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 Peter Bornedal
The Surface and the Abyss
 Monographien und Texte
zur Nietzsche-Forschung
Begründet von

Mazzino Montinari · Wolfgang Müller-Lauter

Heinz Wenzel

Herausgegeben von

Günter Abel (Berlin)

Josef Simon (Bonn) · Werner Stegmaier (Greifswald)

Band 57

De Gruyter
The Surface and the Abyss
Nietzsche as Philosopher
of Mind and Knowledge

by

Peter Bornedal

De Gruyter
 Anschriften der Herausgeber:
Prof. Dr. Günter Abel
Institut für Philosophie
TU Berlin, Sekr. TEL 12/1
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, D-10587 Berlin
Prof. Dr. Josef Simon
Philosophisches Seminar A der Universität Bonn
Am Hof 1, D-53113 Bonn
Prof. Dr. Werner Stegmaier
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität
Institut für Philosophie
Baderstr. 6−7, D-17487 Greifswald

ISBN 978-3-11-022341-5
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022342-2
ISSN 1862-1260

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bornedal, Peter.
The surface and the abyss : Nietzsche as philosopher of mind and
knowledge / by Peter Bornedal.
p. cm. − (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung, ISSN
1862-1260 ; Bd. 57)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-11-022341-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844−1900. I. Title.
B3317.B6554 2010
193−dc22
2009036202

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet
über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

쑔 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York

Einbandentwurf: Christopher Schneider, Laufen
Druck und buchbinderische Verarbeitung: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
⬁ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier
Printed in Germany
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Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Polemical Context ..................................................................... 1

2. Nietzsche’s Theoretical Consistency ................................................ 4
3. On the Difference between Deconstructive
and Reconstructive Thinking ............................................................ 6
4. Nietzsche and the Intentional Object ............................................... 9
5. Chapter-Descriptions ........................................................................ 11
5.1. Chapter 1: The Concepts of Truth and Metaphor ................................ 11
5.2. Chapter 2: The Ontology and Epistemology ....................................... 15
5.3. Chapter 3: The Concept of the Split Subject ....................................... 17
5.4. Chapter 4: The Concept of the Fragmented Subject ............................ 20
5.5. Chapter 5: A Theory of the Ideological Subject and the Ideologue ..... 23
5.6. Chapter 6: Affirmation of the Hyper-Surface of the Present as an
Intrinsic Psychological Possibility ...................................................... 25

Chapter 1
The Narcissism of Human Knowledge. Truth – Metaphor – Concept:
An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s “Über Wahrheit und Lüge” in the
Context of 19th Century Kantianism ..................................................... 29
0. Introduction ...................................................................................... 30
1. A Human Being with no Natural Disposition for
Producing Knowledge ...................................................................... 36
2. A Polysemous Notion of ‘Truth’ ...................................................... 39
2.1. The Fundamental Opposition: Things-in-themselves versus
Appearances ........................................................................................ 39
2.2. From Truthfulness to Truth: On the Evolution of a ‘Truth-Drive’ ....... 50
3. The Production of Metaphor: Nerve-Stimulus – Image –
Word ................................................................................................. 55
3.1. Contemporary Context and Background ............................................. 55
3.2. The Logic of Metaphor as ‘Replacement’ and ‘Arbitrariness’ ............ 58
3.3. A Distinction between ‘Living Metaphor’ and ‘Dead Metaphor’........ 63
3.4. Metonymy and Surface-World ............................................................ 71
4. The Theory of the Concept ............................................................... 73
4.1. Concept-Formation Distinguishing Human from Animal ................... 73
4.2. The Surface-World and the Tautological Structure of the Concept ..... 78
9,7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV

4.3. Failed Attempts to Uphold a Rigorous Distinction between
‘Word’ and ‘Concept’ ......................................................................... 79
4.4. The Logic of the Concept and Interpretability..................................... 84
4.5. An Interlude on Stanley Fish’s Notion of Interpretability ................... 88
5. Contingency and Narcissism of Human Knowledge ........................ 92
5.1. Recapitulating Nietzsche’s Polysemous Notion of Truth .................... 92
5.2. Connecting ‘Truth as Illusion’ and the ‘Logic of the Concept’ ........... 94
5.3. A Clever, All-Too-Clever Animal ........................................................ 95

Chapter 2
A Silent World: Nietzsche’s Radical Realism: World, Sensation,
Language ................................................................................................... 97

1. Introductions to and Descriptions of the Position ............................. 98

1.1. Nietzsche’s Rejection of Idealism and Abstract Truth-Claims ............ 98
1.2. Juxtaposition to an Analytic Philosophical Approach ......................... 104
1.3. An Outline of the Position ................................................................... 110
2. Substantiation and Elaboration of the Position ................................. 117
2.1. Ur-Ground and Sensation .................................................................... 117
2.1. Human Ground and Sensation ............................................................. 128
2.3. Sensation and Word ............................................................................. 134
3. Two Brief Control-Readings to Put the Position to Test............................. 145
3.1. Explaining Nietzsche’s ‘Negative Ontologie des Dinges’ ................... 145
3.2. How Come that ‘Lightning Flashes’ only in Language? ..................... 148

Chapter 3
Splitting the Subject: Nietzsche’s Rethinking of the Cartesian and
Kantian ‘I Think’ ............................................................................... 153

0. Introduction ...................................................................................... 154

1. A Preliminary Determination of the Problem of the
‘I Think’ in Nietzsche ....................................................................... 158
1.1. The Problem of ‘thinking’ in ‘I think’ ....................................... 158
1.2. The Problem of ‘I’ in ‘I think’ ................................................... 160
7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV9,,

Part I: Thinking the ‘I’ in Descartes, Kant, and Benveniste

2. Descartes and Nietzsche; Nietzsche’s Criticism of the

Cartesian ‘I Think’ ............................................................................ 164
2.1. The Desire for Immediate Certainty .......................................... 164
2.2. The Reality of Immediate Uncertainty ...................................... 166
2.3. Descartes’ Confusion of Linguistic and Cognitive ‘I’ ............... 171
3. Kant and Nietzsche: Deconstructing the Cartesian Cogito ............... 174
3.1. Preliminary; the Multiple-Self Subject in David Hume ............ 174
3.2. The Paragoristic Confusion of Logical and Empirical
Subject in Kant .......................................................................... 176
3.3. A Glassy ‘Rational Subject’....................................................... 184
4. The Linguistically Constituted ‘I’ in Benveniste .............................. 187

Part II: Nietzsche’s Theories of the Split Subject

5. Nietzsche’s “General Theory” of the Split Subject........................... 193

5.1. Spir and Nietzsche’s Interpretations of the
Kantian Double-Determination of the Subject .......................... 193
5.2. The Fictions of ’I’ and ‘Will’ versus the Reality of
‘Thinking’ and ‘Wills’ ............................................................... 200
5.2.1. Chaos and Becoming in the Empirical Subject ................. 200
5.2.2. On Willing: A Reading of JGB 19 ..................................... 204
6. Nietzsche’s “Special Theory” of the Split Subject ........................... 213
6.1. Nietzsche’s ‘Dividuum’ as Foundation for the Moral Subject .. 213
6.2. The Unique Formula for the Commanding Voice ...................... 217
6.3. The ‘Perverse’ Soliloquy of the Moral Judgment ...................... 219
6.4. Formal Consciousness and Spatialization of Self ...................... 220
6.5. The Metaphor of the Ear:
To Hear the Differences in the Same .......................................... 224
7. From a Theory of the Split Subject to a Theory of Ideology ............ 226
7.1. Why Re-Introducing Nietzsche’s Notion of a Split Subject? .... 226
7.2. A Theory of Ideology................................................................. 228

Chapter 4
Theory of Knowledge as ‘Neuro-Epistemology’: Toward a
Biological-Linguistic Subject in Nietzsche and Contemporaries ...... 231

0. Introduction ...................................................................................... 232

9,,,7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV

Part I: Nietzsche’s Contemporaries on Sensation, Cognition, and
Language

1. Schopenhauer, Helmholtz, and Lange on the Retinal Image ............ 241

2. Gustav Fechner’s Analysis of Sensations ......................................... 246
2.1. On the Threshold for Subjective Sensations .............................. 246
2.2. The Psychophysical Energy-Subject.......................................... 249
3. Freud’s Analysis of Sensation, Memory, & Consciousness .............. 253
3.1. A Neurological Distinction between
Stimulus& Sensation, phi & psi ................................................. 253
3.2. A Neurological Explanation of the Sense of Reality ................. 259
3.3. Ego-Clusters and Will-to-Power-Formations............................. 264
3.4. The Psychological Origin of Entity and Identity ....................... 271
3.5. Toward a Theory of Language:
Three Variations over a Theme .................................................. 274
3.5.1. Word- and Thing-Presentation ........................................... 274
3.5.2. The Replacement of Thing with Word............................... 277
3.5.3. From Ego-Cluster to Semantic Ego-Cluster ...................... 280

