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).