Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

A new species of philosophers is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger […] these philosophers of the future might require in justice, perhaps also in injustice, to be called attempters [Versucher]. The name itself is in the end a mere attempt and, if you will, a temptation [Versuchung]. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, ‘The Free Spirit’, section 42.

Abbreviations

I will use these standard abbreviations for Nietzsche’s works:

BGE Beyond Good and Evil GM On The Genealogy of Morals GS The Gay Science HH Human All-too-Human TI The Twilight of the Idols TL Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense A The Anti-Christ WP The Will to Power D Daybreak

The specific translations I use appear in detail in the bibliography.

When citing from these works, I will cite not pages but sections (these are Nietzsche’s own sections which are identical regardless of publisher) and chapters (if they affect the numbering of the sections) where appropriate. This makes finding the reference easier if you’re using different editions.

The following abbreviation is for a secondary source (by Brian Leiter, Routledge,

2002) on Nietzsche:

NOM Nietzsche On Morality

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Michael Proudfoot, Galen Strawson, Daniel Whiting and Ali

Shahrukhi for the comments they provided for the improvement of this paper. Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

Introduction

This paper is an effort to retrieve, connect and enhance certain ideas found throughout

Nietzsche’s works that pertain to causality, in order to make a persuasive case of how our idea of causality came to be and what errors and naiveties were and may still be contained in it. The genealogy reveals the connections and roles played by our idea of the will, the ‘I’, our need for familiarity, the nature of language and how our interpretations of our own psychological processes shaped our notion of causality.

What is a Genealogy?

Before conducting a genealogy of cause and effect, one needs to have some idea of what a “genealogy” is. I will draw from Brian Leiter’s book Nietzsche on Morality1 to briefly indicate what this method consists in.

Although misleading at many points according to Leiter, there is some “kernel of truth”2 when Foucault claims that genealogy does not try to discover the “exact essence of things…the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession”3 but rather refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics and instead finds that there is “something altogether different” behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms…A genealogy of values, morality, asceticism, knowledge will never confuse itself with a quest for their “origins,”[4] will never

1 Routledge, London, 2002 2 NOM, p.166 3 As quoted from NOM, p.166. Let me also note that Leiter criticises Foucault for making the implausible claim that historians resemble “clumsy Platonists”. 4 Foucault means here, something that Nehamas explains in his Nietzsche: Life as Literature, p.113, (Harvard University Press, 1985): When Nietzsche says “The utility of an organ does not explain its origin” (WP, 647) he means that we cannot “project the current function of anything backward as the cause of its emergence. Though it is crucial to know the history of something in order to understand what it is, a thing’s origin can never by itself explain its nature: “In the beginning was. To glorify the origin –that is the metaphysical after-shoot which sprouts again at the contemplation of history, and absolutely makes us imagine that in the beginning of things lies all that is most valuable and essential. (HH, vol.2, section 3).” Thus Nietzsche is well aware of the “genetic fallacy” as Leiter also notes in NOM p.173

1 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect neglect as inaccessible the vicissitudes of history. On the contrary, it will cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning; it will be scrupulously attentive to their petty malice; it will await their emergence, once unmasked, as the face of the other.5

Leiter believes that Foucault’s interpretation of the Nietzschean method of genealogy, although accurate at some points, contains an “anachronistic affinity with postmodern scepticism about facts and objectivity”6. He quotes a piece from two influential commentators on Foucault (Dreyfus and Rabinow) to confirm this point:

For the genealogist…the more one interprets the more one finds not the fixed meaning of a text, or of the world, but only other interpretations. These interpretations have been created and imposed by other people, not by the nature of things. In this discovery of groundlessness the inherent arbitrariness of interpretation is revealed.7

However, if one examines the socio-historical context within which Nietzsche was educated, one will find that the reigning idea surrounding philological studies at that time was that there were correct and incorrect interpretations, and one central purpose of philological training was to make one know how to distinguish between them.

Therefore it would be an important thing to remember that when Nietzsche talks about “interpretation” and “texts” it should not be taken to anticipate

“deconstructionist orthodoxies of the present, like the idea “that literary texts can be interpreted equally well in vastly different and deeply incompatible ways” (Nehamas

1985:3 emphasis added)”8 looking at Nietzsche through such “orthodoxies” simply forgets that Nietzsche learned how to read texts from Ritschl, not Derrida[9]. And for a Ritschl, or any other nineteenth-century practitioner of “the art of reading well − of reading facts without falsifying them by interpretations,”[10] the existence of “deeply incompatible” ways of reading a single text is merely evidence of mediocre philology (Leiter, 1992). With respect to this attitude, at least, Nietzsche remained his master’s loyal pupil.11

5 NOM, p.166 6 NOM, p.166-7 7 As quoted from NOM, p.167 8 NOM, p.38 9 I have to mention that in discussing this paper a fellow student (Ali Shahrukhi) pointed out that this comment is: “unfair to Derrida, who can be great help in elucidating the idea of Nietzschean ‘interpretation’.” 10 This is a quote from A, section 52 11 NOM, p.38

2 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

The preface of GM is also relevant: “My desire, at any rate, was to point out to so

sharp and disinterested an eye as his [here Nietzsche is referring to his friend Paul

Ree] a better direction in which to look, in the direction of an actual history of

morality.”12As Nehamas puts it “genealogy simply is history, correctly practiced.”13

A couple of lines later, he writes that what is “a hundred times more vital for a

genealogist” is “what is documented, what can actually be confirmed and has actually

existed, in short the entire long hieroglyphic record, so hard to decipher, of the moral

past of mankind!”14. Regardless of the “hieroglyphic record” being “so hard to decipher”, Nietzsche does not claim that it is impossible to do so − holding such a

view would undermine his own intentions. The possibility of deciphering a text gives

us reason to think that there are correct and incorrect readings or interpretations and

one with a “sharp and disinterested” eye can decipher correctly. These remarks taken

within the context of Nietzsche’s education, give us further reason to believe that

Nietzsche is not as close to post-modern theories of interpretation as some people

believe him to be, although these theories may sometimes be helpful in understanding

him.

Leiter provides two diagrams15 that help us distinguish between the usual picture of

genealogy and the Nietzschean one. The usual picture of genealogy has the following

structure:

Present Object (possessing value X)

↑ (value X)

↑ (value X)

Point of Origin (value X)

12 GM, section 7 13 Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, p.246 note 1. 14 GM, preface, section 7.

3 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

This picture of genealogy has a simple structure. There is one (or more) characteristic

that is passed on with every “generation”. The assumption is that whatever X

characteristic was present at the origin, gets transferred on to the present object. The

Nietzschean picture however, is much more complicated:

Present object (possessing value X)

(value C) ↑ (value T) (value O)

(value B) ↑ (value S) (value N)

Point of Origin 1 Point of Origin 2 Point of Origin 3

(value A) (value R) (value M), etc.

Nietzsche introduces two distinctions to differentiate two aspects of the genealogy.

One of them is “relative permanence, a traditional practice [Brauch], a fixed form of

action, a ‘drama’, a certain strict sequence of procedures, the other is its fluidity, its

meaning [Sinn], purpose and expectation, which is linked to the carrying out of such procedures”16

It’s important to remember that in the Nietzschean picture of genealogy “the stable or

individuating feature of the genealogical object − say, morality − is not its value or

meaning or purpose.”17 It is the Brauch18 that makes the genealogy be that of one

object, not the Sinn.