Part II: Toward a ‘Biological-Linguistic’ Nietzschean subject

4. Fundamentals in the Constitution of a Biological-Linguistic

Subject .............................................................................................. 282
4.1. On the Constitution of the Experience of Identity ..................... 282
4.2. On the Constitution of the Sense and the
Evaluation of Reality ................................................................. 288
4.3. On the Constitution of the Experience of Causality .................. 292
4.3.1. Causality as Humanization ................................................ 292
4.3.2. Causality and Time-Reversal ............................................. 300
4.4. On Nature & Constitution of Language:
Proposition, Word, Meaning ...................................................... 303
4.4.1. The Judgment and the Categories ...................................... 303
4.4.2. The Emotional Word.......................................................... 314
4.4.3. The Fluidity of Meaning .................................................... 321

Part III: Reconciling Positions and Drawing up Implications

5. The ‘Confused-Aggressive’ Subject as the Condition of

Possibility for Ideology .................................................................... 325
5.0. Introduction ............................................................................... 325
5.1. Ego-Clusters as Competing Power-Configurations ................... 325
5.2. The Master-Analogy:
7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV,;

Inner-Mental Life as a Game of Chess ...................................... 328
5.3. On Intrinsic Irrationality ............................................................ 330
5.4. On ‘Irrationality’ as Frenetic Defense of ‘Truth’ ...................... 332
5.5. On Ideology as Imaginary Repair of the Subjective
Sense of Loss ............................................................................. 336
5.6. Two Brief Applications .............................................................. 339
6. In Defense of a Cognitively Modified Nietzschean Realism ............ 342
6.1. On the Reception of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Mind as
Idealism ..................................................................................... 342
6.2. The Mind Creates Perception, not Matter .................................. 345
6.3. Nietzsche’s Master-Axiom: the World as
Language-Independent .............................................................. 348
6.4. Reconciling Realism and Cognitive Theory .............................. 351
6.5 The Dubious Evolutionary Value of ‘Explanations’ ................... 353

Chapter 5
The Meaning of Master, Slave, and Priest: From
Mental Configurations to Social Typologies ..................................... 358

0. Introduction: Servile and Assertive Configuration ........................... 358

Part I: The Incredible Profundity of the Truly Superficial

1. Superficial and Profound Subjectivity .............................................. 361

1.1. Defending Superficiality ............................................................ 361
1.2. The Magnificent Shallowness of Woman .................................. 365
2. Two Economies: Hyper-Cathected and De-Cathected Self .............. 371
3. The Dialectics Between Forgetfulness and Memory ........................ 380
3.1. Necessary Forgetfulness; Impeding Memory ............................ 380
3.2. Nietzsche’s Chiasma: Reversed Valuations of Forgetfulness
and Memory .............................................................................. 383
3.3. Justice and the Institution of Law .............................................. 385

Part II: On the Ideological Formatting of the Servile Configuration

4. The Institution of Guilt ..................................................................... 389

4.1. ‘Schuldig’ as Being Indebted and as Being Guilty .................... 389
4.2. Internalization of Guilt .............................................................. 393
4.2.1. From Proto-Sadism to Proto-Masochism .......................... 393
4.2.2. Identical Positions on Conscience & Guilt in
;7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV

Nietzsche & Freud ....................................................................... 396
4.3. The Unstable Opposition Between ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ ............... 400
4.4. Nietzsche’s Affirmation of Cruelty as ‘Primary Aggression’ .... 403
5. Exploiting “Suffering”: On the Meaning of the Ascetic Ideal
and the Ascetic Priest ........................................................................ 407
5.1. The Ascetic Ideal as a Will-to-Nothing ...................................... 407
5.2. The ‘Ascetic Priest’ as Exploiting “Suffering” .......................... 413
5.3. Soft-Core and Hard-Core Strategies for the
“Toleration of Life” .................................................................... 417
5.4. Strategies for Fanaticization of the Depressed Individual ......... 424
6. Insight and Blindness in Nietzsche; On Defensive Retaliation ........ 430

Chapter 6
Eternal Recurrence in Inner-Mental Life: Eternal Recurrence as
Describing the Conditions for Knowledge and Pleasure ................... 435

1. Introducing Three Different Kinds of Return ................................... 435

1.1. A Brief Preliminary about Repetition and Joy ........................... 435
1.2. Return as Simple and Mechanical Rebirth ................................ 438
1.3. A Preliminary Introduction to Two Alternative
Interpretations of Recurrence .................................................... 442
2. Recurrence as Circle or Loop ........................................................... 446
3. Return as a Repetitive Interpretation-Process; Two Cases................ 450
3.1. First Case: Sensation and Perception ......................................... 450
3.1.1. Knowledge as Familiarizing the Strange ........................... 450
3.1.2. Time-Reversal and ‘Delayed Perception’ .......................... 452
3.1.3. Living in the Mirror of Consciousness .............................. 456
3.2. Second Case: How One Becomes What One Is ......................... 463
3.2.1. The Polemical Environment .............................................. 463
3.2.2. The Principle of Self-Development ................................... 465
3.2.3. Amor Fati as Anti-Narcissistic Love of the Inner
Interpretation-Machine ...................................................... 468
3.2.4. To ‘Become What One Is’ in a
‘Vertical Dimension’ of Time ............................................ 472
4. Return as Self-Repetition of Self-Presence; Four Encounters .......... 478
4.1. Introducing the ‘smallest possible loop’ .................................... 478
4.2. First Encounter: The Environment Facilitating the
Thought of Eternal Recurrence.................................................. 479
4.3. Second Encounter: An Early Example of Self-Unconsciousness,
the Forgetful Animal.................................................................. 484
7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV;,

4.4. Third Encounter: Empty Perception of Hyper-Reality and the
Celebration of the Super-Superficial ......................................... 488
4.5. Fourth Encounter: The Erotic Unification of the Eternal
Recurrence-Subject and the Eternal-Recurrence-Universe ....... 492
5. Temporal Construction and Deconstruction of the
Interpreted World .............................................................................. 496
5.1. The Temporally Constructed World of Being ............................ 496
5.2. Deconstructing the Temporally Constructed World of Being .... 500

Appendixes ..................................................................................... 507

Appendix 1
Nietzsche and Ernst Mach on the Analysis of Sensations ................. 508

1. Ernst Mach’s Analysis of Sensations .......................................................... 508

1.1. Deconstructing the Cogito in Mach ..................................................... 508
1.2. The Dissolution of the World into Sensation-Elements, and the
Introduction of Perspectivism as Scientific Ideal................................ 510
1.3. The Suspension of the Cause-Effect Relation ..................................... 513

Appendix 2
A Theory of “Happiness”: Nietzsche’s Theory of
Pain and Pleasure ............................................................................... 517

1. Nietzsche’s Pleasure Principle Reversing the Tradition ................... 517

2. A Relativistic Theory of Pleasure ..................................................... 522
3. The Rhythm ...................................................................................... 527
4. Beyond the Logic of Desire. What if Desire is Nothing but
Representation? ................................................................................ 528
5. Pain-Sensation as Fantasy and Hallucination ................................... 534

Appendix 3
The Fragmented Nietzschean Subject and Literary Criticism:
Conflicting Images of Woman in Jacobsen’s “Arabesque to a Drawing
by Michelangelo”............................................................................... 540
1. On Severe Confusion and Fundamental Ignorance........................... 540
2. Me, on the Contrary . . . . .................................................................. 543
3. Reading the Poem ............................................................................. 547
3.1. First Stanza: Repetition and Rebellion ...................................... 547
3.2. Second Stanza: Implosion and Castration ................................. 550
;,,7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV

3.3. Third Stanza: The Blind Eye of Desire ...................................... 554
3.4. Fourth Stanza: Poetry and Death ............................................... 557
3.5. Fifth Stanza: A Pen through the Heart of Night......................... 560
4. Fundamental Ignorance .................................................................... 461
5. Jacobsen’s Poem ............................................................................... 564

List of Literature & Index ........................................................... 567

List of Literature ................................................................................ 568

Index ............................................................................................. 593

