Sartre, Nothingness, and Value

Sartre's rejection of the 'Dialectical' theory of Nothingness pertains to only part of its logical dimension--that Being and Nothingness are reified complements. However, he does retain three of the theory's other features. First, Being precedes Nothingness phenomenologically. Second, negation is sublation, i. e. it preserves what it negates, e. g. Consciousness preserves the object that it negates by revealing it. Third, negation seeks to negate itself. The combination of the latter two features yields what Sartre calls 'Value', i. e. Being-in-itself-for-itself, which is both intrinsic to the dynamic of Nothingness, and, yet, is as impossible as is the synthesis of Being and Becoming. One embodiment of Value is 'God', e. g. a Being that is both perfect in itself, and, yet, seeks to go beyond itself, though Sartre stops short of pursuing an argument for Atheism on the basis of this impossibility. Another possible exemplification of this structure, that is more relevant to specific action, is the Consciousness of satisfaction, which Freedom cannot help but seek, but which is impossible to attain, since Consciousness is itself dissatisfied. Now, though Sartre never explicitly presents it as such, this theory of Value--that values are intrinsic to the structure of Freedom--is a notable alternative to both of two prominent predecessors, Plato's--that Value is derived from self-subsistent Ideas, and Nietzsche's--that Value is an extrinsic instrument of Will to Power. On the other hand, it is more reminiscent of one of Nietzsche's earlier considerations, i. e. that even Dionysus needs Value, no matter how illusory. However, like the later Nietzsche, Sartre seems to eventually abandon his earlier theory of Value, in favor of that of Dialectical Materialism.

Heidegger, Sartre, Peirce

The basis of Sartre's synthesis of Existentialism and Marxism is the common theme of Praxis. So, at least at that stage of his career, he construes Existentialism as committed to the priority of Practice over Theory. However, such a commitment is less clear in Being and Nothingness, in which his focus vacillates between nihilating by Consciousness and nihilating by action. At the root of the uncertainty there may be that its explicit Phenomenological method is descriptive, and, thus, not well-suited to characterizing action, i. e. what has yet to appear. Being and Time comprises a similar tension--it attempts to present the pragmatic apparatus of the ready-to-hand via Phenomenological techniques. But, in contrast with Sartre, Heidegger eventually accords priority to Theory, i. e. to the revelatory rather than to the practical dimension of experience. Now, these encounters of Phenomenology and Pragmatism are not unprecedented.--as has been previously discussed here, Peirce's pioneering formulations of Pragmatism are themselves occasionally compromised by his own 'phenomenological' method. Regardless, his ultimate priority of Practice over Theory is plain, which would make Sartre, rather than Heidegger, his truer Existentialist heir, regardless of the greater scholarly attention paid to the latter's, as opposed to the former's, connections to Pragmatism.

Sartre, Nothingness, and Evaluation

In Sartre's account, 'Nothingness', has a variety of manifestations. He first presents it as Consciousness, insofar as Consciousness is the negation of its object, which possesses Being. Then, Nothingness is lies between Consciousness and any of its objects. But the Consciousness of any object is also self-consciousness, so Nothingness, furthermore, separates the Nothingness that is the subject of self-consciousness from that of its object. Later, Nothingness is Freedom, insofar as any new action negates its given circumstances. Sartre never explicitly systematizes these various types, but he does intimate that they are all moments of the same negating process. However, another type that is not as easily assimilable to these others is dissatisfaction. For, unlike the others, dissatisfaction is normative, i. e. it is the Consciousness of a lack, and descriptive Consciousness and evaluative Consciousness are traditionally regarded as categorially distinct. While Being and Nothingness seems to leave the relation between dissatisfaction and the descriptive modes unresolved, by Critique of Dialectical Reasoning, he seems to have incorporated the latter into the evaluative process. That might explain why in the later work he uses 'existential', rather than 'phenomenological', to classify descriptive Consciousness, i. e. Phenomenology is an intrinsically and exclusively descriptive methodology.

Ontology and Questioning

Being and Time and Being and Nothingness both begin with a discussion of the process of Questioning, each preparatory to their respective introductory analyses of the 'question of Being'. Each treatment is surprisingly generic--their similar characterizations of Questioning as a transition from indeterminacy to determinacy can be found in, for example, Dewey's definition of 'Inquiry'. Specifically lacking in both is an Ontological account of Questioning, of the caliber of the painstaking derivations to which both submit other activities, e. g. Heidegger's 'Being of Understanding'. In Heidegger's case, Dasein's fundamental experience of Being is the awareness of the call of conscience. Hence, the Questioning of Being can only be a phase or mode of a response to that call, for, otherwise the absence of Being cannot be experienced as questionable at all, and can never arise as an object of inquiry. Furthermore, the answering of the question of Being, i. e. the arrival at an understanding of Being, can be achieved only insofar as Being becomes revealed, not insofar as it is discovered, just as the perception of a dawning sun is not the result of a search for it that had begun at midnight. In other words, in Heidegger's Ontological scheme, the Questioning of Being cannot be more than an ontical process which, upon completion, is revealed, in hindsight to have been a misinterpreted response to the call of Being. As for Sartre, his initial Questioning of Being is eventually revealed to have abstracted from a preceding phase, namely the becoming-questionable of Being. For, his eventual presentation of Being-for-itself, as the negation of Being-in-itself, demonstrates that the former intrinsically renders the latter questionable. In other words, the Questioning of Being is, in his scheme, more precisely, the perpetually recurrent fundamental structure of the relation between Being-for-itself and Being-in-itself. As such, it is a transition not from indeterminacy to determinacy, but, to the contrary, from the determinacy of Being-in-itself to the indeterminacy of Being-for-itself. More than either of these two Ontologists explicitly do, Deleuze accords Ontological status to Questioning, though he seems to attribute to Heidegger what is actually Sartre's position.

