Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
Nietzsche and Objectivism

Unit Two: February 21 - March 19

Shawn Klein's Review Essay
"Nietzsche's Metaphysics and Epistemology"
In The Will to Power, Geneology of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Friday, February 25, 2000 10:01 PM

Subject: Cyberseminar SK Pt. 2 Review: Nietzsche's Metaphysics and Epistemology

[Moderator's note: With me still not having put together the summary of
part one (soon to come-- promises, promises), here is the first review essay
for part two of the syllabus]

Nietzsche's Metaphysics and Epistemology



[From Shawn Klein]

It is no easy task trying to understand what Nietzsche's views on
metaphysics and epistemology are. Beyond getting past Nietzsche's manner
of writing and doing philosophy, the ideas themselves seem to be somewhat
muddled and confused. He shifts from a cool and passionless account of an
idea, to a fire and brimstone account of another idea.

In one paragraph, one can feel as though he completely agrees with
Nietzsche's point, it makes senses and fits with his understanding of the
world. Nonetheless, in the next paragraph, this understanding is turned on
its head with an account that makes no sense and sometimes seems to even
contradict the previous point. Part of this problem, I think, arises from
reading Nietzsche's notes; however, his published writings are not that
much clearer.

Nietzsche seems to be a Kantian in rejecting the possibility of knowing the
"true" world. For both Kant and Nietzsche, to know the "true" world
requires what David Kelley has called the diaphanous view of consciousness.
Others have called it the "God's eye view." Since we have to use our
senses, that is, since in order to know the external world we have to use a
particular method and process, then we are not really knowing the world.
If we could get beyond these methods and processes, we could see the "real"
world and truly know it. (It is called the "God's eye view" because it is
stipulated that God can know the world without any particular method. )

However, Nietzsche seems to break with Kant in the following way. Kant
supposes two realms, the phenomenal and noumenal. The noumenal is the
external, "real" world. The phenomenal world is the world our senses
present to us. Kant argues that all we know is the phenomenal world, and
can have no knowledge of the noumenal realm. But, he still thinks it is
out there, and possibly causing the phenomenal world(I could be wrong on
that last point but its not really relevant here). Nietzsche rejects this
categorically. "The 'thing-in-itself' is nonsensical" (WtP Sec. 558). He
argues, as much as Nietzsche actually argues, that if we can have no
knowledge of this noumenal realm, why are we supposing it even exits. "To
assert the existence as a whole of things of which we know nothing whatever
... was a piece of naiveté of Kant" (WtP Sec. 571)

Nietzsche is more consistent than Kant is this regard. He follows through
with the implications from the diaphanous view of consciousness. Without
any knowledge of this noumenal realm, what reasons do we have to suppose it
exists?

Still, Nietzsche is not a philosophic Idealist. There is, it seems, a
world external to humans. A world that is separate from our conditioning
of it, from our imposing order, logic and meaning upon it. It is a little
muddled exactly what this world is, but that is, I think, precisely the
point. He says it is "essentially a world of relationships" and it is a
"formless unformulable[sic] world of the chaos of sensations"(WtP Sec 568
and Sec 569).

It is not, according to Nietzsche, any more real (or unreal for that
matter) than the phenomenal world that we operate in. It is still a world
of sensations and perspectives. It has no meaning or even things in it;
Meaning and "thingness" are ideas imposed on our phenomenal world.

Nietzsche runs into a problem here, however. It is the same mistake that
he accuses Kant of. If we are unable to know this world, how to we know it
exists? One answer Nietzsche might give is that we don't know, we really
don't know anything. All we have is appearance and perspective. Our will
to power imposes and creates meaning and order. Part of the understanding
created by our will is this formless world of relationships.

Nietzsche's view is different than Kant's because Kant thought the noumenal
world was the real and true world. For Nietzsche, the concepts of real and
true are fictions created by the will to power, there is no "real" world.

The two fundamental ideas in understanding Nietzsche's metaphysics and
epistemology are perspectivism and the will to power.

