Nietzsche's Naturalized View of Logic

* This research paper can also be accessed at my Academia.edu page.

 

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 of change and flux influences his conception of how logic should be understood.  This conception of logic is found throughout the corpus of Nietzsche’s writing with only slight variation of emphasis. A counter-argument provided by Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick alleging that Nietzsche changed his view regarding logic in the latter period of his writing is examined.  It is shown that Clark and Dudrick’s exegesis of Nietzsche is faulty and that there is textual evidence from the latter writings of Nietzsche to demonstrate continuity of his views on logic with the earlier portions of his writings.

 

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 well known area to feel Nietzsche’s naturalizing touch, his naturalism also generates some interesting and controversial thoughts on the nature of logic and reasoning itself.  

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 and an epistemological component. Metaphysically, Nietzsche is committed to an understanding of human beings in which their origination is a result of non-teleological forces.  Humans are churned up out of the flux.  This metaphysical starting point has epistemological implications.  Keith Ansell Pearson succinctly describes this relationship of metaphysics to epistemology in Nietzsche’s thought: “Rather, his idea is that we, along with everything else that lives are implicated in the perpetual flux, and the challenge we are now confronted with is one of developing a more refined knowledge of ourselves and the world in light of this truth.”[3]

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 honour when they dehistoricize it, sub specie aeterni—when they make a mummy out of it” (Twilight of the Idols, 462). This “historical” approach is, thus, reductionistic in nature.  Human faculties and concepts are a result of a long chain of historical causes; none of which are goal seeking in orientation.  As Steven Hales states:

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 are an infinite number of ways that the raw chaos of experience could have been carved up into objects; humans have simply chosen those interpretations that allow them to live and promote their interests.[4]

 

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 niaiserie”—French, for foolishness or stupidity.  This also comports well with the larger discussion of logic found in The Gay Science in which the tendency to “err and make up things” generates the logical structure of humanity’s thinking.

            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 and that applied logic, mathematics.  Reality is nowhere to be found in them, not even as a problem; nor does the question arise as to what actual value a sign-convention like logic has. (463)

 

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 items he places logic and states that “reality is nowhere to be found” in this category of items.  There is no mention of the physiological and evolutionary background as in previous writings but there are contextual clues that the philosophical categories of flux and constant change are at play here.[7]  In the previous section (1.2) Nietzsche praises Heraclitus because he rejected the thought of other philosophers who “showed things as if they had duration and unity” (462).  Nietzsche ends this section with these words:

‘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 ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘real world’ has just been lied on …(462)

 

There is a shift of perspective in Nietzsche’s thought here—in that the ideas of the evolutionary background are not mentioned—but not a contradiction to what was seen earlier.  Here, in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche speaks of ‘reason’ in quotation marks.  This ‘reason’ is that which imposes the stability of Being and its consequent concepts such as “unity, identity, duration, substance, causes, materiality”—items listed in the contextual vicinity of 1.5. Previously, as was noted, Nietzsche was describing the evolutionary back-story that explained how humans developed the notions of substance that underlie logic.  Here, Nietzsche’s focus is the philosophical doctrine of change as found in Heraclitus.  Thus, there is consistency of thought even if there is a slight shift of perspective.

            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 straight forward reading of 1.3-4 seemingly undermines the truthfulness of logic. Sections 1.3-4, in their words, “seem to provide clear evidence that Nietzsche denies both the possibly [sic] of gaining truth and the value of doing so.”[9]  In order to overcome this prima facie reading, Clark and Dudrick distinguish between an exoteric reading which is the surface level understanding and an esoteric reading of the text which is a “sophisticated and subtle communication” that is contrary to the surface meaning.[10]  They argue that this work of Nietzsche cannot “be adequately appreciated without recognizing that its surface meaning differs substantially from what Nietzsche really believes, and that the latter is simply not accessible to most readers—perhaps any reader—without significant overcoming of their initial impressions.”[11]  This is a bold move on the part of Clark and Dudrick—to subvert the surface meaning of the text in an attempt to show the exact opposite.  But the details of the arguments used to show such an inversion of meaning are lacking in substance.

