that science is right there beside it; the fact that both belong to a culture; and the fact that if one wants to erect a system of culture, one must also provide information about the interrelations of these cultural phenomena. Were Nietzsche's point of inquiry merely that of the philosophy of culture, intending to erect a tidy system of cultural phenomena and cultural values, then the relation of art and truth could surely never become for it a discordance, much less one that arouses dread.
In order to see how for Nietzsche art and truth can and must in some way come into noteworthy relation, let us proceed with a renewed clarification of his concept of truth, since we have already treated sufficiently the other member of the relation, art. In order to character-· ize more precisely Nietzsche's concept of truth, we must ask in what way he conceives of knowledge and what standard he applies to it. How does Nietzsche's conception of knowledge stand in relation to the two basic tendencies of epistemological interpretation described above, Platonism and positivism? Nietzsche once says, in a brief observation
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found among the early sketches (1870-71) for his first treatise, "My philosophy an inverted Platonism: the farther removed from true be- ing, the purer, the finer, the better it is. Living in semblance as goal" (IX, 190). That is an astonishing preview in the thinker of his entire later philosophical position. For during the last years of his creative life he labors at nothing else than the overturning of Platonism. Of course, we may not overlook the fact that the "inverted Platonism" of his early period is enormously different from the position finally attained in Twilight of the Idols. Nevertheless, on the basis of Nietzsche's own words we can now define with greater trenchancy his conception of truth, which is to say, his conception of the true.
For Platonism, the Idea, the supersensuous, is the true, true being. In contrast, the sensuous is meon. The latter suggests, not nonbeing pure and simple, ouk on, but me-what may not be addressed as being even though it is not simply nothing. Insofar as, and to the extent that, it may be called being, the sensuous must be measured upon the supersensuous; nonbeing possesses the shadow and the residues of Being which fall from true being.
To overturn Platonism thus means to reverse the standard relation: what languishes below in Platonism, as it were, and would be measured against the supersensuous, must now be put on top; by way of reversal, the supersensuous must now be placed in its service. When the inver- sion is fully executed, the sensuous becomes being proper, i. e. , the true, i. e. , truth. The true is the sensuous. That is what "positivism" teaches. Nevertheless, it would be premature to interpret Nietzsche's concep- tion of knowledge and of the kind of truth pertaining to it as "positivis- tic," although that is what usually happens. It is indisputable that prior to the time of his work on the planned magnum opus, The Will to Power, Nietzsche went through a period of extreme positivism; these were the years 1879-81, the years of his decisive development toward maturity. Such positivism, though of course transformed, became a part of his later fundamental position also. But what matters is precisely the transformation, especially in relation to the overturning of Plato- nism as a whole. In that inversion Nietzsche's philosophical thought proper comes to completion. For Nietzsche the compelling task from
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 155
early on was to think through the philosophy of Plato, indeed from two different sides. His original profession as a classical philologist brought him to Plato, partly through his teaching duties, but above all through a philosophical inclination to Plato. During the Basel years he held lectures on Plato several times: "Introduction to the Study of the Platonic Dialogues" in 1871-72 and 1873-74, and "Plato's Life and Teachings" in 1876 (see XIX, 235 ff. ).
But here again one discerns clearly the philosophical influence of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer himself grounds his entire philosophy, indeed consciously and expressly, on Plato and Kant. Thus in the Preface to his major work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), he writes:
Hence Kant's is the sole philosophy a basic familiarity with which is all but presupposed by what will be presented here. -If, however, the reader has in addition lingered awhile in the school of the divine Plato, he will be all the more receptive and all the better prepared to hear me.
As a third inspiration Schopenhauer then names the Indian Vedas. We know how much Schopenhauer misinterprets and vulgarizes the Kan- tian philosophy. The same happens with regard to Plato's philosophy. In the face of Schopenhauer's coarsening of the Platonic philosophy, Nietzsche, as a classical philologist and a considerable expert in that area, is not so defenseless as he is with respect to Schopenhauer's Kant-interpretation. Even in his early years (through the Basel lectures)
Nietzsche achieves a remarkable autonomy and thereby a higher truth in his Plato interpretation than Schopenhauer does in his. Above all he rejects Schopenhauer's interpretation of the apprehension of the Ideas as simple "intuition. " He emphasizes that apprehension of the Ideas is "dialectical. " Schopenhauer's opinion concerning such apprehen- sion, that it is intuition, stems from a misunderstanding of Schelling's teaching concerning "intellectual intuition" as the basic act of meta- physical knowledge.
However, the interpretation of Plato and of Platonism which tends to follow the direction of philology and the history of philosophy, although it is an aid, is not the decisive path for Nietzsche's philosoph-
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ical advance toward the Platonic doctrine and confrontation with it. It is not the decisive path of his experiencing an insight into the necessity of overturning Platonism. Nietzsche's fundamental experience is his growing insight into the basic development of our history. In his view it is nihilism. Nietzsche expresses incessantly and passionately the fun- damental experience of his existence as a thinker. To the blind, to those who cannot see and above all do not want to see, his words easily sound overwrought, as though he were raving. And yet when we plumb the depths of his insight and consider how very closely the basic historical development of nihilism crowds and oppresses him, then we may be inclined to call his manner of speech almost placid. One of the essential formulations that designate the event of nihilism says, "Cod is dead. " (Cf. now Holzwege, 1950, pp. 193-247. )* The phrase "Cod is dead" is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history.
Only in the light of that basic experience does Nietzsche's utterance, "My philosophy is inverted Platonism," receive its proper range and intensity. In the same broad scope of significance, therefore, Nietz- sche's interpretation and conception of the essence of truth must be conceived. For that reason we ought to remember what Nietzsche understands by nihilism and in what sense alone that word may be used as a term for the history of philosophy.
By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i. e. , event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are an-
*See the English translation, "The Word of Nietzsche: 'Cod is Dead,'" in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Heidegger's reference, placed in parentheses, apparently was added in 1961. Note that the "event" of nihilism, cited four times in this and the following paragraphs, occasions one of the earliest "terminologi· cal" uses of the word Ereignis in Heidegger's published writings. (Cf. the use of the word Geschehnis in the Holzwege article, p. 195, and in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, p. 4. ) The word's appearance in the context of Nietzsche's account of nihilism assumes even more importance when we recall a parenthetical remark in the "Protocol" to the Todt- nauberg Seminar on "Zeit und Sein" (Zur Sache des Denkens [Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1969], p. 46): "The relationships and contexts which constitute the essential structure of Ereignis were worked out between 1936 and 1938," which is to say, precisely at the time of the first two Nietzsche lecture courses.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 157 nihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.