Comments, Questions, Disagreements

Comments that are relevant to the content of a posting, and are well-considered, are always welcome. Questions are always an opportunity for discovery, and, so, are appreciated. Disagreements with, and challenges to, a posting, get subject to the same scholarly and logical standards that the posting has to meet before appearing.

Existentialism, Individuation, Action

A definition of 'Existentialism' is as difficult to formulate as is one of 'existence'. On the other hand, one commonality to five Philosophers often considered to be the most prominent 'Existentialists'--Nietzsche, Kierkergaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre--is a singular personal experience which serves each as a Principle of Individuation. For Nietzsche, it is the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence; for Kierkergaard, it is a 'leap of faith'; and, for Jaspers, it is the relationship with God. For Heidegger, according to Being and Time, it is Death, i. e. one's 'ownmost possibility', one's awareness of which detaches one from anonymous involvement in the 'they'. However, Sartre rejects this analysis of Death--since one can never experience one's own Death, there is nothing 'ownmost' about it, and, instead, it has meaning only anonymously, i. e. to the surviving 'they'. In contrast, Sartre's own Principle of Individuation is one's absolute freedom of choice at every moment--one is uniquely defined by one's choices. So, one common definition of 'Existentialism', the principle that 'Existence precedes Essence', is clear in at least Sartre's case--since one chooses one's way of being, that one is precedes what one is. But, Sartre has thus distinguished himself from Heidegger in another important respect. While his Individuation consists in action, Heidegger's moment is one of passive revelation, which he elsewhere characterizes as an "appropriation" of a being by Being, a seeming suppression of Individuality. Meanwhile, the decisive moments of Nietzsche, Kierkergaard, and Jaspers are, like Sartre's, active ones. So, either Heidegger stands as a counter-example to the hypothesis that the locus of Individuality is Action, or he, despite, the common classification, is not an Existentialist.

Freedom, Nothingness, Nihilism

One of Sartre's better-known statements 'We are condemned to be free', is an overdramatic mischaracterization of his central thesis. There is no 'condemnation' preceding Existence, so the more accurate formulation is simply 'We are free'. Freedom, for Sartre, is the irreducible nature of Existence--each of us is constantly choosing how to be, even whether or not 'to be happy', or 'to be rational', two of the most prominent modes of being that are traditionally characterized as pre-inscribed in human nature. However, one frequently attempts to obscure this absolute Freedom, by recourse to objective conditions as motivations of action, e. g. physical circumstances, a priori essences, divine will, etc. This hiding of one's Freedom, not merely to others, but to oneself, Sartre terms 'Bad Faith'. Now, since this Freedom constitutes Selfhood for Sartre, Bad Faith is a mode of self-denial, which, in Nietzschean terms, is a manifestation of Nihilism. Indeed, even though Sartre himself never addresses the issue, Nietzsche's 'Slave Morality' can be understood as an expression of Bad Faith--it entails the erection of subjective creations, e. g. God, values, as self-subsisting entities to serve as objective grounds of one's actions. So, whereas for Heidegger, 'Nihilism' consists in the forgetting of Being, for Sartre it can be said to consist in the forgetting of Nothingness.

Sartre, Freedom, and America

Sartre is one of the few major Philosophers to attain any kind of status in American popular culture, albeit one with little verisimilitude. The most common impression of him, based probably on some of his fiction, seems to be of someone despairing over the absurdity of existence, so that the title 'Being and Nothingness' probably connotes to most who have heard of it a Hamlet-like contemplation of suicide. Thus, there is likely little awareness in America that that work includes a theory of Freedom that is unfamiliar to most Americans. In contemporary American life, 'freedom' generally means a liberty from government interference in activites such as economic, speaking, gun-ownership, and the enjoyment of private pleasures. In stark contrast, in Sartre's theory, it is an ever-present existential radical freedom of choice, complemented by an absolute responsibility for one's actions. Given that he formulated and published this view during the Nazi occupation of France, it is not likely that he would take a poster of Obama with a Hitler moustache as a serious expression of Freedom. But, it is not merely that the American concept is superficial and underdeveloped from the perspective of Sartre's--on his theory it is illusory. For, on that theory, 'doing what one wants' is conditioned behavior insofar as one does not choose what one wants. And, indeed, on the Psychological theory that is the basis of the American system, namely Adam Smith's, derived from Hume's, action is ultimately a slave to passions. Hence, on the theory that predominates in American life, conduct is not Free, on Sartre's definition. Furthermore, Sartre's second major work, Critique of Dialectical Reason, demonstrates how the system that best enhances individual Freedom is, in fact, Socialism. As few Americans that there are who are familiar with that argument, there are probably less that care to hear such a critique of the American system, and even less with the capacity to respond to it with intellectual integrity. So, an abyss lies between the American popular impression of Sartre, and reality.

Heidegger, Sartre, and Ontological Difference

The title of Sartre's Being and Nothingness suggests a contrast with Heidegger's Being and Time, but the more specific challenge that it poses to Heidegger is with respect to Ontological Difference, which emerges later than Being and Time. Sartre's subtitle, 'A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology', signals the point of departure of the challenge--a reminder that Heidegger, too, is a practicing Phenomenologist, even where he neglects to cite his orientation. As is the case with Heidegger's 'History', as has been previously discussed, the re-introduction of that background significantly transforms his treatment of Ontological Difference. On Heidegger's own terms, 'Being' creates a 'clearing' in which beings appear, and is not an appearing object itself, which to many followers, imparts a mystical aura to Being. Accordingly, Sartre's analysis demystifies Heideggerian 'Being'. For, on that analysis, Heidegger has, in his later work, abstracted from the methodology that initially leads him to that Being--the Phenomenological 'Epoche' that first creates that clearing, which in the Phenomenological scheme is subjective Consciousness. In other words, Heidegger's 'Being' is Consciousness, minus the initial subjective context. Likewise, his Being-being difference is an abstraction from the Phenomenological Consciousness-Phenomenon difference, which Sartre proceeds to argue is a Being-for-Itself vs. Being-in-Itself diffference, respectively.

