On Metaphysics and Epistemology, The Atlas Society | Ayn Rand, Objectivism, Atlas Shrugged

यह टिप्पणी एटलस सोसाइटी के 2000 के ऑनलाइन "साइबरसेमिनर" का हिस्सा है जिसका शीर्षक है " नीत्शे और ऑब्जेक्टिविज्म ।

Essays and Comments on Nietzsche's View of Metaphysics and Epistemology:

1. Shawn Klein, "Nietzsche's Metaphysics and Epistemology"

2. David Potts, "Epitome of Will to Power, Book 3, Part I"

3. Chris Sciabarra, "A Note on Ayn Rand's College Transcript"

Introduction to the Discussion, by Stephen Hicks

Nietzsche’s metaphysical and epistemological views receive much less attention than his views on human psychology and values. And Nietzsche has a reputation for being an unsystematic and disorganized thinker. Yet he seems to conceive of a philosophy organically, as all of its parts being connected and growing from a fundamental source.

“We [philosophers] have no right to isolated acts of any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths. Rather do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit--related and each with an affinity to each, and evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun” (GM, Preface, 2).

What then is the “soil” out of which Nietzsche’s views grow?

Nietzsche has a reputation for being an unsystematic and disorganized thinker.

In Unit One we investigated his views on human nature and values. We found that he identifies, for example, slave values as an expression of a weak psycho-biological nature. He then argues that even though the slave morality’s advocates’ basic identity is to be weak, they nonetheless have a will to power. Their will to power is what causes the slave morality to arise. The weak cannot compete with the strong masters on the masters’ terms, and so the slave morality was a rational, calculated, long-term strategy to defeat the masters. That strategy seems to be succeeding, and its success is causing the decline of the species.

So the story is told in terms of identity, causality, and rational strategies.

Yet in our readings for this unit, we find Nietzsche engaged in sustained attacks on the concepts of identity, causality, and rationality.

So our broad questions in this unit are: What are Nietzsche’s metaphysics and epistemology, and how are they related to his views on human nature and values?

As before, please feel free to pick and choose among these questions to address, and to add others.

1. Nietzsche is an atheist, and this tells us something of what he is against. There is no traditional God who made us and owns us, who tells us what to do, who cares about us, etc. If the traditional religious/Platonic metaphysics is false, then what is true? Metaphysically, what is reality, for Nietzsche? What in general terms is its identity? What causal processes are to be found in it?

2. For example, Nietzsche is often interpreted as being a process thinker. (E.g., WtP 1067) Is this accurate? What kind of process is it, if we are to think of process as more fundamental than something engaged in a process? What is the contrast concept to process metaphysics?

3. Nietzsche is also often interpreted as being a teleological thinker: the will to power is not Schopenhauer’s blindly striving will; it has a goal, a direction. Nietzsche also suggests occasionally that the Zarathustras must necessarily come one day and that the entire process will repeat itself eternally. What kind of causal process is at work that could generate such results?

4. Nietzsche also declares himself occasionally as being against teleology (e.g., WtP 552; his “Postcard to Overbeck” in which he allies himself with Spinoza against the teleologists). What are we to make of this?

5. The above questions depend on the concepts of identity and causality. Yet Nietzsche explicitly rejects those concepts as false-to-reality. Identity, he says, is a fiction (e.g., WtP 507-517), as are the usual versions of causality (e.g., WtP 497, 545-552). One of Nietzsche’s arguments against identity is similar to the old Presocratic argument that identity and change are incompatible with each other (WtP 520). Why so?

6. Is Nietzsche suggesting that there really is no identity or causality in reality? Or is his position only that our versions of identity and causality are subjective?

7. Another set of Nietzsche’s arguments focuses on our faculties of consciousness. Consciousness, Nietzsche tells us repeatedly, is not a faculty of awareness of reality (e.g., WtP 473, 479, 481, 507, 511, 513, 516, 521; GM II.16). Our faculties of sensation and conception do not identify reality but rather impose structure upon reality (e.g., WtP 479, 507, 515-516). Are Nietzsche’s arguments simply repetitions of Kant’s arguments?

“Truth,” Nietzsche says, apparently paradoxically, is an “error.”

8. Since sensations and concepts are not based in reality, Nietzsche concludes that logic and reason are not based in reality but are subjective impositions. “Truth,” he says, apparently paradoxically, is an “error” (e.g., WtP 493). So he has harsh words for those who want to rely primarily on reason and logic. Since reason and logic are false-to-reality, what other faculties does Nietzsche suggest that should we rely upon for guidance? (As, e.g., at GM II.16.) Does Nietzsche suggest that those other faculties are more reliable? If so, is it because they are more accurate?

9. On the other hand, Nietzsche also argues that even though our sensations and concepts are false-to-reality they are nonetheless useful (e.g., GS 354). While consciousness is not a faculty of identification, it is nonetheless functional. The standard account of consciousness is that it is functional because it accurately identifies facts of reality. How, on Nietzsche’s view, can consciousness be functional if it is not in the truth business?

10. Nietzsche opposes two views of consciousness: one that sees consciousness as identifying truths about reality and one that sees consciousness as for the purpose of effective functioning in reality (e.g., WtP 507). Why does he think the two views are opposed rather than complementary? Is it because he sees the consciousness-as-identification position as necessarily intrinsicist?

11. Is Nietzsche an early evolutionary epistemologist? See, e.g., WtP 493-498. Evolutionary epistemologists argue that we can rely upon our consciousness because it evolved to help us survive, and if its products weren’t reliable either it or we wouldn’t have survived. Are there any significant differences between Nietzsche and the evolutionary epistemologists?

12. Does Nietzsche anywhere address the standard paradox for skeptical conclusions such as his: Is he saying that his philosophy is only a functionally useful set of concepts (without being true), or is he saying that it really tells us how it is? If the former, can he make the claim that his philosophy is more functional than any other? If the latter, has he contradicted himself?

13. The content of Nietzsche’s philosophy attacks the concepts of identity and causality, and the form in which he presents it is typically aphoristic. Does this mean Nietzsche should have no systematic philosophy?

14. A question about our textual sources: We have relied heavily on WtP for Nietzsche’s metaphysics and epistemology. Yet Nietzsche did not publish WtP. How much can we rely on Nietzsche’s unpublished manuscripts as indicating his views?

A note on discussing Nietzsche and Ayn Rand :

Since we will have all of Unit Four to compare Nietzsche’s and Rand’s views, for the next two units please keep direct comparisons of the two thinkers’ view to a minimum. Each of us knows Rand’s views well, and our purpose in the first three units is to achieve a similar level of understanding of Nietzsche’s views. Making a comparison in passing to Rand’s views can of course be included if such comparisons will help us understand what Nietzsche means, just as passing comparisons to Kant’s or Hegel’s views may help us understand what Nietzsche means. But for now our focus is upon Nietzsche, and his relationship to Rand should be saved for later.

An aspect of this is being careful not to give Objectivist answers or use Objectivist terminology when addressing Nietzschean questions. For the questions and issues we raise and discuss, our focus is on how or whether Nietzsche addresses them, what the textual evidence is to support our interpretations of what Nietzsche’s answers are, and whether his answers are any good. Then, in Unit Four we can ask of any question or issue that has been raised: Is that also the question Objectivism asks? Is that how Objectivism frames the issue? If not, how would Objectivism put the question or frame the issue? And if the Nietzschean question/issue is the same as the Objectivist one, what is the Objectivist answer to it and how does it compare to Nietzsche’s?

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