Such collision Nietzsche describes at one point in the following way:
. . . we call good someone who does his heart's bidding, but also the one who only tends to his duty;
we call good the meek and the reconciled, but also the courageous, un- bending, severe;
we call good somone who employs no force against himself, but also the heroes of self-overcoming;
we call good the utterly loyal friend of the true, but also the man of piety, one who transfigures things;
we call good those who are obedient to themselves, but also the pious;
we call good those who are noble and exalted, but also those who do not despise and condescend;
we call good those of joyful spirit, the peaceable, but also those desirous of battle and victory;
we call good those who always want to be first, but also those who do not want to take precedence over anyone in any respect.
(From unpublished material composed during the period of The Gay Science, 1881-82; see XII, 81. )
There is no longer any goal in and through which all the forces of the historical existence of peoples can cohere and in the direction of which they can develop; no goal of such a kind, which means at the same time and above all else no goal of such power that it can by virtue of its power conduct Dasein to its realm in a unified way and bring it to creative evolution. By establishment of the goal Nietzsche under- stands the metaphysical task of ordering beings as a whole, not merely the announcement of a provisional whither and wherefore. But a genu- ine establishment of the goal must at the same time ground its goal. Such grounding cannot be exhaustive if, in its "theoretical" exhibition of the reasons which justify the goal to be established, it asseverates that such a move is "logically" necessary. To ground the goal means to awaken and liberate those powers which lend the newly established goal its surpassing and pervasive energy to inspire commitment. Only in that way can historical Dasein take root and flourish in the realm opened and identified by the goal. Here, finally, and that means primor-
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dially, belongs the growth of forces which sustain and propel prepara- tion of the new realm, the advance into it, and the cultivation of what unfolds within it, forces which induce it to undertake bold deeds.
Nietzsche has all this in view when he speaks of nihilism, goals, and establishment of goals. But he also sees the necessary range of such establishment, a range determined by the incipient dissolution of all kinds of order all over the earth. It cannot apply to individual groups, classes, and sects, nor even to individual states and nations. It must be European at least. That does not mean to say that it should be "interna- tional. " For implied in the essence of a creative establishment of goals and the preparation for such establishment is that it comes to exist and swings into action, as historical, only in the unity of the fully historical Dasein of men in the form of particular nations. That means neither isolation from other nations nor hegemony over them. Establishment of goals is in itself confrontation, the initiation of struggle. But the genuine struggle is the one in which those who struggle excel, first the one then the other, and in which the power for such excelling unfolds
within them.
Meditation of such kind on the historical event of nihilism and on the condition for overcoming it utterly-meditation on the basic meta- physical position needed to that end, thinking through the ways and means of awakening and outfitting such conditions-Nietzsche some- times calls "grand politics. "* That sounds like the "grand style. " If we think both as belonging originally together, we secure ourselves against misinterpretations of their essential sense. Neither does the "grand style" want an "aesthetic culture," nor does the "grand politics" want the exploitative power politics of imperialism. The grand style can be created only by means of the grand politics, and the latter has the most
*Nietzsche uses the phrase die grosse Politik during the period of the preparation of Beyond Good and Evil; cf. WM, 463 and 978, both notes from the year 1885. The source for Heidegger' s entire discussion of Zielsetzung seems to be section 208 of Beyond Good and Evil. Cf. also the entire eighth part of that work, "Nations and Fatherlands. " We should also note that die grosse Politik occupied the very center of interest in Nietzsche in Germany after World War 1: not only the Stefan George circle and Alfred Baeumler, but even Karl Jaspers (see his Nietzsche, Bk. II, chap. 4), emphasized it.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 159
intrinsic law of its will in the grand style. What does Nietzsche say of the grand style? "What makes the grand style: to become master of one's happiness, as of one's unhappiness:-" (from plans and ideas for an independent sequel to Zarathustra, during the year 1885; see XII, 415). To be master over one's happiness! That is the hardest thing. To be master over unhappiness: that can be done, if it has to be. But to be master of one's happiness. . . .
In the decade between 1880 and 1890 Nietzsche thinks and ques- tions by means of the standards of the "grand style" and in the field of vision of "grand politics. " We must keep these standards and the scope of the inquiry in view if we are to understand what is taken up into Book One and Book Two of The Will to Power, which present the insight that the basic force of Dasein, the self-assuredness and power of such force to establish a goal, is lacking. Why is the basic force that is needed in order to attain a creative stance in the midst of beings missing? Answer: because it has been in a state of advanced atrophy for a long time, and because it has been perverted into its opposite. The major debility of the basic force of Dasein consists in the calumniation and denegration of the fundamental orienting force of "life" itself. Such defamation of creative life, however, has its grounds in the fact that things are posited above life which make negation of it desirable. The desirable, the ideal, is the supersensuous, interpreted as genuine being. This interpretation of being is accomplished in the Platonic philosophy. The theory of Ideas founds the ideal, and that means the definitive preeminence of the supersensuous, in determining and domi- nating the sensuous.
Here a new interpretation of Platonism emerges. It flows from a fundamental experience of the development of nihilism. It sees in Platonism the primordial and determining grounds of the possibility of nihilism's upsurgence and of the rise of life-negation. Christianity is ih Nietzsche's eyes nothing other than "Platonism for the people. " As Platonism, however, it is nihilism. But with the reference to Nietzsche's opposition to the nihilistic tendency of Christianity, his position as a whole with respect to the historical phenomenon of Christianity is not delineated exhaustively. Nietzsche is far too perspicacious and too
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sovereignly intelligent not to know and acknowledge that an essential presupposition for his own behavior, the probity and discipline of his inquiry, is a consequence of the Christian education that has prevailed for centuries. To present two pieces of evidence from among the many available:
Probity as a consequence of long moral training: the self-critique of morality is at the same time a mora/ phenomenon, an event of morality (XIII, I21).
We are no longer Christians: we have grown out of Christianity, not because we dwelled too far from it, but because we dwelled too near it, even more, because we have grown from i t - i t is our more rigorous and fastidious piety itself that forbids us today to be Christians (XIII, 318).
Within the field of vision maintained by meditation on nihilism, "inversion" of Platonism takes on another meaning. It is not the sim- ple, almost mechanical exchange of one epistemological standpoint for another, that of positivism. Overturning Platonism means, first, shat- tering the preeminence of the supersensuous as the ideal. Beings, being what they are, may not be despised on the basis of what should and ought to be. But at the same time, in opposition to the philosophy of the ideal and to the installation of what ought to be and of the "should," the inversion sanctions the investigation and determination of that which is-it summons the question "What is being itself? " If the "should" is the supersensuous, then being itself, that which is, conceived as liberated from the "should," can only be the sensuous. But with that the essence of the sensuous is not given; its definition is given up. In contrast, the realm of true being, of the true, and thereby the essence of truth, is demarcated; as before, however, already in Platonism, the true is to be attained on the path of knowledge.
