Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Philosophy: Ontology, Morality, and Epistemology
Theme 2: Critical to Philosophers
Nietzsche critiques the Western philosophical tradition in three areas:
Addresses: 1). Traditional metaphysics (ontological and epistemological) 2). Morality 3). Positive Sciences.
a) Multiplicity and Change: Critique of Traditional Ontology
Nietzsche confronts the Western philosophical tradition, accusing it of falsifying reality and misrepresenting the nature of being. Indeed:
* For Nietzsche, reality (being) is multiplicity, change, diversity, and movement – metaphorically, “life.” Traditional philosophy, by contrast, has advocated this contrast: the real world (world of being, unity, and permanence) versus the apparent world (false, illusory, or misleading, of becoming and multiplicity). (See paragraphs 1, 2, 3)
* According to Nietzsche, the “superior” is always a product of the “inferior” and should be explained by it. For example, we should explain the evolution of man from animals, not as a creation of God. Similarly, we must explain God as an invention of man, not as an eternal being. Traditional philosophy established a different contrast: top = anterior / bottom = posterior. Nietzsche argues that philosophers, confusing the former with the latter, have always explained values and supreme concepts as causes in themselves, not as derived from the things considered under those concepts and values. The prototype is the concept of God: Nietzsche says, “the latest, most thin and empty, since (by philosophers) as the first, as a cause in itself” (read paragraph 4).
Traditional metaphysics is based on two fundamental errors: 1) that things of supreme value must originate from something that cannot be derived from this earthly, ephemeral world – they come directly from another world, from God (a world invented by philosophers to justify their values). 2) Traditional ontology is static: Being = permanence, stability, uniqueness. Being is not seen as it truly is, in this world where everything is appearance and the senses are fallible. Thus, being has its own world: man knows only mere appearance. And since this world is unrealistic, we must find another to find the truth.
The separation between the real and the apparent is an evaluative opinion about life, a negative one, because we give more importance to the real world of ideas than to the unreal world of sensory experience. But in reality, there is no apparent and real world, only the constantly evolving, creating, and destroying world.
The real world is infinitely multiple, under constant change, and less dominated by fixed realities. It is a kind of abyss or chaos, causing dizziness and distress to man, who then, in horror and cowardice, seeks refuge in a comforting fiction – a world endowed with unity and permanence, where the higher has more force and power than the lower. This world does not exist, but it is presented and said to exist due to the philosopher’s ethical cowardice. The real world is, therefore, a moral-optical illusion. But the philosopher doesn’t just escape reality; through a typical psychological defense mechanism, fear turns to hatred, directed against life. Then, giving vent to resentment and desire for revenge, philosophers claim as true the classic philosophical formulas: real world = permanent, unified world / apparent world = multiple, changing world / top = anterior / posterior = inferior.
b) Decline, Pessimism, and Nihilism: Moral Criticism of the “Unnatural”
Ontology is directly linked to morality. Nietzsche connects the division between the real and apparent world (characteristic of Platonism) with the unnatural morality of Christianity, which sees the way of the world as the cause of man’s downfall.
Nietzsche critiques Platonism and Christianity’s idea of a moral world order that guides human history. He criticizes the significance of that order. Seeking something external to the world is to deny the world. God has been the major argument against life, the great life-denying force; “we deny God to redeem the world.”
Nihilism in Nietzsche must be understood in two distinct ways: 1. The nihilism of the philosophical tradition is critical and combative. Being passive and decadent, it leads only to nothing. 2. Nietzsche’s nihilism is positive and active. Here, denial serves a superior claim. Nietzsche rejects the values and ideals of the philosophical tradition (man, world, and God), reducing them to nothing, but he doesn’t stop there. He proposes new values and ideals that affirm life, multiplicity, and motion. What has died is the monotheistic idea of God, and any deification of Man or the State is just a thinly veiled new manifestation. The death of God doesn’t imply atheism, except superficially. “How else could there be other gods!” exclaims the will to power. These other gods are those worshipped by polytheism – many contradictory gods who widen man’s perspective.
According to Nietzsche, artists, with their fictions and lies, manage to be faithful to reality and express the truth better than philosophers, especially tragic artists. Tragic art, for Nietzsche, is the antithesis of the decadent attitude, whether pessimistic or nihilistic. Tragedy leads to a strong affirmation of reality because it teaches that one must always say “yes” to life, even when life is painful and terrible.
c) Reason, Philosophy, and Language: Critique of Traditional Epistemology
For Nietzsche, the Western philosophical tradition is decadent (pessimistic and nihilistic) because it is rational. Reason denies or kills life, artificially transforming multiplicity and change into unity and permanence. Life and reason are opposing terms: thus, all vitalism must be irrational, and all irrationalism, vitalism.
Traditional epistemology taught the superiority of reason over the senses. We have seen metaphysics explain the unity and permanence of being through reason. In ethics, we placed rational will above desires and passions, showing logic as the necessary laws of thought. Thus, we see how the tradition of relying on the concept of reason has developed in different domains of philosophy.