Well, eighteen of us met in the rather distracting hubbub of Hawthorn’s front room – and what follows is my partial resume of the discussion points we had over the two hours, spliced with a mixture of some of the angles I picked up on, and then some themes we started to think about pursuing and thus returning to over the next four weeks. ($ refs to the entry whatever your translation and edition/the number to the page ref in my Hollingdale, 1973, Penguin Classic edition).
PREFACE
Supposing truth to be a woman (31)
We spent a fair ten minutes mulling over N’s provocative opening (surely his point?) – the humour more or less agreed upon, we read this as an allegorical definition of philosophy’s dogmatism when faltering in front of characteristics akin to those ascribed to woman, as inscrutable and seductive etc. as untruth: a pithy example then that short circuits. Not woman then as an object but nor woman perhaps as C21st feminist theories might inscribe, i.e. as instigating a radically different set of frames of reference outside philosophy’s current tradition (perhaps, as the spirit/style of N might well be precisely this) [Derrida’s response to the question:’ If you had a choice, which philosopher would you have liked to have been your mother?” (Derrida Documentary – Dick/Kofman: chapter 15 of DVD].
Not being ungrateful to the dogmatist’s error: this started our discussion on the question of the system or metaphysics in N’s thought: this was contentious and disputed but it does point to the style at work: the error, in any case, revealing an agonistic creativity (we return to this below).
PART ONE: ON THE PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'? ($1/33)
Discussed the idea that this challenges the dogmatism of metaphysical certainty, why 'we' - philosophy hitherto, and perhaps us still (note N directs much to us now - easy to be seduced by his writings and laugh with him when the humour is directed at you (see $) - seek/will truth. Two things struck us here it seems: (1) not to deny truth and its role in its 'regulatory importance' but that untruths fulfill this function too: hence the oft quoted 'The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding ... without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live ...To recognize untruth as a condition of life' ($4: 35-6); (2) also noted the destabilization of the subject of willing the truth here - what is it that is in us that thinks, that thinks as desires, seeks out truth? Are we sure this doesn't come from outside our sense of atomistic individual thought blasting that apart too (even from within us/this is addressed of course in $19)? And further, that actually the selection of truth as traditionally conceived is value laden: philosophers are all actors and their convictions at some point appear on the scene (their conceptual personae - i.e. at once disparaging but also constructive for N. The Satyr Greek plays - 'The ass came along, beautiful and strong': I noted Maria F's ass earrings worn for the occasion, smart bunny!) So, no absolute truths as not ones for philosophers to discover, rather, and here N questions the honesty of philosophers (in his humourous put downs of Kant and Spinoza (something that we discuss again over Part III), this ambiguous appreciation and mockery of these philosophers - achieved quite a bit as a hermit etc!) to actually sort of valorize the prejudices in the title.