            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 preface  and the preface to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.  Our authors argue that there is similarity of both content and structure. Clark and Dudrick draw attention to the metaphor of the bow and its tension that Nietzsche uses in the preface.  They write, “Nietzsche does not unpack this metaphor for us, but a tense bow must involve two opposing forces.”[12]  They link these two opposing forces with “the will to truth” and “the will to value.”  It is precisely here that one begins to see the interpretative excess of Clark and Dudrick.  To appreciate this critique it is important to see the actual words of Nietzsche:

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 is upon the “tension” which is mentioned three times.  The tension resulting from the challenge to transcendence (under the guise of Platonism and Christianity) is likened to the tension of a bow.  But Clark and Dudrick bring in the extraneous detail about the “two opposing forces” which allows them to insert talk of “the will to truth” and “the will to value.”  Why is this important?  Clark and Dudrick will take these two elements and use them to overthrow the apparent, surface meaning of 1.3-4.  They argue that main point of 1.3-4 is to overturn the “falsification thesis” which is found in Nietzsche’s early work.  This falsification thesis is the idea that all of our supposed ideas of truth are actually false.  According to Clark and Dudrick, “Nietzsche is trying to show us something that he does not say: that his early philosophy is the expression of a tension between the will to truth and the will to value.”[13]  Notice the disjunction between what Nietzsche allegedly “shows” and what he “says.”  This disjunction will grow into outright antithesis as Clark and Dudrick develop their argument.

            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 judgement just because it is false; this is probably what is strangest about our new language” (314). Clark and Dudrick comment on this in the following manner:

Evidently when Nietzsche suggests that logic, mathematics, and other such “indispensable” judgments are false, he is not objecting to them.  But then what is the point of calling them false? As the term functions in ordinary discourse, to call a judgment “false” is certainly to object to it as a candidate for belief or acceptance, and it is not clear in what other regard Nietzsche might be considering judgments here.[14]

 

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 complete lack of clarity to Nietzsche’s meaning.  The tertium quid is that Nietzsche is challenging the conventions of “ordinary discourse” and positing his own understanding of falsity in this context.[15]  Nietzsche has already articulated this understanding regarding the falsity of judgments in previous writings.  For example, in The Gay Science section 11—a section commented upon earlier in this paper—Nietzsche articulates his view:

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 bottom every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life.  No living beings would have survived the opposite tendency—to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just—had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong. (221)

 

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 therefore might not be truth-conducive but only “precisely what is necessary for the preservation of beings such as us.[16]

 

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 move they are able to neutralize a straightforward reading of 1.3-4.

 

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 ‘divinity’, we have placed him back among the animals…. man is, relatively speaking, the most unsuccessfully animal, the sickliest, the one most dangerously strayed from its instincts—with all that, to be sure, the most interesting!—As regards the animals, Descartes was the first who, with a boldness worth of reverence, ventured to think of the animal as a machine… Nor logically do we exclude man, as even Descartes did: our knowledge of man today is real knowledge precisely to the extent that it is knowledge of him as machine. (490)

 

This portrait of man as “animal” and, thus, “machine” coheres well with, not only the denial of “man as the measure” but also the wider array of evidence cited earlier regarding Nietzsche’s views on logic.  

            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 inthe work Beyond Good and Evil—in a subsequent section to 1.3-4—Nietzsche argues in a manner consistent with remarks from his earlier works.  Consider part 21 of Section 1 in which Nietzsche writes:

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 mythologically. (322)

 

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 and The Gay Science.[22]

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 

(December, 1996): 819-835.

 

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 edited 

by Keith Ansell Pearson, 517-531. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

 

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 and Duncan Large, eds. The Nietzsche Reader. Malden, Mass.: 

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, 3^rded. New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 

1967.

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     [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 (December, 1996): 829.

