The Quest for Self

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The Quest for Self-Knowledge: Where Philosophy Went Wrong JONATHAN Y !"#$AN
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heaped o’er her head! Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more ! "or public #lame, nor private, dares to shine$ "or human Spark is left, nor %limpse divine! &o! Thy dread 'mpire, CH()S! is restored* &ight dies before thy uncreating +ord$ Thy hand, great (narch! lets the curtain fall* (nd universal ,arkness buries (ll (le-ander Pope, The ,unciad ./0 Modern man both kno+s and denies that he and his civili1ation are in crisis 'levated talk of 2The 'nd of History3 and 2The Problem of Modernity3 in the places of learning serves only to make interesting +hat +ould other+ise be cause for fear The academy does not really believe in a crisis 4hen art, literature, and popular culture convey convulsive e-citability or hopelessness, the scholars and pundits distract and calm the public +ith mantras of self5e-pression, confessing that neither art nor art criticism really believes in a crisis )n the part of the philosophers, a +eary resurgence of the 6uestion, 24hat is truth, any+ay73 promises no real conviction, +hile the 2post53 that describes and affi-es to all our thinking like a rosy po- is vague enough to be ignored or debated The silver5haired philosophers do not really believe in the crisis, either .n a situation +here those honored and paid to think, feel, and lead, are so tirelessly satisfied +ith their +ork on the problem, it is nearly impossible to defy them all and actually believe in a crisis 8ut at certain times a fleeting instinct nevertheless overpo+ers sociali1ed modern man and forces him to do so against his +ill The threat of global +ar and the 9arring specter of the appalled fist of hatred driving it give pause to even the most complacent "evertheless, the evasion nearly al+ays returns eventually, for it is stubborn, and many things beyond the desire for personal happiness are complicit Modern man’s secret dream of freedom is to be an artist in a society of artists creating themselves (lmost nothing has been able to dislodge this ideal, neither its failure in fact nor the political logic +hich promises that a society in +hich everyone is an artist +ill

soon enough reveal itself as a society of clo+ns, and from there +ill not have far to go in becoming a society of bandits The identification of freedom +ith self5creation is so entrenched that to point out its reality is considered an impropriety and the serious thinker is made ashamed of mentioning any gritty specifics The clinical syndromes and disorders that make children’s minds overload +ith unassimilated stimuli are not spoken of in the conte-t of 2The 'nd of History,3 and a blind spot in every promising :nified Crisis Theory like+ise e-ists +ith regard to the small nations of the despondent +ho are administered drugs to make life bearable ,isregarding the agitating of moralists, as everyone does, even the humble many, desperate to fi- their broken relationships, interest our thinking men only as phenomena unto themselves, as they receive their dubious guidance from our reconstituted family life, our confusion of se-, or our surgical toilette These and other symptoms attend the +aking life of an age +hich dreams its freedom in unbridled self5creation The principal thing +hich modern man seeks to evade is nevertheless not an unpleasant reality .t is the fact that his dream has for some time no+ gro+n macabre Seeking himself in +hat he desires to be, man has lost sight of +ho he is The crisis of modernity is at least partly a crisis of identity .t is certain that it affects groups and individuals une6ually ;et no thinking man remains untouched by the spirit of an age in +hich the +ord 2identity3 denotes something as desired as it is lacking )urs is a generation +hose intellectuals deconstruct identity, +hile in the background their echoes rouse a furious public debate that infects even the simple +ith a deep philosophical malaise Thus it is due to a common and shared feeling if today +e find ourselves +ith a disconcerting sympathy for +hat faced the <oman 'mpire nearly t+o thousand years ago ( hollo+ sound as of dissolution +as heard in the +orld Man seemed in a hideous case$ Placed bet+een t+o infinities, he kne+ neither He kne+ not past nor future (ll belief +as dead* dead the belief in the gods, dead the belief in the republic = <ome +as another civili1ation Those +ho dra+ too strong a parallel bet+een its great crisis and ours are in error, but +hatever the similarities or differences, it is not so blamable an error as that +hich evades