Nietzsche’s Critique of Western Philosophy
Hatred of the Notion of Becoming
In this passage, Nietzsche discusses one of the characteristic features of Western philosophy: “His hatred of the notion of becoming,” with the exception of Heraclitus. Heraclitus, a philosopher of becoming, stated that everything flows and nothing remains, and that reality is subject to constant transformation. This rejection of the notion of evolution is evident in the Eleatics. It must be remembered that, for Parmenides, the Self was immutable and eternal, and the future was the result of the deception of the senses.
It can also be seen in Plato, who defended an ontological dualism, a doubling of the world, saying that the truly real, the real world of Ideas, was that of uncreated realities, not subject to evolution. For Plato, becoming only affects the apparent world, the world of things that we perceive through our senses, but is not really real since it is an imperfect copy of the Ideas. For Nietzsche, this rejection of evolution is caused by the inability to accept the testimony of the senses and reality as chaos, as something born and permanently destroyed, as a constant evolution. It is a decadent attitude. Metaphysics has been a process of rationalization of being.
Neglect of the Senses and Overestimation of Reason
In this passage, Nietzsche also points out other aspects that have characterized Western philosophy: the neglect of the testimony of the senses and the overestimation of the power of reason. This can be seen in Plato and Parmenides, for whom sensitive knowledge is only opinion and does not allow us to grasp the true reality but only appearances, while rational knowledge is considered as a science and leads us to grasp the true nature of things.
This priority of reason against the senses is also found in modern rationalists, who believed that reason was the source of knowledge while the senses are considered a source of error. We can also find it in Kant, although, taking into account the senses, he gives greater importance to the a priori evidence that reason provides.
Confusion of the Latter with the Former
Nietzsche points out another aspect that has characterized Western philosophy: the confusion of the latter with the former. The highest concepts of metaphysics—the good in itself, truth itself, God as causa sui—are conceived and presented as more ontological, as the first, when in fact they are the furthest from reality, the last. The most extreme case is the concept of God, which has been considered the cause of himself and of other things, the creator of the universe, as being very real when it really is an empty concept, as far away from reality.
Critique of Language
Nietzsche made a critique of philosophy through the critical language. Man thinks he has knowledge of the world in words, concepts. Any vision of the world is masked by a given grammar. Through language, fiction becomes real. “‘Reason’ in language: Oh, what a deceptive female!”
Let’s take an example: the concept of “tree.” With it, we refer to an elm tree, a cork oak, and a pine tree, which leads us to believe in the existence of the universal essence of “tree,” to believe that there is in reality the essence when it is not real. “This happens as with the movements of a large constellation: in the latter, the error is permanent counsel to our eye, where our language.” Metaphysical entities have suffered excessive condensation, filled in both these concepts conceived as real entities when there is no guarantee of their existence.
The Seduction of Words
For Nietzsche, it is essential to free ourselves from the seduction of words; it is necessary to beware of language. Language makes true metaphysical fictions. Under the terms universal, timeless, and undeniable are hidden instincts. All the concepts of metaphysics are mere fictions that are treated as true realities. The “I,” the “thing itself,” “substance,” and “God” are empty fictions.
The “I” as a Fiction
Take the concept of “self.” Descartes established the fact that “I think” is a substance, a being. He believes in the “I,” believes that the self is a being, that the self is a substance. Although I feel as changing and flowing, we need to live till the memory of facts and past experiences and allocate them to a unique self and identity, to a permanent self. As with the concept “being.”
The Immutability of Being
Language makes us see it as something permanent, immutable, and that is how the Eleatics understood it. Remember that Parmenides affirmed the immutability of being, but even his opponents, the atomists, succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being. Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom, also argued for its immutability, even when the senses show the permanent becoming of things.
Conceptual Mummies
Metaphysical concepts, therefore, are merely “conceptual mummies” to which it is necessary to strike with the “philosophy of the hammer” and see that they ring hollow.