File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 138


Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 12:12:24 -0700
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: eliminating recuperation: ethical stoicism -Reply


Nathan,

Thanks for the pointer to Hegel, another alley-way to go wandering
down.  Actually, reading Nietzsche is often like listening to one side
of a telephone conversation--with Hegel on the other side of the line!
A _responsa_, in other words.  (Perhaps why you seldom hear Nietzsche
mention Hegel's name--because they are on such _familiar_ terms.)
"Force" is, of course, a very, very questionable concept from
Nietzsche's point of view (although, at the same time, not one we can
simply do away with, either).  For one thing, it cannot be effectively
separated from the whole notion of cause and effect, being that which
both composes and links the two.  It is exactly this whole "relation"
and "link" which Nietzsche calls into question (by excerpting the
word, marking it off as a "quotation").  Of interest here is Section
21 of BGE, from which I will only excerpt a short section (although
the whole bears reading):

     "...one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure
     concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the
     purpose of designation and communication--_not_ for
     explanation.  In the "in itself" there is nothing of "causal
     connections," of "necessity," or of "pschological non-
     freedom"; there the effect does _not_ follow the cause,
     there is no rule of "law."  It is _we_ alone who have
     devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity,
     constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and
     when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if
     it existed "in itself," we act once more as we have always
     acted--_mythologically_.

I can't help but feel that a good part of the discussion, and
"argument," we have been having is over locating Will to Power as some
kind of _causa sui_ or not, relative to which the start of the same
section quoted above is instructive as to Nietzsche's view:

     "The _causa sui_ is the best self-contradiction that has
     been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion
     of logic..."

Of course, if it is _not_ a "first cause," then that opens up the
whole can of worms...

Anyway, I can't say that my ideas are completely formed here--in fact,
I think I may now know _less_ what Will to Power might be than I may
have presumed previously (or even whether Nietzsche means it as
"being" anything at all, rather than simply as a designator and
pointer to a _problem_).  The difficulty is, of course, the act of
ascription, itself, that it "is _we_ alone who have devised..." (note
that it is not simply "I" who has devised here, but _we_)--what makes
Nietzsche difficult is that he does take this into account, and, yet,
that very act, which is a creative act, is, in Nietzsche's view, a
_problem_, itself (if not _the_ problem, shall we say).

The "genetic" and the "differential" seem difficult to separate
entirely in that I'm not sure we can ever say we are dealing with
simply _a_ force, per se, but always a collection and amalgamation of
forces, if you will (that is, force is nothing singular, except to the
degree that we encapsulate it conceptually, in other words, a
convention which allows us to conceptualize about things, shall we
say, but not something which can preserve its "monism" once we turn=7F
our "spectacles" onto it).  In this sense, the "genetic" would simply
be the "differential" in another guise.  The whole concept of
"difference" is, perhaps, to the point, in that the [perceptual?] act,
itself, is a "differentiation" (although "reason" is a looking _for_
causes).  The bracketing of my doubt above represents kind of a
doorway to go through--are our most basic differentiations formed
perceptually, and is conception (what Nietzsche refers to in another
place as "the equating of the inequatable") a kind of equalization in
the name of the genetic?  (Which brings into relief what Nietzsche has
to say about "equality" in all manner of contexts.)  Anyway, I'm not
sure whether I'm swimming or drowning.

Steve

===============================================================================
            Steven E. Callihan -- callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com
 
            "Most of the expressions we use are metaphorical:
             they contain the philosophy of our ancestors..."

               --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, _Aphorisms_,
                    "Notebook D 1773-1775," No. 87
===============================================================================



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