the thought of our o+n gathering storm This, then, is a meditation on modern man and +hat stands before him .. Since modernity gives us a crisis of men, let us imagine an actual man facing the crisis 4hat is +rong, is +rong in him The approach to the problem demands simplicity The ob9ect +hich interests us is modern man in his actual incarnation, not a philosophical one such as could be found, for instance, in many +orthy +orks of scholarship or history To ans+er the very basic 6uestion, if, and ho+, modern man is in crisis +e +ill have to sum him up, and then decide 2+hat +as rotten and +hat +as fresh 3 "ot merely refined taste, but especially the modern love of diversity and disinclination to 9udgment are ill5pleased +ith a task such as this 4ho are +e, nevertheless7 The ans+er does not come easily "o belief, no idea, and no single culture contains us 4e kno+ of tendencies, can even make pro9ections to a certain degree, but the essentially modern man +ill not appear in the mind’s eye He +ill not appear because there is no idea of human nature against +hich to hold him 4hat is man capable of being7 4hat are his good and evil7 8y +hat means does he arrive at these7

These 6uestions hang over us unans+ered like flags of cultural defeat, or +hat is +orse, they are over5ans+ered and so come to embitter our taste for the pursuit of truth ,espite or because of modern philosophers’ portentous claims, +e remain generally at a respectful distance from philosophy and its peculiar passion Taste and habit dispose modernity more to ra+ e-perience than to the pursuit of +isdom .n spite of this, the bitter taste in our mouths for the philosophy of human nature finds itself not in rebellion but largely in harmony +ith modern philosophy and science Philosophy, +hich began +ith Socrates’ dictum 2>no+ thyself,3 is today fallen mostly silent on man and mankind, and from it no ans+ers to 6uestions on human nature are likely, for +ithout an interest in both the singularity and ideal of man’s character, precisely no kind of comparison is possible .t is strangest that, +ith fe+ e-ceptions, this slighting of self5kno+ledge by philosophers is not under consideration by philosophy .t has not al+ays been so Philosophy has not al+ays silently abandoned man, but on the contrary had to openly declare itself against self5kno+ledge before it could be e-tricated from him #rom a 6uite definite time on+ard the philosophers became less and less inclined to in6uire about themselves The feeling begins to gain momentum in %erman philosophy after >ant, but +aits for Hegel to bid an imperious riddance to human nature Concern +ith +hat is called a cognition of human nature, involving the attempt to investigate the peculiarities, passions and foibles of other people, the so5called recesses of the human heart, is e6ually alien to the philosophy of spirit Cognition of this kind is of significance only if it presupposes cognition of that +hich is universal, of man, and hence, essentially of spirit ? 'ven a philosopher is entitled to remain agnostic as to the relation bet+een philosophy and life 8ut +hen modern man and philosophy combine so happily, as if by design, against a philosophy of human nature, it is hard to see only a great coincidence of events (t least this much cannot be denied, that a philosophical perple-ity regarding truth, identity, and human nature has seeped into daily life, so that modern man’s crisis involves a deep if unconsidered philosophical malaise 4hat Hegel e-presses, ho+ever, is only a bad opinion of human nature and its philosophical +orth The causes of his opinion are more clearly seen else+here in %erman philosophy 4ith Hegel is indeed an early trace of modern man’s condition, or, more precisely, an oracle concerning the unresolivability of his crisis 8ut it is only in #riedrich "iet1sche’s philosophy that the same disinclination for self5kno+ledge became a matter for philosophy to consider directly and +ith urgency "iet1sche is our point of departure because he is the first and last of the great philosophers to 6uestion his o+n aversion to self5kno+ledge 8ut there are also more general considerations dra+ing us to him Hegel’s +as a closed system and its optimism no longer reflects our intellectual orientation "iet1sche, an-ious and unsatisfied, is the first of the philosophers to belong fully to modernity His +ork provides many of the loose threads of reality +hich have been pulled by successive generations .n him is found not only our ambivalence for the study of human nature, but also a recogni1able form of our dream of freedom 4e begin by asking this first and greatest representative of modernity$ 4hat of self5kno+ledge7 ...