     [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 dynamical tension within the event.  The law of non-contradiction no longer applies to them: events in the world as will to power are self-contradictory (WP 517, 584, 1067).”  Eric Steinhart, “Nietzsche on Identity,” Revista di Estetica 28 (2005): 10—note page numbers refer to online version available here: http://www.ericsteinhart.com/articles/nidentity.pdf. 

     [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 “speculative methodological naturalist”—see footnote #1. 

     [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.

     [9]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 309.

     [10]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 319-320.

     [11]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 303.

     [12]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 307.

     [13]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 309.

     [14]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 310.

     [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.

     [16]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 316.

     [17]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 316.

     [18]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 316.

     [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.  

     [20]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 312.

     [21]Clark and Dudrick, “Beyond Good and Evil,” 313-314.

     [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 judgements.”  Nietzsche also speaks of believing in the truth of such concepts that happen “to be necessary as one of the foreground beliefs and appearances that constitute the perspective-optics of life” (316-317).  The conceptual links with “preserving” our species and the issue of “foreground beliefs” are readily apparent with Beyond Good and Evil1.3-4.

     [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 man made of water in an infinitely extended and bottomless ocean of water.  Desiring to get out of water, he makes a ladder of water.  He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then attempts to climb out of the water.  So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural’s man’s methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time and chance are ultimate.  On this assumption his own rationality is a product of chance.  On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance.  The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance.”  Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 3^rded. (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967), 102—emphasis added.

Jesus as a Philosopher: Some Resources

I've been thinking recently about Jesus as a thinker who is to be reckoned with as a participant in the history of philosophy.  Below are some resources and quotations relevant to this issue.

1.  Douglas Groothuis wrote a small book for the Wadsworth Philosophers Series--On Jesus.

Chapter one is entitled "Was Jesus a Philosopher?" and argues in the affirmative.  Groothuis put this chapter up on a website so it can be read here: Was Jesus a Philosopher?

Here is piece from this chapter:

Jesus did not build a philosophical system in the same sense that Spinoza or Hegel did. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, did not build a system at all, although he developed a distinctive philosophical method, which in some ways attempts to dissolve philosophical questions. But the fact that Jesus did not “build” a philosophical system does not preclude the possibility that he thought in terms of a well-ordered and logically consistent account of reality and argued rationally with those who disputed it. If he thought and spoke in this manner, he was a philosopher indeed—and the most influential one in Western history. (p. 8)

Chapter three of Groothuis' book is entitled "Jesus' Use of Argument" and it examines the kinds of logical arguments that Jesus utilized.  For example, Groothuis notes that Jesus employed a fortiori arguments as well as reductio ad absurdum arguments.  Jesus could and did appeal to evidence and was adept at escaping the horns of a dilemma when in the midst of argument.

In chapter five--"Jesus' Epistemology"--Groothuis furthers speaks of Jesus' reasoning and approach to logic.

Jesus reasons from the Scriptures and he reasons against his critics.  When presented with an apparently irresolvable dilemma concerning the resurrected state or political allegiance (Matthew 22:15-22), he finds a tertium quid that avoids either horn of the dilemma.  In this, and in all his other use of argument, Jesus implicitly endorses the law of noncontradiction as a necessary test for truth.  A statement and its negation cannot both be true in the same way at the same time.  Jesus never accepts a proposition and its negation as both true; nor does he revel in irreconcilable paradoxes as a way to disarm rational thought and make room for faith.  Jesus at no time invokes an irresolvable paradox when pressed into a logical corner--although he will often employ a paradox to give a memorable ending to a pertinent teaching.  When accused of holding contradictory teachings or of opposing the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus argues in order to resolve the apparent contradiction and vindicate his teaching.

