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Nietzsche and the Later Wittgenstein: An Offense to the Quest for Another World
AYDAN TURANLI
O
ne of the most important Wittgensteinian themes is the idea that we are being held captive by a picture. Being held captive by a picture is the product of thinking that there can be an external standpoint in analyzing concepts. This idea of “the view from nowhere” directs our investigation in philosophizing. The cure is an escape from a platonic cave, and seeing the connections. In this article, I argue that both Nietzsche and the later Wittgenstein share the idea that perspicuous representation is possible only if we free ourselves from this craving for generality. In Nietzsche this view finds its expression in On the Genealogy of Morals, which is designed to show that concepts regarding moral issues cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. In the later Wittgenstein, this view is enlarged so as to cover all kinds of concepts. I also maintain that, unlike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche provides an account of how this craving arises. The thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein are not supposed to be similar at all. One is a philosopher, especially in his early period, thought to belong to the analytic camp of thinking, while the other is supposed to be a literary rather than an academic philosopher. But clearly they both tried to transform our vision of philosophy: one in the nineteenth century and the other in the twentieth century. They attack traditional ways of doing philosophy from all directions, and in this sense both can be regarded as revolutionary thinkers. In the beginning of the twenty-first century their agenda is still important: we still did not achieve to see the “world rightly”
* I would like to thank the Philosophy Department of Brown University for inviting me as a Visiting Scholar for the academic years 1995–97. I would also like to thank the Department of Philosophy of Boston University for inviting me for postdoctoral work for the academic year 1997–98. I am also grateful to the Philosophy Department of Harvard University for allowing me to attend several seminars on the later Wittgenstein.
Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 26, 2003 Copyright © 2003 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.
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as Wittgenstein tries to get us to see in the Tractatus. We behave as if we are eliminating metaphysics, but it shows itself under different disguises. I see Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s views as therapeutic in the sense that by attacking several dogmas of traditional philosophy they try to get us to see that we are actually being held captive by a picture. Their critiques of traditional philosophy focus on several issues, including knowledge and morality, all of which intend to show that “language is like an engine idling” (PI §132) when we analyze concepts concerning these topics from an external standpoint. I want to deal with their reaction to traditional philosophers regarding issues of knowledge and morality.
I Traditionally, knowledge had been regarded as justified true belief. According to this understanding, there are three components of knowledge as belief, truth, and justification. After the Gettier objections in 1963, epistemologists revised their view and tried to add the fourth component to their theory of knowledge, but even the revised version of the traditional definition of knowledge would not do for Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. According to traditional philosophers, knowledge is possible either through grasping abstract propositions existing independently in another world or through awareness of mental propositions. The Platonic worldview, for example, presupposes the “pure, will-less, painless, timeless” (GM III 12) knower. Knowledge, in this sense, requires a philosophical method that enables us to achieve objectivity and a God’s-eye view of things. Wittgenstein and Nietzsche oppose this otherworldly explanation of knowledge. This type of knowing presupposes “pure reason” and “absolute intelligence.” It entails Thomas Nagel’s a “view from nowhere.” For Nietzsche, such super-knowing requires “an eye turned in no direction at all” (ibid.). But there cannot be such an eye because “There is only a perspective seeing” (ibid.). Perspectivism, on the other hand, necessitates seeing-something-as something. It needs the human being’s perspective. Wittgenstein appeals to the Gestalt Switch analogy in order to underline that absolute knowledge is not possible, and there are no ideas the grasping of which guarantees our knowing once and for all. The categories of pure reason, which guarantee absolute knowledge, are not a priori. For Nietzsche, logical rules and categories are useful devices that help preservation and growth of life. Our conviction that “a=a” is the result of entrenched experience, which seems to confirm this conviction. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, repudiates essentialism and asserts that logical laws are conventions rather than assertions about being. This is emphasized in his famous aphorism “essence is expressed by grammar” (PI §371),