"iet1sche’s statements on self5kno+ledge are scattered throughout his +ritings, recorded in a tone of unusually persistent pu11lement and riddling ( solilo6uy deep in the labyrinths of 8eyond %ood and 'vil serves as an introduction 4ill anyone believe me7 8ut . insist on being believed$ . have never been good at thinking about myself, and do so only on very rare occasions, only +hen forced, +ithout any desire to pursue 2the matter3! This +hole state of affairs might be the most certain thing . do kno+ about myself . must have a kind of revulsion against believing anything definite about myself Could there be a riddle here7 Probably* but fortunately not one for my teeth 55Could this reveal +hat species . belong to7558ut not to me$ 4hich is 9ust ho+ . +ant it to be 55@ "ot everything in "iet1sche is to be taken at face value The philosopher contradicts himself, he lies and he riddles 'ven so there is much to speak for this particular declaration’s sincerity "iet1sche is found directly confessing his unrepentant distaste for the pursuit of self5kno+ledge, and musing that his revulsion is a mysterious sign of something else The confusion only thickens +ith the addition of different voices else+here in his +riting Someone else +ith a more subtle thirst for possession +ill say to himself, 2)ne should not deceive +here one +ants to possess355He becomes irritated and impatient at the thought that a mask of himself rules the hearts of people$ 24hich is +hy . have to let myself be kno+n, and above all kno+ myself!3A "iet1sche insists that the 6uest for self5kno+ledge leaves him cold and indifferent He also lets it be kno+n that the desire to possess, in subtle natures, demands self5 kno+ledge This contradiction, as +ill become apparent, forms near the core of his thought and t+ines about its deepest fabric .t is "iet1sche’s riddle of self5kno+ledge .t +ould not be difficult to con9ure up an apparent solution to the riddle B ;et +hat speaks here is manifestly not another of the riddles +hich "iet1sche sets for his disciples <ather, it is the central riddle implicit in the philosophy and the man himself (s if by +ay of confession, a peculiar tone of flat perple-ity is never far from any aphorism touching the sub9ect (n issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us 554hat did that god +ho counseled, 2>no+ thyself!3 really mean7 4as it perhaps$ 2Stop letting anything matter to you! 8ecome ob9ective!355(nd Socrates755(nd the 2scientific man3755C 4hat complicates matters is that this riddle of self5kno+ledge belongs not to any philosopher, but to a philosopher tormented, above all other things, precisely by a sudden and unbearable presentiment of self5kno+ledge Standing 2beyond good and evil3 re6uires kno+ing +hat e-actly one’s good and evil +ere 2Self5overcoming3 is an idea +hich could hardly occur to a man +ithout any very clear idea +ho he is The man +ho believes he has killed his %od cannot escape also being the man +ho believes his %od +as all along a part of himself This is the same "iet1sche that, according to Sigmund #reud, 2had a more penetrating kno+ledge of himself than any man +ho ever lived or +as likely to live 3D The riddle stands thus$ Self5kno+ledge is not to be pursued, cannot be pursued, even as everything seems to demand it Modernity’s struggles +ith identity are versions of this riddle 4hen "iet1sche, a master of self5kno+ledge, turns first in conscious be+ilderment and then in disgust from self5e-amination, it is not arbitrary (fter him, many others and much of philosophy +ill follo+ The riddle of self5kno+ledge is at the

foundation of a ne+ tradition pressing on+ard through his e-istentialist disciples .n Heidegger, Sartre, and their follo+ers, for instance, the true self +ill appear Eor disappearF as something unkno+able* something perpetually receding, or merely potential 8ut a potential self that creates the personal past +as not +hat +e sought 4e sought modern man, mind and soul, flesh and blood ./ The riddle of self5kno+ledge reflects the confusion of a modernity struggling to 2find itself 3 ( solution to this riddle can never come from the man occupied in looking for himself$ Such a man is himself the riddle "iet1sche, ho+ever, is an e-ception He e-periences the riddle in terms of the +ish to be lost to himself 4hat for us is an affliction, for him +as an end .n the prophetic tangle of philosophy and poetry that marks his +ork, there are no doubt many roads leading back to the riddle and its causes )urs +ill be paved by the cunning of proverbial +isdom according to +hich 2to kno+ a man is to kno+ his %od 3 "iet1sche is usually remembered as the man +ho declared that %od is dead, but he speaks also of other gods +ho are 6uite alive and lively enough to engage in debate More than once he states simply and emphatically that 2the gods philosophi1e 3G His meaning, though not immediately clear, can be deciphered The gods, philosophi1ing or not, are the highest intelligent po+ers in or above the +orld They are also responsible for the +orld, +hether as creators or as overseers, and are the final authority on matters of truth Philosophy, on the other hand, is a search and an interminable contention over truth ( man’s philosophy may change precisely +hile the +orld remains the same, for it matters little to the +orld +hether it be grasped or merely groped 8ut should the gods’ truth change, then the +orld +ould have little choice but to follo+ suit 2The gods philosophi1e3 means truth changes, and it changes by virtue of philosophi1ing "o +onder, then, that this proclamation is 2something that might arouse mistrust precisely among philosophers! 