 Preface

It is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint date and origin for the conception
of a work. Partly because the decision about writing a work on this or that
topic rarely comes in a flash, but rather surfaces slowly and gradually. One
does not remember all these minute degrees of gradual maturation; one is
hardly aware of them. Only after they have accumulated, one experiences
perhaps something like a ‘flash,’ which now emerges as nothing more that the
articulation in a sentence of a plan that has been germinating for a long time.
Such plans start to germinate, mature, and sprout ultimately thanks to
nourishment. One is offered certain opportunities, encouragements, and
rewards, and responds to these rewards in the hope of more of the same.
Homo sapiens sapiens is so sufficiently close to other primates on the
evolutionary ladder that it still needs its nuts and raisins for motivation. There
is always something rudimentarily biological about the decision-processes
preceding an activity.
About eight years ago, it was for example my intention to write a work on
methodology, on interpretation, and ‘reading-strategy.’ I had finished a work
practicing readings of some key-philosophical texts, and wanted to supply a
theoretical statement. I regarded Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and
Grammatology as the three most promising disciplines for working out such a
unified theory of interpretation and methodology, but – besides the
prohibiting ambition of the project, which might in any case have stalled it in
its early stages – nobody were interested. Methodologists are an exclusive
group on today’s academic scene; they live exclusive lives somewhat like the
theoretical mathematician trying to figure out what a six-dimensional
universe might look like. Especially in language and literature departments,
dealing in ‘interpretations,’ one would expect that theory and methodology
had to be foundational disciplines, but no; mutadis mutandis, there was, still
is, no interest.
At that point in time, reading Nietzsche was mostly relaxation; although it
had been an activity enjoyed, on and off, for about thirty years. Nietzsche is
generally pleasant philosophical reading, because his aphorisms are brief and
still brimming with insight. He tends to turn abruptly from subject to subject,
which is pleasing to the mind, because he engages the mind in short bursts of
energy, whereupon the mind is allowed to relax again, ready to start
something new – unlike reading, for example, Kant, where one is forced to
follow long tracts of argument in constant fear of losing one’s understanding.
XIV Preface

Thus, whereas there was obviously no interest in methodology, there

seemed to be an interest in the pleasures of Nietzsche. This brings us back to
the above-mentioned nuts and raisins of ‘rewards’ and ‘opportunities.’ In this
narrativized statement of acknowledgment, it was for example a ‘reward’ to
be invited to participate in a Nietzsche-conference under the auspices of
SPEP in 2002; it gave me a much needed opportunity to meet notable
colleagues, such as Babette Babich, Tracey Strong, David B. Allison, and
Lawrence Hatab. It was encouraging to have an early article on Nietzsche and
literary interpretation (which in revised version is included as Appendix III in
the present work), first invited and since accepted for The Comparatist under
the editor MaryAnn Freese Witt. As my Nietzsche-project started developing,
and I began to see his thinking as a version of a neurological model of the
subject one could find in outlines in Freud’s early writings too, I allowed
myself to send a section on Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology for
review to Mark Solms (renown psychoanalyst and neuroscientist, and the
preeminent international authority on Freud’s early work). Again, it was
encouragement that Solms took the time to read the long section, and
returned a positive response. Finally, as the project started to mature, I had in
rapid succession three long essays (included here as Chapters 2, 5 (part 1), &
6) accepted for the prominent German Nietzsche-Studien, which was so much
the more pleasing because the three editors, Josef Simon, Günter Abel, and
Werner Stegmaier, not only stood out as distinguished Nietzsche-scholars, but
even better, were also renowned philosophers in their own right. As such,
what started as pleasure-reading and -writing, gradually to took the form of a
serious book-project. As the manuscript developed, and the separate chapters
approached final draft form, I called upon Dr. Kasper Nefer Olsen as critical
reader and copy-editor of the work. As an accomplished translator of the
German, he also checked my translations of Nietzsche into English.
Given this history of conception, the present work was never planned as a
book; such a plan was conceived quite late into the writing-process. Most of
the chapters originated as independent essays of single aspects of Nietzsche’s
thinking, with the essay’s relative independence and self-sufficiency.
Redundancies throughout the work are therefore not completely avoided;
sometimes a passage, sometimes a quotation, is repeated in different chapters,
but when in the relatively few instances it happens, these passages or
quotations are then interpreted from the different perspective of the chapter’s
theoretical context.
The surface-structure of the work is, as one will notice, classical. This
work, as so many previous works on Nietzsche, conventionally starts with
what seems the most general and abstract of Nietzsche’s philosophical
concerns, that is, his theories of truth, ontology, and epistemology, and ends
 Preface XV

with what seems more specific and unique to his thinking, his theories of
master/slave and eternal recurrence.
Since the work is not planned as a whole, the reader is also free to begin
his or her reading from any point of departure. A strategy, which seems to me
to make good sense, might be to first read the subsequent ‘Introduction,’ and
then, according to the brief chapter-descriptions offered here (a kind of
elaborate menu for the work), continue reading whatever chapter appeals to
the reader’s own philosophical interest, engagement, or taste.
 Introduction

1. The Polemical Context

When one, some years ago, read commentators of Nietzsche from the post-
modernist and deconstructionist tradition, one got the impression that there
was nothing more to say of Nietzsche’s philosophy as philosophy; it was as
if the reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy as philosophy was closed. Only
because Nietzsche was a fascinating poetical-rhetorical writer, the commen-
tator was preoccupied with him, especially with exploring a rich material of
poeticisms, images, allegories, or metaphors left in his texts. There was lit-
tle or no description of Nietzsche’s thinking as a conceptual system, or as a
response to problems in the prevailing contemporary, evolutionary-
cognitive-psychological, paradigm. Instead, one focused on a single image,
an allegory, or a metaphor, which was supposed to ‘generate’ Nietzsche’s
discourse, but so far had gone undetected. To understand Nietzsche’s dis-
course as a conceptual system was not seen to be important, but to
understand its ‘origin’ as ambiguous non-origin – as generating, from a root
that was in-decidable and oscillating, a discourse that was purely rhetorical
– became important.
The assumption behind the approach was that a word, an image, or a me-
taphor would linger in the text as an un-thematized, but over-determining
density, and from that position influence subsequent theoretical decisions
taken in the text. This word or image – as ‘original non-origin,’ as ‘decisive
in-decidability’ – was symptomatically repeated in the entire discourse.
Nietzsche (in effect suffering from a kind of theoretical repetition-
compulsion regarding these mantras) was unbeknownst by himself ultimate-
ly writing on a word. This magical word, the commentator would see
reflected in different aspects of the theory, and it could be put into play in
numerous possible permutations; permutations one could multiply by con-
sulting dictionaries and encyclopedias to trace its history and etymology to
reveal new, hidden, and surprising meanings. The effect of this approach
was that after one had had a first encounter with some significant Nietz-
schean text (which might be represented by a single or a few passages), one
could suspend the reading of Nietzsche in his totality. The strategy allowed
the post-modern deconstructionist to playfully exercise his or her associa-
tions over a word, feeding these associations with carefully selected textual
material, in the assumption that these selections would epitomize
2 0. Introduction

Nietzsche’s thinking. As such, one was in own self-understanding exploring

the deepest depth of Nietzsche’s thinking.
Partly because the strategy became heavily dependent on the technique
of association, the language exercised was seen as ‘playful.’ Thinking was
exercised in the horizontal, so to speak. The theorist reclined on the couch,
and started associating, committed only to the golden rule of free associa-
tion, ‘everything that comes to my mind has importance.’
As such, one was confirming and re-confirming the ‘eternal truth’ of
post-modernism, the playful character of language. One believed in the
truth of a constative that one was performing as one’s thinking and writing
activity. According to the paradigm, Nietzsche was himself seen as con-
firming this eternal post-modernist truth, and the post-modern
deconstructionist meant to pay Nietzsche an exquisite complement when
appointing him master of the playful discourse. Had Nietzsche not pro-
moted a ‘cheerful’ or ‘gay’ science? And had not Jacques Derrida (authority
on Nietzsche, and unchallenged master-thinker of deconstruction) more
than once suggested that there was something utterly suspect about classical
philosophy’s recourse to seriousness? It is therefore not surprising that in
these readings of Nietzsche, one did not address theoretical-conceptual
problems; nor did one solve any; one hardly seemed to be even aware of
any. Emphasis on logical and conceptual problems had become a suspect
reiteration of this metaphysics of seriousness, deriving from that phallo-
logo-phono-centric malady characterizing all Western Thinking (‘phallo-
logo-phono-centrism’: the ethnocentric belief in a masculine-rational-self-
conscious subjectivity).
The present work has several aspects, and undersigned may hope that its
polemic aspect is the least interesting. But now introduced, the work can be
seen as an argument against the above theoretical approach, which may
perhaps belong more to the past than to the present, but still lingers as a part
of Nietzsche’s recent reception-history. The present work argues that im-
portant issues in Nietzsche’s thinking has rarely been addressed, is largely
under-explored, and has never been attempted reconstructed (except in iso-
lated cases; a lonely book or an article, which in due time, we will of course
acknowledge). We shall argue that exposing Nietzsche to ‘deconstruction’
(in skilled hands, sometimes a strong reading-strategy) becomes an empty
and idle exercise, if one does not have a clear understanding of the concep-
tual and argumentative machinery, to which one applies the deconstructive
reading.
We see a problem in relying on the technique of free association, namely
that the nodal point, which is chosen as the first link in the chain of associa-
tions, is often selected randomly (‘random,’ relative to the text as system,
 1. The Polemical Context 3