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and grammar is convention (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, part I §74). For Wittgenstein, in principle, logical rules are subject to change and they have nothing to do with truth. In the Tractatus, while discussing the picture theory of truth, he asserts that logical propositions, which are tautologies and contradictions, do not have representational character; in this sense, they are senseless but not nonsensical. They are, on the other hand, “part of the symbolism, in the same way that ‘0’ is part of the symbolism of Arithmetic” (Tractatus §4.462). Wittgenstein’s view, on the function of logical propositions, changes and in On Certainty he implies that logical propositions are neither senseless nor meaningful. What he calls Weltbild Sätze, including logical Sätze, provide a framework for creating reality for ourselves. They are neither true nor false (On Certainty §205). Instead, they make “true” and “false” possible (ibid., §94). They do not reflect or represent objective truth in any sense. According to Nietzsche, on the other hand, logic is a useful device for understanding, formulating, and abstracting other things. The categories of pure reason are suitable for a purpose; they are categories used in understanding and preserving our species. Logical rules have pragmatic utility: “their utility alone is their ‘truth’” (WP III 514). They are subject to change— useful devices for making life easier. Hence, they cannot represent the truth. “The categories are ‘truths’ only in the sense that they are conditions of life for us: as Euclidean space is a conditional ‘truth’” (WP III 515). The basic laws of logic such as the law of contradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity are conditional truths for us. They are ‘conditional truths’ in the sense that they do not exclude alternative laws. We do not accept them because they correspond to a truth in the world; the laws of logic or the laws of thinking do not refer to something about reality, about being, but help us arrange our world. They are not a priori truth, or ‘pre-existing idea.’ Therefore, a truth of logic is not a truth-in-itself, but a “biological compulsion” (ibid.). It is a part of human nature not to see the same surface blue and red simultaneously. Being able to see that “a=a” is instinctive. And this is very similar to what Wittgenstein asserts in On Certainty. For Wittgenstein, my knowing that “a=a,” or that “There exists an external world,” or that “I am a human being,” or that “I have ancestors” or that “I have two hands” are all instinctive. My knowing concerning these Weltbild Sätze is knowing without knowing how I know it. For Nietzsche, the idea that logic represents how the world is is dominated by the belief that “we can gain possession of knowledge, that judgements really hit upon the truth” (WP III 516). However possession of knowledge is not possible; all we can have is passion for knowledge. Knowledge, for both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, has a communal nature. Nietzsche, like Wittgenstein, maintains that human history or the history of communities started when animals learned to make promises. In this sense,
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becoming social is becoming capable of calculation, and the terminal point of this process should be sovereign, the autonomous individual. Elimination of emotions, instincts, and inclinations from matters regarding cognition cripples the intellect. For Wittgenstein, knowledge cannot be defined as justified true belief because our knowledge is not limited to propositional knowledge. In On Certainty he implies that human knowledge is based on nonpropositional, wordless understanding. As Spengler emphasizes, knowledge radiates not only from the cognizing part of man, but from the whole man (The Decline of the West, I:49). Nietzsche also emphasizes that our “true experiences are not all garrulous”; “Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond” (Twilight of Idols, Skirmishes of Untimely Man 26, GM III 12). This “wordless understanding” touches the very depth of the human personality and the human voice in both philosophers.
II Another aspect, which is related to knowledge, is morality. Plato identifies virtue with knowledge; for him there is an identity of happiness, virtue, and knowledge. Good life must include knowledge of the truer type and the exact knowledge of eternal objects. The highest good of man is the genuine development of man’s personality as a rational and moral being, and when a man’s soul is in the state it ought to be in, if he is illuminated by divine dispensation, then that man is happy. This relation between knowledge and moral issues is challenged by Nietzsche. Nietzsche questions idealization in ethics: On the Genealogy of Morals is designed to show that concepts regarding moral issues cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and this attitude is actually the product of thinking that there can be an external standpoint in analyzing concepts. Nietzsche criticizes Plato’s attempt to define the perfect man through concepts such as “good,” “wise,” “just,” and “dialectician.” According to him, this is to define “individuum in itself.” It is the “denaturalization of moral values” (WP II 430) and to remove a plant from all soil. Moral values are naturalized through Nietzsche’s conceptual analysis: he gives the genealogy of the concepts “good” and “evil” to show that there are no moral values such as good-in-itself and moralityin-itself over and above the actual uses of “good” and “evil.” “Good” and “bad” are not defined by our a priori knowledge of them. In order to show this he appeals to descriptions of historical processes in which these concepts have been used. The origin of evil does not lie behind this world. Rather than searching for the origin behind this world, we should, Nietzsche suggests, ask “under what conditions did man invent the value judgements good and evil” (GM III Preface). Nietzsche’s depiction of the master-slave morality
