'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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about Nietzsche's legacy
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March 21, 2006
A quote from a sample chapter of Raymond Geuss' Outside Ethics. In the introduction Guess addresses the significance of Nietzsche for us now. It is very much within Whiteheard's perspective of the European philosophical tradition as "a series of footnotes to Plato." Guess says:
One of Nietzsche's most important legacies to us....is his claim that it is desirable and possible to dismantle the Platonic apparatus of Forms, Absolute Truth, the Idea of the Good, etc. and its historical derivatives, such as Kant's transcendental philosophy, and that this can be done without fear of falling into "relativism." There is, however, a second and slightly different set of issues that also arises in part from the increasing implausibility of Platonist and Kantian approaches to philosophy, but more directly from the decline of traditional religions. The members of the Frankfurt School felt it important to deny that we had to choose between traditional transcendental religion and "positivism." There is no God and no God's-eye view, but this does not imply that we are trapped in the present, condemned merely to mirror the "facts" of the world that surrounds us, or to engage at best in merely piecemeal criticism of our social institutions, as, according to the members of the Frankfurt School, "positivists" would have it. Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the "transcendence" which stands at the center of traditional accounts--the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that, a transcendental viewpoint--with that of a continually transcending activity ("Überwindung" in one of the senses in which that term is used)....There is no single, final perspective, but given any one perspective, we can always go beyond it. I merely note that to take this as implying a guarantee that we will always (necessarily?) be able to go beyond any given position we might occupy, would be to fall back into a theological view. For Nietzsche, whether or not we will be able to "overcome" the one-sidedness of a perspective in which we find ourselves is an open question, for him a question of one's strength. One need not endorse Nietzsche's late-Romantic glorification of "strength" to accept his view that there are no guarantees of the requisite kind in the nature of things.
Overcoming the onesided perspectiveness. How appropriate. It's a good legacy.
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While I agree Nietzsche radically undermines the idealism and systems of both Kant and Plato , I am not so sure he's as hostile to what is taken to be "positivism"-- or even science-- as many leftists and postmodernists would believe. FN continually proclaims he is a "physiologist," and many have noted he's not so far from like Herbert Spencer or even Darwinian views at times (tho he did offer a critique of Darwin I believe). FN seems at least somewhat affiliated with a materialist POV: a type of Aristotelian inductivism to some extent, tho's sans any religious concepts. More like a 19th century Marcus Aurelius than a greek, and that worship of the militaristic is not so appealing. But it's difficult to argue that there is a consistent Nietzsche: there is an aesthete, a psychologist, a historian, philologist, a political thinker. His more aesthetic writing--say the Birth of Tragedy--seems quite opposed to some of the later, bitter writing such as the Antichrist, which might even be said to have anarchistic elements to it. Maybe he was already slightly mad (--infected with syphillis?) by the Antichrist.