but hardly ‘random’ relative to the interpretive desire of the commentator),

and the following associations become equally random, or emerge from
highly selective readings. There is nothing to keep this double randomness
in check, if the recourse to the conceptual problem that Nietzsche has been
struggling to represent is prohibited from the outset. If or when one pro-
motes Nietzsche first and foremost as a stylist and a poet-philosopher,
ironically, the interpretations of Nietzsche have gone full circle. After one
century, one is back to the beginning of Nietzsche-reception. The newest is
also the oldest.
We see another problem in the strong emphasis on style, vocabulary,
image, and metaphor in some of these approaches. When commentators ex-
press themselves exclusively in ‘style’ and ‘vocabulary,’ but rarely or never
in concepts, arguments, structures, or diagrams, then, when we read them,
we do not and cannot ‘see’ their thinking. We cannot ‘see’ this vague form
of a structure, a diagram, or a picture that always comes to mind when one
reads a conceptual thinker (let it be Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Husserl, Freud,
or even Nietzsche). We are for example able to discuss Kant, and endlessly
so, because he produces these vague structures or diagrams in our minds
(these ‘pure and abstract intuitions’), which are rarely reproduced exactly as
the same in every reader, but are nevertheless sufficiently obvious to
prompt discussion. When discussing Kant with a colleague, we therefore
discuss whether this thing is so or so in relation to this other thing, whether
it is ‘before’ or ‘after,’ ‘above’ or ‘below,’ ‘primary’ or ‘secondary,’ ‘inclu-
sive’ or ‘exclusive,’ etc. In contrast, in their interpretation of language, the
post-modern deconstructionists have decided that language is style and
‘rhetoric’; and since they are performatively consistent, they express them-
selves in a language that is stylistic and rhetorical. Consequently, we find it
impossible to truly discuss them, insofar as we ‘see’ nothing. If in their dis-
course there is nothing, which we can get our hands on, there is also nothing
for us to think about. Their theoretical choice of ‘style’ over ‘content,’ ‘vo-
cabulary’ over ‘concept,’ is intentional in their discourse, which is often
deliberately escaping argument and discussion. This escape from reason is
seen as a virtue and a higher purpose of the discourse.
Perhaps one can sum up the conceptually deepest disagreement between
post-modernistic deconstructionism and the re-constructive thinking we
shall pursue below (and which is not without affinity to the early Derridian
project, cf. below). In a neo-rational re-constructive thinking, one intuitive-
ly feels that thinking is spatial, while in post-modernist deconstructionism
one feels it is temporal. In the first view, thinking is conceptual structure,
and structure can only be thought in space; in the second view, thinking is
speech, and speech advances along a temporal line. In the post-modern pa-
4 0. Introduction

radigm, the architecture of genuine thinking, its many dimensions and

many compartments, has been collapsed into a one-dimensional plane of
indifferent linearity. Undersigned, representing a loosely defined neo-
rationalist position with affinities to technical disciplines like structuralism,
linguistics, and phenomenology, is happy to appropriate William James’
observation as his own:

In reasoning, I find that I am apt to have a kind of vaguely localized diagram in

my mind, with the various fractional objects of the thought disposed at particu-
lar points thereof; and the oscillations of my attention from one of them to
another are most distinctly felt as alternation of direction in movement occur-
ring inside my head.1

2. Nietzsche’s Theoretical Consistency

When introducing Nietzsche’s philosophy in several of its most general phi-

losophical aspects, it is of course impossible to pretend originality. Much of
what has been said about Nietzsche throughout the reception of the last
three-quarters of a century is necessarily said again. Our understanding of
Nietzsche’s concept of truth is for example shared by earlier commentators
from the Hermeneutic and Pragmatic traditions (e.g. M. Heidegger, E. Fink,
H. Rudiger-Grimm, R. Rorty).2 The presentation of the so-called ‘split’
and/or ‘fragmented’ subject was introduced into Nietzsche-reception al-
ready in the sixties, and regularly onwards (e.g., G. Deleuze, J. Derrida, M.
Foucault, A. Nehamas, H. Staten).

1
James, William: The Principles of Psychology, vol. I. New York (Dover Pub-
lications), 1890/1950; p. 300.
2
The present introduction, I understand as an outline and summation of posi-
tions more detailed described, and further elaborated, in the main text. For that
reason, I abstain at this point from detailing my references to the work of
Nietzsche-scholars I am using, since they are copiously cited in what follows.
For the same reason, I also abstain from quoting Nietzsche himself in order to
substantiate my claims, since this too is scrupulously done in the main text.
The introduction is a recapitulation of the entire work; it is written as the last
phase in a long journey as an outline and summation of research already per-
formed; it seems redundant to repeat this research process yet again, and
expand the text beyond what is strictly necessary. Therefore, in the present in-
troduction, I limit my acknowledgment of commentators of importance for the
interpretations of Nietzsche to a brief string of names.
 1. Nietzsches Theoretical Consistency 5

Still, however unavoidable this repetition of the well-known and well-

consolidated may be, it is in the present work differently contextualized and
theorized.
Moreover, in the present work, Nietzsche’s philosophy has been at-
tempted reconstructed and rebuilt into a coherent philosophical system,
spanning the traditionally distinct disciplines, epistemology, mind, subject,
psychology, and ideology. In this reconstruction effort, we have addressed
both the published and the unpublished work, although the disciplines men-
tioned above in particular are being developed in the unpublished work,
Nietzsche’s so-called Nachgelassende Fragmente. In this Nachlaß material
Nietzsche has left us with a seeming confusion of notes, which, for the lat-
ter parts, we assume that he intended to edit into the a relatively more solid
form in the magnum opus he was planning, but never completed – the work,
which in his notes often appears by the tentative working-title, Der Wille
zur Macht: Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werthe.
We will thus rely heavily of Nietzsche’s Nachgelassende Fragmente, as
we shall argue and demonstrate that this seeming confusion of notes is only
a mess on appearances. Behind the surface, the fragments are usually al-
ways informed by the same (at most, a few) guiding philosophical idea(s).
Even though Nietzsche quite frequently exposes himself to ‘brainstorming’
sessions in his notes – ‘experimental’ sessions that are meant to drive his
thinking to the edge of the logically possible, and to reveal to himself the
ultimate logical consequences of a thought – it is always the same funda-
mental assumptions we find underlying these sessions, for example, the
chaos of the human mind, its tendency to ‘simplify,’ etc. In these sessions,
he leaves behind the nitty-gritty; he bypasses dozens of possible interme-
diate propositions, and allows himself to ask fundamental questions
addressing directly the core of a problem; for example, if the human is a
chaos, how then to think the human?
In the present work, we aspire at least ideally to reconstruct these fun-
damental assumptions guiding, as logics, diagrams, or figures, Nietzsche’s
thinking. If or when we succeed in reconstructing semi-consistent theoreti-
cal statements from this apparent confusion of notes, we become evidently
better able to appreciate the consistency of the thinking underlying them. In
this, our perception of Nietzsche as philosopher changes: no longer is he re-
garded as a philosophical wild-card, as some exuberant poetizing mind,
good at expressing provocative but beautiful ideas, but rather is he a preco-
cious proto-scientific experimenter in the theories of mind and knowledge,
struggling to establish the most radical consequences of an emerging 19th
century scientific understanding of the subject.
6 0. Introduction

If therefore we introduce the five theoretical subjects listed above – the

five subjects of Nietzsche’s thinking we have adopted as the principal sub-
ject-matter of this particular work – we believe there is consistency between
Nietzsche’s epistemology, his theory of the subject, his analyses of reli-
gious/ideological psychology, and even his exotic proposals of a so-called
Übermensch and an Ewigen Wiederkunft. We believe that Nietzsche has a
‘general plan’ behind whatever new aspect he introduces into his philoso-
phy; a ‘plan’ not necessarily followed consciously, but rather emerging
from a deeply internalized core, an internalized ‘theorem’ or ‘diagram,’
manifesting itself symptomatically in different materials (something like a
‘strange attractor’ in Chaos Theory – a peculiar figure all values in a ‘map’
seek to satisfy; an ordering principle hidden in the chaos).