30H (nd +hen "iet1sche says of his idea that it 2seems to me like something ne+ and not +ithout its dangers,3 tragic tones of understatement are heard 00 8ut is all this not genuinely mad caprice7 4hat is meant by picturing gods as striving against one another to+ard uncertain issue and dragging the +orld along +ith them7 #or "iet1sche, at least, the idea is neither arbitrary nor fanciful He states that it is 2a conclusion . have been dra+n to many times 3 #or him, at least, it carries the allure of necessity +hich all great philosophical ideas, true or false, must possess The idea is that truth changes 4e are accustomed to the claim that all truth is relative, and might therefore be tempted to assimilate "iet1sche’s philosophi1ing gods, and their changing truth, into that more familiar idea The t+o are far from the same, ho+ever Classical relativism claims, in one form or another, that human perspectives differ essentially and says further that there are no means for deciding on an absolute perspective beyond them (ccordingly, truth at any given place and time is relative to some individual man The truth of the philosophi1ing gods is something else entirely .t is a changing absolute .t is not by chance that the idea is e-pressed in a metaphor, for a changing absolute is a classical absurdity +hich even modern philosophers hesitate to admit .f the standard of measure for all things +ere to change, there +ould be no means of measuring that change, e-cept another standard of measure +hich +as indeed absolute 0= .f an absolute

changes, provided only it be a true absolute, that change can have no meaning nor can it even so much as be detected, for if the measure of truth changes, truth changes +ith it Previous truths are lost for all eternity Classical relativism +as prepared to make peace +ith this fact (ccording to it 2man is the measure of all things,3 and since no man has the ability to remain e-actly the same from one moment to the ne-t, even personal truths must fade eternally in a slo+ly evaporating trail Classical relativism +as thus in the broadest sense anti5philosophical .n contrast, "iet1sche’s doctrine of the changing absolute permits him to raise philosophy to an unprecedented state of e-altation Truth, rather than sinking into the abyss of relativism, is lifted by an ingenious stratagem into a higher eternity This is accomplished by means of the 'ternal <eturn, "iet1sche’s doctrine that reality has and +ill repeat itself forever The eternity +hich is filled out by the repetition of a finite reality is a realm in +hich an absolute may change +ithout being utterly lost, because all the forms of the changing absolute are also preserved The recurrence transplants all change and the temporal +orld into eternity .t had been Hegel’s great ambition to preserve those truths, once considered absolutes, +hich the passage of time had falsified 0? To do so, he posited a moving absolute to+ard +hich all history aims by dialectical stages "iet1sche’s incredulous genius +as not able to offer him the comfort of this particular faith in a universal progress that saves the truths of the past by s+allo+ing them up in the (bsolute Truth to come (ll that +as left to him +as the 'ternal <eturn and the sort of peace and 6uiet +hich hover above a realm of endless struggle "iet1sche’s comfort +as not the progress of history, in +hich he disbelieved, but an eternity holding the Complete Collected 4orks of all the gods’ philosophi1ing Starting from gods +ho philosophi1e, the changing nature of truth is a necessary conclusion, and the 'ternal <eturn serves as ballast against a riotous >ingdom of Heaven Taken together, they are the outline of a complete system +hich ans+ers to the classical theologies of religion in many respects, but +hich is essentially ne+ and altered 4hat emerges around "iet1sche’s philosophi1ing gods is more than a ne+ system, it is a ne+ religiosity marked by a ne+ type of god 4ith it lies a tortured path to him and his riddle of self5kno+ledge #or even though this man can never be +holly kno+n, something of him surely speaks in the ob9ect of his ironic +orship$ The philosophi1ing host of heaven / The matter at hand is "iet1sche’s conclusion that the gods philosophi1e, a conclusion he says pressed itself upon him often 4hat +as it that dre+ the philosopher to this7 4hat logic or e-perience lent it philosophical force7 Here, the ans+er may precede its proof, for there is testimony of only one thing in all the annals of "iet1sche’s spiritual autobiography +hich could have fertili1ed his mind for the ne+ relativism The historical sense, or the nineteenth century’s 2si-th sense,3 is "iet1sche’s name for that thing, and perhaps it is a fitting name for all that fascinates and repels in his vision 0@ There is a brief attempt at its definition$ The ability 6uickly to guess the rank order of the valuations that a people, a society, an individual has lived by, the 2divinatory instinct3 for the connections bet+een these

