CONCLUSION. The significance of Nietzsche's philosophy lies in its. exploration of how the world would look if one

Transcription

1 ~HAPTER V CONCLUSION The significance of Nietzsche's philosophy lies in its exploration of how the world would look if one eradicate the metaphysical heritage co.pletely. Nietzsche. identifies 04~ metaphysics, religion and morality as decadent forms of humanity and so far the world is 'interpreted' in terms of these forms. In their interpretation, this world is worth nothing and tilere must be another better world or a Ibeyond~ In such a way this world and this life is at bottom negated. Nietzsche's struggle against nihilism and the spirit of revenge therefore mean the reversal of metaphysics, the transformation of human sciences and the end of history as 'history of man'. Nietzsche wanted to make will to power as the ground of all future evaluations and interpretations of the world in which art stands as the central counter force against all 'will to negation' of life. Against the nihilistic philosopher of morality Nietzsche deploys the philosopher who goes counter, the artist philosopher who gives form and life to the earthly existence. For a long time man has only been able to think in terms of metaphysics and morality which are the expressions of the triad-resentment, bad conscience and ascetic ideal. The prevalent interpretation of the world today is 190

2 scientific interpretation. Nietzsche analyses the modern world as entangled in the net of scientific culture. Our modern civilization itself is built upon the foundations of soientific logic. It proposes as its ideal the theoretical man equipped with the greatest forces of knowledge and laboring in the service of science. Nietzsche saw this feature of the present age as the result of the socratic theoretical optimism which is bent on the destruction of myth and other forms of interpretations. In Socrates Nietzsche saw the first shift towards the theoretical. Theoretical man trained in abstract concepts of truth, abstract morality and abstract law stands dissatisfied in himself. Moreover, he saw, every other form of existence (interpretation) has to struggle for survival beside it, as something tolerated. It was Nietzsche's intention to show that our science is never purely objective, not it merely functions as an instrument' or utilitarian model of explanation. His philosophy teaches science that it is afterall an element of language, that the limits of its formalisations reveal it belonging to a language in which it continues to operate despite its attempts to justify itself as an exclusively objective discipline. 191

3 Deconstruction is aimed at to deny the claim of science to universal validity and universal aims which pretends to be able to fathom the innermost essense of things with the aid of causality. He wanted to show the limits of the theoretical optimism because it believes that it can correct the world by knowledge, guide life purely by science and oonfine the individual within a limited sphere of solvable problems. Nietzsche believed 'only after the spirit of SC1ence has been pursued to its limits and its claims to universal validity destroyed (deconstruction), a hope can be restored for the rebirth of the lost aesthetic spirit. Nietzsche's deco11structive strategies work in the moral realm to discern the life promoting and life negating forces in the existing system of values. Nietzsche's genealogical investigation into the roots (origin) of values reveal that 'all the forces and drives by virtue of which life and growth exist lie under the ban of morality'. Nietzsche viewed, morality as an instinct to deny life; morality wants to level life and make men more and more similar without any great love for earthly life. That made him to say: 'one must destroy morality if one is to liberate life'. Nietzsche sees morality as the result of persuasion of highest truths in the realm of metaphysics. The ideals man 192

4 pursued hitllerto draws their final consequence i.e. nihilism. According to Nietzsche nihilism represents the tiltimate logical conclusion of our values and ideals. If man is a natural species on earth like other creatures, love and hatred, gratitude and revenge, good nature anq anger all belong together. implies acceptance of the other only. Denial of either one, Nietzsche found, evil too being part of 'nature' if attempted to eradicate, like the castration of an organ harmful to the species. Without 'affirming' both good and evil one is unable to understand how to be good. The antithesis of good and evil is conditional on the existence of both. Morality wanted what is not good to vanish. Nietzsche's analysis shows that much labor has been expended in man's recent history, especially in the Christian Ages to reduce mankind to this half sided efficiency, to the 'good'. Nietzsche's interpretive strategy after being shown that good and evil are relative terms, says, the essential demand of morality was that mankind should do nothing outside the accepted norms. This mode of thought with which a definite type of man is bred promotes nihilistic values and denies life. By this, the civilization bred the most repellent, weak and sickly species. 193

5 The development of the unnaturalness that rejects the doubleness of good and evil and invention of the good man as its aim is viewed by Nietzsche as an ideological question. The invention of the meaning of good and evil is viewed by Nietzsche as the part of a game to overpower the history by the weak and reactive forces. Nietzsche's psychogenealogi~al analysis wanted to show that their objective is formation of a man (subject) with certain fixed characteristic traits and thus making use of him for the future, ie. a free and autonomous individual. Sqch training and selection brings its fruit. as the autonomous moral man, the finished product of species' activity. Through this type of man, nihilistic forces gain dominance and starts to function in society. Nietzsche criticizes the philosophers for seeing the mean1ng of history in such a domesticated, mediocre and degenerated being who is the modern European today. In Nietzsche's view values of morality and truth' was created by the weak man because he longs for a condition in which he no longer suffers, appears valid because the aim of these discourses are to provide security, green pastures, lack of danger, comfort and easier life for the sufferers. And for a consolation for the errors and changes in life as well as for the satisfaction in seeing others also 1n the same situation like him. 194