Heidegger, Nihilism, and Nominalism

Heidegger's early work on Duns Scotus is a clue that the real locus of his analysis of Nihilism is the 'Realism' vs. 'Nominalism' debate. The former holds that Platonic Forms are self-subsistent entities, while the latter holds that they are only abstractive words. Heidegger's innovation is to radicalize the Realist position--just as visibility precedes the appearance of even the sun, Being is the precondition that permits the revelation of the Forms, even that of the Form of Being. In other words, even Platonic Realism has already strayed from original Being, and on this definition of Being, Nominalism, according to which 'Being' is only a word, is an extreme deviation from original Being. Given the Being-Nothing antithesis, Nominalism is, hence, Nihilism, on this account. Accordingly, since Nietzsche is an unabashed Nominalist, he is a Nihilist, from this perspective. However, Nominalism is as old as Greek Scepticism, so Heidegger's 'History of the forgetting of Being', that leads to Nietzsche, is an irrelevant contrivance in the charge that Nietzsche is a Nihilist. Equally irrelevant are any of Nietzsche's main doctrines--Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and, especially, his own diagnosis of Nihilism. So, Heidegger's treatment of Nihilism compromises his own insights, by what is likely an attempt to pander to his political environment.

Heidegger and Husserl

To clarify a previous posting, in response to a comment, Husserl is germane to Heidegger's charge that Nietzsche is the ultimate Nihilist, for two reasons. First, insofar as Husserl's Phenomenology qualifies as 'subjectivistic' on Heidegger's definition, is chronologically post-Nietzschean, and is Heidegger's own methodological orientation, it suffices to refute the basis of Heidegger's charge, i. e. that Nietzsche is the final figure of a 'History' that Heidegger himself transcends. None of the three premises seems controversial, and the argument is logically independent of whether or not Husserl ever even addresses Nietzsche or Nihilism. Second, Heidegger ontologizes Phenomenology, that is, he treats Noematic contents as if they were un-'bracketed', e. g. he presents an subjective interpretive scheme as if it were objectively valid 'History'. Now, on Nietzsche's diagnosis, such a procedure qualifies as Nihilistic--it is as much a manifestation of self-denial as is any other projection of a subjective creation as 'objective', e. g. 'God', values, etc., and self-denial is a symptom of Nihilism. So, at minimum, Heidegger's charge against Nietzsche is question-beginning. Thus, as unwelcome to Heidegger as it might be, the inclusion of Husserl in the discussion clarifies the status of Heidegger's charge against Nietzsche. More generally, the question shifts from 'How is Husserl relevant to Nihilism?' to 'How is Husserl not relevant to any of Heidegger's projects?' And, one answer that is difficult to avoid is that once Husserl is purged from academia by the Nazis, he becomes an increasingly, and conveniently, forgotten being to Heidegger.

Heidegger's Indifference

The central notion of Heidegger's mature period is 'Ontological Difference'. The 'difference' referred to is that between Being and beings, the forgetting of which, according to Heidegger, constitutes the Nihilistic subjectivism of Modernity. Now, this difference seems isomorphic to that between Spinoza's nature naturing and nature natured, Schopenhauer's Will and objectification, and Bergson's elan vital and enervated precipitant. in contrast with which Being seems barren. Furthermore, some languages do not even have a word for 'Being'. So, the epochal significance, and the existential benefits of remembering it, that Heidegger finds in Being, are not easy to appreciate. Regardless, it is undeniable that Ontological Difference is unbalanced--Heidegger plainly accords priority to Being over beings. Furthermore, he offers no grounds for the generation of beings out of Being, or for the differentiation between beings. Notably groundless, therefore, are the notions of Dasein and 'ownmost' that are central to his innovative earlier work. If there is any misunderstanding of what he is trying to accomplish, his silence, which is in stark contrast to Nietzsche's repeated revisits to and criticisms of his previous projects, only encourages it. So, as is, a more apt characterization of Heidegger's most prominent later notion might be 'Ontological Indifference'.

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Nihilism

According to Heidegger, what Nietzsche offers is not an antidote to Nihilism, but the ultimate stage of Nihilism. For, on his analysis, Nihilism is the final phase of a History constituted by the progressive forgetting, by beings, of Being, characterized by an increasing Subjectivism, the predominant ideology of Modernity. And, Heidegger, as the rememberer of Being, is the first post-Nihilist. So, from that vantage point, the status of Being in Nietzsche's System, as either a mere value or even nothing, testifies to the extremeness of his forgetting of Being, and, hence, to his Nihilism. Now, more than Heidegger's account being plainly question-begging, the conceptual scheme on which it is based is crucially flawed. For, conspicuously absent in his History is Husserlian Phenomenology, a post-Nietzschean doctrine of transcendental subjectivity in which Heidegger himself was trained. So, either Husserl is the first post-Nihilist, or else Heidegger is himself a post-Nietzschean Nihilist, according to his scheme. The jettisoning of the latter thus opens up a fresh perspective on the relation between Nietzsche and Heidegger regarding Nihilism. In plainer language, for Nietzsche, Nihilism is aimlessness, the solution to which is not a new aim, but the cultivation of appreciation for motion itself. In contrast, for Heidegger, it is rootlessness, the solution to which is a re-grounding. Hence, Heidegger would need to provide a clear derivation of aimlessness from rootlessness for his accusation of Nietzsche to be not question-begging. As is, he reveals himself to be the more conservative of the two thinkers. Also, his forgetting of Husserl might be due to the Nazi's purge of the latter from academia in the same period, and Strauss's critique of Modernity bears a strong resemblance to his.

