The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  32.6 NIETZSCHE ON LOGICAL “FICTIONS”

  Consider an alternative skeptical framework that respects the natural conditions that make logic and argumentation possible. Call the fundamental perspective that Nietzsche thinks we all have to occupy, following Strawson (1986), a “conceptual scheme,” conceptual framework, frame of reference. This is not a “mere perspective” for it cannot be thrown off. What is indispensable to this conceptual scheme, Nietzsche thinks, are certain basic concepts that enable conditions that are essential to the life of knowers. Among these conditions is rational thought: “rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off” (WP, 522). One byproduct of rational thought is logic. Logic is an indispensable part of this framework and cannot be subtracted: “Therefore, what is most extreme is the surrender of logic…No one can live within such a denial of reason.” Philosophers in their leisure may speculate about the possibility of nonhuman forms of thoughts and perspectives from which truth and logic do not hold. But logic is indispensible to humans, shared across human perspectives, and tied to the needs of the kinds of creatures that we are: “Perhaps one is older, more profound than another, even ineradicable, in so far as an organic entity of our species could not live without it” (WP, 535). As such, our belief in logic is necessary for life” (Nachlass: 177: 94). Logic is embedded in the deep structure of language and forms part of the bedrock conditions that make meaningful reasoning and argumentative consistency possible.32 Logic and logical rules of inference are part of the unavoidable conditions that make rational speech and argumentation possible. As such, logic is inescapable and indispensable because it is linked to essential natural conditions enabling our species of human life (Nachlass: 177: 94). Thus, even for a perspectivalist, this general naturalist framework is not up for revision.

  But significantly, this doesn’t make logic immune from questioning from within that framework.33 Nietzsche still regards logical laws as open to critique. For instance, he writes, “The question remains open,” whether the law of non-contradiction applies to things in the world in a nonperspectival way (WP, 516). While logic is an essential and ineliminable component of our conceptual scheme, his Heraclitean naturalism leads him to call into question the closed, stable, ordered reality that classical logical laws perpetuate. The indeterminate nature of Heraclitean reality leaves it “open” whether the law of non-contradiction reflects significant objective ontological facts about nature. He questions logic in the sense, not of denying logic, but of leaving open to interpretation whether logical laws reflect significant ontological truths. He treats laws as not yet finished and complete, but dependent for validation on a subject’s perspective. His perspectival attitude regarding logical laws replaces the closed, determinate nature of judgment about “facts,” with the open, indeterminate nature of interpretation: “facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations” (WP, 481). By contrast with closed facts, he calls logical laws open “interpretations” (WP, 552) in the sense that we give our world a sense.

  Moreover, Nietzsche’s fictionalism about logic allows logic to have normative authority.34 For our logical “fictions” are indispensable to the very conditions enabling our species because they tell us something significant about our nature and ourselves as natural creatures. We cultivate a biased world picture through “fictions and interpretations.”35 Logic points to our need to perpetuate normative assumptions that give meaning to life. His critique of this value-laden logic and metaphysics results in an ontological naturalism. In the Birth of Tragedy, he describes how we recoil from the meaninglessness of living in a Heraclitean reality, with its indeterminate flux of creation and destruction. We look into the terrifying abyss and confront a world which is inhospitable and incomprehensible to humans. Logic lends meaning and value to an otherwise chaotic, indeterminate, utterly incomprehensible Heraclitean world devoid of meaning.36 Logic gives us a meaningful “interpretation” of the unstable, dynamic movement of becoming in nature. Logical concepts carry with them value-laden assumptions about reality—meanings of a stable, predictable, unified, coherent, and unchanging order—that allow us to deny the chaotic instabilities and unpredictability of nature. These meaning-values give us an interpretation that affirms our will to live, beyond death, change, and becoming (GM, III, 19). They promote life in the form of the feeling of life itself, a powerful instinctive feeling for life, beyond death and change, which involves us in meaningfully affirming the eternal recurrence of life.37