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presumes that the relation between the concepts “good” and “bad” depends on a class relation, the relation between the ruling class and the lower class. “Good” was imposed upon the lower class by the upper or ruling class (GM I 2). “Good” was always associated with the upper class, with Aryans, fairhaired, noble, spiritually distinct, and pure. “Bad” was identified with working class, common, inferior, and poor. Historically, they were correlated with race and class. While previously concepts or values such as “good,” “noble,” “happy,” and “powerful” were under the monopoly of aristocrats, with the influence of the Slave Revolt of Jews and Christians this changed. “Good” became associated with the poor, powerless, sick, ugly, and truly blessed (GM I 6). Hence, in almost all nations, the values “good,” and “bad” were inculcated, or imposed upon the lower class by the ruling class, the class that possesses power. Nietzsche’s analyses of moral values show that there is no a priori necessity for associating the word “good” with unegoistic actions (GM I 2). There is no meaning-in-itself determining the meaning of the concepts “good” and “bad” once and for all. Other concepts concerning moral values such as “guilt,” “obligation,” or “justice” are also analyzed in historical perspective in the Genealogy. They too, like other moral concepts, are seen within the perspective of class relationships, power relationships, purchase and sale relationships, and exchange relationships of creditor and debtor. Nietzsche’s conviction that there is no one characteristic defining moral values stems from his complete rejection of the traditional Platonic understanding. For him, the whole history of a thing, or a custom, is a chain of reinterpretations rather than progress toward a goal (GM II 12). With this step Nietzsche rejects traditional teleological explanations and this paves the way for accepting the fluidity of meanings. The concept of “punishment,” for example, has many meanings (GM II 13). The conclusions Nietzsche draws from the analysis of the concept “punishment” show the great similarities between his views and those of Wittgenstein. Nietzsche says, “the history of punishment up to now in general, the history of its use for a variety of purposes, finally crystallizes in a kind of unity which is difficult to dissolve back into its elements, difficult to analyse and, this has to be stressed, is absolutely undefinable” (ibid.). He says further that “all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated defy definition; only something which has no history can be defined” (ibid.). He also stresses that there cannot be one element defining a concept, because although in some cases one element becomes predominant, in other cases other elements may become important. So the definition of “punishment” per se cannot be given because it is totally dependent on history, context, and uses in actual cases. This is very similar to Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance.” Wittgenstein too points out that concepts have meaning only in the flux of life and most concepts of daily life cannot be defined by a single characteristic. There is no quality of
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a concept corresponding to the actual features of the world in our immediate environment. Hence, the intrinsic definition of concepts cannot be given. Despite this, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche differ with respect to the methodology of conceptual analysis. Nietzsche goes to the origins of concepts. He gives the genealogy of concepts. According to him, concepts can only have meaning when seen from a historical perspective. He appeals to history, and shows in what ways concepts were used under different circumstances. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, by showing connections between concepts, tries to get us to see that most of our concepts elude clear-cut definition. While criticizing Frege’s view that a concept should have definite boundaries, he says, “Stand roughly there” is also enough to describe a concept (PI §71). To define the concept “game,” we give examples and we intend them to be taken in a particular way. There is nothing common to all types of games. There is rather “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail” (PI §66). Wittgenstein does not appeal to history; he does not give us the origin of concepts. He suggests that we look and see how concepts are used in daily life, and what relation they have to other concepts in order to show us that there is no uniformity in their usage. The point of similarity, on the other hand, is that both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein reject categories and a prioricity. According to Nietzsche, the-meaning-in-itself, like other concepts of traditional metaphysics such as “unity,” “truth,” “purpose,” “totality,” “permanence,” “doer,” “atom,” and “the thing-in-itself,” is “only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it)” (GM I 13). Nothing in the world actually corresponds to these concepts. They are, for Nietzsche, subjective categories of the human mind having no objective existence. This denial of metaphysical concepts is one of the fundamental characteristics of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Wittgenstein asserts that metaphysical problems, or philosophical problems, “arise when language goes on holiday” (PI §38), or when “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably” (PI §115). Nietzsche and Wittgenstein agree that metaphysical concepts are being created by “reason petrified within [language].” All of these concepts are used to form explanatory philosophical theories. According to Nietzsche, they are fictions created as a result of fallacies of reason crystallized in language. For Wittgenstein, we need therapies to get rid of metaphysical problems created by these concepts. Science, Wittgenstein asserts, can be explanatory, or it can use explanatory devices, but philosophy should be descriptive. What we need is liberation from mythology, or liberation from metaphysics. This is also Zarathustra’s “way to a new morning” (Z:1, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” 3). Nietzsche’s rejection of traditional metaphysics finds its culmination in his remark “God is dead.” For Nietzsche, “God is dead” can be interpreted