valuations, for the relationship bet+een the authority of values and the authority of effective forces! 0A This is the historical sense in a fe+ +ords .t is an ability, says "iet1sche, to guess 6uickly at the valuations a people has lived by, at the 2relationship bet+een the authority of values and the authority of effective forces 3 Translated into more familiar language this refers to the relationship bet+een the dominant cultural values, or the inner history of a period E2the authority of values3F, and the acts of its men E2the authority of effective forces3F .t is a mobile sense for the soul of people, above and beyond, perhaps, even +hat they kno+ of themselves "iet1sche believed that the gods philosophi1e .n order to penetrate a divine dialectic, one +ould have to be able to guess at the nature of the gods’ philosophi1ing from the manifold circumstances of the +orld .n other +ords, from the kno+n and intelligible +orld, it +ould have to be possible to divine the 2rank order of valuations3 embodied in the philosophy of the gods The transition from the historical sense as described in the aphorism to the conclusion that truth changes is a mere shifting of the dependent variable <ather than inferring from men to their secret or cultural souls, the inference is from those same ne+ly discovered souls to a posture of divine philosophy able to grant them meaning 4hen men are seen to act, the historical sense suggests the soul in +hich their action is +rought, e g , the soul of (thenian or <oman man 8ut once those +orld5souls have been made intelligible, it is able to build again on its gains and guess +hat must be the philosophical assumptions of a universe thus populated The ob9ect of kno+ledge is e6ually the gods as seen by the %reeks and the %reeks as seen by the gods Though much in Hegel makes similar claims, "iet1sche liberates the historical sense to infinite applicability He arrives at an entirely ne+ species of relativism, a relativism made possible by the historical sense and based on neither sense perception nor the individual man .nstead, the ne+ relativism of the historical sense is based on superhuman agencies, entities +hose very e-istence is obscure 2The gods philosophi1e,3 says "iet1sche, and adds, 2. have been told that you do not like believing in %od and gods these days 30B The gods have been rediscovered by means of their changing truth They philosophi1e, therefore they are (nd these freshly discovered gods have a much more stubborn claim to e-istence than is first apparent The greater part of our philosophy approaches truth and reality by means of changing divine forces$ ICultural,’ Ilinguistic,’ Ihistorical,’ and Ipsychological’55gods, indeed, in everything but name "iet1sche’s polytheistic relativism, separated from his idiosyncrasies, is nothing short of a fundamental ontological point of departure for modern thought .n all places the historical sense and its gods serve as the demarcation of modernity They are a cornerstone of our received thought 4hile in later thinkers the divine relativism never again reaches the same plastic virtuosity it has in "iet1sche, neither is it ever again absent 4ith it, +e move a step closer to the riddle of self5kno+ledge, and to the core of modern philosophy /. The historical sense is the soil of a once ne+ species of relativism, no+ gro+n unobtrusively familiar 4hat is the true nature of the 2si-th sense3 +hich, much distinguished from the canonical five, is able to resurrect gods and arrive at a changing

absolute7 The historical sense is a faculty +hich appears at a particular 9uncture of history .t is the nineteenth century +hich considers it a si-th sense, and its origin, according to "iet1sche, is the 2democratic mi-ing of the classes and races 3 This e-planation, though likely not +ithout its truth, is very far indeed from putting the matter to rest Can "iet1sche have forgotten to ask ho+ an individual comes to possess the historical sense7 4hat he does say in the aphorism is certainly interesting enough The man of the historical sense is a 2type of chaos3 into +hom 2the past of every form and +ay of life! radiates! 3 His virtues form a list of 9ust those +hich "iet1sche sought to mold into the superman$ 4e are unassuming, selfless, modest, brave, full of self5overcoming! (t this point, our instincts are running back every+here and +e ourselves are a type of chaos 55 2Spirit,3 as . have said, eventually finds this to its o+n advantage 8ecause of the half5barbarism in our bodies and desires, +e have secret entrances every+here, like no noble age has ever had! J8utK Ithe historical sense’ practically amounts to a sense and an instinct for everything, a taste and tongue for everything$ 8y +hich it immediately sho+s itself to be an ignoble sense! 