  Certainly challenging logic from within this naturalist framework takes Nietzsche beyond rationalism. This, he thinks, makes him even more radical than the ancient skeptics.38 His fictionalism questions whether such concepts reflect ontologically significant truths about reality minus the meaning-laden baggage that we superadd onto the world. But it does not make him as radical as an irrationalist. For the way he questions logical concepts is to call logical concepts “fictions” from within an argumentative framework in which logic has to hold. That is, he is constrained to launch his critique immanently, from within a context of argumentation in which logic still holds. He shows an awareness that he is constrained to draw on the very tools he is critiquing: “How should a tool be able to criticize itself when it can use only itself for the critique? It cannot even define itself!” (WP, 486). That is, just to question logic from within a natural framework requires his complicity in using the very logical tools that he is criticizing. To question the laws and imperatives of logic, he is required to hold his critique of logical tools to the very logical standards that dogmatists employ and launch his critique in terms that are internal to the dogmatist’s rational framework.

  Specifically, Nietzsche uses a reductio ad absurdum strategy taken over from the ancient skeptics.39 Following the Pyrrhonian skeptics, Nietzsche uses logical self-refutation against the dogmatist’s logic immanently, that is, in terms that are internal to those very structures. He calls on the logical features of the statements in question to pit the dogmatist’s logical tools ad hominem against the dogmatist’s specious mode of assertion (as well as his own, should it lapse into dogmaticism), in order to bring about an open, indeterminate result that plays against a dogmatic mode of assertion. Being forced to inhabit the dogmatists’ native perspective, he has to appropriate the logic implied in it in order to give his critique in terms that his critics can understand. But he is only doing this because his opponents are. To argue ad hominem against the dogmatist’s logic, he accepts a formulation of the self-refutation charge, based on logical structures that may not necessarily be valid for a skeptic, but which are valid from a place inside their argumentative framework.

  32.7 SKEPTICAL ART OF SELF-REFUTATION: BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 22

  We get a prime illustration in Beyond Good and Evil, 22 of Nietzsche using the skeptical art of self-refutation along Pyrrhonian lines—that is, immanently, from within the very argumentative structures he is questioning. What makes this passage significant for our purposes is that BGE, 22 is often cited as evidence of an incommensurability between his methods and norms. The argumentative context, we are to imagine, is a debate between a skeptic and a scientific dogmatist (represented by “the physicist”). The question is: should the world be viewed in mechanical, physical terms or in terms reducible to will to power? Nietzsche condemns the scientific dogmatist for giving a mechanistic interpretation of the world, as a “perversion of meaning,” a “bad mode of interpretation,” even “bad ‘philology’” (BGE, 22). He gives a sweeping condemnation of science in general, and dismisses certain modes of scientific investigation as “prejudices worth no more than astrology” (WP, 258). He imputes to scientists pathological intentions and motives (even unconscious complicity in will to power). Yet Nietzsche here seems to prescribe something better in place of bad scientific method and a “bad mode of interpretation.” He commends his own Will to Power theory, not as mere interpretation on a level with other interpretations, but as preferable to the bad kind of physics
to be put in its place.

  The normative problem that we began with appears here in BGE, 22 as elsewhere: how do we acquit Nietzsche of an apparent inconsistency between his preferred claims and his skeptical epistemology? For if his perspectivism was deployed as part of the skeptical attack on scientific dogmatism, where the point was to avoid dogmatic assertions and beliefs, then in his attack on dogmatic metaphysics, he should not be installing new dogmas and beliefs in its place. If the morals of perspectivism apply to the claim, “Everything is will to power,” then that claim ought not to be read as a substantive metaphysical doctrine, which brings in unsubstantiated metaphysical commitments. The substantial content of the doctrine should be undermined by the “truth” of perspectivism: namely, there is no fact of the matter as to whether reality should be read in physical terms or in terms of will to power. Any stated preference on Nietzsche’s part would seem to undermine his own perspectivism, by putting forward metaphysical claims, the assertion of which carry conversational implicatures that subject them to self-cancellation. How do we reconcile the apparent inconsistency in this passage between his skeptical epistemology and his preference for will to power?