Nietzsche and Nihilism

There are four main dimensions to Nietzsche's treatment of Nihilism: the pervasive phenomena of his era, his own efforts to accelerate those phenomena, his positing of the proximate cause of the phenomena, and his positing of the fundamental cause of the phenomena. The first is general disillusionment, the dawning disbelief in the predominant ideals that had, for centuries, given meaning to existence. The second is his own efforts to intensify, often in strident language, that disillusionment, in order to hasten its completion. The proximate cause of the disillusionment, on his diagnosis, is an internal contradiction in the Christian Morality that has been the source of those predominant ideals--at the same time that it posits the existence of a supernatural God and realm, it promotes the truthfulness that breeds the Science that disproves those existences. But, the source of the positing of the existence of that deity and world, is the Will to Nothingness, on Nietzsche's analysis. Now, for some interpetations, Nietzsche's definitive treatment of Nihilism is the second dimension, i. e. in them, Nietzsche is the most enthusiastic of Nihilists. While there is textual support for the thesis that Nietzsche does mean to intensify the disillusionment of the era, the limits of the scope of such interpretations are given in the difficulty they have in explaining a passage such as one to be found in Genealogy of Morals, II, 24, in which Nietzsche explicitly equates "Antichrist" and "Antinihilist". The latter confirms the interpretation that Nietzsche's primary concern with Nihilism is the diagnosis of its fundamental cause, and his offering of an antidote to it, i. e. the Will to Nothingness, and the life-affirming Will to Power doctrine, respectively.

Nietzsche, Morality, and Plato's Cave

Nietzsche's subversion of traditional Morality can be represented in terms of the imagery of 'Plato's Cave'. For Nietzsche, the actual world, outside the cave, is meteorologically variable--sometimes placid, warm, and sunny, sometimes tempestuous and extreme. In contrast, inside the cave, Morality is a shadow play that presents the 'real' world as perpetually sunny, clear, and temperate. The main problem in the interpretation of Nietzsche, especially of his later phase, is whether his presentation is a replacement shadow play, whether it is a shadow play designed to 'show the prisoner the way out of the cave', to paraphrase Wittgenstein, or is addressed to those who are already outside the cave. It seems likely that it is at least the latter, while oligarchs seem to prefer to think that it is also at least the former, though a project like Twilight of the Idols, and Nietzsche's self-described 'active nihilism' seem closer to the second than to the first. On the other hand, while there is ample textual support for any of these interpretations, there is far less so for some of the purposes to which they have prominently been put--genocidal, licentious, plutocratic.

Nietzsche and Revaluation

The primary innovation of Nietzsche's 'revaluation of all values' is not the new results that it produces. Rather, his act of evaluation is not a repetition of some previous procedure, but is itself unprecedented. In the given Moral tradition, values are objects of some cognition, e. g. the idea of the Good, because, starting with Zoroaster, Morality is ontologized, so values are discoverable self-subsistent entities. Thenceforth, people and actions can be evaluated on the basis of those ideals, and, even if the process of a specific evaluation is a posteriori, its result is still the discovery of an assessment that is entailed a priori. In contrast, Nietzsche creates a value system--he posits that Life is the highest value, and that Life is Will to Power, so Power is his created criterion of evaluation. But, he is not merely proposing that creating an evaluative criterion is an alternative to discovering one that is ontologically self-subsistent. For, his subversion of the tradition involves the diagnosis that all presumed objective ideals are nothing but the product of an original creative positing to begin with, whether or not their authors recognize or care to acknowledge this paternity. Furthermore, this critique applies similarly to subsequent, usually 'phenomenological' treatments of values, such as Moore's, Heidegger's, and Scheler's--the apparent objectivity of values in consciousness, in such theories, is only a product of a prior objectification, on Nietzsche's analysis.

Dionysian Principle and Individuation

Because some of the main features of Nietzsche's System are based on his interpretation of sexual processes, a significant abstraction from the latter has important implications for the former. Following Schopenhauer, he conceives reproductive activity as primarily a propogation of the species, so, he interprets the process as entailing a sacrifice of the individuality of the participants for the good of the whole. Likewise, the Dionysian Principle consists fundamentally in the destruction of Individuality, thereby casting it as antithetical to the Principle of Individuation. But reproduction does not merely continue the species--it does so by producing new members. So, if Nietzsche had not abstracted from this latter detail in his conceiving of the Dionysian process, he might have come to the realization that the Dionysian Principle, far from being the antithesis of the Principle of Individuation, is that very Principle itself. He might, furthermore, have arrived at a concept of it that anticipates Whiteheadian 'Concrescence', i. e. in which an individual gets absorbed into a process that is ultimately the production of a novel individual. Indeed, some of Nietzsche's later efforts to define Individuality, e. g. complementary man, synthetic man, cumulative man, ontogeny reproducing phylogeny, are all approximations of Whitehead's concept of novel Individuality being the product of a Concrescence of all hitherto existents. But, regardless of whether or not Nietzsche might have gone more definitively in this Whiteheadian direction, his realization that the Dionysian Principle is a Principle of Individuation might itself have had significant ramifications for, e. g. his concept of Will to Power, and of the function of Morality as a mediation between Individual and Species. And, at minimum, it would have presented him with an immediate, though undramatic, repudiation of Schopenhauer.