In such inversion of Platonism, invoked and guided by the will to overcome nihilism, the conviction shared with Platonism and held to be evident is that truth, i. e. , true being, must be secured on the path of knowledge. Since, according to the inversion, the sensuous is now the true, and since the sensuous, as being, is now to provide the basis for the new foundation of Dasein, the question concerning the sensu-
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 161
ous and with it the determination of the true and of truth receive enhanced significance.
The interpretation of truth or true being as the sensuous is of course, considered formally, an overturning of Platonism, inasmuch as Plato- nism asserts that genuine being is supersensuous. Yet such inversion, and along with it the interpretation of the true as what is given in the senses, must be understood in terms of the overcoming of nihilism. But the definitive interpretation of art, if it is posited as the countermove- ment to nihilism, operates within the same perspective.
Against Platonism, the question "What is true being? " must be posed, and the answer to it must be, "The true is the sensuous. " Against nihilism, the creative life, preeminently in art, must be set to work. But art creates out of the sensuous.
Now for the first time it becomes clear to what extent art and truth, whose relationship in Nietzsche's view is a discordance that arouses dread, can and must come into relation at all, a relation that is more than simply comparative, which is the kind of interpretation of both art and truth offered by philosophies of culture. Art and truth, creating and knowing, meet one another in the single guiding perspective of the rescue and configuration of the sensuous.
With a view to the conquest of nihilism, that is, to the foundation of the new valuation, art and truth, along with meditation on the essence of both, attain equal importance. According to their essence, intrinsically, art and truth come together in the realm of a new histori- cal existence.
What sort of relationship do they have?
21. The Scope and Context of Plato's Meditation on the Relationship of
Art and Truth
According to Nietzsche's teaching concerning the artist, and seen in terms of the one who creates, art has its actuality in the rapture of embodying life. Artistic configuration and portrayal are grounded essentially in the realm of the sensuous. Art is affirmation of the sensuous. According to the doctrine of Platonism, however, the super- sensuous is affirmed as genuine being. Platonism, and Plato, would therefore logically have to condemn art, the affirmation of the sensu- ous, as a form of nonbeing and as what ought not to be, as a form of meon. In Platonism, for which truth is supersensuous, the relationship to art apparently becomes one of exclusion, opposition, and antithesis; hence, one of discordance. If, however, Nietzsche's philosophy is rever- sal of Platonism, and if the true is thereby affirmation of the sensuous, then truth is the same as what art affirms, i. e. , the sensuous. For inverted Platonism, the relationship of truth and art can only be one of univocity and concord. If in any ca~e a discordance should exist in Plato (which is something we must still ask about, since not every distancing can be conceived as discordance), then it would have to disappear in the reversal of Platonism, which is to say, in the cancella- tion of such philosophy.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche says that the relationship is a discordance, indeed, one which arouses dread. He speaks of the discordance that arouses dread, not in the period prior to his own overturning of Plato- nism, but precisely during the period in which the inversion is decided
Plato's Meditation 163
for him. In 1888 Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols, "On the contrary, the grounds upon which 'this' world [i. e. , the sensuous] was designated as the world of appearances ground the reality of this world -any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable" (VIII, 81). During the same period when Nietzsche says that the sole true reality, i. e. , the true, is the sensuous world, he writes concerning the relation- ship of art and truth,". . . and even now [i. e. , in the autumn of 1888] I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. "
Where is the path that will take us to the hidden, underlying sense of this remarkable phrase concerning the relationship of art and truth? W e have to get there.
Yet what does "Being" mean, if the sensuous can be said to be more in being? What does "sensuous" mean here? What does it have to do with "truth"? How can it be even higher in value than truth? What does "truth" mean here? How does Nietzsche define its essence? At present all this is obscure. We do not see any way in which the fifth statement might be sufficiently grounded; we do not see how the statement can be grounded.
Such questionableness radiates over all the other statements, above all, the third, which obviously can be decided and grounded only when
Grounding the Five Statements on Art 141
the fifth statement has been grounded. But the fifth statement must be presupposed if we are to understand the fourth as well, according to which art is the countermovement to nihilism. For nihilism, i. e. , Platonism, posits the supersensuous as true being, on the basis of which all remaining beings are demoted to the level of proper nonbeing, demoted, denigrated, and declared nugatory. Thus everything hangs on the explanation and grounding of the fifth statement: art is worth more than truth. What is truth? In what does its essence consist?
That question is always already included in the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy. It runs ahead of them and yet is most intrinsic to these very questions. It is the primal question of philosophy.
19. The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art
That the question concerning art leads us directly to the one that is preliminary to all questions already suggests that in a distinctive sense it conceals in itself essential relations to the grounding and guiding questions of philosophy. Hence our previous clarification of the essence of art will also be brought to a fitting conclusion only in terms of the question of truth.
In order to discern the connection between art and truth right from the outset, the question concerning the essence of truth and the way in which Nietzsche poses and answers the question should be prepared. Such preparation is to occur through a discussion of what it is in the essence of art that calls forth the question concerning truth. To that end we should remember once more Nietzsche's words on the connec- tion between art and truth. He jotted them down in the year 1888 on the occasion of a meditation on his first book: "Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: and even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance" (XIV, 368).
The relation between art and truth is a discordance that arouses dread. * To what extent? How, and in what respects, does art come into relation to truth? In what sense is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? In order to see to what extent art as such comes into
*Ein Entsetzen erregender Zwiespalt. In the title of this section, Der erregende Zwiespalt zwischen Wahrheit und Kunst, the phrase erregende Zwiespalt is actually a condensation of the statement made here. That is to say, discordance between art and truth "rages" insofar as it arouses dread.
The Raging Discordance 143.
relation to truth, we must say more clearly than we have before what Nietzsche understands by "truth. " In our previous discussions we gave some hints in this direction. But we have not yet advanced as far as a conceptual definition of Nietzsche's notion of truth. For that we require a preparatory reflection.
A meditation on fundamentals concerning the realm in which we are moving becomes necessary whenever we speak the word "truth" in a way that is not altogether vacuous. For without insight into these contexts we lack all the prerequisites for understanding the point where all the bypaths of Nietzsche's metaphysical thought clearly converge. It is one thing if Nietzsche himself, under the burdens that oppressed him, did not achieve sufficient perspicuity here; it is another if we who follow him renounce the task of penetrating meditation.
Every time we try to achieve clarity with regard to such basic words as truth, beauty, Being, art, knowledge, history, and freedom, we must heed two things.