  Rather than defend himself, Nietzsche throws up his hands and embraces the aporetic conclusion. Despite what his rationalist critics have thought, he cheerfully welcomes the paradox as a desirable result: “Supposing that this (Will to Power) also is only interpretation—and you will be eager enough to make this objection—well, so much the better (um so besser)!” (BGE, 22, cf. 14; WP, 636). He himself admits that no one interpretation is to be preferred. For one could alternatively “read out of the same nature, and with regard to the same phenomena” a view of the world as being driven by will to power. He caves in too fast and offers no resistance to a gravely serious and industrious attempt to refute him. Yet he is not just being perverse and funny—though he is being all that too.

  Here, Nietzsche is using skeptical tropes to express an attitude and style of argumentation akin to the ancient skeptics. He is drawing on the Pyrrhonian technique of equipollence to balance the scientific interpretation against an equally compelling one. With both theories balanced equally on both sides, no one interpretation can be preferred. To put the point in the mode of skeptical speech employed by the ancient skeptics: “No more this than that.” His response—um so besser!—is not to be taken as trivializing or abandoning his theory. He deflects the self-refutation charge by “holding back” (epoche), in the sense of refusing to be drawn into a style of argumentation and proof that draws on the dogmatic mode of assertion that his perspectival stance calls into question. He deploys a self-refuting logic, not just to discredit his opponents, but harshly against his own position as a way of avoiding a dogmatic mode of theorizing: “well, so much the better” for the theory if it is self-refuting. From within the dogmatists’ framework, he draws on their logical resources to purposely generate a logical contradiction for perspectivism. He relies on this logical mechanism to disrupt our bias toward unity of interpretation.

  Notice that Nietzsche’s response to self-refutation is not a lapse into irrationalism. He is not to be understood as irrationally embracing a logical contradiction or abandoning his theory. He is not saying something meaningless or committing to nothing. He is not being ambivalent, undecided, or silent. He admires the kind of caution, restraint, decency, genuineness, intellectual rigor, ruthless self-scrutiny, and honesty in philosophical conduct that he finds exercised in ancient skepticism (“The Philosopher as Cultural Physician,” 31). He adopts from the ancients an intellectual code of conduct guiding philosophical practice, which has to be harshly self-reflective and self-critical in order to alert us to pretensions about the illusory way we conceptualize what we are doing. Like the ancient skeptics, he is scrupulously aware of the danger to his intellectual integrity if his insights are valued as truth: “The highest values devalue themselves” (WP, 2). He employs a self-undermining logic, along lines laid out by ancient skepticism, for the purpose of avoiding dogmatic theorizing. He uses a Pyrrhonian strategy of self-refutation as a critical strategy against dogmatism. By deploying a self-refuting logic, even against his own perspectivism, he is safeguarding it from lapsing into a dogmatism of its own making.

  In one important respect Nietzsche safeguards his own perspectivism against a dogmatic misreading. Notice that what generated a logical paradox in the first place is a strong reading of perspectivism.40 The strong reading arrives at a substantive metaphysical position of anti-realism and relativism about truth and ontology, which if true, would clash with the skeptical statements used to state the theory of perspectivism. For if one were to accord perspectivism a preferential, nonperspectival status by giving truth a “strong” reading in this way, this would indeed be absurdly in contradiction with the chief metaphysical doctrine being targeted. A metaphysical realism, on which knowledge is of pure, undistorted facts and states of affairs, whose nature is constituted independently of our cognitive abilities and true by virtue of corresponding to timeless, extra-perspectival entities (WP, 608). Only this strong dogmatic reading is capable of generating paradox. Nietzsche safeguards perspectivism from being given this strong misreading by entangling one in logical contradictions if one tries. That is, if perspectivism were taken wrongly as such, in the very nonperspectival sense of truth it was intended to repudiate, this would entangle one in logical contradictions. Nietzsche’s response to his rational critics is thus to cheerfully accept that a logical contradiction has indeed occurred in the most objectionable way: “So much the worse for the theory.”