0C The concluding sentence of the aphorism is probably +hat constitutes "iet1sche’s final literary 9udgment on the matter 0D &ike the rider on a steed snorting to go further on+ard, +e let the reins drop before the infinite, +e modern men, +e half5barbarians55and +e feel supremely happy only +hen +e are in the most55danger These, then, are the seductive bits of description given in the aphorism #or our purposes, ho+ever, such bits are insufficient and unsatisfying 4hat begins +ith the historical sense ends +ith nineteenth5century man in general, and rather than an e-planation of either, there is only a spirited apostrophe for a type of virtue that is both knightly and base, and in the last analysis ignoble "iet1sche spins ne+ +onders to conceal the old &et us attempt to press on +here he has failed to do so The historical sense is an ability to penetrate to the depths of the most disparate incarnations of the human being People separated from us by time, geography and language are no+ intelligible to us, and this intelligibility makes manifest all the assumptions and hidden valuations of their souls This is a sense able to grasp the hierarchy of desires in strange men, even +here they themselves had never attempted a similar degree of thoughtful self5penetration Such an ability must surely be strongest in a man of po+erful imagination, one +hose empathetic faculty has been cultivated to an e-traordinary degree ;et for all that, it cannot be mere empathy 'mpathy allo+s us to understand others as they understand themselves, to partake in their emotions or even to desire ne+ ones on their behalf 8ut empathy did not suddenly become available in the nineteenth century, it does not re6uire the empathi1er to be a type of chaos, nor is it a 2divinatory instinct3 for an utterly ne+ type of kno+ledge, a sense for things previously unsensed The ob9ect of empathy is al+ays a real ob9ect #or e-ample, one feels the +averings of a man +ho faces a dilemma .t +ould be something 6uite distinct from empathy, ho+ever, if one +ere to e-perience a dilemma on behalf of a man +ho himself is a+are of no such dilemma, and it +ould cease entirely to be empathy if one +ere to e-perience an emotion, idea, or desire different and perhaps much greater than that e-perienced by the ob9ect of empathy ;et this is 9ust the promise the historical sense holds out$ The ability to

penetrate to the inner soul of a people, to grasp the hidden la+s governing its desires and actions, 2to guess the rank order of the valuations that a people, a society, an individual has lived by 3 Ho+, then, is the transition made from mere empathy to this7 (t the core of the historical sense are t+o familiar and philosophically opposed intuitions The first has come to be termed historicism and teaches that man is molded by history 0G .f man is shaped by history, to understand him is to understand his history .dealism teaches, on the contrary, that it is man, by thinking and acting, that is the sole author of historical reality .t recogni1es no reality independent of man’s mind 4ithout ever formulating either of these doctrines e-plicitly, the historical sense accepts them both and operates in the vacuum +here they intersect (s such, it is not simply a compromise +hich +ould vaguely consider man and his environment as mutually determining This ageless and obvious truth is not the uni6ue understanding of man and history that the historical sense promises The purity of the contradiction is maintained The historical sense is un+illing to relin6uish its truth, fruit of .dealism, that the +orld can be imagined to e-ist only by first imagining a mind to grasp it Ealthough it is 6uite +illing to replace Imind’ +ith the more robust notion of personalityF "either is it +illing to deny the manifest truth that minds and personalities have differed enormously over history, from epoch to epoch, nation to nation, and must therefore be considered as determined from +ithout History makes the man indeed, but the man must also make reality =H #or the historical sense this contradiction bet+een man as totally determined and no less totally determining is not intolerable, or even perple-ing .t is fecund T+o entities, man and +orld, neither of +hich may be imagined as possessing independent e-istence, are nevertheless uni6uely responsible for each other’s being :nderstanding either one comes to mean understanding their perpetual co5genesis =0 8ecause neither man nor history can so much as be thought +ithout first positing the )ther, the historical sense is a mental ventrilo6uism .t thro+s a voice that thro+s another in turn .t hosts a split monologue in +hich each voice speaks for its other half The disarmed logical contradiction is allo+ed to persist Man and +orld are each understood only through the )ther, and neither is prior == (lmost +ith a single voice, classical philosophy had agreed +ith common sense in denying the validity of this manner of thinking The medieval (nselm of Canterbury +rote +ith elo6uent brevity that 2the notion that something could e-ist through that to +hich it gives e-istence, is 9ust irrational 3=? .rrational, that is, because it is a notion that leaves thought +ith no point from +hich to begin The historical sense makes long +ork of this problem .t is the honed instinct of the metaphysical agnostic, trained originally by %erman .dealism and freed by the study of history, to annihilate in thought the source of a thought, all the +hile maintaining the thought .t employs a type of doublethink, a forgetful thought .n order to begin thinking of a man, the historical sense con9ures him up through +orld history and subse6uently forgets the derivation .n this +ay man is granted a temporary and unstable independence as an ob9ect of thought =@ This type of thinking navigates an atmosphere of hypothetical e-istences and discovers the soul of the atmosphere .t is a thinking at home in an unreal universe neither ob9ective nor sub9ective Thus is the man of the historical sense 2a type of chaos,3 thus is the instinct 2divinatory,3 thus does he love the infinite$ The infinite to and fro, for+ard and