Nevertheless, some interpreters attempt to make Jesus into a Jewish Zen-Master or guru by claiming that he employed mind-stopping contradictions.  They compare several paradoxical sayings of Jesus to Zen koans.  A koan is a riddle having to do with a logical impossibility; it is given to a Zen student in order to induce the student to transcend normal logical analysis and rational processes.  Zen epistemology involves transcending all dualities and antitheses through various practices, such as contemplating koans and sat-zen (meditating on a blank wall for hours) in order to attain the state of "no-mind."  A famous Zen koan is, "What is the sound of one hand [clapping]?"  This question has no resolution, because one hand cannot clap (in any standard sense of clapping).

Jesus utters statements that are prima facie similar to koans, such as, "But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first" (Matthew 19:30).  But Jesus' use of paradox is pedagogical, not illogical.  It has nothing to do with Zen or any other kind of mystical practice that abandons rational categories as a means to enlightenment.  Jesus' paradoxes are given not as enigmas but as memorable conclusions to his teachings.  They have an intellectual  context and communicate propositional knowledge.  The statement, "Many who first will be last, and many who are last will be first" is not affirming that "first equals last" (a contradiction), as would a Zen koan.  Rather, Jesus is speaking of the final reward of those who give up much in this life to follow him.  The reward more than compensates for the losses they experience.  Therefore, many who are "first" (or fortunate in this life) will be "last" (or unfortunate in the next), and vice versa.  Jesus' phrasing is paradoxical, and, therefore, pedagogically provocative, but it has a determinative and intelligible meaning (see Matthew 19:16-30).  (pp. 52-53) 

2.  Dallas Willard has a famous essay titled, "Jesus the Logician" which appeared in the Christian Scholar's Review vol. 28, no. 4 (1999), 605-614.  It was also reprinted in Willard's collection of essays The Great Omission (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006), pp. 180-195.

Here are some choice quotations from this piece (page numbers are from The Great Omission):

There is in our culture an uneasy relation between Jesus and intelligence, and I have actually heard Christians respond to my statement that Jesus is the most intelligent man who ever lived by saying that it is an oxymoron. Today we automatically position him away from (or even in opposition to) the intellect and intellectual life. Almost no one would consider him to be a thinker, addressing the same issues as, say, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger or Wittgenstein, and with the same logical method. (p. 180)

 

 Now when we speak of “Jesus the logician” we do not, of course, mean that he developed theories of logic, as did, for example, Aristotle and Frege. No doubt he could have, if he is who Christians have taken him to be. He could have provided a Begriffsschrift, or a Principia Mathematica, or alternative axiomatizations of Modal Logic, or various completeness or incompleteness proofs for various ‘languages’. (He is, presumably, responsible for the order that is represented through such efforts as these.)

He could have. Just as he could have handed Peter or John the formulas of Relativity Physics or the Plate Tectonic theory of the earth’s crust, etc. He certainly could, that is, if he is indeed the one Christians have traditionally taken him to be. But he did not do it, and for reasons which are bound to seem pretty obvious to anyone who stops to think about it. But that, in any case, is not my subject here. When I speak of “Jesus the logician” I refer to his use of logical insights: to his mastery and employment of logical principles in his work as a teacher and public figure. (p. 181)

 Not only does Jesus not concentrate on logical theory, but he also does not spell out all the details of the logical structures he employs on particular occasions. His use of logic is always enthymemic, as is common to ordinary life and conversation. His points are, with respect to logical explicitness, understated and underdeveloped. The significance of the enthymeme is that it enlists the mind of the hearer or hearers from the inside, in a way that full and explicit statement of argument cannot do. Its rhetorical force is, accordingly, quite different from that of fully explicated argumentation, which tends to distance the hearer from the force of logic by locating it outside of his own mind.