One mistake that previous historians of certain cultural practices like morality or

punishment make, is to “highlight some “purpose” [like a “value X” in the first

picture of genealogy] in punishment, for example, revenge or deterrence, then

15 NOM, p.168 16 As quoted in NOM, p.169-170 (original source is GM, Second Essay, section 13) 17 NOM, p.168 18 An example of a Brauch given by Leiter on Nietzsche’s behalf regarding morality is “the practice of evaluating oneself and others” he calls it Anthropocentric Evaluative Practice (AEP) without claiming that every AEP is a morality (NOM, p.171-2).

4 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

innocently place the purpose at the start…and have finished…[But] the origin of the

emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness…are toto caelo separate”19

For Nietzsche the Sinn is something fluid; one cannot fix it in a stable definition

(“only something which has no history can be defined” writes Nietzsche in GM20) and

trace it back in the same form in all the stages of the genealogy. The best one can do

is find “family resemblances”, to borrow a Wittgensteinian expression, although some characteristics might eventually disappear completely. Another metaphor (also with a

Wittgensteinian hue) from NOM helps us understand the purpose of genealogy even further:

“Concepts influenced by history,” as Clark notes […] “are like ropes held together by the intertwining of strands, rather than by a single strand running through the whole thing” Genealogy, then, would be a matter of separating “the various strands that may have become so tightly woven together by the process of historical development that they seem inseparable”21

To criticise (moral values in this case) through a genealogy it is necessary for

Nietzsche to have a

knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed (morality as consequence, as symptom, as mask, as tartufferie, as illness, as misunderstanding; but also morality as cause, as remedy, as stimulant, as restraint, as poison)22

the purpose behind Nietzsche’s flamboyant words, could be something as simple as

the following methodological rule: it is necessary to have a thorough (historical,

psychological, philosophical) knowledge of the object (and any relevant

circumstances surrounding it) you wish to criticise. For this might end up becoming a

criticism in itself, and eventually lead to a transformation of the object of your

critique and changes in the intended critique itself − this might be exactly what a

Nietzschean genealogy aims at.

19 As quoted in NOM, p.169 20 Second Essay, section 13 21 NMO, p.170 22 GM, Preface, section 6

5 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

Nietzsche’s Experimentalism and its Relevance to Genealogy

Before attempting a genealogy of cause and effect, I think it would be useful to put

the method of genealogy within the context of Nietzsche’s experimentalism.

Kaufmann believed that the way Nietzsche wrote in small paragraphs and aphorisms

reflected his distinct experimentalism: “The discontinuity or, positively speaking, the

great number of experiments, reflects the conviction that making only one experiment

would be one-sided.”23 Later on he uses that thought to point to Nietzsche’s affinity to

Kierkegaard when he quotes a comment of Kierkegaard which says: “If Hegel had written the whole of his Logic and then said…that it was merely an experiment in thought…then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived.

As it is, he is merely comic.”24

Nietzsche as much as Hegel according to Kaufmann, wanted philosophy to become

“scientific”. For Hegel this meant enclosing it in a rigorous system. For Nietzsche this

seemed an unnecessary limitation and less “scientific” than “the “gay science” of

fearless experiment” coupled with the “good will to accept new evidence and to

abandon previous positions, if necessary”25. According to Kaufmann “systems keep one from questioning certain premises” because

the systematic thinker starts with a number of primary assumptions from which he draws a net of inferences and thus deduces his system; but he cannot, from within his system, establish the truth of his premises…he takes them for granted…and even if they should seem “self-evident” to him, they may not seem so to others.26

hence “unimpeded by presuppositions that one may not question, one can penetrate one’s subject matter more deeply”27. Failure to question might hide an unwillingness

23 Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, p.85, 4th edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1974. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p.86 26 Ibid., p.79 27 Ibid.,p.87. Although one ought to add that Kaufmann criticises Nietzsche later on (p.93-94) by claiming that “Nietzsche failed to see that only a systematic attempt to substantiate them [referring to Nietzsche’s experiments] could establish an impressive probability in their favor. Hence his

6 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect to accept the possible consequences of an undesirable result of an enquiry28. If a system therefore “keeps one from questioning certain premises” then the following aphorism from TI comes as no surprise: “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them.

The will to a system is a lack of integrity”29.

Nietzsche’s contention was that the secret wish of all past philosophers (most notably

Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer) was to “solve all with one stroke” and with an all- encompassing system become the “unriddler of the universe”30. Avoiding such vain hopes, Nietzsche thought that the philosophers of the future would be “attempters” and their “greatness would consist in “holding one’s own in an unfinished system with free, unlimited views” as Leonardo da Vinci did”31. I think Nietzsche’s views on this matter are close to Popper’s idea of “bold conjectures” and Feyerabend’s spirit of questioning which culminated in his notorious slogan “anything goes”.

The method of genealogy should be seen within Nietzsche’s experimentalism exactly because it is an experiment − and can be revised or even abandoned in the face of

“new evidence…if necessary”. In the preface of GM Nietzsche remarks:

…my real concern was something much more important than hypothesis-mongering[32], whether my own or other people’s, on the origin of morality (or more precisely: the latter concerned me solely for the sake of a goal to which it was only one means among many).33

experiments are often needlessly inconclusive. Though a system may be false in spite of its internal coherence, an unsystematic collection of sundry observations can hardly lay any greater claim to truth.” 28 Ibid., 90. 29 I guess here Nietzsche means intellectual integrity. TI, Maxims and Arrows, section 26 30 As quoted in Kaufmann’s Nietzsche, p.86 31 Ibid., p.87 32 Here “hypothesis-mongering” should be distinguished from Nietzsche’s notion of “experimentalism”. By “hypothesis-mongering” Nietzsche means making hypotheses that cannot be “documented,” or “actually[…]confirmed”. The use of the word experiment[Versuch] is not accidental; it implies an affinity to the natural sciences (Kaufmann writes in Nietzsche (p.85) that “it is well to keep in mind that Versuch[…] need not mean merely “attempt” [because it also means that] but can have the characteristic scientific sense of “experiment”: it is quite proper in German to speak of a scientist as making a Versuch”) where the role of empirical verification is more important than hypotheses that cannot be falsified or confirmed by empirical evidence. I am indebted to Ali Shahrukhi for pointing out the need for such a clarification. 33 GM, Preface, section 5, (italics mine)

7 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

I think one could replace the word “means” with “experiment” without altering

Nietzsche’s intentions. However, if one compares GM where the experimental method of genealogy is applied with all his other works, GM ironically comes closest to resembling a “systematic” effort to unravel and explain the cultural practice we call morality.

Having said the above, I shall use Nietzsche to attempt a genealogy of cause and effect within the spirit of Nietzsche’s experimentalism.

