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NIETZSCHE’S NATURALIZED VIEW OF LOGIC
Abstract: This paper examines Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on the nature of logic. Nietzsche’s naturalistic project affects the nature and understanding of logic. Nietzsche’s metaphysical background belief
Nietzsche takes his pursuit of naturalism seriously.[1] He demonstrates a ruthless consistency regarding the implications and applications of a fully naturalized worldview. This is seen in any number of areas of his thought. Although the area of morality is perhaps the most
Nietzsche’s views on logic and human reasoning can only be understood in light of his naturalizing program or, as he describes it, the “de-deification of nature” (The Gay Science, 220).[2] Nietzsche articulates this view when he states: “When may we begin to ‘naturalize’ humanity in terms of a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature” (The Gay Science, 220)? For Nietzsche, this naturalizing program has two inter-related aspects, a metaphysical component
Nietzsche is opposed to a “metaphysical philosophy” which posits eternal and unchanging forms or ideas. Rather, he engages in what he calls “historical philosophy” which focuses on the naturalistic origination and development of humans—their faculties and concepts (Human, All Too Human, 161). Nietzsche chastises the vast majority of philosophers preceding him for “their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming… They think they are doing a thing an
For him, everything is an invention or fiction, and everything is the result of the way we impose categories and form concepts out of sensory chaos…. There
Thus, to properly understand the current state of humanity it is necessary to explore this evolutionary back-story.[5] From these starting points—metaphysical and epistemological—Nietzsche considers the nature of human logic.
One of Nietzsche’s most developed articulations of the nature of logic comes from The Gay Science3.111 which is entitled “Origin of the logical” (221-222). He begins this section with the words, “How did logic come into existence in man’s head? Certainly out of illogic…” Nietzsche then proceeds to offer an evolutionary account that explains the development of logical reasoning. He posits an evolutionary advantage that aided survival to those beings that made quick judgments about various situations in which two things seemed equal in some respect. In Nietzsche’s words:
Those, for example, who did not know how to find enough what is “equal” as regards both nourishment and hostile animals—those in other words, who subsumed things too slowly and cautiously—were favored with a lesser probability of survival than those who guessed immediately upon encountering similar instances that they must be equal.
Although it helped the organism survive, this quick judgment regarding the identity of situations led to the erroneous conclusion that there was a stable substance in reality that allowed for such identity. Nietzsche notes that this concept of substance “is indispensable to logic.” But it should be remembered that for Nietzsche, all is in a state of flux and that judgments, which do not accord with this reality, tend to falsify this flux by imputing to it a stable substrate that is empirically detectable. Thus, develops the “dominant tendency… to treat as equal what is merely similar.” For Nietzsche, this does not correspond to reality, “for nothing is really equal.”[6] Without this erroneous tendency “[n]o living beings would have survived.” This leads Nietzsche to conclude that, what we today call proper logical inferences, which are based on a (mistaken) concept of a stable substance, are simply the result of “a process and a struggle among impulses” which arose out of illogical mental moves. These erroneous tendencies have embedded themselves in human beings due to “primeval mechanisms” which operate “so quickly and … so well concealed.”
This view of logic is found in other places in Nietzsche’s writing. Four years before the publication of The Gay Science, Nietzsche published Human, All Too Human in 1878 in which he wrote the following about logic:
“Logic, too, rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world, e.g., on the assumptions of the equality of things, the identity of the same thing at different points of time; but this science arose from the opposite belief (that there were indeed such things in the real world.” (164)
This is but a one-sentence preview to the more fully developed thoughts in The Gay Science.
