REVALUING LIFE-NEGATING VALUES

For Nietzsche overcoming nihilistic despair requires revaluing life-negating values. In an important passage in the Nachlass he says:

We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world estimable for ourselves . . . have proved inapplicable and therefore devaluated the world (WP 12, see also P: 4; A 6).⁷⁵

Life-negating values, or what Nietzsche calls here “categories,” have in some sense been the basis for all other values by which we attempt to understand and assess the world.⁷⁶ Nietzsche goes on to explain that “the feeling of valuelessness [is] reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of these [categories]” (WP 12, see also P: 4). This reveals an antidote for nihilistic despair: “once we have devalued these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe” (WP 12). The “categories” listed are the values that (a) existence has a final aim, (b) pluralities of events can be unified, and (c) there is a true world of being.

Nietzsche asserts that none of these values are satisfiable in the imminent world. Understanding (c) the true world of being is the most important for this dissertation, since Nietzsche often talks about the true world in relation to science (see, e.g., TL; HH I: 16; GS 344; GM III: 24; BGE 21;

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

75 In what follows, I will be working with WP 12 (KSA 11[99]) and supporting it with published passages when possible. This is justified because of the incredible importance of WP 12 on its own terms for understanding Nietzsche’s view of nihilism. Many other interpreters have recognized the importance of this passage. See Heidegger (1982): 24-51; Schacht (1975): 180; Reginster (2006): 45-46; Sommer (2006): 253-255. To my knowledge no published passage sits in tension with my reading of WP 12.

76 This is highly unlikely, and Nietzsche never really attempts to support this premise in full. This is not a problem for my account because I do not take issue with the derivative values, but those from which they are putatively derived.

TI “Reason”). His criticisms of (a) and (b) nonetheless introduce an ontology that, I suggest in the next chapter, provides him with a way to combat nihilistic presuppositions in certain scientific worldviews. I examine (c) in the next section and turn now briefly to (a) and (b).

Nietzsche maintains that we must rid ourselves of the value that (a) existence has a final aim or purpose because a “‘meaning’ in all events . . . is not there” (WP 12). This “meaning”

might have been, he offers, “the ‘fulfillment’ of some highest ethical canon in all events, the moral world order; or the growth of love and harmony in the intercourse of beings; or the gradual approximation of a state of universal happiness” (WP 12, see also A 26). Nietzsche’s target is any moralistic interpretation of the natural world, arguably those espoused by the Christian, Kantian, or even Hegelian tradition, which allow humanity an avenue to avoid the “torment of the ‘in vain’, [and] insecurity” of bearing lives with no visible moral progress or purpose (ibid).

Nietzsche proffers that moralistic valuations are unrealizable because the world essentially exists in a state of “becoming” [Werden] and “becoming aims at nothing and achieves nothing” (ibid, see also GM II: 12; LN 11[72]). If everything within the world transpires without a given purpose, then the value that life has an inherent purpose refers to only a “purely fictitious world”

(ibid). For Nietzsche conceiving the world essentially to exist in a state of becoming helps overcome nihilistic despair partly because it exposes the unsatisfiable nature of our moralistic valuations of the world (see also Z “Tablets” 8). Those valuations are said to be erroneous projections onto an amoral world (see GS 109; BT P: 4). Becoming “redeems” our relationship with the world because it frees us from thinking that our moral judgments refer (see TI “Errors”

7).⁷⁷ For this reason, Nietzsche thinks becoming is “innocent” (TI “Errors” 8).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

77 This redemptive quality of becoming is contingent on the possibility that agents value a conception of the world as becoming.

Nietzsche also asserts that there is no (b) “comprehensive unity in the plurality of events,” or no ultimate “organization in all events, and underneath all events,” for one to “admire and revere” (WP 12). He claims that such admiration or reverence depends on the recognition that one is a “mode of the deity” which establishes and maintains the grand whole (ibid). This recognition would allow one to “believe in [one’s] own value” by having the ability to comprehend the unity of the system (ibid). Although Nietzsche seems to target theistic interpretations of the universe propounded by modern scientists such as Newton or Voltaire (see GS 37), he is most likely thinking of Spinoza.

In his Ethics, Spinoza argues that we are “modes” of God endowed with intelligence and reason. Because we are such creatures we have access to a unique kind of virtue through knowledge of God. The best kind of knowledge for Spinoza is a pure intellectual intuition of the essences of things as having a necessary and determinate nature. When one has this kind of knowledge one understands all things under the aspect of eternity, or situated in relation to God and his attributes (thought and extension). What one sees when understanding things in this manner is that all events follow necessarily from the essence of matter and the universal laws of physics, and that all ideas, including all the properties of minds, follow necessarily from the essence of thought and its universal laws. Spinoza’s ethical program consists in attempting to see the determinate and necessary nature of the whole with reverent, intellectual equanimity.

Nietzsche believes Spinoza’s manner of valuing the world is mistaken because it assumes an erroenous conception of the world. The world is instead “becoming,” Nietzsche proclaims, and “underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value” (WP 12). Nietzsche offers the view that the world exists in a state of becoming in opposition to Spinoza’s ontology because becoming

indicates that all events are indeterminate and contingent rather than determinate and necessary.⁷⁸

In sum, Nietzsche opposes the first two life-negating values by appealing to becoming (see also GS 109; GM II: 12; BGE 22; TI “Errors” 7, 8). The structure of the arguments is as follows: (1) If the world is becoming, then [(a) or (b)] is unrealizable; (2) The world is becoming; (3) So, [(a) or (b)] are unrealizable (see also TI “Reason” 1). For this to be plausible, of course, Nietzsche would have to do more work. First, he has not provided sufficient reason for taking (1) seriously. He has not actually shown that becoming is inconsistent with (a) or (b).

Other passages fill out the argument (against (a) see PT; GS 109; GM II: 12; BGE 13; TI

“Errors” 7; EH “Books,” BT: 3; against (b) see PT; BGE 22; TI “Reason” 2). He has also not properly supported (2). He could do so by providing independent reasons for taking an ontology of becoming seriously over other ontologies (for this see PT; BGE 13, 36; TI “Reason” 1). And finally, it would be helpful to have independent reasons to assert (3). Nietzsche could do this by doubting the plausibility of (a) and (b) on internal rather than external grounds (for (a) see HH I:

2; D 210; WP 253; for (b) see WP 517, 552, 576).

It is therefore an open question whether or not Nietzsche has convincing arguments against (a) and (b). Despite this difficulty, however, the important point that concerns my project is that Nietzsche clearly wants to motivate an ontological conception of becoming as central to his project of overcoming nihilistic despair. The following chapter explains why this is the case.

To understand Nietzsche’s motivation for positing becoming, though, it is imperative first to grasp his criticism of (c) the true world of being.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

78 See Chapter 3 for more discussion about these aspects of becoming.