Jesus’ aim in utilizing logic is not to win battles, but to achieve understanding or insight in his hearers. This understanding only comes from the inside, from the understandings one already has. It seems to “well up from within” one. Thus he does not follow the logical method one often sees in Plato’s dialogues, or the method that characterizes most teaching and writing today. That is, he does not try to make everything so explicit that the conclusion is forced down the throat of the hearer. Rather, he presents matters in such a way that those who wish to know can find their way to, can come to, the appropriate conclusion as something they have discovered--whether or not it is something they particularly care for. (p. 183)

We need to understand that Jesus is a thinker, that this is not a dirty word but an essential work, and that his other attributes do not preclude thought, but only insure that he is certainly the greatest thinker of the human race: “the most intelligent person who ever lived on earth.” He constantly uses the power of logical insight to enable people to come to the truth about themselves and about God from the inside of their own heart and mind. Quite certainly it also played a role in his own growth in “wisdom.” (Luke 2:52) (p. 189)

3.  J. P. Moreland was deeply influenced by Dallas Willard and he also wrote a short piece on Jesus and logic: "How Did Jesus Argue? Jesus & Logic" which begins with the following words: 

Today there is widespread indifference to, even downright hostility towards logic and the fundamental laws that govern it. We are sometimes told that logic is a Western construction invented by DWEM’s (Dead White European Males such as Aristotle), that in a postmodern world, story and narrative have replaced a cold-hearted, logical approach to life, and that Jesus was a prophet for the common man, not a logician for the “wise and intelligent.”

I could not disagree more. Logic comes from the very nature of God Himself, its employment need not be cold and impersonal, it can be expressed through story and narrative as C. S. Lewis’s works of fiction nicely illustrate, and Jesus used logic with “the common man” every bit as much as he did with the “wise and intelligent.” In what follows, I shall unpack these assertions by doing two things: present a primer on logic and God, and explain and illustrate Jesus’ skill in using logic.

The article ends in this way, looking at Jesus' example of logically reasoning:

Consider Matthew 22:23-33 where the Sadducees raise a reductio ad absurdum argument against Jesus. In such an argument you grant your opponent’s premise, show that it leads to an absurd conclusion, and argue, therefore, that the granted premise should be denied. The argument is also an example of a dilemma syllogism (see below): Formally, the Sadducees argue thusly: If P (there is life after death), then either Q (adultery is permissible in the afterlife) or R (polygamy is permissible in the afterlife). Not-Q (adultery is not permissible, period) and not-R (polygamy is not permissible, period). Therefore, not-P (there is no life after death).

Grasping the heart of this syllogism, Jesus skillfully notes that the either/or dilemma his opponents have placed on him (either adultery or polygamy is permissible in the afterlife) both make an assumption: There is marriage in the afterlife. They argue: If there is marriage in the afterlife, then either there is adultery or polygamy. Jesus denies that there is marriage in the afterlife (Matthew 22:39), and in one simple step, he undermines the dilemma (either adultery or polygamy) they have raised against life after death.

In Mark 11:27-33, Jesus himself uses a dilemma syllogism. Put formally, such a syllogism goes like this: (1) (If P then Q) and (if R the S), and (2) either P or R, then (3) either Q or S. In context, the religious leaders are challenging Jesus’ authority, and he asks, “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” His argument is this: (1) (If John’s baptism is from heaven, then the critics ought to believe John’s teaching about Jesus) and (If John’s baptism is from men, then the critics are in danger from the people). (2) Either John’s baptism is from heaven or from men. Then, (3) the critics should either believe John’s teaching or place themselves in danger from the people. Realizing that Jesus had successfully placed them on the horns of a nasty dilemma, they responded by saying “We don’t know from where John’s baptism came.”

To my mind, Jesus was the greatest thinker who ever lived. And while he did not come to develop a theory about logic or to teach logic as a field of study, it is clear that he was adept at employing logical forms and laws in his thinking and reasoning. We who are his followers should go and do likewise.

4.  Jonathan T. Pennington's new book is appropriately titled Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2020).

Pennington begins his book by considering the art on the walls of a third century church.  