The Need for Knowledge and The Need for Familiarity

There is one last thing I want to introduce before I begin the genealogy. I will call it the need for familiarity, and demonstrate throughout the paper its fundamental role throughout human and intellectual evolution and, specifically, its relevance to the evolution of the concept of causality. In a section entitled ‘The origin of our concept of “knowledge”’ Nietzsche notes that what most people want when they want

“knowledge” is

Nothing more than this: Something strange is to be reduced to something familiar. And we philosophers − have we really meant more than this when we have spoken of knowledge? What is familiar means what we are used to so that we no longer marvel at it[34], our everyday, some rule in which we are stuck[35], anything at all in which we feel at home. Look, isn’t our need for knowledge precisely this need for the familiar, the will to uncover under everything strange, unusual, and questionable something that no longer disturbs us? Is it not the instinct of fear that bids us to know? And is the jubilation of those who attain knowledge not the jubilation over the restoration of a sense of security?36

Thus Nietzsche believes that our need for knowledge is “precisely this need for the familiar” and that this need stems from the “instinct of fear” of anything strange, and

34 Although I can’t be sure, this seems to me like an implicit reference to Aristotle’s saying “Philosophy starts in wonder”. If that is so, then Nietzsche could be implying two things. The first could be that when he started “marvelling” at what others took to be “familiar”, he started to do philosophy. The second could be (supported by some things written later in the same section), that past philosophers didn’t marvel enough at the sight of familiar things, and therefore were not being philosophical about them − hence they made (what Nietzsche calls later in the same section) the “error of errors” and thought they “knew” them [the “them” especially in the section under consideration refers to the ‘inner facts’ we shall examine in detail later] just because they were “familiar”. 35 Such a “rule” could be the rule of cause and effect.

8 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

unusual37. Therefore “those who attain knowledge” are jubilant “over the restoration of a sense of security”. Although I think Nietzsche is right on this point, I would not

say it is only fear of the “strange or unusual” that bids us to know − I would also add

that basic needs such as the need for food (which can be interpreted into something to

be frightened of, like for example, the fear of starvation), or to be more general, the

need for the conditions that will enable our optimum growth, also translate into a need

for knowledge.

As the genealogy unfolds, I will demonstrate how human beings have this strong tendency to familiarize “strange” things for a variety of purposes − even though the

ulterior motivation could ultimately be “the restoration of a sense of security”.

An example would be to take a familiar method that “explains” a phenomenon or

“solves” a problem and extrapolate it to a different (strange, unusual or urgent) phenomenon or problem with the hope of solving or explaining it; I call this

expression of the need for familiarity methodological extrapolation.

An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

I think it is easy to designate the Brauch in the case of cause and effect: it is the

practice of people to believe that events that succeed one another are somehow

necessarily connected – they believe there are “causes” and “effects”, and that you

can explain an “effect” by pointing out to its “cause”. Analyzing the Sinn, is the main

purpose of the genealogy. As our discussion of genealogy has shown, apart from the

36 GS, book five, section 355. 37 There is also another section which supplements this idea, it is found in TI, “The Four Great Errors”, section 5, where again Nietzsche states that “to trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power[…] proof by pleasure as criterion of truth.” We seek for “certain kind of cause[s]” because they are alleviating, soothing etc. This has as a consequence that “a particular kind of cause-ascription comes to preponderate more and more, becomes concentrated into a system and finally comes to dominate over the rest, that is to say

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fact that an idea like causality can have multiple origins it is also possible that “the

origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness…are toto caelo

separate”38. I think the best place to start so that this emergence becomes intelligible

is section 3 in Twilight of the Idols (published in 1889) where among the “Four Great

Errors” you find the following:

The error of a false causality. − We have always believed we know what a cause is: but whence did we derive our knowledge, more precisely our belief we possessed this knowledge? From the realm of the celebrated ‘inner facts’, none of which has up till now been shown to be factual. We believed ourselves to be causal agents in the act of willing; we at least thought we were there catching causality in the act. It was likewise never doubted that all the antecedentia of an action, its causes, were sought in the consciousness and could be discovered there if one sought them − as ‘motives’: for otherwise one would not have been free to perform it, responsible for it. Finally, who would have disputed that thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought? …Of these three ‘inner facts’ through which causality seemed to be guaranteed the first and most convincing was that of will as cause; the conception of a consciousness (‘mind’) as cause and later still that of the ego (the ‘subject’) as cause are merely after-products after causality had, on the basis of will, been firmly established as a given fact, as empiricism…39

Nietzsche states three ‘inner facts’ responsible for our belief that we possessed the

knowledge of what a cause is. There are, therefore, three major “strands” that have to

be “separated” in our genealogy. The first, and most important, is that we “believed

ourselves to be causal agents in the act of willing” we thought of the will as cause.

The second is that it was never doubted that the causes of action lay in consciousness,

and one could discover them there, if one sought them. Finally, the third consists in

our undisputed conviction that thought is caused and that the ‘ego’ the ‘I,’ causes it.

I will start by the first (since it’s the most important), and show how all of them

influence, connect and grow out of each other. Nevertheless, we will notice that in the

process of separating the strands from one another, other minor (but definitely not

unimportant) strands will come to the surface (like the strands of language, free will,

the nature of the ‘I’), ultimately making the overall genealogy more intelligible.

simply to exclude other causes and explanations. – The banker thinks at once of ‘business’, the Christian of ‘sin’, the girl of her love”.

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A. The Origin of the Will and The Will as Cause

Nietzsche believes that an important starting point for our idea of causality comes

from the feeling that we are causal agents. In the act of willing, we think we are

“catching causality in the act”. It is true that in our everyday affairs we think of

ourselves as agents capable of causing events in the world; this idea has strong prima

facie phenomenological proof. Most people would not think I’m mad if I took it as

self-evident that there is something which I call “myself” and that ‘I’ can move tables,

paint pictures, do philosophy and so on.

However, this is no “proof” for Nietzsche. Willing and our ‘I’, are far more complex,

and such prima facie phenomenological “proofs” are just evidence of a very

rudimentary − and naïve − psychological interpretation reinforced by the structure of

language40. It is very familiar to us − thus we think we actually know it. In TI

Nietzsche writes:

The oldest and longest-lived psychology was at work here − indeed it has done nothing else: every event was to it an action, every action the effect of a will, the world became for it a multiplicity of agents, an agent (‘subject’) foisted itself upon every event.41

Having in mind what was said earlier on the need for familiarity, let us focus on an

example that would make the above idea more intelligible.

Why was it that in primitive worldviews and religions, many natural things such as

clouds, rivers, fire, animals etc. were thought to be gods or spirits that had a

personality of their own, and were actively involved in the dealings of humans?

In GS Nietzsche explains:

After-effects of the most ancient religiosity. − Every thoughtless person supposes that will alone is effective; that willing is something simple, a brute datum, underivable, and intelligible by itself. He is convinced that when he does something −strike something, for example− it is he that strikes, and that he did strike because he willed it. He does not see any problem here; the feeling of will seems sufficient for him not only for the assumption of cause and effect but also for the faith that he understands their

38 As quoted in NOM, p.169 39 TI, “The Four Great Errors”, section 3 40 More will be said about the role of language later. 41 Ibid.