3) On the Difference between Deconstructive and

Reconstructive Thinking

Like much of the newest Nietzsche research, the present work too under-
stands itself as ‘post’ post-Modernism. Like several recent Nietzsche-
scholars, we too believe that this post-Modernist Nietzsche has had his day.
If or when post-modernism is advertised as cutting-edge theory, half a cen-
tury after these interpretations were first proposed, we believe that the
commentator reveals a rather conservative bend of mind.
We read with interest Nietzsche’s recent receptions by more historically
and philologically interested commentators (including for example, C. Em-
den, G. Moore, T. Brobjer, R. Small, C. Cowan, & A. Urs Summer). We
see in this new reception an intention to understand Nietzsche in his histori-
cal, cultural, and intellectual contexts; implying that the scholar takes upon
him or herself reading a large material of texts that would have constituted
the intellectual background and inspiration for Nietzsche. Placed into this
historical-intellectual context, it becomes also far more evident to see the
Nietzschean project as a reaction to the contemporary evolutionary-
cognitive-psychological debates of his day; a dimension almost entirely lost
in the post-modern paradigm.
While thus we find this historical research highly valuable, and we gen-
erally see it as indispensable to be acquainted with some of the textual
material that inspired Nietzsche (in the present work, we put a strong em-
phasis of the trinity, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Lange, but include also
discussions of a number of philosophical and scientific texts that may today
have only historical interest, but had significance to Nietzsche), still, the
present work is not and does not pretend to be a historicist investigation. Its
 3. On the Difference between Deconstructive and Reconstructive Thinking 7

higher purpose is not a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s sources, his readings,

or his library.
It rather pretends to be ‘reconstruction’ of Nietzschean concepts of
world, mind, knowledge, and language, combined with an over-determining
interest in the theories of mind and cognitive theory (which incidentally was
one of Nietzsche’s own over-determining interests). Theoretically, theories
of perception, cognition, mind, and language occupy the center-stage in the
present work. Methodologically, the work continues in the vein of the work
of the early Derrida – Derrida, we emphasize, the philosopher of Gramma-
tology.
This needs some explanation. We allow ourselves to distinguish between
Derrida, the grammatological phenomenologist, and Derrida, the master-
thinker of post-modernist deconstruction. We distinguish between Gramma-
tology, as a phenomenologically inspired reading-strategy, and
Deconstruction, as a post-Modern reading-strategy challenging New Criti-
cism, mostly adopted in North America. We believe that there was a brief
opportunity for a Phenomenology-inspired Grammatology to develop, a
window of opportunity that was lost again, when Grammatology was trans-
formed into Deconstruction.
In its American appropriation, Derrida’s ‘Deconstruction’ became a dis-
cipline mostly exercised in Language and Literature Departments, and often
denounced in the Philosophy Departments. Scholars appropriating Decon-
struction came typically from the Language Departments (so, for example,
Paul de Man and Jonathan Culler; later the ‘Yale School’ was established,
etc.), and seemed to be continuing the strictly formal approach to texts that
had been internalized, but exhausted in important aspects, in New Criticism.
The strategy, which could now replace the basic New-Criticism project, fo-
cused on textual lack of consistency, rather than on consistency. This branch
of Deconstruction would emphasize inconsistency on the rhetorical surface,
it would emphasize the playful interchangeability of positions in an opposi-
tion (so-called ‘in-decidability’), or the rhetorical nature of all language,
implying that philosophy and science were also kinds of rhetoric.
In the original Grammatological project (literally a ‘logic of writing’),
Derrida had been introducing new readings of the philosophical concept vis
a vis re-readings of Husserl’s phenomenology, Saussure’s Linguistics, and
Levi-Strauss’ Structuralism – like Jacques Lacan had been offering new
readings of psychoanalysis, and Michel Foucault new readings of history.
Philosophy had been exposed to re-thinking by a so-called ‘Grammatolo-
gy,’ which was organically related to, although superseding in important
aspects, these three highly technical disciplines: Phenomenology, Structu-
ralism, and Linguistics. When this context for Grammatology disappeared,
8 0. Introduction

one no longer saw Derrida’s thinking as practicing the Phenomenological

epochè applied to conceptual structure, as such opening up a new kind of
deep-analysis of the philosophical text, which was neither Analytic nor
Psychoanalytic, and the theoretical analysis of this new application of phe-
nomenology was never well developed (although bright minds would be
practicing the strategy).
If, in its earliest project, Grammatology is essentially applying the Phe-
nomenological epochè to conceptual structure, we need no longer think that
Grammatology necessarily merely ‘deconstructs.’ It may also, and perhaps
more often so, ‘reconstruct.’ In adopting a possible and legitimate ‘theoreti-
cal attitude’ to conceptual structure, one erases the ‘world’ to which the
concept refers, and has now an unhindered access to understanding the for-
mal structure in itself (this ‘theoretical attitude’ we see as a purely
methodological posture, which in no way commits us to Idealism). The
guiding question becomes, what is the concept inside the ‘logic of writing,’
temporarily ignoring (‘suspending’) that to which the concept refers outside
the ‘logic of writing.’ If temporarily we accept that there is “nothing outside
the text,” the text lays open to another kind of elucidating reading. By re-
constructing the in the text appearing concept-structure, one necessarily
also becomes aware of the weak or absent ‘joints’ in the structure; that is,
the problematic points of connection that might bring about a collapse of
the entire system, if or when they are illuminated. The reconstructive work
must therefore always precede the deconstructive work. A Deconstruction
that emphasizes only the ‘play’ or the ‘poetry’ of theory we see as nonsen-
sical, and is often merely an ideological position from where to challenge
two designate ‘enemy’ disciplines, professional philosophy and the
sciences.
When we reconstruct concept-structures in Nietzsche’s thinking, we
necessarily become of aware of ‘elements’ in the structure that have been
allowed to pass through Nietzsche’s thinking unidentified and anonymous-
ly; or elements that may be entirely lacking in the structure. We know, that
the human mind has a capacity for, not just perceiving what is there, but al-
so for perceiving what is not there, if and when a pattern points to the
missing element. In reconstructive thinking, one therefore also names the
unnamed; one points to and identifies an absence; one locates differences in
a material that on appearances seems undifferentiated. This is the hardest
challenge in reconstructive thinking, namely to ‘see’ something that is not
originally there. In meeting this challenge, the dictum ‘read the text’ (‘back
to the text,’ as one might paraphrase this phenomenologically inspired strat-
egy) has to be properly understood. One necessarily is committed to the
text, but not exactly as the philologist is committed. We read conceptual
 3. On the Difference between Deconstructive and Reconstructive Thinking 9

structure; philology reads history and development of word-meaning. We

are committed to the ‘text’ as a system, and nothing but the system revealed
in the text can give us the necessary indications of absences. But this also
implies that in some instances, word-meaning is not particularly important,
or more precisely, words are only important as naming a position in a struc-
ture. In order to understand ‘words’ we therefore do not believe it is as
important to understand their history and etymology, as it is to understand
their positions in a structure. Historical development of word-meaning be-
comes the important business of scholars; systems are the business of
philosophers. In the first case, one must rely on the library; in the second,
one must rely on spatial and abstract thinking.
To provide an example! We surely believe that Nietzsche’s word ‘priest’
is a word for something. We also believe that the word has a connotation to
what in everyday-language we call a ‘priest.’ Still, we do not believe that
we have in any way exhausted Nietzsche’s meaning of the word by know-
ing this connotation. We even assume that this connotation is relatively
unimportant in determining the rich and expanded meaning the word
‘priest’ gets in Nietzsche’s texts. Consequently, we have to ‘reconstruct’
this expanse of meaning. We have to investigate the system and context in
which ‘priest’ repeatedly occurs. In this reconstruction, we move far beyond
its conventional word-meaning (the ‘priest’ as ‘clergyman,’ ‘preacher,’ etc.,
in a Christian church), and far more importantly construct in what kind of
relation Nietzsche’s ‘priest’ stands to the ‘slave’ or to the ‘master’; in what
his so-called ‘remedies’ for ‘suffering’ consist; how they are disseminated;
why Nietzsche’s intemperate tone when introducing this particular ‘priest,’
etc. The ‘priest’ becomes a nodal-point, an intensified semantic cluster,
from where antennas reach out to other and different semantic clusters,
which may or may not have something to do with ‘priest’ as conventionally
defined. We mention en passant that this strategy is in perfect harmony
with Nietzsche’s general understanding of language, as we shall see in es-
pecially Chapter 4 (see especially the discussion of ‘the emotional word’).

