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March 6, 2006
In his Nietzsche and Philosophy Gilles Deleuze says that for Nietzsche science is part of the nihilism of modern thought as its attempts to deny differences is a part of the more general enterprise of denying life, deprecating existence and promising it a death. he adds that we must look for the instrument of nihilistic thought in science:
The answer is that science, by inclination, understands phenomena in terms of reactive forces and interprets them from this standpoint. Physics is reactive in the same as biology: things are always seen from the ... side of reactions. (p.45)
I struggle with this. Science as a reactive force?
I can grasp the way that a positivist science is an expression of the ascetic ideal. The ascetic priest demands that we see a matter in one particular way. So does science when it values truth as being beyond criticism. Though science is commonly interpreted as being opposed to religion, it has merely replaced God with truth as an absolute, transcendent ground that justifies and explains existence. So Nietzsche attacks science on the ground that it relies too heavily on faith in unjustified fundamental beliefs. What it denies is interpretation; and more particularly interpretation developed by particular interests and with particular goals. That means that 'truth' is always partial and motivated. Fine.
So science, with its will to truth, is not the antithesis to the ascetic ideal. The opposing force is found in the self-overcoming of the ascetic ideal, when the meaning of the will to truth is called into question. Since reactive forces only have their existence through an opposition to another force which it rejects, so science is a reactive force.
That means what? Reactive forces, Nietzsche says, are always a no-saying, as active forces are self-affirming; Science is no saying to what? To Interpretation? Or would it be related to e unconscious processes that manifest themselves in ressentiment: a hatred first of all of life, of nature; that life itself can not be good enough, so that we have to invent a world beyond this world which is better, more perfect.
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