Nietzsche, Christianity, and Sexuality

While his immediate target , in the central phase of his career, is Schopenhauer, towards the end, Christianity becomes the primary object of Nietzsche's attacks. For example, the first official part of his projected 'Revaluation of All Values' project, The Anti-Christ, presents a relatively, for Nietzsche, focused and systematic exposition of the theme expressed in its title. However, a few comments near the end of the contemporaneous Twilight of the Idols indicates how Christianity may have been the ultimate target all along. As Nietzsche there reflects on Birth of Tragedy, he, for perhaps the first time, acknowledges how the Dionysian theme, originally advanced to explain Greek tragedy, is a fundamentally sexual one, and, as such, the germ of his subsequent main doctrines, e. g. Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence. Implicit in his affirmation of Sexuality is its stark contrast with Christianity--with not so much the events in Genesis, which, contrary to the popular interpretation, makes no explicit reference to sexual relations between Adam and Eve, but with Augustine, the Plato-inspired father of Christian theology, who influentially construes the reproductive act as an ontological curse on the human race. All the main elements of Nietzsche's eventual explicit anti-Christianity, e. g. sexual pleasure as the physical feeling of eternally recurring creative power, derive from his initial implicit subversion of that predominating nay-saying theological doctrine. Which is probably why he refers in hindsight to Birth of Tragedy as his "first revaluation of all values".

Nietzsche, Morality, and Hypochondria

For Nietzsche, traditional Morality is a medical problem, requiring careful diagnosis, and an effective cure. For example, he regards the Christian Morality of his time as a promotion of the sharing of suffering, under the rubric 'Pity', in the service of its advocacy of a 'better', non-physical realm, i. e. Heaven. But, on Nietzsche's analysis, the latter is a fictitious application, by what Nietzsche calls 'Platonism for the people, of Plato's 'World of Ideas'. Hence, the mediate cause of the pervasive suffering of his day is Platonic dualism, which entails a precursor to Christianity's denigration of physical reality in the name of a Nothingness. However, it is not dualism, per se, that is at the root of that denigration, but, more precisely Plato's ontologizing of dualistic Morality, the historical source of which is none other than Zoroaster, aka, Zarathustra, to whom Nietzsche's character is a deliberate contrast. But, the ontologizing of Morality, i. e. that the universe is inherently a battleground of Good vs. Evil, is ultimately the promotion of a fiction. In other words, the suffering that goes under the name of 'Morality' is Hypochondria. Agreement with this etiology comes from an unexpected source--a Biblical passage that is as well-known as it is usually misinterpreted. The nakedness that Adam and Eve, upon eating from the 'tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil', with shame, is not at all offensive to God, thereby exhibiting that the Moral tradition that their shame breeds is fundamentally illusory, and its attendent suffering, is fundamentallyHypochondria. The diagnostic difficulty with Hypoch0ndria is that the actual suffering that it causes is untraceable to the imagined disease. Hence, Nietzsche's analyses are necessarily convoluted, and his antidote, the governing of Conduct by Will to Power, is generally interpreted from the perspective of the imagined disease, leaving its relevance and potential efficacy unrecognizable. So, while Nietzsche often describes himself as philosophizing 'with a hammer', he just as often proves himself to be the most delicate of surgeons.

Nietzsche and Individuality

In Schopenhauer's System, individuality is an illusion. In Nietzsche's Dionysianism, an individual is an ephemeral fragment of nature. Out the outset of The Gay Science, as Nietzsche introduces Zarathustra and Eternal Recurrence, 'Morality' is the comic effort to treat that fragment of the species as substantive and meaningful. However, in Nietzsche's later work, 'Morality' is the suppression of individuality by the species, which would seem to imply an overturning of not merely Schopenhauerism and Christianity, but of own his earlier phase, as well. And, yet, to the end, he adheres to his Dionysianism, according to which an indictment of such suppression is comic in its vanity. That he continues to struggle with the unsettled status of Individuality in his doctrine of Will to Power is occasionally evident in his entertainment of a version of the thesis that has become better known as 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'. On that thesis, each individual is an embodiment of the entire past of the species, which would also amount to a generalization of his own concept of 'complementary' man that he does officially endorse, but only as a specialized phenomenon. Such a thesis does offer a potentially non-illusory conceptual reconciliation of Individual and Species, but Nietzsche never fully develops it. Otherwise, the status of Individuality in his System remains unclear, as, therefore, do his concept of Morality, and his diagnosis of Nihilism, both of which depend on it.

Willing Nothing

The phrase 'Will to Power' most immediately suggests a elucidation of the exercise of strength, but the greater value of Nietzsche's doctrine is perhaps better demonstrated at the other end of the spectrum. First, it easily explains a phenomenon with which Aristotle struggles--'weakness of the will'. Because of the Aristotle's commitment to bi-valence, he can not accommodate the process of resolving to do something, but failing to actualize the resolution, i. e. the process of knowing what to do, but not doing it. In contrast, the multi-valence of Will to Power shows how a resolution can be the expression of any of a varying degrees of strength, not all of which may suffice for carrying out the action. Second, Will to Power offers an alternative interpetation of the 'willlessness' that is central to a long tradition, most lately to Schopenhauer's Philosophy--it is a relatively weak expression of Will to Power, not a privation of 'will'. Third, and perhaps most important, it is a response to the profound thesis that only Spinoza seems to have understood--if all human motivation is based on a self-preservative drive, then suicide is logically impossible. Spinoza, accordingly, argues that apparent acts of self-killing are actually the internalizations of external destructive forces. The doctrine of Will to Power counters that explanation with the thesis that suicide is an act in which one 'would rather will nothing than not will at all', as Nietzsche puts it. In other words, one mode of Will to Power is a Will to Nothingness, i. e. self-destructiveness, and, perhaps, what Freud would later call the 'Thanatos' Principle. Of especial use to Nietzsche is the application of the Will to Nothingness to the contagion that he calls 'Nihilism', which facilitates his diagnosis of pervasive phenomena as symptoms of declining strength. In any case, the doctrine of Will to Power is more than a mere alternative to the Will to Live thesis of human motivation; these examples demonstrate its superior explanatory power. Perhaps if Nietzsche had managed to produce a focused version of his 'Will to Power' fragments, the doctrine would not have become as obscured by his provocative rhetoric as it is.