11 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect relationship. He knows nothing of the mechanism of what happened and of the hundredfold fine work that needs to be done to bring about a strike, or of the incapacity of the will in itself to do even the tiniest part of this work. The will is for him a magically effective force; the faith in the will as the cause of effects is the faith in magically effective forces. Now man believed originally that wherever he saw something happen, a will had to be at work in the background as a cause, and a personal, willing being. Any notion of mechanics was far from his mind. But since man believed, for immense periods of time, only in persons (and not in substances, forces, things, and so forth), the faith in cause and effect became for him the basic faith that he applies wherever anything happens − and this is what he still does instinctively: it is an atavism of the most ancient origin.42

This is where we see an application of what I have described as methodological

extrapolation. This as we’ve said, is based on the need for familiarity that is driven by

the instinct of fear and the need to obtain the basic preconditions of living. To make

the example more concrete, think of the following: In primitive times most activities

were practical and related to survival. At the dawn of first farming communities,

primitive humans must have been concerned about the natural phenomena, such as

rain. In periods where the crops failed due to droughts, the fear of starvation must

have made the necessity of an explanation urgent. At one point or another, they must

have made the connection between clouds, rain and plant growth. Now being

confident − that is, ignorant − of their observations of their own psychological processes (obviously not in any intellectual conscious manner) such as the process of willing and its function as the cause of action, they assumed that the cause behind

natural phenomena was a “will”43. The reasoning is simple: “Why do I run? Because I

want to run.” They then made the following (unconscious) bold conjecture: “Why do

clouds rain? Maybe because they want to.” People thought that “wherever [t]he[y]

saw something happen, a will had to be at work in the background as a cause, and a

personal, willing being” was there to do the work.

People thought that other things had a similar nature with human beings. Clouds,

winds, mountains, had a “will” and personality of their own, like human beings, and

42 GS, Book Three, section 127 43 I’m not saying that this was the first time that they assumed this, this is just an example.

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this is why they featured the way they did in many primitive religions. This explains

the kind of sacrifices primitive people did for gods, the elements etc. They took what

was most valuable to them44 (food, human sacrifices, great buildings or artifacts) and

gave or dedicated it to the element or god that they wanted to appease − like they tried

to appease warlords that usurped their land.

This scenario is crammed with methodological extrapolation45. Observing (regardless

of the naivety of the observation) a method (“Why do I run? Because I want to run.”)

and extrapolating it in different situations (“Why do clouds rain? Maybe because they

want to.” “How should we appease the clouds? Maybe the way we appease warlords”)

in the hope of solving different problems with the same method. One assumption

being that it is method that guarantees “truth”, or “a solution”.

Methodological extrapolations are very common in human history and happen also in

philosophical affairs. The Euclidian method was adopted by Spinoza and Hobbes to solve metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and political problems even though it started as a method in geometry. This process is in fact something that comes so naturally to us, that we hardly notice it. The “method” doesn’t have to be something as grand as Euclidian geometry. It could be something as trivial as “if you press a button, something happens”. What is crucial to note however, is that methodological extrapolation and the need for familiarity, are constantly applied back and forth during man’s practical and intellectual evolution.

44 This happened for two reasons: 1) because they thought that their common nature (since both “willed”) meant that they had common needs and 2) because for a very long time people thought that what was good for them was good in itself. It took a Heraclitus (with famous fragments like: “Sea is the most pure and the most polluted water; for fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deleterious” in p.188 of The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, by Kirk, Raven and Schofield, Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition, 1983) to expose how wrong this can be. 45 Exactly as I have defined it before: “To take a familiar method that “explains” a phenomenon or “solves” a problem and extrapolate it to a different (strange, unusual or urgent) phenomenon or problem with the hope of solving or explaining it”

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For example, although Nietzsche later in the next section we’ll quote insists that it is the structure of language that explains why “the older atomism sought, besides the operating “power”, that lump of matter in which it resides and out of which it operates

− the atom”46 I think he misses an additional point that my idea of methodological extrapolation is able to capture. The idea that the cause of motion lay within the atom, is extrapolated from the idea that our cause of motion lay “within” our body. The operating “power” is nothing more than another extrapolation and metaphor for our

“will”, and the “lump of matter” a metaphor and extrapolation for our body.

B. Breaking with Tradition: Nietzsche’s picture of the Will and the ‘I’.

In section 19 in BGE47, Nietzsche simply claims that laymen and most philosophers have taken the will for granted. Schopenhauer48 even claimed that “the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without subtraction or addition.”49 Nietzsche on the contrary, thinks that the will is “above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as a word”50 (hinting also at the tacit role language plays). To be more specific, here is one of Nietzsche’s attempts to try to capture the complexity of the will: first, a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the state “away from which,” the sensation of the state “towards which,” the sensations of this “from” and “towards” themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting into motion “arms and legs,” begins its action by force of habit as soon as we “will” anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, secondly, should thinking also: in every act of the will there is a ruling thought − let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the “willing”, as if any will would then remain over!51

46 BGE, Part One, On the Prejudices of the Philosophers, section 17 47 Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers. 48 Hannah Arendt in her article Nietzsche’s Repudiation of the Will (in Nietzsche Critical Assessments, vol.2, p.9, Routledge, 1998), claims that Nietzsche “saw correctly that the reason for [Schopenhauer’s misunderstanding of the will] lay in a ‘basic misunderstanding of the will (as if craving, instinct, drive were the essence of the will)’ whereas ‘the will is precisely that which treats cravings as their master and appoints to them their way and measure’”. 49 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid.

14 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

The ingredients of habit, “a plurality of sensations”, and the almost analytic

indispensability of “a ruling thought” seem to be contained in the process of willing.

We see that what is happening as Nietzsche examines the will, is what I have

remarked in the second chapter52: acquiring a better understanding of the object of his

study becomes a form of criticism and starts exposing not only the naivety of previous

philosophical accounts of the will, but also any of the mistakes that occurred by the

application of such accounts to further philosophical problems.

Nietzsche adds more important elements to the complexity of the will as he continues

in the same section:

Third, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and specifically the affect of the command. That which is termed “freedom of will” is essentially the affect of superiority in relation to him who must obey: “I am free, ‘he’ must obey” − this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look that fixes itself exclusively on one aim, the unconditional evaluation that “this and nothing else is necessary now,” the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered − and whatever else belongs to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.53

This is where Nietzsche makes the important phenomenological observation that the

‘I’ has a dual nature. Phenomenological reflection readily provides us with the fact

that the ‘I’ has at least two parts : A commanding and an obeying one. You command

“You have to concentrate”, and even though this might not come about, there is the

sense that a command is given to another part of yourself that must obey this

command. It will be useful to introduce a terminology for referring to the different

sections of the ‘I’.

Following other commentators54I will call the commanding part “master” and the obeying part “slave”.

52 The methodological rule that it is necessary to have a thorough (historical, psychological, philosophical) knowledge of the object (and any relevant circumstances surrounding it) you wish to criticise. For this might end up becoming a criticism in itself, and eventually lead to a transformation of the object of your critique and changes in the intended critique itself. 53 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 54 Gilles Deleuze (Nietzsche and Philosophy) in particular.

15 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

Nevertheless even though the ‘I’ has these two parts it is not conscious only of one of

them. Consciousness is of both, and in situations where both are perceived, you view

as a spectator55 that part which will eventually prevail. For example, you might have

to study tonight for the exam tomorrow, in which case the master commands the slave

to study. However the slave refuses to obey and can even cite reasons for doing so:

such as “watching this movie seems more pleasurable”.