Now we can look at their church walls.  What were their decorations?  Like those in our imagined megachurch, these faithful Christians also used their walls to remind worshippers of who Jesus is.  The painted images in this ancient church depict Jesus in various ways, as the Good Shepherd, the Great Physician, and the Water Walker.  And as a Philosopher.  In fact, in all the pictures of Jesus healing, teaching, and performing miracles, he is wearing the telltale philosopher's robes, has the haircut that indicated his status as a philosopher, and is standing in the posture of a philosophy teacher. (pp. 4-6)

Pennington has the following picture inserted which is from Dura-Europas church.

In examining Jesus' teaching, Pennington notes that Jesus often taught in parables.  There are over sixty different parables which comprise almost 35 percent of the Gospel material.  Pennington writes:

Parables are powerful because they are imaginative and memorable and teach disciples to see the world in an unexpected way and invite an appropriate response in attitude and behavior--exactly what sages were all about.

Pennington then adds:

Jesus plays the role of a prophetic philosopher, a sage-prophet who is inviting people to see the world from the perspective of divine revelation that goes beyond human-centered knowledge.  This prophetic emphasis does not make Jesus any less of a philosopher, but it does add an urgent edge to his teaching.  Jesus regularly inserts the weighty tagline "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"  That is, "If you can understand my wisdom, then pay attention!"  Jesus's teaching in aphorisms and parables would have immediately identified him as a philosopher during his own lifetime. (p. 63)

5.  My own contribution to looking at how Jesus uses logic is found in my blog post "Jesus' Use of Reason in Matthew 12.22-29".   Here is the post in full:

Matthew 12.22-29: Jesus’ Use of Reason

1.     Setting the scene

a.     There is a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute.

b.     Jesus responds by healing the man “so that he spoke and saw” (v. 22).

c.      The crowds are amazed and begin to draw the explanatory conclusion that Jesus might be the Son of David—the Messiah.[1]

d.     The Pharisees offer another causal explanation—Jesus’ exorcistic power is from Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons. 

2.     Jesus begins to reason about why their explanatory cause makes no sense.  He points to their (a) inconsistency and (b) arbitrariness.[2]

a.     Inconsistency:  Jesus points to an internal inconsistency in his opponents argument in verses 25-26.  Essentially Jesus argues that if Satan is casting out Satan this creates a divided kingdom.  If Satan is casting out Satan and in the process is drawing people’s minds to think of God’s promises—namely the Davidic Messiah—then is a stupid plan.[3]

b.     Arbitrariness: In verse 27 Jesus points to a reality the Pharisees accepted—exorcisms by their “sons.”  Jesus is asking if their causal explanation of his exorcisms is consistent with the fact of other exorcisms they do accept.  Jesus is thus demonstrating that their causal explanation is arbitrarily applied.[4]

3.       Jesus continues to draw out his reasoning about the situation in verse 28: “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” 

a.     This is an example of modus ponens:

                                               i.     If P then Q

                                              ii.     P

                                            iii.     Therefore, Q 

b.     In Jesus’ argument:

                                               i.     P = I [Jesus] cast out demons

                                              ii.     Q = the kingdom of God has come upon you

c.      Jesus had defended P in verses 25-27 against the counter-explanatory claims of the Pharisees

4.     The Pharisees can irrationally hold to their inconsistent and arbitrary explanation or they could attempt to take Jesus’ modus ponens argument and turn it into a modus tollens argument.

a.     modus tollens

                                               i.     If P then Q

                                              ii.     ^Q

                                            iii.     Therefore, ^P

b.     They could deny that the kingdom has come (^P).  Therefore, whatever the explanatory cause of the exorcism it is not the case that the kingdom has come so they reject Jesus’ reasoning.  It is to admit that they do not have an explanation for Jesus’ power but they refuse to give credence to Jesus’ explanation. 

5.     Why does Jesus draw the conclusion about the relationship between exorcism by the Spirit and the coming of the kingdom?

a.     Jesus’ words in Matthew 12.29 help us to see the background of Jesus’ reasoning.  Matthew 12.29 states: “Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man?  And then he will plunder his house.”

b.     This language of Matthew 12.29 is an allusion to Isaiah 49.24-25:

24”Can the prey be taken from the mighty man, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?”  25Surely, thus say the Lord, “Even the captives of the mighty man will be taken away, and the prey of the tyrant will be rescued; for I will contend with the one who contends with you, and I will save your sons."

c.      Larger context of Isaiah 49 is about the “Servant.”