Nietzsche also picks up the discussion of logic after The Gay Science. In Beyond Good and Evil, which was published in 1886, Nietzsche states, “Behind all logic, too, and its apparent tyranny of movement there are value judgments, or to speak more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a particular kind of life” (314). Here, again, there are the themes of “value judgments” and “physiological demands” which are used for evolutionary advantage. In particular, Nietzsche mentions two value judgments made by humans: (1) “certainty is worth more than an uncertainty” and (2) “appearance is worth less than ‘truth.’” Nietzsche notes that such values may have “regulatory importance for us” but this may be nothing more than “foreground evaluations” in which we are not cognizant of the long evolutionary history in the background that impinges upon our reasoning. This is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s words in The Gay Science(section 111). There he spoke of the idea of humanity’s evolutionary history being “concealed.” Nietzsche continues in Beyond Good and Evil to discuss logic and again mentions, for the second time in as many sentences, the “preservation of beings like us.” This preservation rests upon “a certain kind of
In one of Nietzsche’s last published writings in 1888—Twilight of the Idols—he again broaches the topic of logic and reasoning in ways consistent with the above analysis. The relevant section (1.3) is as follows:
We possess science nowadays precisely to the extent that we decided to accept the evidence of the senses—when we were still learning to sharpen them, arm them, think them through to the end. The rest is abortion and not-yet-science: to wit, metaphysics, theology, psychology, theory of knowledge. Or the science of forms, the theory of signs: like logic
Nietzsche places the “science nowadays,” which is based on senses, in opposition to that which he calls “not-yet-science”—a mere “abortion” of thought. Into this latter category of
‘Reason’ is what causes us to falsify the evidence of the senses. If the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie … But Heraclitus will always be right that Being is an empty fiction. The ‘
There is a shift of perspective in Nietzsche’s thought
This demonstration of the consistency of Nietzsche’s thought regarding logic is important to note since not all Nietzsche scholars would grant this. Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick, in their essay “Beyond Good and Evil,” seek to argue that Nietzsche changed his views about logic in Beyond Good and Evil. In a footnote Clark and Dudrick comment on the phraseology of Section 1.3 which speaks of value judgments that are connected with “physiological demands for the preservation of a particular kind of life.”
This sounds as if principles of logic were instilled in us by evolution, by the contributions they made to our ancestors’ survival which is what Nietzsche believed in his early work (e.g., HAHI:18). In what follows, we argue in effect that this is no longer his view in BGE.[8]
If Clark and Dudrick are correct in their assessment then this would call into question the thesis of this paper regarding the continuity of perspective on logic throughout the corpus of Nietzsche. Thus, an examination of their argument is in order.
Clark and Dudrick’s focus in their essay is on the preface and Sections 1.3-4 of Beyond Good and Evil. This is significant since it is precisely Section 1.3 that was referenced above to show continuity of Nietzsche’s thought. Indeed, even Clark and Dudrick recognize that a
Clark and Dudrick begin their interpretative efforts in the preface of Beyond Good and Evil by attempting to demonstrate a “striking similarity” between Nietzsche’s
But the struggle against Plato, or—to put it more clearly, for the ‘common people’—the struggle against thousands of years of Christian-ecclesiastical pressure (for Christianity is Platonism for the ‘common people’) has created a splendid tension of the spirit in Europe such as the earth has never seen: with this kind of tension in our bow, we can now shoot at the most remote targets. To be sure, Europeans experience this tension as distress, and there have already been two elaborate attempts to loosen the bow, once by means of Jesuitism, and a second time by means of the democratic Enlightenment… But we who are not sufficiently Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even Germans, we good Europeans and free, very free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of the spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps the arrow, too, the task, who knows? the target… (312)
The full context leads one to think that Clark and Dudrick have over-interpreted the metaphor of the bow. The key point and stress of the passage
As Clark and Dudrick progressively engage the details of Nietzsche’s text their interpretations become more strained. This can be seen in their handling of the first sentence of 1.4: “We do not object to
The interpretative problem here is one of positing a false dichotomy: either the term “false” is to be understood as it “functions in ordinary language” or there is
How did logic come into existence in man’s head? Certainly out of illogic, whose realms originally must have been immense. Innumerable beings who made inferences in a way different from our perished; for all that, their ways might have been truer…. At
This can be considered a biological interpretation of logic. What is striking to notice is that even Clark and Dudrick recognize the “biological interpretation” as being a potential interpretation for Beyond Good and Evil1.3-4:
Admittedly, BGE4 might seems to be using “life” in a biological sense when it denies that falsity is an objection to a judgment, claiming that the only question is “to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, even species-cultivating.” The biological interpretation of “life” is also suggested byBGE3’s claim that the valuations that stand behind logic are “physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life,” and they
This suggestion appears correct but Clark and Dudrick tenuously reply, “we need not interpret it in this way.”[17] Instead, they opt for an interpretation in which the relevant terms are not given a biological interpretation but, rather, one that “coheres with the normative interpretation of ‘life.’”[18] While their creative exegesis of Nietzsche may be possible, it does not seem plausible.[19]
Clark and Dudrick run into further difficulties with their interpretation of the last line of 1.3: “Given, that is, that man is not necessarily the ‘measure of all things’…” As it stands, it certainly appears that Nietzsche is rejecting Protagoras’ dictum that man is the measure of all things. Clark and Dudrick, however, argue that Nietzsche does not, in fact, deny the statement by Protagoras. This allows them to postulate:
Nietzsche is obviously urging the reader to consider whether he himself rejects this claim. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t endorse BGE3’s argument. And since the problematic claim concerning truth not being an objection at the beginning of BGE 4 appears to be a way of dealing with the fallout from that line of argument, Nietzsche need not endorse it either.[20]
By this interpretative
Clark and Dudrick allege that Nietzsche “expects good readers to realize that he doesn’t
accept it, and therefore that he does not actually endorse the argument of BGE3.”[21]
One should be wary of a reading that inverts the plain meaning of the text into something completely opposite. Only if their reading of the last line of 1.3 can be sustained can Clark and Dudrick neutralize the plain meaning of 1.3-4. But their reasons offered for this interpretation seem strained. Of even more consequence, there is a text subsequent to Beyond Good and Evil that also seems to align with Nietzsche’s denial of Protagoras’ dictum. In Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ(section 14) man is reduced to one animal among many, which seems to undergird the suggestion the “man is not the measure” of all things.
We no longer trace the origin of man in the ‘spirit’, in the ‘
This portrait of
Although their exegesis of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil1.3-4 is creative, it ultimately fails to convince. The case for continuity in Nietzsche’s view regarding logic is stronger. To simply add one more element to this argument for continuity in contradistinction to Clark and Dudrick, consider that even
We alone are the ones who have invented causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, coercion, number, law, freedom, reason, purpose; and if we project, if we mix this world of signs into things as if it were an ‘in itself’, we act once more as we have always done, that is
Although this section is concerned with the concept of cause and effect, and not strictly with logic, nevertheless there is more mentioned in this sentence beyond that which relates to cause and effect. Consider that “number” and “reason” are also mentioned. Notice the focus on “inventing” and that this is a result of thinking “mythologically.” This seems fully consistent with Nietzsche’s views as articulated in both Human, All Too Human
Nietzsche’s naturalizing program leaves nothing unscathed. Even the human ability to reason and the idea of logic itself are to be understood only in light of a non-teleological background of flux. Logic is considered by many philosophers to be something metaphysically stable and invariant. In Nietzsche’s understanding, however, logic must be understood as simply one more piece of human evolution. Humanity is birthed out of the naturalistic flux and logic itself is but a construct that aids in evolutionary survival.[23] This understanding of logic is consistently seen across the corpus of Nietzsche’s writing. There may be other themes and concepts that take center stage in his later writings but this naturalized view of logic remains relatively constant.
Sources Cited
Clark, Maudemarie and David Dudrick. “Beyond Good and Evil.” In The Oxford Handbook of
Nietzsche edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson, 298-322. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hales, Steven D. “Nietzsche on Logic.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56
(
Leiter, Brian. “Nietzsche’s Naturalism Reconsidered.” In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche
edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson, 576-598. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Moore, Gregory. “Nietzsche and Evolutionary Theory.” In A Companion to Nietzsche
Pearson, Keith Ansell. “The Incorporation of Truth: Towards the Overhuman.” In A
Companion to Nietzscheedited by Keith Ansell Pearson, 230-249. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
Pearson, Keith Ansell
Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Steinhart, Eric. “Nietzsche on Identity” Revista di Estetica 28 (2005): 1-15. Online:
http://www.ericsteinhart.com/articles/nidentity.pdf.
Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith, 3rded. New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed,
1967.