First, that a clarification is necessary here has its grounds in the concealment of the essence of what is named in such words. Such clarification becomes indispensable from the moment we experience the fact that human Dasein, insofar as it is-insofar as it is itself-is steered directly toward whatever is named in such basic words and is inextricably caught up in relations with them. That becomes manifest whenever human Dasein becomes historical, and that means whenever it comes to confront beings as such, in order to adopt a stance in their midst and to ground the site of that stance definitively. Depending on what knowledge retains essential proximity to what is named in such basic words, or lapses into distance from it, the content of the name, the realm of the word, and the compelling force of the naming power vary.
When we consider this state of affairs in relation to the word "truth" in an extrinsic and desultory manner, we are accustomed to saying that the word has sundry meanings which are not sharply distinguished from one another, meanings that belong together on the basis of a common ground which we are vaguely aware of but which we do not clearly perceive. The most extrinsic form in which we encounter the
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ambiguity of the word is the "lexical. " In the dictionary the meanings are enumerated and exhibited for selection. The life of actual language consists in multiplicity of meaning. To relegate the animated, vigorous word to the immobility of a univocal, mechanically programmed se- quence of sighs would mean the death of language and the petrifaction and devastation of Dasein.
Why speak of such commonplaces here? Because the "lexical" repre- sentation of the multiplicity of meanings for such a basic word easily causes us to overlook the fact that here all the meanings and the differences among them are historical and therefore necessary. Accord- ingly, it can never be left to caprice, and can never be inconsequential, which of the word meanings we choose in our attempt to grasp the essence named-and thus already illuminated-in the basic word and to classify it as a key word for a given discipline and area of inquiry. Every attempt of this kind is a historical decision. The leading meaning of such a basic word, which speaks to us more or less clearly, is nothing evident, although our being accustomed to it seems to suggest that. Basic words are historical. That does not mean simply that they have various meanings for various ages which, because they are past, we can survey historically; it means that they ground history now and in the times to come in accordance with the interpretation of them that comes to prevail. The historicity of the basic words, understood in this fash- ion, is one of the things that must be heeded in thinking through those basic words.
Second, we must pay attention to the way such basic words vary in meaning. Here there are principal orbits or routes; but within them meanings may oscillate. Such oscillation is not mere laxity in linguistic usage. It is the breath of history. When Goethe or Hegel says the word "education," and when an educated man of the 1890s says it, not only is the formal content of the utterance different, but the kind of world encapsulated in the saying is different, though not unrelated. When Goethe says "nature," and when Holderlin speaks the same word, different worlds reign. Were language no more than a sequence of communicative signs, then it would remain something just as arbitrary and indifferent as the mere choice and application of such signs.
The Raging Discordance 145
But because in the very foundations of our being language as reso- nant signification roots us to our earth and transports and ties us to our world, meditation on language and its historical dominion is always the action that gives shape to Dasein itself. The will to originality, rigor, and measure in words is therefore no mere aesthetic pleasantry; it is the work that goes on in the essential nucleus of our Dasein, which is historical existence.
But in what sense are there what we have called principal orbits or routes for the historical expansion of meanings among the basic words? Our example will be the word "truth. " Without insight into these connections, the peculiarity, difficulty, and genuine excitement apropos of the question of truth remain closed to us; so does the possibility of understanding Nietzsche's deepest need with respect to the question of the relation of art and truth.
The assertion "Among Goethe's accomplishments in the field of science the theory of colors also belongs" is true. With the statement we have at our disposal something that is true. We are, as we say, in possession of "a truth. " The assertion 2 X 2 = 4 is true. With this statement we have another "truth. " Thus there are many truths of many kinds: things we determine in our everyday existence, truths of natural science, truths of the historical sciences. To what extent are these truths what their name says they are? To the extent that they satisfy generally and in advance whatever is proper to a "truth. " Such is what makes a true assertion true. Just as we call the essence of the
just "justice," the essence of the cowardly "cowardice," and the essence of the beautiful "beauty," so must we call the essence of the true "truth. " But truth, conceived as the essence of the true, is solely one. For the essence of something is that in which everything of that kind-in our case, everything true-dovetails. If truth suggests the essence of the true, then truth is but one: it becomes impossible to talk about "truths. "
Thus we already have two meanings for the word "truth," basically different but related to one another. If the word "truth" is meant in the sense which admits of no multiplicity, it names the essence of the true. On the contrary, if we take the word in the sense where a plurality
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is meant, then the word "truth" means not the essence of the true but any given truth as such. The essence of a matter can be conceived principally or exclusively as what may be attributed to anything that satisfies the essence of the matter. If one restricts himself to this plausible conception of essence, which, however, is neither the sole nor the original conception, as the one which is valid for many, the follow- ing may be readily deduced concerning the essential word "truth. " Because being true may be asserted of every true statement as such, an abbreviated form of thought and speech can also call what is true itself a "truth. " But what is meant here is "something true. " Something true now is called simply "truth. " The name "truth" is in an essential sense ambiguous. Truth means the one essence and also the many which satisfy the essence. Language itself has a peculiar predilection for that sort of ambiguity. We therefore encounter it early on and constantly. The inner grounds for the ambiguity are these: inasmuch as we speak, and that means comport ourselves to beings through speech, speaking on the basis of beings and with reference back to them, we mean for the most part beings themselves. The being in question is always this or that individual and specific being. At the same time it is a being as such, that is, it is of such a genus and species, such an essence. This house as such is of the essence and species "house. "
When we mean something true, we of course understand the essence of truth along with it. We must understand the latter if, whenever we intend something true, we are to know what we have in front of us. Although the essence itself is not expressly and especially named, but always only previewed and implied, the word "truth," which names the essence, is nevertheless used for true things themselves. The name for the essence glides unobtrusively into our naming such things that participate in that essence. Such slippage is aided and abetted by the fact that for the most part we let ourselves be determined by beings themselves and not by their essence as such.
The manner in which we examine the basic words therefore moves along two principal routes: the route of the essence, and that which veers away from the essence and yet is related back to it. But an interpretation which is as old as our traditional Western logic and
The Raging Discordance 147
grammar makes this apparently simple state of affairs even simpler and therefore more ordinary. It is said that the essence-here the essence of the true, which makes everything true be what it is-because it is valid for many true things, is the generally and universally valid. The truth of the essence consists in nothing else than such universal validity. Thus truth, as the essence of the true, is the universal. However, the "truth" which is one of a plurality, "truths," the individual truth, true propositions, are "cases" that fall under the universal. Nothing is clear- er than that. But there are various kinds of clarity and transparency, among them a kind that thrives on the fact that what seems to be lucid is really vacuous, that the least possible amount of thought goes into it, the danger of obscurity being thwarted in that way. But so it is when one designates the essence of a thing as the universal concept. That in certain realms-not all-the essence of something holds for many particular items (manifold validity} is a consequence of the essence, but it does not hit upon its essentiality.