Nietzsche's Complementary Man

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche introduces a term for a notion, equivalent to 'Superman', according to some, that has been significant to him for years previously--the 'complementary' man. The latter is one "in whom the rest of existence is justified", someone who "incorporates" the entire range of humanity's past experiences and values, thereby overcoming the past, as Zarathustra does. Since Nietzsche also characterizes this ability to incorporate as a "plastic power", the notion of complementarity clarifies the evaluative criterion 'degree of power' entailed in the doctrine of Will to Power--i. e. the more comprehensive the incorporation, the greater degree of power involved. So, not only men and actions can be evaluated in terms of more or less comprehensiveness, so, too, can interpretations and theories, for example. Thus, when a scientific theory is praised as possessing greater 'explanatory power', it is being evaluated on the basis of the Will to Power criterion. Likewise, the criticism of Leo Strauss, previously presented here, is on the grounds of the narrow scope of his proposed interpretation of Nietzsche. In Formaterialism, comprehensiveness is called 'Complexity', and a relation of greater comprehensiveness is called 'more Evolved'. So, the notion of complementarity helps explain how the doctrine of Will to Power is a precursor to the 'Evolvementalism' that has been presented here. More important, it helps refute the common impression that the doctrine of Will to Power is a promotion of rapacious brutality, and it undercuts any presumption that superiority is a function of 'racial purity'. It is unfortunate that such a fruitful notion has been overshadowed by some of Nietzsche's more provocative rhetoric.

Nietzsche, Leo Strauss, and God

Leo Strauss claims that Nietzsche asserts that the doctrine of Will to Power is a "vindication of God". His primary textual evidence for the claim is #37 in Beyond Good and Evil, in which Nietzsche's response to the hypothesis that in the doctrine of Will to Power, "God is refuted, but not the devil", is "To the contrary!" In other words, according to Strauss, the "contrary" of "God is refuted, but not the devil" is "God is vindicated". The first problem with this interpretation is the word "vindication", which is unmotivated by the logic of the sequence, is not systematically related to Will to Power, and, in contrast with, say, 'affirmation', smacks of the 'spirit of revenge' that is a fundamental and frequent object of Nietzsche's attacks. Second, the more apt "contrary" in the context is 'both God and the devil are refuted', because, like Good-Evil, God-Devil is a conjoined conceptual pair in the tradition that Nietzsche repudiates, so the refutation of one conjunct entails that of the other. Third, while an affirmation of the Judaeo-Christian "God" is difficult to reconcile with Nietzsche's Dionysian theology, the assimilation of Dionysus to the former would serve Strauss's own undeniable purpose--rendering Nietzsche more palatable to American neo-Conservativism, to which Nietzsche's inegalitarianism and his defense of lying are more immediately appealing than his apparent 'Atheism'. Finally, if there is a deity that Will to Power vindicates, it is Apollo, who disappears from Nietzsche's consideration after Birth of Tragedy, but as the god of Form, arguably becomes relevant to form-imposing Will to Power. Indeed, Strauss does praise the 'beauty' of Beyond Good and Evil, but without considering the potential implications regarding the god of Beauty, i. e. Apollo. Still, the vindication of even Apollo does not occur at #37. Nevertheless, despite the multifaceted frailty of Strauss's interpretation, it is still worthy of serious scholarly attention. For, as a species of the appropriation of Nietzsche for right-wing political purposes, by a student of Heidegger, no less, Strauss's presentation constitutes an historical link between Auschwitz and Baghdad.

Beyond Eternal Recurrence

The transformation of him into a self-described 'immoralist' by the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, has encouraged some to characterize Nietzsche as an 'Egoist', others to see him as advocating criterion-less instinctual behavior, and even a few to interpret him as renouncing the value of action entirely. But, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that that description is ironic. As an explictly Life-affirming doctrine, Eternal Recurrence establishes the evaluation of conduct on the basis of the degree to which it is life-enhancing. Furthermore, his definition of 'Life' is 'Will to Power', and Power generally has a disreputable status in the Moral tradition that Nietzsche seeks to overcome. Hence, it is only from the perspective of that tradition that Nietzsche's new doctrine is 'immoral', which has prompted Deleuze to classify it as 'Ethics', in constructive contradistinction to 'Morality'. However, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence effects another, perhaps more substantive, break with the tradition, one that does not merely substitute one set of values for another. It is also a repudiation of Teleology in Morality, i. e. of the tradition of positing some ulterior 'Good' on the basis of which Life, in general, and concrete actions, in particular, are evaluated. While Nietzsche is well-aware of this element of his doctrine, he fails to draw out its fullest implication--the ascendance of the Formal Cause, as a replacement of the Final Cause, as the primary determinant of Conduct, even though it is already in effect whenever one choses an action on the basis of whether or not one can will its eternal recurrence. Evolvementalism, presented here, elaborates on the role of Formal Causality in Conduct, and, to more clearly distinguish this concept of Conduct from that of the Moral tradition, the term 'Phronetics', better than the baggage-laden 'Ethics', has been offered to classify it.