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as saying that there is no realm of transcendent reality, no supersensible world, no absolute values. Presupposing that there are two different realms, one an immutable, absolute realm of universal essences, is to degrade the world in which we live into a world of illusion. It is to deny reality, the world of senses, of change, and opposition. With the devaluation of the highest values, Nietzsche abandons the idea that there are two worlds having an unequal ontological rank: the true and transcendent world of ideas and the inferior world of senses. The only world we have is the world of sensations, change, and contradiction. Wittgenstein also criticizes this longing for the truth, this craving for frictionless surfaces. His concept of “family resemblance” is the critique of the Platonic understanding of meaning, which presumes that specific difference and universals make meaning possible. “We have got on the slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!” (PI §107). Nietzsche identifies “naturalization of morality” (WP II 461) with certainty in actions and in instincts. To the extent that our actions are conscious, they lose perfection. Naturalness, on the other hand, excludes the great doctrine of the identity of happiness, virtue, and knowledge and the idea of the transcendental. Naturalization of morality is possible by returning to the facts of common sense and of the “‘little people’ of all kinds” (WP II 439). Of course, this does not mean that we accept what is given to us as it is; on the contrary, “As the soldier exercises, so should man learn to act” (WP II 430). Instincts are shaped and reshaped in practice, and this process goes on and on endlessly. What Nietzsche does in ethics Wittgenstein does in philosophy of language. Nietzsche opposes idealization in ethics; he naturalizes ethics. Wittgenstein opposes idealization in language, and suggests naturalization of language by bringing “words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (PI §116). To be sure, what is everyday or ordinary is not given once and for all, but is defined and redefined.
III The craving for absolutely general specifications results in doing metaphysics. Unlike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche provides an account of how this craving arises. The creation of the two worlds such as apparent and real world, conditioned and unconditioned world, being and becoming is the creation of the ressentiment of metaphysicians. Nietzsche says, “to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for a world that makes one suffer: the ressentiment of metaphysicians against actuality is here creative” (WP III 579). Escaping from this world because there is grief in it results in asceti-
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cism. Paying respect to the ascetic ideal is longing for the world that is pure and denaturalized. Craving for frictionless surfaces, for a transcendental, pure, true, ideal, perfect world, is the result of the ressentiment of metaphysicans who suffer in this world. Metaphysicians do not affirm this world as it is, and this paves the way for many explanatory theories in philosophy. In criticizing a philosopher who pays homage to the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche says, “he wants to escape from torture” (GM III 6). The traditional philosopher or the ascetic priest continues to repeat, “‘My kingdom is not of this world’” (GM III 10). This is a longing for another world in which one does not suffer. It is to escape from this world; to create another illusory, fictitious, false world. This longing for “the truth” of a world in which one does not suffer is the desire for a world of constancy. It is supposed that contradiction, change, and deception are the causes of suffering; in other words, the senses deceive; it is from the senses that all misfortunes come; reason corrects the errors; therefore reason is the road to the constant. In sum, this world is an error; the world as it ought to be exists. This will to truth, this quest for another world, this desire for the world as it ought to be, is the result of unproductive thinking. It is unproductive because it is the result of avoiding the creation of the world as it ought to be. According to Nietzsche, the will to truth is “the impotence of the will to create” (WP III 585). Metaphysicians end up with the creation of the “true” world in contrast to the actual, changeable, deceptive, self-contradictory world. They try to discover the true, transcendental world that is already there rather than creating a world for themselves. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the transcendental world is the “denaturalized world” (WP III 586). The way out of the circle created by the ressentiment of metaphysicians is the will to life rather than the will to truth. The will to truth can be overcome only through a Dionysian relationship to existence. This is the way to a new philosophy, which in Wittgenstein’s terms aims “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (PI §309). Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of Letters and Sciences Istanbul Technical University Istanbul
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———. Twilight of the Idols. In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: The Viking Penguin, 1982. ———. The Will to Power. Ed. W. Kaufmann, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House, 1967. ———. Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: The Viking Penguin, 1982. Plato. Collected Dialogues. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Schacht, Richard, ed. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1994. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, vol. I. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman, trans. P. Winch. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. ———. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psycholog, vol. II, ed. G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993. ———. On Certainty. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969. ———. Philosophical Investigations. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. 2d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967. ———. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Edited by G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978.