The equating of essence with the character of the universal, even as an essential conclusion which has but conditional validity, would of itself not have been so fatal had it not for centuries barred the way to a decisive question. The essence of the true holds for the particular assertions and propositions which, as individuals, differ greatly from one another according to content and structure. The true is in each case something various, but the essence, as the universal which is valid for many, is one. But universal validity, which is valid for many things that belong together, is now made what is universally valid without qualifi- cation. "Universally valid" now means not only valid for many particu- lar items that belong together, but also what is always and everywhere valid in itself, immutable and eternal, transcending time.
The result is the proposition of the immutability of essences, includ- ing the essence of truth. The proposition is logically correct but meta-· physically untrue. Viewed in terms of the particular "cases" of the many true statements, the essence of the true is that in which the many dovetail. The essence in which the many dovetail must be one and the same thing for them. But from that it by no means follows that the essence in itself cannot be changeable. For, supposing that the essence
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of truth did change, that which changes could always still be a "one" which holds for "many," the transformation not disturbing that rela- tionship. But what is preserved in the metamorphosis is what is un- changeable in the essence, which essentially unfolds in its very transformation. The essentiality of essence, its inexhaustibility, is there- by affirmed, and also its genuine selfhood and selfsameness. The latter stands in sharp contrast to the vapid selfsameness of the monotonous, which is the only way the unity of essence can be thought when it is taken merely as the universal. If one stands by the conception of the selfsameness of the essence of truth which is derived from traditional logic, he will immediately (and from that point of view quite correctly) say: "The notion of a change of essence leads to relativism; there is only one truth and it is the same for everybody; every relativism is disruptive of the general order and leads to sheer caprice and anarchy. " But the right to such an objection to the essential transformation of truth stands and falls with the appropriateness of the representation of the "one" and the "same" therein presupposed, which is called the abso- lute, and with the right to define the essentiality of essence as manifold validity. The objection that essential transformation leads to relativism is possible only on the basis of deception concerning the essence of the absolute and the essentiality of essence.
That digression must suffice for our present effort to unfold what Nietzsche in his discussions of the relation between art and truth understands by "truth. " According to what we have shown, we must first ask upon which route of meaning the word "truth" moves for Nietzsche in the context of his discussions of the relationship between art and truth. The answer is that it moves along the route which deviates from the essential route. That. means that in the fundamental question which arouses dread Nietzsche nevertheless does not arrive at the proper question of truth, in the sense of a discussion of the essence of the true. That essence is presupposed as evident. For Nietzsche truth is not the essence of the true but the true itself, which satisfies the essence of truth. It is of decisive importance to know that Nietzsche does not pose the question of truth proper, the question concerning the essence of the true and the truth of essence, and with it the question
The Raging Discordance 149
of the ineluctable possibility of its essential transformation. Nor does he ever stake out the domain of the question. This we must know, not only in order to judge Nietzsche's position with regard to the question of the relation of art and truth, but above all in order to estimate and measure in a fundamental way the degree of originality of the inquiry encompassed by Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole. That the question of the essence of truth is missing in Nietzsche's thought is an oversight unlike any other; it cannot be blamed on him alone, or him first of all-if it can be blamed on anyone. The "oversight" pervades the entire history of Occidental philosophy since Plato and Aristotle.
That many thinkers have concerned themselves with the concept of truth; that Descartes interprets truth as certitude; that Kant, not inde- pendent of that tendency, distinguishes an empirical and a transcenden- tal truth; that Hegel defines anew the important distinction between abstract and concrete truth, i. e. , truth of science and truth of specula- tion; that Nietzsche says "truth" is error; all these are advances of thoughtful inquiry. And yet! They all leave untouched the essence of truth itself. No matter how far removed Nietzsche is from Descartes and no matter how much he emphasizes the distance between them, in what is essential he still stands close to Descartes. All the same, it would be pedantic to insist that the use of the word "truth" be kept within the strict bounds of particular routes of meaning. For as a basic word it is at the same time a universal word; thus it is entrenched in the laxity of linguistic usage.
We must ask with greater penetration what Nietzsche understands by truth. Above we said that he means the true. Yet what is the true? What is it here that satisfies the essence of truth; in what is that essence itself determined? The true is true being, what is in truth actual. What does "in truth" mean here? Answer: what is in truth known. For our knowing is what can be true or false right from the start. Truth is truth· of knowledge. Knowledge is so intrinsically the residence of truth that a knowing which is untrue cannot be considered knowledge. But knowl- edge is a way of access to beings; the true is what is truly known, the actual. The true is established as something true in, by, and for knowl- edge alone. Truth is proper to the realm of knowledge. Here decisions
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are made about the true and the untrue. And depending on the way the essence of knowledge is demarcated, the essential concept of truth is defined.
Our knowing as such is always an approximation to what is to be known, a measuring of itself upon something. As a consequence of the character of measurement, knowing implies a relation to some sort of standard. The standard, and our relation to it, can be interpreted in various ways. In order to clarify the interpretive possibilities with re- gard to the essence of knowing, we will describe the principal trait of two basically different types. By way of exception, and for the sake of brevity, we will take up two terms which are not to suggest any more than what we will make of them here: the conceptions of knowledge in "Platonism" and "Positivism. "
20. Truth in Platonism and Positivism. Nietzsche's Attempt to Overturn Platonism on the Basis of the Fundamental Experience of Nihilism
We say "Platonism," and not Plato, because here we are dealing with the conception of knowledge that corresponds to that term, not by way of an original and detailed examination of Plato's works, but only by setting in rough relief one particular aspect of his work. Knowing is approximation to what is to be known. What is to be known? The being itself. Of what does it consist? Where is its Being determined? On the basis of the Ideas and as the ideai. They "are" what is apprehended when we look at things to see how they look, to see what they give themselves out to be, to see their what-being (to ti estin). What makes a table a table, table-being, can be seen; to be sure, not with the sensory eye of the body, but with the eye of the soul. Such sight is apprehension of what a matter is, its Idea. What is so seen is something nonsensuous. But because it is that in the light of which we first come to know what is sensuous-that thing there, as a table-the nonsensuous at the same time stands above the sensuous. It is the supersensuous and the proper what-being and Being of the being. Therefore, knowledge must mea- sure itself against the supersensuous, the Idea; it must somehow bring forward what is not sensuously visible for a face-to-face encounter: it must put forward or present. * Knowledge is presentative measurement
*"To put forward or present" is an attempt to translate the hyphenated word voT- stellen, which without the hyphen is usually translated as "to represent. "
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of self upon the supersensuous. Pure nonsensuous presentation, which unfolds in a mediating relation that derives from what is represented, is called theoria. Knowledge is in essence theoretical.