Conscious thinking must still be counted among the instinctive activities ($3/35) A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want it ($17/47)
A big theme for me here so I am going to strand together several threads connecting: affect to will to power, competing wills-drives organic but not atomistic that extend and critique distributed agency (Latour isn't Nietzschean enough?)/habit and plasticity/Speculative Realism (sure, all my convictions at the mo!). (1) The time at which Nietzsche is writing, not so much in terms of society and politics, but in terms of science - physiology. Why and how was N turning to this field of science? So perhaps my favourite quote of Part 1: Physiologists should think again before postulating the drive to self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being [theories now of plastic deformation/auto-immunization?] A living being desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - : self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it - In short, here as everywhere, beware of superfluous teleological principles ($13/44) $15 is a rich perplexing argument addressing both phenomenology (phenomena in the sense of idealist philosophy) and SR (the external world is not the work of our organs) - i.e. sure our sense organs are phenomena too, so objects as well as subjects of the world, but N hints at going further than this through physiology. How? In his critique of 'immediate certainties' - now here we first briefly discussed pragmatism (mainly James) and then in more detail that $16 sets up $19 as the crux of Part 1. Thus: the philosopher must question: That it is I who think, that it has something at all which thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of an entity thought of as a cause, that an 'I' exists, finally that what is designated by thinking has already been determined - that I know what thinking is ($16/46) Using this to question why we (scientists/philosophers/in general) think in terms of cause and effect? Then to $19 and the will to power - feelings and thinking as will/will as the affect of command: of what? Of wills/forces against wills/forces. The punchline that comes: for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls - thus making sense of the idea that in will it both commands and obeys. It is only when we/it overcomes some obstacle that through the resultant effort that it appears - and we associate ourselves with the success, centered on the 'I'; but not if we now realize we are not atomistic but rather a collection of under-wills as well etc. And this illusion, untruth of the 'I' is the common philosophy of grammar - similar grammatical functions steal the interpretation always already. Of course it is here that we see the scale of N's project (also $54/81); and its antihumanism (forwards to Part III - the death of God is the death of 'man'; also $101; Foucault, OT - to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair - N thus eschewing 'causa sui' and the myth that we can be the masters of knowledge etc). Also here: N's relation to the science (and that of physiology) - he doesn't valorize it alone because the project here is not to discover but to invent ($12/44) - i.e. invention draws in other experiences, expressionisms, encounters etc (OK, my prejudice for GD is immanent!)
Big questions we skipped over here - the question of freedom. We did discuss the notion of the myth of unfree will as well as that of free will: the question remains though: what do we think of the beat of strong and weak wills? This relates back to the indifference of nature: To live - is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is living not valuating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? ($9/39). How do we proceed with this? And how do we read N? Well, something I have been musing on: his method - he says after the first exposition of his will to power in BGE it is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable: it is with precisely this charm that it entices subtler minds ($18/47 - and I am appealing here, haha!!) And before that on the innate prejudices of philosophers, that what they lack is the courage of the conscience ($5/36) to admit their prejudices; and this is the method, this courage, if carried out, that will be the means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion ($4/36)
Ok so here I start folding PART TWO: THE FREE SPIRIT but continue on about N's method
What customary value-sentiments are resisted? He has given thus some of the logics - antithetical thinking/cause and effect/ a priori judgements - and rejigged them in much the same style and provocation as the opening sentence of the preface. Specifically, he is targeting Descartes, Hegel and Kant - immediate knowledge ($16/46), synthetic judgements etc. So he starts Part II with his method: the will to knowledge on the basis of a far more powerful will, the will to non-knowledge, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its antithesis but - as its refinement! ($24/55) And then: It is commanded by the conscience of method. Not to assume several kinds of causality so long as the experiment of getting along with one has not been taken to its ultimate limits ( - to the point of nonsense, if I may say so) ($36/67) - THUS: N's method, and the courage behind the provocations of his thought here, is the singular pursuit of the 'will to power' and his constant questioning of it so as not to fall down as its martyr (does that prevent if from being a metaphysical move?) It is almost then that the following sections in The Free Spirits acknowledges the 'vulgarity' and 'difficulty' of it: but then, like the power of censorship in society (a good ill given it spotlights the current 'unnacceptable' - being told something is unnacceptable usually makes me laugh)), it does this to set N' stage to distinguish the 'levellers' from the 'attempters [loved eloquent and tirelessly scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its 'modern ideas' ($44/72)] - and thus the distinction, again, perhaps?, 'unpalatable', between plant 'man' and herd animal.
Well that is it for now - will probably add in a few additions over the week when/if I get the time: these would include, the affect in will/the ethics in N's method - the allusions to desiring a different world and overturning the existing one. The themes we had - why masks so prevalent? - why psychology a lure, and queen of the sciences? - is will to power then the metaphysical statement of N? - more to be said on the times in which N wrote, politically, socially, scientifically, and also personally.
P.S. [Derrida’ response to the question mentioned earlier: ‘it is impossible for me to have any philosopher as a mother’].