4. Nietzsche and the Intentional Object

We believe that Nietzsche is always thinking positively about something,

positively explaining something. He is certainly keenly aware of his lan-
guage and his style, but his object is not ‘the text,’ and he is not producing a
self-reflexive philosophy about ‘the text.’ His philosophy might take as its
object the individual’s perceptive and cognitive abilities; or the genealogy
and disciplinary techniques of morality; or the degeneration of Nietzsche’s
10 0. Introduction

contemporary Germany and the Germans. But in any case, his thinking has
positively defined objects.
The truistic fact that we represent an object in a text, does not imply that
the object is a text, as little as events represented on the television-screen
are ‘in’ the television. Writing surely is our most typical means of represen-
tation, but that does not mean that what we represent by means of writing is
also writing. The misunderstanding comes about thanks to a confusion of
means of representation and represented. The text is always in Nietzsche
only a means of representing something outside the text. It is not his idea
that the text’s outside represents the text’s own inside. The internalization
of a moral imperative is supposed to have happened; the human being sub-
jected to the moral imperative is supposed to feel actual guilt; the
suggestion of a ‘super-human’ that might transgress the current situation is
supposed to address a possible real future, etc. That we are able to suspend
references to ‘outside’ objects by applying the phenomenological epochè in
order to study formal conceptual structure, is a purely ‘theoretical attitude’
– a methodological pose, as we say – that does not contradict the general
proposition that Nietzsche must always be seen as thinking about some-
thing.
So, what is Nietzsche thinking about; what is Nietzsche’s thinking
about? In the aspects of his philosophy that we are here pursuing, Nietzsche
is most fundamentally thinking about cognition and mind. This aspect was
suppressed in much late 20th century commentary (however, rediscovered
by the above-mentioned cultural and intellectual historians, and also fre-
quently addressed by a newer generation of German commentators; e.g., W.
Müller-Lauter, J. Simon, G. Abel, W. Stegmaier, R. Gasser, & E. Schlim-
gen) for the understandable reason that if Nietzsche’s philosophy is
frequently about the mind, then he can be seen, not only as thinking about
something, which is supposed to have an empirical manifestation, therefore
a ‘self-presence.’ Moreover, it becomes doubtful if Nietzsche is really such
a good ally to the post-modernists in the current “science wars” fought be-
tween the humanities and the sciences in especially North America. If
Nietzsche is solidly imbedded in the scientific paradigms of his day, it casts
doubts on the cultivated image of Nietzsche as the poeticizing philosopher
engaged in playful transgressions; the thinker who is never serious, who
knows all the traps of metaphysics, and dances his way out of their reach.
In Nietzsche’s epistemology and subject-philosophy, we are always re-
turning to the mind, cognition, and knowledge. It is the mind that perceives
(what has consequences for his theory of perception); it is the mind that
‘simplifies’ (what has consequences for his cognitive theory); it is the mind
that ‘interprets’ (what has consequences for his theory of meaning). It is be-
 4. Nietzsche and the Intentional Object 11

cause we have a mind that we cannot have a notion of truth in the classical
sense. What is per definition located beyond the reach of our mind – as ei-
ther the Platonic forms or the Kantian in-itself – cannot be of any
consequence to the human being, because our mind, controlling our percep-
tion and our thinking, prevents us from perceiving or thinking the
absolutely independent and self-sufficient. It is also thanks to our malleable
minds that it is possible to format different human ‘types,’ like so-called
‘master’ and so-called ‘slave.’ It is even because of a certain repetition-
automatism characterizing our cognitive processes that we may experience
something like ‘eternal recurrence of the same’ (at least in what we shall
defend as the strongest and most pertinent interpretation of this enigmatic
concept).
If Nietzsche’s evolutionary-cognitive-psychological understanding of
mind and cognition is his main project, he suddenly becomes a highly
‘timely’ philosopher. This interpretation of Nietzsche is eminently relevant
for contemporary theories of mind, cognition, and neurology. An evolutio-
nary-cognitive-psychological epistemology has several advocates in modern
thinking, some of who nicely continue the Nietzschean project and focus on
both evolutionary and cognitive descriptions of the mind (e.g., R. Penrose,
P. Churchland, D. Hofstadter, M. Solms, H. Tetens, & D. C. Dennett). Still,
it is not our explicit purpose in this work to juxtapose Nietzsche and mod-
ern neuro- and cognitive sciences. That would require another treatise. In
this work, we shall confine ourselves to the contemporary, or near-
contemporary, discourses and paradigms of which Nietzsche was a part.

5. Chapter-Descriptions

5.1. Chapter 1: The Concepts of Truth and Metaphor

In our first chapter, we start with what best represents Nietzsche’s philo-
sophical beginning; we start with a reading of the brief essay Über
Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen sinne (WL). The essay is proba-
bly the most frequently commented about of Nietzsche’s texts, attracting
commentators from a wide range of different traditions (cf., S. Kofman, P.
de Man, W. Klein, C. Crawford, M. Clark, R. Schacht, C. Emden, & G.
Moore). The essay has ignited a debate especially on Nietzsche’s concept of
truth and his concept of metaphor; less about his concept of concept, which
we find equally important and shall include below.
For some traditions, Nietzsche’s discussions of truth are full of contra-
dictions, because he is apparently discussing truth in more than one sense.
12 0. Introduction

These, especially Anglo-Saxon, traditions take truth to be a uniform concept

best determined as correspondence between a proposition and a fact or a
state of affairs. Nietzsche seems to have such a concept of truth, since in the
context of his essay, it is possible to make false statements. However, he
also frequently asserts that ‘truth is an illusion,’ and equally frequently that
the Kantian in-itself is ‘truth.’ The Anglo-Saxon philosophers find this be-
wildering, since they have a strongly internalized concept of truth as
correspondence between proposition and fact. If now someone questions
this correspondence, they by default also question the existence of facts, or
at least our access to facts; they even question the existence of the world, or
our access to the world (this being seen as wild, indefensible, and nonsen-
sical Idealism). In this interpretation, the Anglo-Saxon philosophers seem
committed to Francis Bacon’s conception of reality; the fact is there in its
own self-evident self-presence, and our sentences can refer, or fail to refer,
to this self-evident self-presence.
To Nietzsche, this direct access to reality is not an option, because we
per human constitution necessarily receive reality as perceived reality (ac-
cording to our so-called “human optics”), which thereupon, we transform
into conceptualized reality (according to our language). The truths we as
such produce about reality are per force mediated by these two layers, per-
ception and cognition. Therefore Nietzsche’s modest proposal, ‘truth is an
illusion’; implying that if or when our reflective point of departure is the
classical correspondence theory of truth presupposing accessibility to the
fact itself, ‘truth’ – pragmatically speaking – could only be ‘illusion’ be-
cause it has to traverse these two mediating layers. In Nietzsche’s early
essay, our epistemological nether limit is always perceived reality, never
reality as such, never the Kantian in-itself. We have no way of transgressing
perceived reality in order to get a peek at what reality in-itself might look
like as a kind of perception-free hyper-surface. We are stuck with our per-
ceived reality; a reality that appears as “images in our eyes.”
Therefore, measured against a hypothetical universal ‘truth-in-itself,’
truth, as our species-specific production, is ‘an illusion.’ However, this does
not imply that we suspend the possibility for uttering sentences that may
correspond to, or fail to correspond to, what is perceived reality. It is still
possible to lie or to tell the truth in Nietzsche. One the one hand, ‘truth is an
illusion,’ because it has undergone a perceptive-linguistic formatting; on the
other hand, it is possible to lie or tell the truth about the ‘illusion’ that our
perceptive-linguistic apparatus has so concocted. The two notions of truth
are type- and category-different, and they do as such not collide, nor do
they produce a self-contradiction. They are proposed within two different
contexts or ‘compartments’ of the theory, and have as such two different
 5. Chapter Descriptions 13