The conception of knowledge as "theoretical" is undergirded by a particular interpretation of Being; such a conception has meaning and is correct only on the basis of metaphysics. To preach the "eternally immutable essence of science" is therefore either to employ an empty turn of phrase that does not take seriously what it says, or to mistake the basic facts concerning the origin of the concept of Western science. The "theoretical" is not merely something distinguished and differenti- ated from the "practical," but is itself grounded in a particular basic experience of Being. The same is true also of the "practical," which for its part is juxtaposed to the "theoretical. " Both of these, and the difference between them, are to be grasped solely from the essence of Being which is relevant in each case, which is to say, they are to be grasped metaphysically.
Neither does the practical change on the basis of the theoretical, nor does the theoretical change on the basis of the practical: both change always simultaneously on the basis of their fundamental metaphysical position.
The interpretation of knowledge in positivism differs from that in Platonism. To be sure, knowing here too is a measuring. But the standard which representation must respect, right from the start and constantly, differs: it is what lies before us from the outset, what is constantly placed before us, the positum. The latter is what is given in sensation, the sensuous. Here too measurement is an immediate presenting or putting forward ("sensing"), which is defined by a me- diating interrelation of what is given by way of sensation, a judging. The essence of judgment in turn can itself be interpreted in various ways-a matter we will not pursue any further here.
Without deciding prematurely that Nietzsche's conception of knowledge takes one of these two basic directions-Platonism or posi- tivism-or is a hybrid of both, we can say that the word "truth" for him means as much as the true, and the true what is known in truth. Knowing is a theoretical-scientific grasp of the actual in the broadest sense.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 153
That suggests in a general way that Nietzsche's conception of the essence of truth keeps to the realm of the long tradition of Western thought, no matter how much Nietzsche's particular interpretations of that conception deviate from earlier ones. But also in relation to our particular question concerning the relation of art and truth, we have just now taken a decisive step. According to our clarification of the guiding conception of truth, what are here brought into relation are, putting it more strictly, on the one hand, art, and on the other, theoreti- cal-scientific knowledge. Art, grasped in Nietzsche's sense in terms of the artist, is creation; creation is related to beauty. Correspondingly, truth is the object related to knowledge. Thus the relation of art and truth that is here in question, the one which arouses dread, must be conceived as the relation of art and scientific knowledge, and correla- tively the relation of beauty and truth.
But to what extent is the relation for Nietzsche a discordance? To what extent do art and knowledge, beauty and truth at all enter into noteworthy relation? Surely not on the basis of the wholly extrinsic grounds, definitive for the usual philosophies and sciences of culture, that art exists and that science is right there beside it; the fact that both belong to a culture; and the fact that if one wants to erect a system of culture, one must also provide information about the interrelations of these cultural phenomena. Were Nietzsche's point of inquiry merely that of the philosophy of culture, intending to erect a tidy system of cultural phenomena and cultural values, then the relation of art and truth could surely never become for it a discordance, much less one that arouses dread.
In order to see how for Nietzsche art and truth can and must in some way come into noteworthy relation, let us proceed with a renewed clarification of his concept of truth, since we have already treated sufficiently the other member of the relation, art. In order to character-· ize more precisely Nietzsche's concept of truth, we must ask in what way he conceives of knowledge and what standard he applies to it. How does Nietzsche's conception of knowledge stand in relation to the two basic tendencies of epistemological interpretation described above, Platonism and positivism? Nietzsche once says, in a brief observation
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found among the early sketches (1870-71) for his first treatise, "My philosophy an inverted Platonism: the farther removed from true be- ing, the purer, the finer, the better it is. Living in semblance as goal" (IX, 190). That is an astonishing preview in the thinker of his entire later philosophical position. For during the last years of his creative life he labors at nothing else than the overturning of Platonism. Of course, we may not overlook the fact that the "inverted Platonism" of his early period is enormously different from the position finally attained in Twilight of the Idols. Nevertheless, on the basis of Nietzsche's own words we can now define with greater trenchancy his conception of truth, which is to say, his conception of the true.
For Platonism, the Idea, the supersensuous, is the true, true being. In contrast, the sensuous is meon. The latter suggests, not nonbeing pure and simple, ouk on, but me-what may not be addressed as being even though it is not simply nothing. Insofar as, and to the extent that, it may be called being, the sensuous must be measured upon the supersensuous; nonbeing possesses the shadow and the residues of Being which fall from true being.
To overturn Platonism thus means to reverse the standard relation: what languishes below in Platonism, as it were, and would be measured against the supersensuous, must now be put on top; by way of reversal, the supersensuous must now be placed in its service. When the inver- sion is fully executed, the sensuous becomes being proper, i. e. , the true, i. e. , truth. The true is the sensuous. That is what "positivism" teaches. Nevertheless, it would be premature to interpret Nietzsche's concep- tion of knowledge and of the kind of truth pertaining to it as "positivis- tic," although that is what usually happens. It is indisputable that prior to the time of his work on the planned magnum opus, The Will to Power, Nietzsche went through a period of extreme positivism; these were the years 1879-81, the years of his decisive development toward maturity. Such positivism, though of course transformed, became a part of his later fundamental position also. But what matters is precisely the transformation, especially in relation to the overturning of Plato- nism as a whole. In that inversion Nietzsche's philosophical thought proper comes to completion. For Nietzsche the compelling task from
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early on was to think through the philosophy of Plato, indeed from two different sides. His original profession as a classical philologist brought him to Plato, partly through his teaching duties, but above all through a philosophical inclination to Plato. During the Basel years he held lectures on Plato several times: "Introduction to the Study of the Platonic Dialogues" in 1871-72 and 1873-74, and "Plato's Life and Teachings" in 1876 (see XIX, 235 ff. ).
But here again one discerns clearly the philosophical influence of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer himself grounds his entire philosophy, indeed consciously and expressly, on Plato and Kant. Thus in the Preface to his major work, The World as Will and Representation (1818), he writes:
Hence Kant's is the sole philosophy a basic familiarity with which is all but presupposed by what will be presented here. -If, however, the reader has in addition lingered awhile in the school of the divine Plato, he will be all the more receptive and all the better prepared to hear me.
