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NIETZSCHE and NIHILISM Brian Gilbert a Thesis Submitted In NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM Brian Gilbert A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education Department of Theory and Policy Ontario hstitute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto O Copyright by Brian Gilbert (1999) National Library Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON KtA ON4 canada canada Your Me Votre reference Our Ne Notre ref6rence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, ban, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fïlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. NIETZSCHE AND NIHILISM Brian Howard Gilbert, Ed. D., 1999 Department of Theory and Policy Studies University of Toronto ABSTRACT The failure of Hegel's attempt at a 'grand' synthesis of Platonic and Christian thought has forced upon continental philosophy a radical rethinking and reevaluation of both metaphysics and theology -what Heidegger has called the onto-theological tradition. Nietzsche's reevaluation of that tradition results in the thesis of philosophic nihilism - that philosophy itself, since Parnienides' thesis of the identity of thought and 'Being', is cornplicitous in nurturing the modem sense of meaninglessness which Nietzsche calls European nihilism. If nihilism is viewed as being at the very centre of Nietzsche's thought, then very different conclusions may be drawn, than by those interpreters who take his 'doctrines' of the ubermensch, the etemal recurrence. and the will to power, tm literally as 'solutions' to the 'problem' of nihilism. The recognition of nihilism as the culmination of a long historical process which begins, philosophically, with 'morality' as the unexplored substratum of al1 claims to tmth, forbids further solutions in the form of 'overcoming' or 'progress' -the modemist strategy by which the past is hollowed out, denigrated, in the interest of a newer tmth. Instead Nietzsche responds to European nihilism with an exploration of the possibilities of history - foremost of which is the notion of eternal recurrence. Here the etemal recurrence is taken figuratively, a poetic device which points to a new definition of philosophy which "so far as it is science and not legislation, ... means only the broadest extension of the concept of history." TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCrION Nihilism as Nietzsche's Problematic ......................................................... iv - xv CHAPTER 1 Nietzsche and the Orthodox Tradition of Philosophy .................... .. .............. 1 CHAETER 2 Plato :The Allegory of the Cave : The Distinction Between Being and Becorning, hterpreting the Cave, The Philosophic Context of the Cave, Conclusions.......................... .. ...................................... 7 CHAiTER 3 Nietzsche's Anti-Platonism : Revisiting the Cave from the Perspective of History, Homer and Plato According to Arendt ...................... 30 CHAPTER 4 Descartes : Ni hilism as Absolute Transcendence : Descartes' Disengagad Reason and Mathematical Thought, Descrates' Originating Impulse and the Relationship to Scholasticism. Intuition and Deduction found Inadequate, The Descartes of the Meditations, Absolute Transcendence and the Abandonment of Finitude ............................... .... .................................. 43 CHAPTER 5 Nietzsche's hti-Cartesianism : Introduction, Nietzsche's Subversion of Categories, Nietzsche's Attack on Mechanism and Self ......................................................................................... 59 The Weight of the Past and the Ascetic Ideal .................................................. 67 From Active Nihilism to Accomplished Nihilism : Active and Passive Nihilism ............................................................................ 8 L Tragedy : The Birth of Tragedy, The Death of Tragedy, The Birth of Tragedy as Cosmology, Anti-Socratism and History, Socratism as Truthfulness ........................................................... 96 The Will to Truth and The Will to Power : The Will to Power and the Tragic, History, Science and the Will to Power, Conclusion .................................................. 113 CHAPTER 10 Surnmary and Conclusions............................................................................. 128 B IB WOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................. 13 5 iii Nietzsche's Problematic: Nihilism The history of philosophy is a secret raging against the preconditions of life, against the value feelings of Me, against partisanship in favour of life. Philosophers have never hesitated to aflirm a world provided it contradicted this world and furnished them with a pretext for speaking il1 of this world. It has ken hitherto the grand school of slander. (WP 46 1) This essay is a discussion of the issue of nihilism as it is viewed by Nietzsche. The bais of this discussion is the idea that Nietzsche's stniggle wilh nihilism is at the centre of his thought. My thesis is first, that Nietzsche refuses the evasion of subjectivity that, 1 think, is at the heart of rnetaphysical thought. Secondly, the reintroduction of subjectivity, or 'illusion' into philosophy requires a radicai revision of the notion of reason and philosophy. And finally, nihilism cm only be 'overcorne' and transformed by lirst recognizing its deep roots in the history of philosophy. Such transformation is for Nietzsche the philosophic and educational task of modernity. By subjectivity 1 mean that al1 action and thought must be based on only partid knowledge and therefore on a certain degree of error. To this extent all action is 'tragic' in the broadest sense or the word and Nietzsche claims to be the first uagic philosopher (EH 8). But Nietzsche ultimately goes beyond or wishes to go beyond the notion that error or illusions are acceptable, at least philosophicdly. The acceptance or illusion, or what is somclimes called Jesuitisrn, is what Nietzsche does NOT accept; neither does he accept the noble lie of Plato which is an aspect of this Jesuitism. The philosophic search is infinite (JW 124). Nietzsche's answer to a tragic insight is "nolhing other than a histoncal consciousness which prepares his long encounter with the persistence of the past in archaic history, a prsistence he atternpts to re-evaluate and surpass by translating the Dionysian excess of space and time into the eternal recurrence, a time in excess of history's self figuration (Ghisalberti, 1996). In other words, Nietzsche transfomis philosophy into an historical analysis which he calls genealogy through which 'illusions' are understood 'scientifically' as necessary to particular context specific 'world disclosures.' The metaphysical tradition resulted in nihilism because neither subjectivity, nor illusion, and therefore the partiality of knowledge was honoured. hstead the infinite search for tmth which has always really guided both philosophy and science has ken hidden, buried, for two rasons. First the very hypothetical nature of Greek philosophy had ben hidden by the notion that certain, absolute, truths were possible in the form of, for exarnple, Platonic Ideas. Second Plato's noble lie, the necessity of the ordering of society and the sou1 according to the epistemology of Forms, had hidden over the notion of the infinity of Eros, which always refuses denotation, always evades language itself. [n short classicai metaphysics had atternpted to represent philosophy as the attainment of finite tmths. Nietzsche refuses the finite of classical metaphysics and the mimetic repetition of the past by custom and tradition which accompanies this 'finite'. Philosophy's task is precisely to prevent the repetitions of time and history by a fonn of "indemonstrable philosophizing", a philosophy no longer motivated by certainty but by the will to power, to expansion which "gravitates towards a condition of irnmeasurability - wills its own expansion, desires to be more than it is at any given time - the will to power becomes the motivating principle of an ecstatic ontology - even though the fini te con tinuosly restrains this movement" (Ghisalberti, 1996): Measure is alien to us, let us admit it to ourselves; what we itch for is the infinite, the unmeasured. Like a rider on a charging steed we let fall the reins before the infinite, we modem men, like semi-barbarians -and attain our state of bliss when we are rnost -in danger! If Nietzsche here expresses a certain ambivalence towards the in rinite it is because "without any limitation there is no knowing' (PTAG 37). It is for this reason that Nietzsche cannot merely 'overcome' the Greeks, cannot forego Apollo and metaphysics in particular, but must engage in a critique of metaphysics which is more than 'deconstructive',
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