back+ard and inside5out of the great construction of everything upon the foundations of the void "iet1sche recogni1es that his philosophy o+es its vast, unsettling po+er to the historical sense =A )f its ontological fallout he is no less a+are .n one aphorism, he accuses regular language, common sense, through its 2positing3 of a sub9ect +hich carries out an action, of doubling the action$ 8ut no such agent e-ists* there is no 2being3 behind the doing, acting, becoming* the 2doer3 has simply been added to the deed by imagination55the doing is everything The common man actually doubles the doing by making the lightning flash* he states the same event once as cause and then again as effect! =B "iet1sche’s ontology, if it may be so described, arises from the historical sense +here like+ise there is no 2being3 and no sub9ect Cause and effect are also implicitly denied because their e-istence re6uires a causing sub9ect ;et +hat is a %enealogy of Morals, it might be asked, if not a vast, artful table of cause and effect7 The seeming contradiction bet+een the simultaneous employment and denial of cause and effect is covered over and forgotten in the relentless activity of the historical sense )ne cannot stand in a universe +ithout causality, says "iet1sche, but one can soar .ndeed, only thus do the seas of historical becoming offer up their sunken treasures Throughout "iet1sche’s +ritings the great destructive and constructive po+ers of the historical sense are in evidence 4e have considered ho+ it pro9ects a theology +hich +akens the sleeping gods to a ne+ life of philosophy Here it is possible to see the origin of the philosophi1ing gods again in a fresh light "ot only are they discovered by means of the historical sense, the philosophi1ing gods also solve the dilemma of man and +orld history by being the imaginary e-istence from +hich to derive either (t each beingless point of intersection bet+een man and history, a ne+ creating god is born The gods serve to still "iet1sche’s convulsive thinking and make it comprehensible &ater philosophy +ill employ precisely the same artifice by inventing entities that have ontological priority over both man and +orld Sometimes revealed and sometimes concealed, many are the gods of modern philosophy presiding over an act of mutual creation bet+een the +orld and man =C The historical sense leads compellingly to numinosity, though after "iet1sche this becomes philosophy’s dark secret /.. "iet1sche penned a treatise on the use of the historical sense containing a dire +arning about a 2historical malady3 brought about in his time by an e-cess of historical learning, undermining and destroying 2the plastic po+er of life that no more understands ho+ to use the past as a means of strength and nourishment 3 (gainst it he counsels an art of historical forgetfulness in the service of life and the noble deed =D The ultimate failure of his art to control the disease, a failure in both theory and practice, springs from his misapprehension of the sense +hich, in applying, he +as so unparalleled a master #orgetfulness, both of man and of history, +as al+ays an essential component of the historical sense .t has long proven itself capable of thriving in the absence of e-cesses of scientific history, and even in the very dearth of history The historical sense is not so much a philosophy as it is a +ay of thinking, and as a +ay of thinking is concerned as much +ith cosmology as +ith history This is perhaps +hy, nameless and invisible, its animating breath is able to live on in mostly unhistorical modern thought

4e have until no+ been follo+ing the historical sense’s heavy footprints in the primordial void, but only an anatomy of the historical sense in action can put flesh on this +andering spirit &et us first briefly consider the related matter of value 2These are my values,3 +e often say +ithout noticing +e mean not 2these things have +orth for me,3 but rather 2through these things everything assumes its +orth for me 3 "iet1sche speaks often of 2value3 and 2valuation 3 (s +ith us, the meaning of these terms is not e-hausted by a sub9ective or ob9ective 9udgment of e-isting things Much of modern philosophy has taken pains to emphasi1e that values are also connected someho+ +ith our conceptuali1ation of the +orld 4hether the value be %od or health, it is understood as that through +hich +e form conceptual 9udgment The sum5total of our values, the radical Eand entirely imaginaryF totality of everything through +hich +e 9udge +ould have to encompass both ourselves and the +orld Thus must "iet1sche be understood He speaks of 2valuation3 as a +orld5creating activity, +hat in the diluted language of later philosophy comes to be called the emergence of a 2conceptual frame+ork 3=G The historical sense, +ith its forgetful thought, +as defined by "iet1sche as 2the ability 6uickly to guess the rank order of the valuations that a people, a society, an individual has lived by 3 8ecause it operates +ith e-treme rapidity, 2instinctually,3 it is difficult to describe (ny description +ill re6uire us to