comparison-backgrounds on which to be understood and evaluated. As we

might say with Nietzsche, they are proposed from two different perspec-
tives.
We therefore generally propose that Nietzsche has a polysemeous theory
of truth, where his different notions of truths are proposed from different
perspectives, and therefore engender no contradiction in-between them-
selves, even when the same signifier is assigned a variety of different
significations. Similarly, I am not guilty of self-contradiction because I or-
ganize my cabinet, and allocate one drawer for shorts, another for T-shirts,
and a third for socks. I am in this example only guilty of self-contradiction,
if T-shirts and shorts are found in the same drawer. Philosophy is like such
a cabinet; it has several different compartments or ‘drawers.’ Discovering
different articles in different ‘drawers’ does not reveal a ‘contradiction.’ In
order to read philosophy properly, one has to take upon oneself the work of
locating its theorems within their proper compartments. Not before this
work is done can one meaningfully start passing verdicts about the logical
consistency of a theory.
In our interpretation, Nietzsche essentially introduces three type-
different notions of truth. First, he calls the thing-in-itself ‘truth’; secondly,
he proposes that ‘truth’ is an ‘illusion’; thirdly, he introduces a notion of
truth as ‘truthfulness’ or accountability. His primary interest is to determine
‘truth as illusion.’ This concept of truth he can only express if he asserts a
background that would hypothetically be free of ‘illusion.’ Language there-
fore forces him, temporarily and as a heuristic device, to suggest that the
Kantian in-itself is Truth. This ‘Truth’ becomes a linguistically and structu-
rally necessary concept that nobody believes actually exist; it is a concept
without which we cannot express that ‘truth is an illusion’; it is a concept
rejected in the very instant it is proposed; it is a concept under erasure.
Therefore, the thing-in-itself is Truth, and compared to Truth, truth is an il-
lusion.
In Nietzsche, ‘truth’ is also determined as a ‘metaphor.’ This claim has
ignited at least as much debate as his claim that ‘truth’ is an illusion. The
two claims are in fact complementary and codependent. In Nietzsche’s es-
say, the images we receive of perceived reality, as well as our
conceptualization of images qua words, are so-called ‘metaphors.’ The rad-
ical determination of both our perceptions and our language as
‘metaphorical’ – thus rhetorical, thus figurative, thus creative and poeticiz-
ing – has received two greatly different responses in respectively the post-
modernist and the analytic tradition. The post-modernist commentators
have been confirmed in their basic dogma, everything is language, and lan-
guage is always play and poetry. The Anglo-Saxon commentators have on
14 0. Introduction

the contrary been offended in their basic dogma, the strongly internalized
belief in the correspondence theory of truth, and the accessibility to the
world as fact. The latter also do not see any reason for erasing the differ-
ence between literal and metaphorical language, because then one is merely
left with an inflated notion of metaphoricity, unable to distinguish different
language-uses, which does not seem to be a theoretical gain (e.g., A. Danto,
A. Nehamas, M. Clark).
In our work, we have articulated the problem differently. Only in a high-
ly qualified sense, we see Nietzsche’s notion of metaphoricity as ‘inflated.’
Preferably, we see it as a completely new concept, with only system-specific
meaning. Like in our example of Nietzsche’s priest, Nietzsche’s metaphor
has only superficially connotations to ‘metaphor’ as used in classical rhetor-
ical theory from Aristotle to Perelman. Its conceptual range has been
expanded; in the expansion, it has perhaps retained a few elements from
classical theory, but largely, Nietzsche has given the concept a new concep-
tual sphere. ‘Metaphor’ has in Nietzsche lost its commonsensical value, and
been re-invested with new values. Now it lingers in his theory as an incom-
prehensible ‘x,’ whose meaning-structure it is the commentator’s task to
reconstruct and better describe. In the classical sense, a metaphor replaces a
literal expression with a figurative expression; one word or phrase in a sen-
tence-construction is replaced with another word or phrase. We
immediately see that Nietzsche’s ‘metaphor’ replaces nothing. (1) Images
supposedly replace nerve-stimuli, but nerve-stimuli have no representation
to begin with, why the ‘image’ as a ‘metaphor’ ‘replacing’ it can be nothing
but pure and spontaneous creation. (2) Words supposedly replace images,
but images belong to visual perception, not to our linguistic capabilities.
Images do not make up a language replaced with a more poetic and figura-
tive language in the form of words. Nerve-stimuli, images, and words are
distinct spheres, and when something is ‘transferred’ from one sphere to
another, the transfer is uniquely original. Therefore, Nietzsche’s ‘metaphor’
replaces a void, implying that it replaces nothing, implying that Nietzsche’s
‘metaphor’ is pure and spontaneous creation, implying that it gives repre-
sentation to something, which originally have no representation.
Nietzsche’s ‘metaphor’ is thus another word for ‘sign.’ By means of signs,
we orient ourselves in the world. Images are such signs, as are words.
Nietzsche’s notion of ‘metaphor’ can therefore be said to be ‘inflated,’ but
only because its system-specific meaning equals ‘sign,’ and because we can
think of no science that does not employ signs.
This reading makes Nietzsche’s theory of ‘metaphor’ entirely harmless
(perhaps even trivial, but we fear not the trivial – especially not when it
provides the best explanation!), and we furthermore understand that in this
 5. Chapter Descriptions 15

sense of ‘metaphor,’ Nietzsche does not see language as playful in the post-
modernist sense, since signs are employed, not only in creative and imagin-
ative writing, but also in rigorously formalized languages, such as logic and
mathematics. Nietzsche’s ‘metaphor’ has meaning only within a highly ab-
stract epistemology that generally asserts that our access to so-called
‘reality’ is necessarily sign-mediated. It is in the best sense a foundational
theory, reaching several levels deeper into the enigma of knowledge-
formation, than the superficial distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘figurative’
in classical rhetoric.

5.2. Chapter 2: The Ontology and Epistemology

In our second chapter, we continue to elaborate our theory on Nietzsche’s

ontology and epistemology. Our access to reality is necessarily sign-
mediated (the ‘sign’ being both a perceptive image and a linguistic word).
This however, does not imply to Nietzsche that reality has evaporated. Con-
trary to what is often suggested, we find in Nietzsche a strong emphasis of
so-called ‘language-independent’ reality as the paradoxical ‘ground’ that
grounds nothing. The reason for our inadequate ability of producing know-
ledge is exactly the existence of this language-independent reality. ‘Reality’
is in Nietzsche always something absolutely other; something existing
without intention, design, and purpose; something that was never pre-
formatted in language or according to rules or structures that we can under-
stand. ‘Reality’ is the absolutely other, the chaos, the becoming, the ground
that grounds nothing, that we cannot understand; only from this abyss of
incomprehension do we describe it in our (sign-dependent) scientific lan-
guages. If by any chance reality were already ‘language’ or ‘structured as
language’ (which in Nietzsche’s context would be a nonsensical assump-
tion), it would be superfluous to start describing it once more in yet another
language. If reality was already lingering as ‘language,’ we only needed to
press the ‘record’ bottom.
Since reality is always the absolutely other, we are not able to under-
stand the nature of reality; still, we are able to describe the appearances of
reality. This limited ability to describe ‘reality’ is secured thanks to three
human capabilities, (i) we are able to perceive a surface, (ii) we are able to
form languages about what we perceive, and (iii) we are able to conceptual-
ize, that is, group together into distinct classes, the linguisticized perceived
surface. We have for example the ability to perceive objects as either big or
small, as either near or far, as either bright or dim, etc. Thanks to this per-
ceptive capability, we can now classify stars according to their mass, their
16 0. Introduction