6 By deconstructing morality Nietzsche was trying to challenge the theoretical optimism of the modern culture does not go beyond the means of consolation. Theoretical optimism of morality thinks nature exists on a h4man Scale. All evaluations of ethics were made from the human angle. Human being put their values on every p~enomena and made it as the standard of measurement of life and the world. Nietzsche seeks to free thought from this sort of 'anthropomorphism', Man by positing himself as an autonomous 'moral subject' cuts his roots from nature and posits his place in the divine order, in the beyond. It is in such a situation that Nietzsche's deconstruction takes up the task of "dehumanization of nature followed by the naturalization of man". Nietzsche's supreme concern was how man is able to arrest degeneration of life and overcome nihilism. Unlike the arguments of other interpretors that Nietzsche's philosophy was a romantic rebellion towards modernity, we percetve, Nietzsche had a distinct project for the future. That is transformation of the present form of interpretation of existence based on anthropocentric interests into another mode of existence. Transfiguration means thinking in terms 195

7 of universality and categoriality should give way for a way of thinking in which man as such no longer pervades thought and writing. This is intended to overcome thinking in terms of anthropologization of the new our the human sciences, under its categories modern man carries his thought process. Man is no more taken as an object of knowledge and a subject who knows and reflects. Nietzsche give so suoh importance to art because art realizes the whole of this project. Logically centered thinking turns 'will' i~to something bad, and this sort of thinking argues that 'will' must be re$trained, corrected an~ even denied. Whereas Nietzsche's new way of thinking ~hich is aesthetic introduces an affir~ative thought, a thought which affirms life and 'will to life'. In the aesthetic writing, style of intellect gives way to the style of will. Artistic imagination works as a substitute to the theoretical interpretation of the world. Enhancement of the species man and illumination of his will to power is the aim of Nietzsche. Enhancement does not lie mainly in physical strength or intellectual capacities or barbarian qualities, but the strength of the soul, to become whole human beings by accepting the natural qualities denied by rationalization. 196

8 Nietzsche's project of transformation include transformation of human sciences, transformation of philosophy from a rational discipline of changeless into a distinctive practice of language. If the very ideals nature of t~uth is metaphorical, philosophy as a rational mode of knowle~ge has to give way to philosophy as a practice of language. The philosopher of the future, Nietzsche says 'Beyond Good and Evil', is the philosopher enmeshed in language and there would not be any corresponding ideas in the real world for him to be represented in his Rather he will use the libidinal language which is more close to art and literature. Our language. rational knowledge of the world is limited to our The world we inhabit through language is already replete with metaphysical and moral meanings. This we inherit from the entire past thinking of mankind which is dominated by a logocentric drive. When philosophy poses the question of language, the dispersion of the supposed unity of human sciences is heralded. Fundamental arrangement of thought in traditional philosophy as well as in various human sciences is governed and controlled by anthropocentric interests. Even the sciences which appear apparently neutral like physics, biology and social sciences are also intended to serve the selfish purpose of man and in them knowledge about the 197

9 phenomena and other organisms described through the human angle. In them thought is always governed by the idea that it is man who is thinking. categories of logic provide the basic foundations necessary for the formulation of human sciences, and ethics provide a general idea of human behaviour conducive for its operation and its practice. Human sciences operate from a general concept of man provided by ethics, isolating certain qualities which are specific, irreducible and uniformly given to experience. Onto-theological tradition (metaphysics and ethics) of western thinking gave a supreme position for human species (man is a rational animal- Aristotle; man is a spiritual animal- Kant etc.) giving legitimacy for manipulation on nature and other species. Various theories are attempts to standardise our mode of life by constructing supposedly objective definitions of man and reality. For the purpose of man to remain distinct from nature and from other animals some form of breeding was needed. Resultantly suppressing his animal qualitie~ and natural drives. The spirit of Nietzsclle's project of deconstruction is seen in his statement "to give man back the courage to his natural drives", so that their self underestimation can be checked. Acceptance of a supposedly objective science and exploitative technology are viewed as the natural culmination of western metaphysics since Plato; the result 198

10 of persuaslon of highest ideals above life forgetting man's existence as a part of nature. science and technology and the production of autonomous subjectivity in ethics initially intended to overcome the threat of external nature, led finally to imprison life in an objectivity of the same order. The result of seeing the world merely as an object to overcome in the name of preservation and comfort, has led to potential disaster. The ecological crisis may be seen as the best example of this issue. The material prosperity achieved by technological growth in European modernity produced much despair and absurdity as we see it in contemporary El1ropean societies. Nietzsche.'s project to overcome nihilism entails overcoming of these forms rooted in metaphysics. It simultaneously is a call for saving the earth by transfiguring life to aesthetically rooted subjectivities. His philosophy of overcoming is achieved in a philosophy of language. His deconstructive reading is aimed to take a 'step-back' from the onto-theological framework of metaphysics which reduced reality to objectified entities. As Heidegger said, the modern period is increasingly dominated by technology and rational use of language requires a caring for the 'word' and a language that speaks life. Moreover art keeps a space for the expression of the natural desires of men in modernity which has forgotten the representative thought. 199