One might question why we need a distinction anyway. When I scratch my head there

is no conscious experience of the master saying “Scratch your head” and the slave

obeying. True indeed, simply because when there is harmony between the two parts

of the ‘I’, there is no tension which makes their difference evident. Power cannot be

felt without opposition of some sort. This duality, does not reveal itself with just any

visible action (like scratching one’s head), but only where there is tension, between

the master and the slave. Arendt’s thoughts on this are relevant:

In Nietzsche, the point is that he numbers the negative slave-feelings of being coerced and of resisting or resenting among the necessary obstacles without which the Will would not even know its own power. Only by surmounting an inner resistance does the Will become aware of its genesis: it did not spring up to obtain power; power is its very source.56

When the master commands and succeeds, we feel elated by our feeling of

achievement and power exactly because we identify the ‘I’ as a whole with the

commanding part rather with the one that obeys57 − this is where Nietzsche believes our notion of having a “free” will originates58, we are free in relation to “another” that

must obey:

55 The reason I used the word “spectator”, is because as we will see later in this paper, Nietzsche does not think that consciousness can have any active role in determining which course of action will shall follow. 56 Nietzsche’s Repudiation of the Will, Nietzsche Critical Assessments, vol.2, p.10 57 See Arendt ibid., p.9 58 In section 689 in WP Nietzsche thinks that our notion of causality originates (remember that there can be multiple origins for a single concept) here as well: “Critique of the concept: cause. − From a psychological point of view the concept “cause” is our feeling of power resulting from the so-called act of will – our concept “effect” the superstition that this feeling of power is the motive power itself.

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“Freedom of the will” − that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order− who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his will itself that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight on his successful executive instruments, the useful “under-wills” or under-souls − indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls− to his feelings of delight as commander.59

The ‘I’ doesn’t strictly have two parts − thus “myself” is not one thing, there can be many “under-wills” that compete for dominance; it is not really “me” that commands, it is not really “me” that orders, that causes, “my” thoughts, since thoughts just

“come”; in BGE Nietzsche writes (this is also where the picture regarding atomism is completed):

“With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact, which these superstitious minds hate to concede − namely, that a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think”. It thinks; but that this “it” is precisely the famous old “ego” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “it thinks” − even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the grammatical habit: “Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently −” It was pretty much according to the same schema that the older atomism sought, besides the operating “power”, that lump of matter in which it resides and out of which it operates − the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learned at last to get along without this “earth-residuum,” and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, including the logicians, to get alone without the little “it” (which is all that is left of the honest little old ego).”60

Thinking occurs just like clouds rain −there is as much “will”, as much ‘I’ in ourselves as there is in clouds. Nietzsche is very well aware of the presuppositions that even seemingly “immediate certainties” like statements such as “I think” contain:

When I analyse the process that is expressed in the sentence, “I think,” I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example, that it is I who think[s], that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking − that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps “willing” or “feeling”? In short, the assertion “I think” assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to

A condition that accompanies an event and is itself an effect of the event is projected as the “sufficient reason” for the event; − the relation of tensions in our feeling of power (pleasure as the feeling of power), of a resistance overcome − are they illusions? − 59 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 60 BGE, Part One, On the Prejudices of the Philosophers, section 17

17 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect determine what it is[61]; on account of this retrospective connection with further “knowledge,” it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.62

Thus he is led to ask the following questions, “From where do I get the concept of

thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of

an ego, and even of an ego as cause, and finally of an ego as the cause of thought?”63

C. The Epiphenomenality of Consciousness

Before confronting the above questions, let us fill a gap we have left open. Nietzsche claims that “thoughts come”, but where does he think they come from? The observation that “thoughts come” apart from showing that the “‘I’ cannot be the condition for the predicate “think””, also makes plausible the idea that maybe thoughts are not causes, but effects − effects of what? Nietzsche’s answer, according to Leiter, is “of our own psycho-physical type facts”. Within Leiter’s interpretation,

Nietzsche holds that “each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution which defines him as the particular type of person he is”64, type-facts being “either

physiological facts about the person, or facts about the person’s unconscious drives

[instincts] or affects.”65 These facts are both causally primary, in the sense that these

are ultimately the real causes66 behind one’s actions, and explanatorily primary “in

the sense that all other facts about a person (e.g. his beliefs, his actions, his life trajectory) are explicable by type-facts about the person (perhaps in conjunction with other natural facts about the circumstances or environment)”67. These background

assumptions explain and are complemented by some sections in WP:

61 This reminds me of Wittgenstein’s idea of the private language, especially § 258 in the Philosophical Investigations, (p.92 in G.E.M. Anscombe’s translation, Prentice Hall edition, 1958). 62 BGE, Part One, On the Prejudices of the Philosophers, section 16 63 Ibid. 64 NOM, p.91 65 Ibid. 66 Although one should be careful about this. Sections like GS 112 and the preface to GM, should at least cast some suspicion on Leiter’s interpretation. I am indebted to Ali Shahrukhi for this remark. 67 NOM, p.91.

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I maintain the phenomenality of the inner world[…]: everything of which we become conscious is arranged, simplified, schematized, interpreted through and through − the actual process of inner “perception,” the causal connection between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, are absolutely hidden from us[68] − and are perhaps purely imaginary.

Therefore Nietzsche believes that a person’s conscious mental states are “Kind-

Epiphenomenal” –Type-Epiphenomenalism in current literature.

A property is “Kind-Epiphenomenal” when it has no causal powers in virtue of being the kind of property it is, but only in virtue of its relation to some other set of properties – in this case, the relevant type-facts.69 This basically means that

“consciousness is not causally efficacious in its own right. While a person’s conscious states may be part of the causal chain leading up to action, they play that role only in virtue of type-facts about the person.”70

This makes Nietzsche come to the conclusion that “every action is unknowable”71 because “it is determined by non-conscious type facts about the agent”72. In NOM,

Leiter points to a revealing section in D:

The primeval delusion still lives on that one knows, and knows quite precisely in every case, how human action is brought about… ‘I know what I want, what I have done, I am free and responsible for it, I hold others responsible, I can call by its name every moral possibility and every inner motion which precedes action; you may act as you will − in this matter I understand myself and understand you all!’ − that is how…almost everyone still thinks…[But] [a]ctions are never what they appear to us to be! We have expended so much labor on learning that external things are not as they appear to us to be − very well! The case is the same for the inner world! Moral actions[73] are in reality “something other than that” − more we cannot say: and all actions are essentially unknown.74

This is the reason why Nietzsche claims in WP that

“Causality” eludes us; to suppose a direct causal link between thoughts, as logic does − that is the consequence of the crudest and clumsiest observation. Between two thoughts all kinds of affects play their game: but their motions are too fast, therefore we fail to recognize them, we deny them−

68 Exactly because they reside in the psycho-physical type facts that are unconscious. 69 Ibid. 70 NOM, p.92 71 See GS section 355, WP section 291, 294. 72 NOM, p.102 73 Obviously these things we’ve been discussing bear on the issue of free will. For how Nietzsche’s “Doctrine of Types” (how psycho-physical type facts determine beliefs, actions etc.) relates to an argument against free will, see some work I presented in an MA Seminar entitled Nietzsche and G. Strawson and the Causa Sui Argument which I have made available on the web at: http://www.geocities.com/gcecrops/mapresentation.htm 74 As quoted in NOM, p.102 (it comes from D, section 116)

19 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

“Thinking,” as epistemologists conceive it, simply does not occur: it is a quite arbitrary fiction, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and eliminating all the rest, an artificial arrangement for the purpose of intelligibility− The “spirit,” something that thinks: where possible even “absolute, pure spirit” − this conception is a second derivative[75] of that false introspection which believes in “thinking”: first an act is imagined which simply does not occur, “thinking,” and secondly a subject-substratum in which every act of thinking, and nothing else, has its origin: that is to say, both the deed and the doer are fictions.76

Now we realize that we have been answering the questions that Nietzsche was led to ask77. The previous section we quoted answered how we got the concept of thinking78. As for why we believed in cause and effect, this was primarily because we thought we were “catching causality in the act” in the act of willing, we made the mistake of thinking of the will as cause. However, I feel the need to complement this answer even further by introducing another route with which we can reach causality.