Perspectivism is the view that our knowledge and understanding are
conditioned by how we are viewing it. To see something, one must be in
particular place and a particular time and view it from a particular angle.
One cannot view a thing from every angle at every time all at once. So,
we do not see the thing, only a perspective of it.

Knowledge, then, only occurs within a particular perspective. There is no
knowledge of the whole, only the part one can relate to given their
perspective. For Nietzsche, and most philosophers, this destroys knowledge
as classically understood. Knowledge is only knowledge of the whole, not a
part; to think of that as knowledge is just deceptive and illusionary.

Another aspect of this view is that whatever knowledge we think we have is
human knowledge. That is, it is based on, and conditioned by, our human
processes and faculties. Part of our perspective is the kind of being we
are.

There is no problem, I think, in the perspectivist idea that we can only
know something in a given domain and that we can only know things through
our processes and faculties. It seems obvious, to Objectivists anyway,
that we can only know something from a point of view. The problem for
Nietzsche's(and other's) perspectivism is that they conclude from this that
"real" knowledge is not possible and that we are only left with a rather
unsuitable remnant of knowledge. Of course, this is logical if one holds
the classical view that knowledge requires the view from nowhere, that is,
the God's eye view.

The other major part of Nietzsche's epistemology is the will to power.
Most of the work is done by this idea. The will to power is basically the
force within humans that drives us to survive and live. We survive and
live by forcing other people and "reality" to succumb to our power.

The will to power drives us to think about the world in the way we do. We
subscribe meaning, order, logic, and understanding to the world because of
the will to power.

In a sense, Nietzsche is anticipating Pragmatism. Truth, in his view, is
not what corresponds to reality, but what allows us to attain our goals and
power. Reason represents only the "expediency of a certain race and
species - their utility alone is their 'truth'" (WtP Sec. 514).

Truth and reason and knowledge have nothing whatsoever to do with the
"real" world. They have to do with how well a species can survive and
control. The "real" world could be, he argues, entirely different than
what our reason says and what we hold as true; but this is irrelevant. So
long as reason and truth enable us to have power and control, that is all
that is important. "The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of
the feeling of power" (WtP Sec 534).

The will to power in metaphysics and epistemology means that things that
are "real" are the things we do or can have power over. The classical
notions of truth and knowledge are passive and ineffectual. They are, for
Nietzsche, meaningless and signs of weakness. Strength comes in actively
creating the "reality" of one's world.

One of the interesting aspects of this theory is that Nietzsche takes all
of experience and reasoning and claims that it does not point to any kind
of truth or real world. "Trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic,
therefore the valuation of logic, proves only their usefulness for life,
proved by experience - not that something is true" (WtP Sec. 507). In
this way, he is not a Pragmatist. The usefulness of reason and logic, for
the Pragmatist, show that these are, in fact, true. But Nietzsche does not
think anything is really true. Just usefully or not. Just able to bring
power or not. And that is all that matters. Truth and real knowledge are
unimportant and useless from Nietzsche's point of view. They push us down
the road toward weakness and frailness. What we need is power, not truth.
So, we call things that bring us power, true and real.

I am not a Nietzsche scholar. This is the first time I have read Nietzsche
at any great length, so I hope those more familiar and more erudite in
Nietzsche's ideas will forgive the errors I am sure I made. However, if I
am basically correct in my interpretation of Nietzsche, then I think there
are some interesting things to say. Nietzsche has anticipated much of
contemporary philosophy. Forms of Perspectivism and Pragmatism are now
commonly held views. His critique of Kant and of "real" reality also
precipitates much of Postmodernism.

While no one else seems to have a theory quite like the Will to Power, it
does seem to explain, from a psychological point of view, the way many act.
While Rand certainly does not subscribe to the Will to Power, I think we
can learn a lot, about psychology, by comparing it to social metaphysics
and the primacy of consciousness. I think the will to power can, in part,
explain these from a psychological point of view.

Shawn Klein
Arizona State University



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Spring 2000 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
cybersem@objectivistcenter.org

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