  To do this within a natural argumentative framework in which logic holds, he needs to draw on the notions of logical consistency in question and the negative value the dogmatists place on contradictions. Keeping their logic in place, he uses logic immanently from a place inside their own argumentative framework. He deploys the logical features of the statements themselves against a “strong” reading of perspectivism in this way:

  If, in trying to state the theory, perspectivism should lapse into declarative, truth-referring speech, then what acquits him of inconsistency is that it contains within it the means of logically canceling itself out. This serves as a kind of caveat emptor, preventing even its author from affirming the doctrine declaratively and dogmatically. He writes, “It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts subtler minds” (BGE, 18). If anyone, including its author, should try to affirm the doctrine declaratively and dogmatically, it has built into it a logical mechanism for self-destruction, which it can only recover from if it repudiates itself. Perspectivism automatically throws up resistance to any and all, including its author, who want to impute to it pretensions, ambitions, and illusions of being a stable, unified doctrine asserting the objective truth. Any attempt to accept perspectivism as “true,” in the offending strong sense that it seeks to refute, sets into motion this self-destructing, self-censoring logical mechanism, which presents a therapeutic rupture from a dogmatic attitude that forces too much coherence and unity on thought. In his war against conventional attitudes, Nietzsche responds with aporia:“Truth kills—it even kills itself” (Nachlass: 176: 92).

  Nietzsche rescues himself from the charge of inconsistency by self-consciously neutralizing any challenges to defend perspectivism in rational terms of logical consistency and systematicity—all of which draw on dogmatic assumptions about proof, validity, and truth that he subjects to skeptical scrutiny. His aporetic response to the charge of self-refutation is to deploy a self-undermining logic artfully, even against his own position, as a therapeutic mechanism for internally revising dogmatic attitudes. He effectively disarms his critics by discrediting their misreading of his theory in terms that they themselves must accept—working as they are within a logical tradition that rejects logical contradictions. If anyone, including himself, were to speak of the truth of perspectivism strongly as a dogmatist, then their statements would indeed reduce t
o absurdity. But if this aporetic result is a muddle, as a logical contradiction certainly is, then it is owing to his critics’ muddle. For when read wrongly as a dogmatic theory, perspectivism exposes the inadequacy of this misunderstanding by triggering the very self-refutation charge that leads to its own undoing: “Logic coils up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail” (BT, 15: 98). But far from rendering perspectivism confused, incoherent, and self-contradictory, as critics charge, logical self-refutation is one of Nietzsche’s consciously skeptical strategies that he pits against his dogmatist critics, at the end of which he stands laughing cheerfully from a great Olympian height.41

  32.8 CAN SKEPTICS LIVE THEIR SKEPTICISM?

  So far, we’ve seen Nietzsche put the skeptical art of self-refutation to negative use. Yet self-refutation, he thinks, must play a positive role in promoting conditions conducive to human flourishing: “Self-refutation for a skeptic is not to be identified with ressentiment or a will to self-annihilation: that would make self-refutation an obstacle to (physiological) flourishing against the will to live” (GM, 3:11). In this respect, Nietzsche’s brand of skepticism is not wholly assimilable to the ancient model.42 He steers clear of skeptical attitudes that lose meaningful ties to practical action. The necessity to act, he thinks, makes it imperative to go beyond a purely negative critique of mistaken beliefs and theories. In the remainder of this chapter, I explore the sense in which Nietzsche’s theoretical skepticism does not suppress beliefs and action in the practical realm.