Eternal Recurrence, Tragedy, and Comedy

Both Zarathustra and Eternal Recurrence first appear in The Gay Science, with Nietzsche introducing the former with the phrase 'The tragedy begins'. At the outset of The Gay Science, he explains how the teaching of Morality has traditionally been 'tragic' in two senses, applying the connotation, presented in Birth of Tragedy, of the ultimate illusoriness and vanity of the individual. The content of Morality hitherto, according to Nietzsche, is tragic, because it has always posited a purpose for individual existence. Furthermore, the act of teaching Morality is also tragic, because Moralists function under the illusion of the meaningfulness of the act. But, since Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche has achieved a new perspective on Tragedy--its vanity is comic, as well, which would explain why, in the preface to The Gay Science, he hints that Zarathustra's teaching of Eternal Recurrence may be parodistic. For, that effort combines tragic and comic elements. Zarathustra's seriousness in carrying out his mission is tragic, but that the purpose of the doctrine is Life itself, not something ulterior, is comic. Furthermore, the content of the doctrine--the idea that the eternal recurrence of all events precludes the possibility of a purpose being attained--is likewise comic. So, Zarathustra's teaching of the doctrine is, on this strong textual evidence, a parody of a Moral teaching, in which the ultimate significance of Recurrence is its counter-purposiveness, not that it might be the product of some flash of intuitive insight into the ontology of Time, as some would have it.

Eternal Recurrence and Life

Nietzsche's earlier essay, 'On the Use and Abuse of History for Life' touches on some of the main ingredients of the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence: to emulate past greatness entails an exact repetition of all the circumstantial details surrounding the exemplar; the measure of one's power is the degree to which one can incorporate the past into one's present activity; affirmative and negative judgements of the past are selections and rejections, respectively, of material to be put to use; and, regarding the past as complete is a precondition of any subsequent action. Framing all these in this essay is the notion of 'Life', which Nietzsche defines there as 'creative activity', and which closely resembles what he eventually calls 'Will to Power'. So, to interpret the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence in terms of this essay is to attribute to it the same ulterior purpose, i. e. as a promotion of creative activity, which is to subordinate it to Will to Power in his System. In particular, on this reading, Recurrence, qua temporal theory, is primarily a characteristic of retrospection, and, an affirmative judgement is required to reactivate any cycle, which would explain why Nietzsche, in his contemporaneous Untimely Meditation on Schopenhauer, attributes to the affirming of Existence the 'liberating' of Life. Tending to validate this interpretation of the doctrine is Nietzsche's frequent characterization of it as 'life-affirming', and, the prominence in the first post-doctrine work, Beyond Good and Evil, of his exhortation to Philosophers to become creators.

Contuition and Syntuition

Nietzsche uses the term 'contuition' to describe Heraclitus' ability to perceive opposites simultaneously. 'Syntuition' would also seem to have its potential usages.

Eternal Recurrence and Heraclitus

In his comments about Birth of Tragedy, appearing in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche suggests that Heraclitus could have preceded him in espousing a doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. At first glance, the attribution to a Philosopher best known for asserting that 'One never steps in the same river twice', a subscription to a doctrince of even a single Recurrence, seems extraordinary. However, Nietzsche's only sustained discussion of Heraclitus, included in his Philosophy in the Tragic Era of the Greeks, does offer a few clues that might explain the suggestion. First, he finds in Heraclitus both an exoteric and an esoteric version of a theory of Becoming--the ephemerality of existence proposed by the former obscures a regularity that is deciphered by the latter. Second, that regularity is an endless play of creation and destruction. Third, that play is constituted by a rhythm of monistic substance, i. e. Fire, diversifying itself and reconciling with itself. Accordingly, perhaps Nietzsche is himself hinting at an esoteric reading of the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, e. g. that it is not so much the course of events that recurs, but its internal rhythm of creation and destruction, that, at bottom, is the play of Dionysus self-disintegrating and re-integrating.

Eternal Recurrence and Humpty Dumpty

A circle is an inadequate representation of Eternal Recurrence, because it implies a one-dimensional sequence of events. Some of Nietzsche's descriptions suggest, instead, a kaleidoscope metaphor--a manifold that is finite, and, therefore, is subject to only a cycle of finite re-arrangements. However, unrepresentable by such a pattern is any original 'dismemberment' of Dionysus, that would produce the manifold out of Dionysian unity. Similarly unaccommodated is the process of composing fragments "into one" that Nietzsche attributes to Willing Backwards. In contrast, an image that can represent both disintegration and re-integration is Humpty Dumpty, on the basis of which, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is more than one event in a cycle--it is a moment of cosmic synthesis. A variety of passages, especially those in which Nietzsche exults about the monumentality of his accomplishment, testify to the exceptionality for him of such a moment. That Dionysus undergoes a cycle of disintegration and re-integration clarifies some difficult aspects of Nietzsche's project. For example, it diametrically contrasts the suffering of the disintegrating Dionysus from that of individuals, which is due to their selfish resistance to a re-integration with the whole, that they experience as 'destructive' and 'cruel', but which is justified from the perspective of the whole. And, it explains how Zarathustra can endure affirming all past events--they are all fragments of Dionysus, and, hence, are all fundamentally divine. Now, that re-integration is a product of Willing Backwards indicates that the synthesis is actively accomplished, i. e. that the Recurrence of cosmic unity can only occur as the product of an affirmation, and not haphazardly. But, if so, then the beginning of a new cycle must also be deliberate--a self-disintegration of Dionysus, Humpty being pushed off the wall, etc. That Nietzsche does not characterize his post-Zarathustra efforts as willed dis-integration does not necessarily refute the Humpty Dumpty hypothesis. Rather, it may only underscore the lack in his System of an active Principle of Individuation, one entailed by e. g. Derrida's Differance and Dissemination, Deleuze's Difference, or, from here, the Material Principle of Formaterialism.