As a third inspiration Schopenhauer then names the Indian Vedas. We know how much Schopenhauer misinterprets and vulgarizes the Kan- tian philosophy. The same happens with regard to Plato's philosophy. In the face of Schopenhauer's coarsening of the Platonic philosophy, Nietzsche, as a classical philologist and a considerable expert in that area, is not so defenseless as he is with respect to Schopenhauer's Kant-interpretation. Even in his early years (through the Basel lectures)
Nietzsche achieves a remarkable autonomy and thereby a higher truth in his Plato interpretation than Schopenhauer does in his. Above all he rejects Schopenhauer's interpretation of the apprehension of the Ideas as simple "intuition. " He emphasizes that apprehension of the Ideas is "dialectical. " Schopenhauer's opinion concerning such apprehen- sion, that it is intuition, stems from a misunderstanding of Schelling's teaching concerning "intellectual intuition" as the basic act of meta- physical knowledge.
However, the interpretation of Plato and of Platonism which tends to follow the direction of philology and the history of philosophy, although it is an aid, is not the decisive path for Nietzsche's philosoph-
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ical advance toward the Platonic doctrine and confrontation with it. It is not the decisive path of his experiencing an insight into the necessity of overturning Platonism. Nietzsche's fundamental experience is his growing insight into the basic development of our history. In his view it is nihilism. Nietzsche expresses incessantly and passionately the fun- damental experience of his existence as a thinker. To the blind, to those who cannot see and above all do not want to see, his words easily sound overwrought, as though he were raving. And yet when we plumb the depths of his insight and consider how very closely the basic historical development of nihilism crowds and oppresses him, then we may be inclined to call his manner of speech almost placid. One of the essential formulations that designate the event of nihilism says, "Cod is dead. " (Cf. now Holzwege, 1950, pp. 193-247. )* The phrase "Cod is dead" is not an atheistic proclamation: it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Occidental history.
Only in the light of that basic experience does Nietzsche's utterance, "My philosophy is inverted Platonism," receive its proper range and intensity. In the same broad scope of significance, therefore, Nietz- sche's interpretation and conception of the essence of truth must be conceived. For that reason we ought to remember what Nietzsche understands by nihilism and in what sense alone that word may be used as a term for the history of philosophy.
By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i. e. , event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are an-
*See the English translation, "The Word of Nietzsche: 'Cod is Dead,'" in Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). Heidegger's reference, placed in parentheses, apparently was added in 1961. Note that the "event" of nihilism, cited four times in this and the following paragraphs, occasions one of the earliest "terminologi· cal" uses of the word Ereignis in Heidegger's published writings. (Cf. the use of the word Geschehnis in the Holzwege article, p. 195, and in Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, p. 4. ) The word's appearance in the context of Nietzsche's account of nihilism assumes even more importance when we recall a parenthetical remark in the "Protocol" to the Todt- nauberg Seminar on "Zeit und Sein" (Zur Sache des Denkens [Tiibingen: M. Niemeyer, 1969], p. 46): "The relationships and contexts which constitute the essential structure of Ereignis were worked out between 1936 and 1938," which is to say, precisely at the time of the first two Nietzsche lecture courses.
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 157 nihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.
Such collision Nietzsche describes at one point in the following way:
. . . we call good someone who does his heart's bidding, but also the one who only tends to his duty;
we call good the meek and the reconciled, but also the courageous, un- bending, severe;
we call good somone who employs no force against himself, but also the heroes of self-overcoming;
we call good the utterly loyal friend of the true, but also the man of piety, one who transfigures things;
we call good those who are obedient to themselves, but also the pious;
we call good those who are noble and exalted, but also those who do not despise and condescend;
we call good those of joyful spirit, the peaceable, but also those desirous of battle and victory;
we call good those who always want to be first, but also those who do not want to take precedence over anyone in any respect.
(From unpublished material composed during the period of The Gay Science, 1881-82; see XII, 81. )
There is no longer any goal in and through which all the forces of the historical existence of peoples can cohere and in the direction of which they can develop; no goal of such a kind, which means at the same time and above all else no goal of such power that it can by virtue of its power conduct Dasein to its realm in a unified way and bring it to creative evolution. By establishment of the goal Nietzsche under- stands the metaphysical task of ordering beings as a whole, not merely the announcement of a provisional whither and wherefore. But a genu- ine establishment of the goal must at the same time ground its goal. Such grounding cannot be exhaustive if, in its "theoretical" exhibition of the reasons which justify the goal to be established, it asseverates that such a move is "logically" necessary. To ground the goal means to awaken and liberate those powers which lend the newly established goal its surpassing and pervasive energy to inspire commitment. Only in that way can historical Dasein take root and flourish in the realm opened and identified by the goal. Here, finally, and that means primor-
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dially, belongs the growth of forces which sustain and propel prepara- tion of the new realm, the advance into it, and the cultivation of what unfolds within it, forces which induce it to undertake bold deeds.
Nietzsche has all this in view when he speaks of nihilism, goals, and establishment of goals. But he also sees the necessary range of such establishment, a range determined by the incipient dissolution of all kinds of order all over the earth. It cannot apply to individual groups, classes, and sects, nor even to individual states and nations. It must be European at least. That does not mean to say that it should be "interna- tional. " For implied in the essence of a creative establishment of goals and the preparation for such establishment is that it comes to exist and swings into action, as historical, only in the unity of the fully historical Dasein of men in the form of particular nations. That means neither isolation from other nations nor hegemony over them. Establishment of goals is in itself confrontation, the initiation of struggle. But the genuine struggle is the one in which those who struggle excel, first the one then the other, and in which the power for such excelling unfolds
within them.
Meditation of such kind on the historical event of nihilism and on the condition for overcoming it utterly-meditation on the basic meta- physical position needed to that end, thinking through the ways and means of awakening and outfitting such conditions-Nietzsche some- times calls "grand politics. "* That sounds like the "grand style. " If we think both as belonging originally together, we secure ourselves against misinterpretations of their essential sense. Neither does the "grand style" want an "aesthetic culture," nor does the "grand politics" want the exploitative power politics of imperialism. The grand style can be created only by means of the grand politics, and the latter has the most
*Nietzsche uses the phrase die grosse Politik during the period of the preparation of Beyond Good and Evil; cf. WM, 463 and 978, both notes from the year 1885. The source for Heidegger' s entire discussion of Zielsetzung seems to be section 208 of Beyond Good and Evil. Cf. also the entire eighth part of that work, "Nations and Fatherlands. " We should also note that die grosse Politik occupied the very center of interest in Nietzsche in Germany after World War 1: not only the Stefan George circle and Alfred Baeumler, but even Karl Jaspers (see his Nietzsche, Bk. II, chap. 4), emphasized it.