The remaining questions will be answered later79.

D. Connections of Custom: Hume and Nietzsche

Nietzsche concludes the analysis of the will and the ‘I’ in the previous section we mentioned80 with the following paragraph:

But now let us notice what is strangest about the will − this manifold thing for which people have only one word: inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensation of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and emotion, which usually begin immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic concept ‘I’, a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false evaluations of the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing − to such a degree that he who wills believes sincerely that willing suffices for action.81

Because “we are accustomed to disregard this duality” we draw “erroneous conclusions”; so here we see the role of custom making its appearance. Later in the same section (which I will cite later) Nietzsche reinforces this Humean element.

75 a.k.a an effect of the need for familiarity, a metaphor, a methodological extrapolation. 76 WP, section 477. 77 The ones in page 18. 78 Although obviously more can be said, but the word limit is restrictive. 79 Specifically, from pages 21-29. 80 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 81 Ibid.

20 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

Nevertheless, Hume’s own example as to how we come to form our idea of causality and its relation to custom, is more external: we remember to have seen that species of object we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any farther ceremony, we call the one cause and the other effect, and infer the existence of the one from that of the other.82

However, “from the mere repetition of any past impression, even to infinity, there never will arise any new original idea, such as that of a necessary connexion”83 which makes Hume eventually conclude that “the mind is determin’d by custom[…]’Tis this

[…] determination, which affords me the idea of necessity.”84 The habit of “constant conjunction” gives rise to the idea of causality and necessary connection85.

Whereas Nietzsche focuses more on internal mental habits: in the great majority of cases there has been exercise of will only when the effect of command − that is, obedience; that is, the action− was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the feeling, as if there were a necessity of effect. In short, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one, he ascribes success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.86

These two accounts are not in any way contradictory. They are in fact complementary87 as the Nietzschean genealogy admits that there may be many points

82 David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, section 6, p.61, eds. Norton & Norton, Oxford University Press, 2000. 83 Ibid., p.62. 84 Ibid., Book I, section 14, p.105. 85 One has to mention however, that in the “New Hume debate” there is a debate between the “Positivist” and the “Sceptical Realist” interpretation of Hume. In the literature, “any concept of one event producing another, or being necessarily a cause or consequence of another, but which involves something beyond the concept of regular succession” is called “a “thick” notion of dependence of one event on another” and “on the Positivist account, Hume believes that no thick notion is intelligible” while the Sceptical Realist “denies that Hume offered any such reduction or analysis of the notion of causation” and “takes seriously the many passages in which Hume appears to allow that we are talking of some thick notion of dependence of one event on another, going beyond regular succession.” (Simon Blackburn, Hume on Thick Connections, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 50, Issue Supplement (Autumn 1990), 237-250) 86 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 87 It is interesting to note something Nehamas writes in an endnote (p.246 note 4) in his Nietzsche: Life as Literature. “Nietzsche sometimes suggests that genealogy is his own invention (GS, 345). Yet, as I mentioned in note 1 above, in GM, I, 2, he describes the efforts of the “English psychologists” as “bungled” attempts at a “moral genealogy”. This in turn suggest that he considers the enterprise in which Hume, Spencer, Ree, and himself are involved to be one and the same, the difference being that he succeeded where his opponents failed.” This supports my belief that Hume’s account of causality is complementary to Nietzsche’s.

21 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect of origin (as the diagram I supplied demonstrates) and all have to be taken into account in explaining the object of our study.

So there are two routes that lead to the formation of the idea of causality: from “inside to outside” (Nietzsche) or from “outside to inside” (Hume). Whichever way you start, you see how this process is an instance of methodological extrapolation. In the first case, people had considered the idea of causality self-evident because they thought of their will as cause. In their every action, they thought they observed something within them, their “will”, that caused events in the world. In the second case, people observed a regular succession of events in the world, and for the reasons given by

Hume, were led to believe that there were necessary connections between them. From there they extrapolated this idea to the inner world; and exactly because they didn’t notice the fundamental difference that in the inner world we cannot observe the causes of our thoughts since thoughts just come, they posited the subject, the ‘I’88, to play the role of the “flame” (Hume’s example) that “causes” the sensation of heat, only in this case it “causes” thoughts.

These are the intricate dialectics that answer all the four questions Nietzsche was led to ask. However, our answers would not be complete, if we did not also address the important role language plays in all of this. That is why before I conclude the

88 Another explanation for the formation of the ‘I’ could be that it is formed as a reaction to the uncomfortable feeling of being simultaneously the master and the slave, of “oscillating between Yes [yes, “you have to concentrate”] and No[no, “watching the movie seems more pleasurable”]” (Nietzsche’s Repudiation of the Will, p.10) which resembles the oscillation between pain and pleasure. Thus the formation of the ‘I’ is a way to avoid pain and enjoy the pleasure of being “the commander and executor of an order” by identifying the ‘I’ solely with the master. This fits with the ideas of Gilles Deleuze (in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Columbia University Press, 1983, p.39-72) where he seems to agree with Nietzsche that consciousness is epiphenomenal and with the general picture of “type-facts” we have drawn. The twist in Deleuze is that consciousness “is not the master’s consciousness but the slave’s consciousness in relation to a master who is not himself conscious [the psycho-physical type- facts]” He notes that “in a body the superior or dominant forces [the psycho-physical type-facts that are explanatorily and causally primary] are known as active [for they are the real causes] and the inferior or dominated forces[the ‘I’] are known as reactive.” That is why he comes to the conclusion that “Consciousness merely expresses the relation of certain reactive forces to the active forces which dominated them. Consciousness is essentially reactive; this is why we do not know what a body can do, or what activity it is capable of”.

22 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect genealogy89, I will emphasize the role language plays in the genealogy of cause and effect.

E. The Role of Language

When Nietzsche remarked (for the will) “this manifold thing for which people have only one word” he did not say it capriciously. If one looks back in HH90 one will find the following section entitled with an interesting title: “Freedom of will and isolation of facts. − Our usual imprecise mode of observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls it a fact”91 then this becomes “a unit only as a word”92 which is exactly what happened in the case of will. Nietzsche then goes on to make an argument against conceiving the world as made out of “facts”, claiming that freedom of the will presupposes such a conception: between this fact and another fact it imagines in addition an empty space, it isolates every fact. In reality, however, all our doing and knowing is not a succession of facts and empty spaces but a continuous flux. Now, belief in freedom of will is incompatible precisely with the idea of a continuous homogeneous, undivided, indivisible flowing: it presupposes that every individual action is isolate and indivisible; it is an atomism in the domain of willing and knowing. − Just as we understand characters only imprecisely, so do we also facts: we speak of identical facts, that there exists a graduated order of classes of facts which corresponds to a graduated world-order: thus we isolate, not only the individual fact, but also again groups of supposedly identical facts[93] (good, evil, sympathetic, envious actions, etc.) − in both cases erroneously.