distance, and their luminosity. This again enables us to set up tables that de-
termine a near-constant value for the proportionality between for example
mass and luminosity. This table may give us the illusion of a law-governed
universe, thanks to which we may quickly identify a newly observed star
according to our preconceived parameters; but – however impressive the
scientific achievement is – we have exclusively addressed a surface, not a
nature, of things. We have classified only an appearance, that is, an ap-
pearance for-us, appearing according to our exclusive human optics, our
perceptive designs, as we shall explain in better detail in the chapter below.
Beneath the surface, Nietzsche suggests his so-called chaos or world of
becoming. To live in a world of chaos remains our fundamental condition.
It is upon this chaotic foundation, we build our fragile conceptual systems.
Chaos is the nether limit in Nietzsche’s ontology. If being is ultimately
chaos, it implies that there is no nature of things, no thing-in-itself, no hid-
den laws or principles or designs for us to discover, or which by happy
accident we might tumble into. This implies again that our conceptualiza-
tions and classifications are exclusively our work, that science necessarily
has this inescapable anthropomorphic (or ‘narcissistic’) dimension.
Nietzsche’s ontological foundation is the chaos that we cannot access as
such, but can approach only through simplifying processes. Our perceptive
image-making as well as our linguistic language-making are such simplify-
ing processes.
We as such simplify in two stages; and we even seem to be simplifying
two qualitatively different grounds. First we simplify thank to our ‘human
optics.’ This fundamentally means that we see the world as we are capable
of seeing it. That is, the world as it appears to us through our perceptive de-
signs, strongly favoring visual perception, but a visual perceptive system
exclusively designed for humans. (For example, humans see the world in
color (some mammals do not); humans see a limited band of wavelengths
(birds see the world in a far broader band of colors); humans see the world
in three-dimensional perspective (insects do not, and may not even have
visual perception), etc.) As such we see a surface, and habitually believe
that the world is a surface; a surface that may retreat into the horizon, or
draw near just under our noses. Since there is no law guaranteeing that the
world in-itself ‘looks’ exactly as we see it (nor, indeed, that it is a surface),
we must have ‘falsified’ something originally there, but which may look
different from, as Nietzsche says, another “point.” That which is originally
there, that which is open to all possible perception – visual, auditory, tactile,
olfactory – we will now call the Ur-ground. We have no choice but to sim-
plify, thus falsify, this Ur-ground. Per human constitution, we have
perceptive designs, and are not equipped with extraordinary means by
 5. Chapter Descriptions 17

which to bypass these human designs. We therefore necessarily falsify the

Ur-ground, and cannot help doing so.
However, in Nietzsche we also falsify a ground constituted for-us; the
ground that is constituted already in human perception; the ground that as
such announces itself as surface, as having dimension, being colorful, near
and far, bright and dim, up and down, right and left, etc. We shall call this
ground the Human ground. We falsify also this ground in Nietzsche, but for
different reasons, since it is qualitatively different from the Ur-ground. If
we falsify the Ur-round out of physiological necessity, we falsify the Hu-
man ground out of psychological necessity. The Human ground, constituted
thanks to our perceptive designs, still encounters us as too chaotic, too ab-
undant, and too complex. The problem with this human ground, this reality
for-us, is that it is always too abundant. There is always too much reality,
too much information, impinging on our sensory apparatus. We as such
need to filter and abbreviate this multitude of impressions into something
manageable. Our mind provides this service; our mind is a filtration-, ab-
breviation-, simplification-apparatus. The problem is never in Nietzsche
that there is no reality, the problem is always that there is too much reality.
To protect ourselves against too much reality, we develop a cognitive ‘reali-
ty-defense’; we automatically screen impressions before we let them pass as
conscious sensations.

5.3. Chapter 3: The Concept of the Split Subject.

In this work, we distinguish between a ‘split’ and a ‘fragmented’ subject in

Nietzsche. The issue in Chapter 3 is the split subject, the issue in Chapter 4,
the fragmented. We have not attempted to work out a unified theory for
both ‘split’ and ‘fragmented’ subject. It is to undersigned not clear how to
think this unification with sufficient accuracy. It is also not a unification at-
tempted by Nietzsche himself. Nonetheless, we believe that the distinction
is justified and does frequently appear in especially the Nachlaß material.
Nietzsche speaks sometimes as if the subject is split, and sometimes as if it
is fragmented. In the first case, we assume that a whole is split into two
pieces, which are still determinable and definable as two parts of the whole
(this assumption pulls the rug from under the subject understood as self-
conscious and self-present self-identity, but it does not necessarily see the
subject’s inner life as an inaccessible chaotic in-itself). In the second case,
we assume that the subject has broken into several pieces so multifarious
that it is no longer possible to put the pieces back together into either identi-
fiable unity or identifiable parts. According to this assumption, there is no
18 0. Introduction

‘personality’ (nor, for that matter, any ‘personality-split’), but rather an in-
definite number of ‘ego-positions’ or ‘ego-clusters’ competing against each
other for ‘power’ in the chaotic self.
In the theory of the split subject, we notice that there is in Nietzsche two
ways in which a subject may split; consequently, two levels for discussion
of the condition. When Nietzsche addresses the ‘split subject’ in its most
general sense, he inherits a discussion introduced by Descartes and contin-
ued by Kant as its two major representatives. This discussion concerns the
nature of the I and the ‘thinking’ in ‘I think.’ We see Nietzsche continuing
and radicalizing the critique of the Cartesian ‘I think’ first introduced by
Kant in his famous chapter on the “Paralogisms of Pure Reason” (from
KrV). Already here Kant recognized that there was an unbridgeable gap be-
tween a formal ‘I’ and empirical ‘thinking.’ The I was in Kant no longer
understood as a substance, but as a formality. That to which the I might be
‘referring’ had at best the status of an unknowable and inaccessible thing-
in-itself, explicitly labeled ‘x’. We see Nietzsche continuing this concep-
tion, since he too conceives of the I as a purely fictional construction, with
no reference to a substantive nature of the self. However, Nietzsche ex-
plains the temptation in the Rationalist tradition to misinterpret I as
substance differently from Kant. At the core of this misinterpretation,
Nietzsche too locates a ‘paralogism,’ but if in Kant, the rationalist tradition
misunderstood the notion subject, and applied to it two different meanings
in respectively the major and minor of a syllogism, in Nietzsche analysis,
the rationalist tradition imitates the subject-predicate logic from conven-
tional grammar, and applies it as a substance-accidence scheme to
subjectivity. In Kant, one had been seduced by reason itself. In Nietzsche,
one had been seduced by language. To Nietzsche, the tradition had appro-
priated the grammatical subject and made it a matrix for the existential
subject.
As we shall see, the I as a formality (in Kant) and as a grammatical sub-
ject (in Nietzsche) has a strong family-resemblance to Emile Benveniste’s
recent determination of the subject of enunciation (subject of discourse). In
Benveniste too, the subject is without essence, determined merely by the
performance of “the one who says I in the instance of enunciation.” This I is
instrumental for communication, because in use, it necessarily constitutes
itself as self opposed to the other addressed, the you. It thus constitutes an
elementary self-other opposition in the dialogical situation. In Benveniste,
this I designates, in all instances, the one who says I, as such designating
nobody in particular, therefore cannot provide us as speakers with any subs-
tantive knowledge of ourselves. Still, it is necessary in the communicative
or dialogical situation, since without this ability to refer a discourse to an I
 5. Chapter Descriptions 19

speaking, there would be no communication. In Saussure’s vocabulary,

there would be no parole, but only langage. The language-system would at
best exist as some abstract, isolated, and divine potentiality; some kind of
‘dark matter,’ we could not access and not comprehend.
With Benveniste, we understand that the emergence of the simple dia-
logical structure, I-you, has several consequences. For one thing, it sets us
apart from most animals, which do not refer to themselves as I when com-
municating (i.e., signaling). We therefore believe that language-acquisition
and development of an ego-consciousness are simultaneous processes (what
happens to be also Nietzsche’s position). For another thing, the structure in-
troduces into our mental life the possibility of a split between self and other,
insofar as the dialogical situation is internalized and transferred to inner life.
We therefore suggest that as well as an I can address a you, the I – thanks to
internalization and transference – can also address itself as you. However,
with the substantial difference that now the you is another part of the I; a
part we label me.
If the simple structure I-you is imitated in inner dialogue (soliloquy), the
subject imitates a speech-situation with which it is already familiar in the
outside world. (We assume in general in this treatise that experience of in-
ner life can be nothing substantially different from experience of outer life.
If for example fantasies are spatially-temporally organized, it is because the
subject experiences in a spatial-temporal world; if they are played out in
three dimensions, it is because the subject perceives its world in three di-
mensions, etc. Similarly, if the subject speaks to itself as another in inner-
life, it is because it is familiar with speaking to another in outer life. There-
fore, nothing uniquely ‘inner’ develops out of itself as object of experience
– something uniquely ‘inner,’ like digestion, we are hardly able to expe-
rience.) We believe that the soliloquizing subject internalizes the dialogical
situation, implying that, (i) a dialogical I-you distinction becomes a solilo-
quizing I-me distinction; (ii) a self-other opposition becomes a self-self
opposition; (iii) a subject constituting itself as individuality, constitutes it-
self as dividuality; (iv) pragmatic discourse becomes self-reflective
discourse.
The two positions I and me become empty forms that can now be filled
with contents; with or without Nietzsche, we know that all kinds of dialo-
gues are carried out in inner life. Out of the constitution of an I-me grows
eventually the possibility of a subject communicating with itself. We argue
that a special case of this self-communication is the moral discourse. Here
an I as one part of the self sets itself up as a commander over another, sub-
servient, part of the self.
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