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intrinsic law of its will in the grand style. What does Nietzsche say of the grand style? "What makes the grand style: to become master of one's happiness, as of one's unhappiness:-" (from plans and ideas for an independent sequel to Zarathustra, during the year 1885; see XII, 415). To be master over one's happiness! That is the hardest thing. To be master over unhappiness: that can be done, if it has to be. But to be master of one's happiness. . . .
In the decade between 1880 and 1890 Nietzsche thinks and ques- tions by means of the standards of the "grand style" and in the field of vision of "grand politics. " We must keep these standards and the scope of the inquiry in view if we are to understand what is taken up into Book One and Book Two of The Will to Power, which present the insight that the basic force of Dasein, the self-assuredness and power of such force to establish a goal, is lacking. Why is the basic force that is needed in order to attain a creative stance in the midst of beings missing? Answer: because it has been in a state of advanced atrophy for a long time, and because it has been perverted into its opposite. The major debility of the basic force of Dasein consists in the calumniation and denegration of the fundamental orienting force of "life" itself. Such defamation of creative life, however, has its grounds in the fact that things are posited above life which make negation of it desirable. The desirable, the ideal, is the supersensuous, interpreted as genuine being. This interpretation of being is accomplished in the Platonic philosophy. The theory of Ideas founds the ideal, and that means the definitive preeminence of the supersensuous, in determining and domi- nating the sensuous.
Here a new interpretation of Platonism emerges. It flows from a fundamental experience of the development of nihilism. It sees in Platonism the primordial and determining grounds of the possibility of nihilism's upsurgence and of the rise of life-negation. Christianity is ih Nietzsche's eyes nothing other than "Platonism for the people. " As Platonism, however, it is nihilism. But with the reference to Nietzsche's opposition to the nihilistic tendency of Christianity, his position as a whole with respect to the historical phenomenon of Christianity is not delineated exhaustively. Nietzsche is far too perspicacious and too
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sovereignly intelligent not to know and acknowledge that an essential presupposition for his own behavior, the probity and discipline of his inquiry, is a consequence of the Christian education that has prevailed for centuries. To present two pieces of evidence from among the many available:
Probity as a consequence of long moral training: the self-critique of morality is at the same time a mora/ phenomenon, an event of morality (XIII, I21).
We are no longer Christians: we have grown out of Christianity, not because we dwelled too far from it, but because we dwelled too near it, even more, because we have grown from i t - i t is our more rigorous and fastidious piety itself that forbids us today to be Christians (XIII, 318).
Within the field of vision maintained by meditation on nihilism, "inversion" of Platonism takes on another meaning. It is not the sim- ple, almost mechanical exchange of one epistemological standpoint for another, that of positivism. Overturning Platonism means, first, shat- tering the preeminence of the supersensuous as the ideal. Beings, being what they are, may not be despised on the basis of what should and ought to be. But at the same time, in opposition to the philosophy of the ideal and to the installation of what ought to be and of the "should," the inversion sanctions the investigation and determination of that which is-it summons the question "What is being itself? " If the "should" is the supersensuous, then being itself, that which is, conceived as liberated from the "should," can only be the sensuous. But with that the essence of the sensuous is not given; its definition is given up. In contrast, the realm of true being, of the true, and thereby the essence of truth, is demarcated; as before, however, already in Platonism, the true is to be attained on the path of knowledge.
In such inversion of Platonism, invoked and guided by the will to overcome nihilism, the conviction shared with Platonism and held to be evident is that truth, i. e. , true being, must be secured on the path of knowledge. Since, according to the inversion, the sensuous is now the true, and since the sensuous, as being, is now to provide the basis for the new foundation of Dasein, the question concerning the sensu-
Truth in Platonism and Positivism 161
ous and with it the determination of the true and of truth receive enhanced significance.
The interpretation of truth or true being as the sensuous is of course, considered formally, an overturning of Platonism, inasmuch as Plato- nism asserts that genuine being is supersensuous. Yet such inversion, and along with it the interpretation of the true as what is given in the senses, must be understood in terms of the overcoming of nihilism. But the definitive interpretation of art, if it is posited as the countermove- ment to nihilism, operates within the same perspective.
Against Platonism, the question "What is true being? " must be posed, and the answer to it must be, "The true is the sensuous. " Against nihilism, the creative life, preeminently in art, must be set to work. But art creates out of the sensuous.
Now for the first time it becomes clear to what extent art and truth, whose relationship in Nietzsche's view is a discordance that arouses dread, can and must come into relation at all, a relation that is more than simply comparative, which is the kind of interpretation of both art and truth offered by philosophies of culture. Art and truth, creating and knowing, meet one another in the single guiding perspective of the rescue and configuration of the sensuous.
With a view to the conquest of nihilism, that is, to the foundation of the new valuation, art and truth, along with meditation on the essence of both, attain equal importance. According to their essence, intrinsically, art and truth come together in the realm of a new histori- cal existence.
What sort of relationship do they have?
21. The Scope and Context of Plato's Meditation on the Relationship of
Art and Truth
According to Nietzsche's teaching concerning the artist, and seen in terms of the one who creates, art has its actuality in the rapture of embodying life. Artistic configuration and portrayal are grounded essentially in the realm of the sensuous. Art is affirmation of the sensuous. According to the doctrine of Platonism, however, the super- sensuous is affirmed as genuine being. Platonism, and Plato, would therefore logically have to condemn art, the affirmation of the sensu- ous, as a form of nonbeing and as what ought not to be, as a form of meon. In Platonism, for which truth is supersensuous, the relationship to art apparently becomes one of exclusion, opposition, and antithesis; hence, one of discordance. If, however, Nietzsche's philosophy is rever- sal of Platonism, and if the true is thereby affirmation of the sensuous, then truth is the same as what art affirms, i. e. , the sensuous. For inverted Platonism, the relationship of truth and art can only be one of univocity and concord. If in any ca~e a discordance should exist in Plato (which is something we must still ask about, since not every distancing can be conceived as discordance), then it would have to disappear in the reversal of Platonism, which is to say, in the cancella- tion of such philosophy.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche says that the relationship is a discordance, indeed, one which arouses dread. He speaks of the discordance that arouses dread, not in the period prior to his own overturning of Plato- nism, but precisely during the period in which the inversion is decided
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for him. In 1888 Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols, "On the contrary, the grounds upon which 'this' world [i. e. , the sensuous] was designated as the world of appearances ground the reality of this world -any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable" (VIII, 81). During the same period when Nietzsche says that the sole true reality, i. e. , the true, is the sensuous world, he writes concerning the relation- ship of art and truth,". . . and even now [i. e. , in the autumn of 1888] I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. "
Where is the path that will take us to the hidden, underlying sense of this remarkable phrase concerning the relationship of art and truth? W e have to get there.