When I read this part, I couldn’t help remembering some of the first propositions of

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “I.2 The world divides into facts”94 or “2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.”95

89 There are even more strands (an obvious candidate is the strand of morality. See for example section 6 in TI in the chapter of the “Four Great Errors”) that may be relevant to the genealogy of cause and effect, and why belief in causality has persisted. However, for reasons of length, I could not include them here. 90 in The Wanderer and his Shadow published in 1880. 91 HH, vol.2, part 2:The Wanderer and His Shadow, section 11. 92 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 19 93 I don’t know whether Hume is also aware of this when he writes: “But upon further enquiry I find, that the repetition is not in every particular the same, but produces a new impression” (Treatise, Book I, section 14, p.105, Norton & Norton edition). 94 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, p.31, trans. C.K. Ogden, Routledge, 1922. 95 Ibid.

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And to make the posthumous rebuttal even worse, the very next sentences mention specifically the role of language:

− The word and the concept are the most manifest ground for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions: we do not only designate things with them, we think originally that through them we grasp the true in things. Through words and concepts we are still continually misled into imagining things as being simpler than they are, separate from one another, indivisible, each existing in and for itself. A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language that breaks out again every moment, however careful one may be otherwise. Belief in freedom of will − that is to say in identical facts and in isolated facts − has in language its constant evangelist and advocate.

Thus, the nature of language can mislead us into thinking that the world is really divided into “facts”. But except proper names, all concepts (such as the concept “leaf” for example) are universal (they are used to describe numerous instances); yet they become so, by “equating what is unequal”96 for “no leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept “leaf” is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions”97. Because words (the actual written characters or sounds) and their meaning in our everyday life is relatively stable, we can be led to forget that reality is “a continuous flux”, and that there are many differences between “this” and “that” table, chair etc.

But it is not only freedom of the will that presupposes such a conception of “identical and isolated facts”; in a brilliant section in WP, Nietzsche summarizes some of the things we have said already, and shows how it is also causality itself that presupposes such a conception:

There is no such thing as “cause”; some cases in which it seemed to be given to us, and in which we have projected it out of ourselves in order to understand an event, have been shown to be self- deceptions. Our “understanding of an event” has consisted in our inventing a subject which was made responsible for something that happens and for how it happens. We have combined our feeling of will, our feeling of “freedom,” our feeling of responsibility and our intention to perform an act, into the concept “cause”: causa efficiens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. We believed that an effect was explained when a condition was detected in which the effect was already inherent. In fact, we invent all causes after the schema of the effect: the latter is known to us − Conversely, we are not in a position to predict of any thing what it will “effect”. The thing, the subject, will, intention − all inherent in the conception “cause”. We search for things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the atom is this kind of super-added “thing” and “primitive subject”−

96 On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, in The Portable Nietzsche, (trans.& ed. Walter Kaufmann) p.46, Viking Penguin, 1982. 97 Ibid.

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At length we grasp that things − consequently atoms, too− effect nothing: because they do not exist at all− that the concept of causality is completely useless[98].− A necessary sequence of states does not imply a causal relationship between them […] There are neither causes nor effects. Linguistically we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I think of the muscle apart from its “effects,” I negate it − In summa: an event is neither effected nor does it effect. Causa is a capacity to produce effects that has been super-added to the events −[…] The calculability of an event does not reside in the fact that a rule is adhered to, or that a necessity is obeyed, or that a law of causality has been projected by us into every event: it resides in the recurrence of “identical cases”[“identical facts”]99.

This shows the continuity in Nietzsche’s thought, and how the ideas we discussed in the section regarding the belief in “isolated and identical facts” from HH that dates back to 1880, come to be strengthened in 1888 in WP. The remaining part of the same section from WP, integrates causality with yet another feature we’ve mentioned – the need for familiarity:

98 Useless for the purposes of explanation (in BGE, part one, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers” section 21 Nietzsche writes: “one should use “cause” and “effect” only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication – not for explanation”) , not useless in general. Again, at GS 112 we find the following section: “Cause and effect. − “Explanation” is what we call it, but it is “description” that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better − we do not explain any more than our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold one-after-another where the naïve man and inquirer of older cultures saw only two separate things. “Cause” and “effect” is what ones says; but we have merely perfected the image of becoming without reaching beyond the image or behind it. In every case the series of “causes” confronts us much more completely, and we infer: first, this and than has to precede in order that this or that may then follow− but this does not involve any comprehension. In every chemical process, for example, quality appears as a “miracle,” as ever; also, every locomotion; nobody has “explained” a push. But how could we possibly explain anything? We operate only with things that do not exist: lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisible spaces. How should explanations be at all possible when we first turn everything into an image, our image! It will do to consider science as an attempt to humanize things as faithfully as possible; as we describe things and their one-after-another, we learn how to describe ourselves more and more precisely. Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted with a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without actually seeing it.” But then one should contrast it with GS, section 121: “Life no argument − We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live − by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.” And with BGE, part one, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers” section 4: “We are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgements (which include the synthetic a priori) are the most indispensable for us; that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live.” 99 Earlier in the same section Nietzsche writes: “Interpretation by causality a deception− A “thing” is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by a concept, an image. In fact, science has emptied the concept causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. It is asserted that in two complex states (constellations of force) the quanta of force remain constant.”

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There is no such thing as a sense of causality, as Kant thinks. One is surprised, one is disturbed, one desires something familiar to hold on to − As soon as we are shown something old in the new, we are calmed. The supposed instinct for causality is only fear of the unfamiliar and the attempt to discover something familiar in it − a search, not for causes, but for the familiar.100

Thus, our feeling of freedom of the will and our intention to perform and act, the need for familiarity, belief in “isolated and identical facts”, all are aided by the nature of language. Language simplifies and aids the presuppositions of freedom of the will and causality, by putting under only one concept a plurality of things, and simultaneously verifies that we are inheritors of a linguistic heritage based on rudimentary observational skills and low theoretical rigor101. Because communities with better observational skills and theoretical needs would not use only one word to point to such a complex phenomenon such as “will” or “ego”. In TI Nietzsche argues that:

Language belongs in its origin on the age of the most rudimentary forms of psychology: we find ourselves in the midst of a rude fetishism when we call to mind the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language − which is to say, of reason. It is this which sees everywhere deed and doer; this which believes in will as cause in general; this which believes in the ‘ego’, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance on to all things − only thus does it create the concept of ‘thing’…Being is everywhere though in, foisted on, as cause; it is only from the conception ‘ego’ that there follows, derivately, the concept ‘being’…102

An example103 might help to make more sense of the above passage. It is common to say, “Lightning flashes”; however, the way we say it makes us think as if the lightning is the “doer” and the flash the “deed” of this doer. “But flashing is not separable from lightning: lightning is the flashing”104; whereas through language:

The popular mind in fact doubles the deed; when it sees the lightning flash, it is the deed of a deed: it posits the same event first as cause and then a second time as its effect. Scientists do no better when they say “force moves” “force causes” and the like – all its coolness, its freedom from emotion notwithstanding, our entire science still lies under the misleading influence of language and has not disposed of that little changeling, the “subject” (the atom, for example, is such a changeling, as is the Kantian “thing-in-itself”);105

100 WP, section 551. 101 Obviously there wasn’t much need for theoretical rigor at primitive times. 102 TI, ‘Reason’ in Philosophy, section 5 103 This is Nietzsche’s own example in GM, First Essay, section 13. 104 A. Danto in the chapter entitled: “Nietzsche”, p. 395, A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed. D.J. O’Connor, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964. 105 GM, First Essay, section 13.