Eternal Recurrence and Individuation

Schopenhauer's ideal individual is a self-denying one, so the overcoming of Schopenhauer needs to address this image. Nietzsche's affirmation of Eternal Recurrence seems to accomplish that, for, it entails the affirmation of one's own past, thereby also serving as a doctrine of self-affirmation. However, this counter to Schopenhauer does not engage a more fundamental problem--the status of Individuation itself in Schopenhauer's System. Schopenhauer's classification of it as a 'Principle' seems inappropriate, because not only is it intrinsic to the explicit monistic Principle of the System, i. e. Will, it is ultimately merely illusory. So, an adequate overcoming of Schopenhauer would seem to entail according a positive significance to Individuation, which Nietzsche attempts in Birth of Tragedy. There, the Principle of Individuation is a mode of the Apollinian Principle, so the challenge to Nietzsche is to demonstrate the necessity of the Apollinian to his analogue of Schopenhauer's Will, i. e. to the Dionysian Principle. His main suggestion there--that the beautiful imagery of the Apollinian serves as a palliative to the suffering of the Individual--only demonstrates its necessity of the Apollinian to the Individual, not to Dionysus. A deeper suggestion--that Dionysus himself similarly requires such beautiful imagery as a palliative to his own suffering--still avoids the root of the problem. For, in characterizing the Dionysian, Nietzsche vacillates between treating it as a state of self-sufficient ecstasy and as one of pain and contradiction, so even if the latter condition does require palliation, in the absence of a derivation of that condition from the former condition, he does not show that Dionysus is in any need of Apollo. In other words, as is the case with Schopenhauer, as well as with most, if not all, of the Philosophical tradition, Nietzsche falls short of providing the Principle of Individuation with a Principle of Sufficient Reason. So, while Eternal Recurrence can be interpreted as, say, the Individuation of Dionysus, i. e. a circle is a determinate image, in presenting it, Nietzsche still does not explain why he, or Dionysus, or Zarathustra, needs such an image to begin with, and, to that extent, does not overcome Schopenhauer.

Eternal Recurrence and Dionysus

While Nietzsche presents the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence as his overcoming of Schopenhauer, the germ of this repudiation appears earlier, at the outset of his first work, in fact. Schopenhauer's Pessimism is based on the thesis that individual happiness is impossible, because the primordial universal Will is indifferent to individual interests. Now, at the outset of Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche does articulate agreement that any individuality is ultimately at the mercy of universal Will, which he calls 'Dionysus', and that such subjection entails the ultimately vanity of any self-interest. However, in the same context, he immediately departs from Schopenhauer, with the observation that the dissolution of the self is an occasion of not misery, but of ecstatic intoxication, in which the individual experiences itself as a cosmic artistic creation. In such passages, inspired by his participation in Wagnerian productions, Nietzsche seems closer to the rhapsodizing of the early Rousseau about his Festival experiences, than to Schopenhauer. Likewise, when a Dionysian first encounters Schopenhauer's notion, appearing in World as Will and as Representation, of the prospect of living one's life over exactly as is, as Nietzsche must have done, it has to be an ecstatic occasion, from which the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence is a joyful elaboration.

Eternal Recurrence and Superman

Nietzsche's concept of 'Superman' has almost as little to do with the Nazi 'Aryan blond beast' physical ideal as it does with the American comic and film hero. Rather, it can be defined as 'the being that conducts itself on the basis of the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence'. Thus, the 'super'-strength of this entity is primarily psychological--it is the product of a transcendence of the all-too-human susceptibility to Ressentiment, as well as of other inabilities, e. g. escapist, to assume the past and all its disappointments and suffering. It is crucial to note that by 'superman', Nietzsche does not mean 'supernatural', which, on his diagnosis, is ultimately a product of Ressentiment against Nature. Instead, he intends by the idea a superior natural entity, one which the characterization 'more highly evolved' might be appropriate, if it were not for a range of Darwinian connotations from which Nietzsche explicitly distances himself. So, what is especially un-Nietzschean about a refugee from Krypton is that his superiority is not a product of a concerted effort to overcome his human nature. And, among the many un-Nietzschean features of the Nazi ideal is its recourse to extermination in order to deal with what it cannot endure.

Willing Backwards

The explicit connection between Eternal Recurrence and Will to Power presented in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the notion 'Willing Backwards'. Nietzsche introduces it as a special case of Will to Power, that transforms 'it was' into 'thus would I have it', as he describes it. Eventually, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is shown to be what effects this transformation, so the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is, first and foremost, a special case of Will to Power in Nietzsche's System. Perhaps Nietzsche would agree that the art of improvisation entails Willing Backwards, insofar as essential to that art is making any unwanted development seem as if it had occurred exactly as intended. And, perhaps, he would agree that Willing Backwards can be effective therapy for certain types of psychological atrophy. But in the relevant passages, the specific target of Willing Backwards is what Nietzsche calls there 'the spirit of revenge', which he later characterizes as 'Ressentiment'. Whereas Willing Backwards attempts to transform 'it was' into 'thus would I have it', the spirit of revenge attempts to negate it, via punishment, the futility of which, according to Nietzsche, only compounds entanglement in the past. Hence, Willing Backwards serves as a critique of certain versions of Retributive Justice, a theme which he further develops in Genealogy of Morals. However, his more immediate concern is the problem of the profound and chronic influence that the spirit of revenge has had on human history. Notions like 'Original Sin', which construe human existence as a punishment, are at the root of a millennia-long stunting of human development, continuing even as the original theological influence wanes, and turning, according to his diagnosis, Nihilistic more recently. So, it is not out of wild aggrandizement that his title for the passage in which Nietzsche introduces Willing Backwards is 'Redemption'.