                                               i.     Servant is both corporate (Israel—verse 3) 

                                             ii.     And an individual—the Servant brings back Israel (Jacob) to God (v 5-6)

d.     “Servant” language in Isaiah 49 is part of larger Servant imagery in Isaiah that Jesus also appeals to in his teaching.

                                               i.     Isaiah 42.1 “Behold, my Servant, whom I uphold; my chosen one in 

whom my soul delights.  I have put my Spirit upon him…

1.     Isaiah 42.1-3 is the passage quoted by Jesus in Matthew 12.17-21—the pericope immediately prior to the passage under consideration about Jesus’ exorcisms!

2.     The Servant who has God’s Spirit upon him is linked in Isaiah with the Spirit-anointed One in Isaiah 61.1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted;…”

                                              ii.     Isaiah 61.1-2

1.     “This individual parallels in the servant figure of Isa. 40-55.  The anointment of the Spirit recalls 42:1…” 

2.     “Thus Beuken (1989) is correct in understanding Isa. 61 as an ‘interpretation’ of Isa. 40-55.”[5]

3.     Isaiah 61.1-2 is quoted by Jesus in Luke 4.18-19

e.     Jesus is utilizing the background material in Isaiah regarding the Spirit-anointed Servant who brings God’s kingdom.[6]

6.     Jesus and the Pharisees hold certain background assumptions in common.  They both formally affirm the Old Testament perspective on God, his covenants, his promises in Isaiah, etc.  Jesus reasons from within these shared assumptions to show the inconsistency and arbitrariness of the Pharisees.  Their explanation does not fit the evidence as situated within their shared background assumptions.

Footnotes

     [1] “The question is worded in such a way as to indicate a measure of perplexity, but also to open the door to an interesting possibility.”  Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 314.

     [2] Douglas Groothuis sees Jesus’ answers here in verses 25-27 as an example of Jesus using a reductio ad absurdum form of argumentation.  On Jesus (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth-Thompson Learning, 2003), 34.

     [3] “It is not be presumed that Satan is stupid: the Pharisees were taking up an impossible position.  Theoretically, of course, it might be argued that Satan could allow the expulsion of one demon in order to effect some diabolical purpose, but this would be met by the fact that Jesus kept on expelling demons; he carried on an unrelenting war against all the demonic forces.”  Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 315.

     [4] “The only possible logic behind the Pharisaic position was that a mere human could not overcome a demon.  If Jesus did have such a victory, therefore, it would show that he had aid from a superhuman source, and in their hostility their logic led them to hold that the source could only be Satan.  But they had spoken hurriedly; they had not stopped to reflect that some of their own people claimed to cast out demons.  The Pharisees would have vehemently denied that their sons were in league with the evil one, but they had not realized that such exorcisms said something about Jesus also.  Therefore they will be your judges; your own sons will prove you wrong!  The logic of a Pharisaic denial that their followers cast out demons through the evil one meant that Jesus did not use the powers of evil either.  The sons would be able to testify to the fact that casting out demons was not a work of Satan.  They would ‘judge’ them for ascribing to Satan what they, the exorcists, knew came from God.”  Leon Morris, The Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 316.

     [5] David W. Pao and Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Luke” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, eds. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2007), 288.

     [6] “In making this unique claim—in the light of the expectation that in the last time God’s Spirit would rest on the Messiah (Isa. 11.2)—Jesus was almost certainly claiming that in his exorcisms it was evident that he was endowed with the eschatological Spirit and therefore an eschatological figure himself.”  Graham H. Twelftree, “The Miracles of Jesus: Marginal or Mainstream?” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1.1 (January 2003), 119.