11 When a philosopher enters into t.he play of language he suspends the common view of language as a utilitarian vehicle of information. In Western philosophical tradition, language functioned as a vehicle of thought reducing it just to a means. By standing above it the aesthetic thinker far from escaping into a platonic heaven of timeless essences uses language in a novel way. Post -socratic metaphysics reduced language to logic and made of thinking, a matter of correct judgment in terms of categories of technical thinking. Nietzsche wanted to restore to language that poetic status it once enjoyed in the myths and tragedies of the Greeks (which is his enquiry in 'The Birth of Tragedy'). Traditional philosophers used language to formal and abstract expressions. Language thus becomes for many philosophers a means for 'representation' and classification of the world. By deoonstructing the purely utilitarian or technical function of language, Nietasche makes "play' as the root of genuine philosophising. Nietzsche's new philosophising is directed against truth, and opposes philosophy as knowledge. It constructs a counter philosophy, a transformation of philosophy into a tot~lly different form of expression. It rejects the suprahistorical perspective of the metaphysics and its concept of eternal truth. The purpose of writing philosophy is carnivalization of life as he does in his book Thus Spoke Zaratbustra. 200

12 Nietzsche turns philosophy into an art. A distinctive manner of language that interconnects thought with literary writings. To affirm multiplicity and becoming which the other systems reduced to homogenity, philosophy has to transform into artistic expression. Because art can replace the philosophical quest for adopting a particular worldview. The conceptlessness of artistic expression reveal how a 'writing' is distinct from philoso~hical expositions, and is not reducible to concepts. Sensing truth is metaphorical, Nietzsche grounds his thought on it, and these metaphorical elements undermine the discursive nature of thought. While philosophy transmutes to aesthetic practice Nietzsche see only three functions for philosophy. They are laughter, play and dance. Zarathustra's laughter transforms the suffering in life into joy. Dance and play affirms becoming and chance. Against the nihilistic 'no' saying at life, saying 'yes' and 'Amen' at existence is achieved in such a project. In such a state, Nietzsche hopes, human thought will not contain the heaviness of scientific seriousness which always wants to direct its enquiry for future purposes. That way it forgets the innocence of the present. Nietzsche's teaching 'eternal return' believes the innocence of the present which do not take history in a human scale, to be a linear progress producing higher forms. 201

13 Modern notion of 'man' is a r.onditioned product of specific systems of knowledge. Man is viewed as a category created by these theories. Human 'subject' as an autonomous substance or as an independent consciousness is an ideological product of 'power relations'. Morality provides a picture of man in whom multiplicity of characteristic traits are reduced to notions of 'duty' and 'goodness'. Nietzsche reminds us that a single individual contains within him a vast varieties of drives. Nietzsche views, the moral interpretation of man and the world as an attempt to place man above the world to manipulate upon it and manage life in certain ways. That way man is able to preserve himself against nature and other organisms. So far we employed morality for preservation. For Nietzsche the need of 'the hour, however, is not preservation, but overcoming these constraints. Nietzsche's new philosophy based on will seeks the goal that stqnds above 'the human all too human' interests. Consequently, Nietzsche's enquiry is not who 1S man, but who overcomes man. Zarathustra's teaching, how shall man be overcome is opposed to preservation of the 'human subject' which is the product of theoretical thinking. NietzschB's project for the future the 'overman' (ubermench) is the man who stands uninfluenced by the discourses of metaphysical -moral heritage or who overcomes it. He would affirm the earthly life by accepting 202

14 the multiplicity of natural instincts which will once aga1n link him with the animal kingdom. Art provides man a space for the expression of his. natural desires. Human consc1ousness 1S not a transcendental entity and it is intertwined with the collective consciousness of the other species. It was this consciousness that was cut by the rationalizing thought of metaphysics and human sciences. When philosophy and human sciences transform into aesthetic practice human language will speak about all living and non living phenomena. It is not: for serving the utilita~ian function of managing them as it was done in human sciences, but for relinking human consciousness with the rest of the world. This function is already accomplished by the literary and artistic writings. 'Eyes of the tiger in the jungle' portrayed by William Blake and the delightful play of the Animal Kingdom depicted by Pablo Neruda in his poem Some Beasts are examples of the human urge to participate in the play of the world which include organic and inorganic phenomena. However in the recent history of man literary/poetic writings were subordinated to philosophical discourses. Philosophy being taken to be the body of "correctly representable truths' always had a special claim for truth and privilege. Nietzsche's deconstruction besides disproving its universality wanted to transform our anthropocentric sciences to aestheticizing thought. 203

15 To sum up, Nietzsche's aim was two fold: transformation of human Sciences to artistic writings and transfiguration of man to overman, the 'aesthetic being'. Nietzsche's subversion of philosophical writings with a multiplicity of stylistic practices can be seen as a first step towards that end. 204