26 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

The atoms, the subject, even the Kantian “thing-in-itself” are the refined results of methodological extrapolations of our own (sometimes) naïve phenomenological observations, “interpretations with the aid of psychical fictions.”106

There is an intricate dialectical influence between our own methodological extrapolations from phenomenological experiences and language, and it difficult to see clearly how the one gives rise to the other, though it may just be that they evolved simultaneously. Especially when there are languages that are not structured like the

Indo-European languages. For example when Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) studied the Hopi Indians of Arizona “who make no distinction in their language between past, present and future tenses; where in English it seems natural to distinguish between 'I see the girl', 'I saw the girl' and 'I will see the girl',”107 he

“imagined that the scientists of the day and the Hopi must see the world very differently”108 pointing the way to a kind of linguistic determinism. Nietzsche at least, seems to be aware and attracted to such an idea when he writes that

The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophising is explained easily enough. Where there is affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar − I mean, owing to the unconscious domination and guidance by similar grammatic functions − that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems; just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the concept of the subject is least developed) look otherwise “into the world” and will be found on paths of thought different[109] from those of the Indo-Germanic peoples and the Muslims.110

F. Conclusion

106 WP, section 689. 107 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, http://venus.va.com.au/suggestion/sapir.html (accessed on the 1st of May 2003) 108 Ibid. 109 Just to make a bold conjecture of my own, it would be interesting to see to what extent Oswald Spengler, who in the introduction in vol.1 of his Decline of the West (trans. C.F. Atkinson, Alfred Knopf Publishers New York, 1926) writes that he feels that he owes everything to Nietzsche and Goethe, explored the common linguistic heritage of the civilizations he states in the tables of “contemporary” spiritual, cultural and political epochs found in the end of the first volume and whether this would somehow indirectly confirm Nietzsche’s conjecture. 110 BGE, Part one, On the Prejudices of Philosophers, section 20.

27 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

We had begun our genealogy with a section from TI that ended with the following sentences:

…Of these three ‘inner facts’ through which causality seemed to be guaranteed the first and most convincing was that of will as cause; the conception of a consciousness (‘mind’) as cause and later still that of the ego (the ‘subject’) as cause are merely after-products after causality had, on the basis of will, been firmly established as a given fact, as empiricism…

Now we are in a position to include the rest of this section, since we have provided all the necessary background with which we could fully appreciate its meaning and ironies:

Meanwhile, we have thought better. Today we do not believe a word of it. The ‘inner world’ is full of phantoms and false lights: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, consequently no longer explains anything − it merely accompanies events, it can also be absent.

The expression “today we do not believe a word of it” could very well be used on purpose to imply that it is language that had previously influenced us to believe in the factuality of the three “inner facts”. The “will no longer moves anything, consequently no longer explains anything” because we have seen that the idea of the

“will” is based on rudimentary and naïve observation and that the real causes of our thoughts are for Nietzsche the psycho-physical type-facts that both causally and explanatorily primary. Our description of Nietzsche’s picture of consciousness also explains why Nietzsche thinks that

The so-called ‘motive’: [is] another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment to an act, which conceals rather than exposes the antecedentia of the act. And as for the ego! It has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has totally ceased to think, to feel and to will!…

Again, we see a reference to the role of language (“play on words”), which supports previous remark about Nietzsche’s choice of expressions. The reason the “ego” has become “a fable, a fiction, a play of words” is because (as we have already discussed) it “is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think”” since thoughts just “come”.

What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all! The whole alleged empiricism which affirmed them has gone to the devil! That is what follows!− And we had to make a nice misuse of that

28 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

‘empiricism’, we had created the world on the basis of it as a world of causes, as a world of will, as world of spirit.

These fit nicely with what I call the “three stages of transference”: 1. Humanity (the

“world of will”): We (naively) observe our phenomenological processes in the act of willing, think we are causal agents, and think we are “catching causality in the act”.

2. The World (the “world of causes”): We project this idea to the world, and think that for every action there is a “will” behind it that serves as its cause. The nature of language influence and is influenced by both the first and the second stage.

3. God (the “world of spirit”): It sometime occurred to people that if cause and effect are part of the world, and if every event in this world can be explained by its antecedent cause, then the following dilemma emerges: Either the chain of causation is infinite or it stops somewhere, to something that is causa sui (self-caused). This is where methodological extrapolation was again used: God was the entity that was causa sui, and the world was the result of his “will”! Our genealogy comes to an end with the conclusion of this brilliant section where Nietzsche summarized the effects that the projection of the three “inner facts” produced

Man projected his three ‘inner facts’, that in which he believed more firmly than in anything else, will, spirit, ego, outside himself − he derived the concept ‘being’ only from the concept ‘ego’, he posited ‘things’ as possessing being according to his own image, according to his concept of the ego as cause. No wonder he later always discovered in things only that which he had put into them![111] − The thing itself, the belief in the ego as cause…And even your atom, messieurs mechanists and physicists, how much error, how much rudimentary psychology, still remains in your atom! − To say nothing of the ‘thing in itself’ that horrendum pudendum[112] of the metaphysicians! The error of spirit as cause mistaken for reality! And made the measure of reality! And called God[113]!−…114

111 Nietzsche clearly has a Neo-Kantian idea of reality. He believes we project the Kantian categories on reality, but he does not believe in an a priori faculty. He believes those categories should be fitted in a naturalistic evolutionary framework; evidence for this is strong in GS, section 111. He believes that the Kantian question “Are synthetic a priori truths possible?” should be replaced with “Why is belief in such truths necessary?” and his answer is contained in GS section 121 and BGE, part one, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers” section 4. There has been debate as to what exactly is the nature of this Neo-Kantian position, and whether it necessarily involves the falsification thesis, namely, that our human perspective necessarily falsifies the nature of reality; for this see M. Clark’s Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1990, chapters 3,4 and 5. 112 Ugly shameful part. 113 In another section in TI (‘Reason’ in Philosophy, section 5) Nietzsche writes “I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar…” thus emphasizing for yet another time the important role of language. 114 TI, “The Four Great Errors”, section 3.

29 Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

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H. Arendt, ‘Nietzsche’s Repudiation of the Will’, Nietzsche Critical Assessments, ed.

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1 This was published posthumously. 2 I don’t include a date of publication because Nietzsche never personally published that book. It contains sections from a variety of dates. Alexandros Pagidas An Attempt at a Genealogy of Cause and Effect

L. Campbell, The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, http://venus.va.com.au/suggestion/sapir.html accessed on the 1st of May 2003.

M. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

A. Danto, ‘Nietzsche’, A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed. D.J. O’Connor,

The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.

G. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, Columbia University Press, 1983.

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A. Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard University Press, 1985.

H. Vaihinger, ‘The Doctrine of Conscious Illusion’, Nietzsche Critical Assessments, ed. D. W. Conway, vol.2, Routledge, p.402-420, 1998.

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C.K. Ogden, Routledge,1922.

Additional Bibliography

O. Spengler, The Decline of the West (trans. C.F. Atkinson, Alfred Knopf Publishers

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G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Cambridge

University Press, 2nd Edition, 1983.