[1]See Brian Leiter, “Nietzsche’s Naturalism Reconsidered,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzscheeds. Ken Gemes and John Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 576-598. Leiter argues that Nietzsche is a “methodological naturalist” with a “speculative” orientation. Leiter writes: “Speculative M[etholdological]-Naturalists do not, of course, appeal to actual causal mechanisms that have been well confirmed by the sciences: if they did, they would not need to speculate! Rather, the idea is that their speculative theories of human nature are informed by the sciences and a scientific picture of how things work” (577).
[2]Unless otherwise noted, all readings and page numbers for Nietzsche’s works are from The Nietzsche Reader, eds. Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
[3]Keith Ansell Pearson, “The Incorporation of Truth: Towards the Overhuman,” in A Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006): 238.
[4]Steven D. Hales, “Nietzsche on Logic,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (
[5]Although Nietzsche was deeply interested in the science of his time, including evolutionary theory, Gregory Moore aptly notes: “For a start, he did not regard Darwin as the originator of a new worldview: rather the theory of evolution is for him merely an ‘after-effect,’ an echo of the philosophy of becoming first expounded by Heraclitus, Empedocles, Lamarck, and, tellingly, Hegel…” Gregory Moore, “Nietzsche and Evolutionary Theory,” in A Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006): 520.
[6]Nietzsche’s view even undermines the law of identity (a=a). Eric Steinhart argues this point with help from some quotations from Nietzsche’s Nachlassas contained in The Will to Power(WP): “Nietzsche says: ‘There are no facts, everything is in flux’ (WP 604). He says, ‘Continual transition forbids us to speak of “individuals,” etc.; the “number” of beings is itself in flux’ (WP 520). If we deny that there is even instantaneously any self-identical A, then for every event A in the world as will to power, A is not one and the same as A. At most, every event A in the world as will to power, A resembles A. Events are not self-identical; events only resemble themselves. This sets up a
[7]The words of Gregory Moore should be remembered from footnote #5 above. He draws attention to the relationship between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the philosophy of Heraclitus. It appears that the Heraclitean notion of “becoming” is more philosophically pronounced with various scientific theories (including Darwin’s) being brought to bear as interpretations of the more primary doctrine of flux. This fits well with Brian Leiter’s notion of Nietzsche as
[8]Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil” in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzscheeds. Ken Gemes and John Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 316.
[15]Clark and Dudrick do attempt to examine a counter-interpretation offered by Brian Leiter in which he takes the claim in 1.4 to be stating “we ought to believe errors and falsehoods when they are necessary for our flourishing.” Clark and Dudrick reject this “deeply problematic” interpretation since, as they argue, “The ‘ought’ Leiter thinks Nietzsche recommends to us is not one on which we can act” Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 310. But Leiter’s view is not the only way to make sense of the interpretation of 1.3. In fact, Leiter’s view seems incorrect in that it puts a normative focus on what is more likely a descriptive claim. Nietzsche is not arguing that we “ought” to believe errors and falsehoods but, rather, that we do happen to believe errors and falsehoods in light of our metaphysical positioning in an ever-changing environment—the view posited in the first part of this paper.
[19]Clark and Dudrick also comment on the phrase “new language” in Beyond Good and Evil1.3 and remark: “The problem is that he doesn’t seem to be speaking a “new language” here. To speak a new language is to speak a different language than one spoke previously, and that would require, at a minimum, a different vocabulary and/or set of grammatical rules. Yet, to all appearances Nietzsche is continuing to speak ordinary German here” Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 311. This is a wooden and pedantic literalism that misunderstands Nietzsche’s use of metaphor.
[22]One more piece of exegetical evidence comes from Beyond Good and Evil1.11 in which Nietzsche is discussing Kant’s notion of the synthetic a priori. Nietzsche draws attention to the biological impulse to believe in such a notion—“it is time to understand that for the purpose of preserving creatures of our kind, we must believe that such judgments are true; which means, of course, they could still be false
[23]Although not specifically addressing Nietzsche’s thought, Cornelius Van Til’s “water-man” illustration seems an apt picture of Nietzsche’s metaphysical and epistemological project: “Suppose we think of a