slo+ thought to the speed of +ords in the manner of logicians, and +ill unavoidably involve a reduction of the true mental activity involved "evertheless, to make the attempt is necessary 4e take, for e-ample, the total valuation of a particular man and annihilate the man in thought The valuation remains as an entity, a +orld conceptuali1ed, +hich can in turn e-plain the formation of another man, different from the first This second man +ill not be some aeterna veritas +ith the valuation superadded, but its outgro+th$ .t creates him and into its +orld he is born This second man is the conditioned result of the +orld conceptuali1ed +hich +as derived though the annihilation in thought of the man +ho first valued and created it The second man is himself liable to create a ne+ valuation, to conceptuali1e the +orld afresh 8ut this can occur only after the +orld +hich created him has been annihilated in thought, so as to free him to be a man (nd so on ad infinitum .t matters little +hether the men in 6uestion make up a people over history, or are merely stages in the life of a single man The historical sense proceeds by degrees from man to the +orld conceptuali1ed and back again to man .t is necessary, at each stage, to forget that thought +hich gave rise to it #ailure to discard the preceding rung on the ladder of cause and effect invites a paraly1ing absurdity, previously described as the contradiction bet+een idealism and historicism .f valuation is a predicate of man, man must precede it as sub9ect, and it cannot form him .f, on the other hand, man is the predicate of a valuation, he is determined and cannot create ne+ value (nd lastly, if man is both the sub9ect and predicate of valuation, then there are no longer any means for distinguishing him from the evolving value itself* he is reduced to an unreal e-istence, any arbitrary pause in a sea of transmogrifying valuation and conception Moving from one historical kno+n to another, from Socrates to (le-ander, from "iet1sche to Hitler, the historical sense mines history’s marro+ The 2rank order of the valuations3 a man has lived by as +ell as 2the connections bet+een these valuations3 are discovered (n imaginary mental pivot embedded in the events of history allo+s us to consider either the man or his +orld, but not both, as real Lumping back and forth rapidly

as +e follo+ the course of kno+n history, kno+ledge of the +orld5made5man and the man5made5+orld merge into a single insight, into a host of creating gods or a 2rank order of valuations 3 Hegel, +ho ascribes all alteration in valuation to a single telos, describes 9ust this in his famous phrase the 2cunning of reason 3 4e, more "iet1schean and some+hat humbled in the passage of time, speak of 2cultural perspectives 3 The ontology of the historical sense denied 2being3 and, by e-tension, cause and effect ( fe+ philosophers have been tempted to retaliate by denying the historical sense 8ut as +e have seen, the historical sense is not really a denial of sub9ect, not a true abandonment of cause and effect, and not really a thought of the unthinkable The historical sense is a peculiar mental gymnastics 6uite +ithin the bounds of thought /... The aim of solving the riddle of self5kno+ledge has proceeded some distance already .t began +ith the philosophi1ing gods and the ne+ relativism they imply The origin of the ne+ relativism +as sought in the historical sense The historical sense appeared as an infinite march of simultaneous discovery and forgetfulness Having started farthest from man, it is no+ finally possible to return to him, for +e have not yet asked +hat becomes of the self +hich is endo+ed +ith the historical sense The broken chain of cause and effect by +hich the historical sense moves from valuation to man, man to valuation, is not a purely logical chain of cause and effect .t does not possess its o+n la+s, as do the cause and effect of the physical universe (t each point in the chain there is a certain psychological calculus to be determined, +hich could not have been determined beforehand .t is here that imagination and empathy become essential, for at each stage the man of the historical sense must himself relive and re5act the process of creation of value Eman to valuationF and creation by value Evaluation to manF 4ithout the thinker’s personal entrance into the revolution of cause and effect, man and value +ould never 2touch3 each other, and things +ould remain at a standstill "o insight +ould be gained, and he, ho+ever +ell versed in the relevant history, +ould lack the 2divinatory instinct3 that is the hallmark of the historical sense ?H ;et it is not precisely he himself +ho enters into this causality of history "ot, at any rate, he himself as a given, determinate being He must allo+ himself to be molded passively by the value in 6uestion, allo+ himself to relive the impulsion from stage to stage$ /aluation to action, and back again )nly by e-periencing the past in this fashion is he able to e-tract the desired kno+ledge (nd this mode of time travel allo+s him to travel very light indeed He can bring nothing +ith him, not even himself He must forget himself in order to make these forays into the past He must arrive as a sort of primal psychological matter, a formless man, in order to allo+ some valuation to recreate him into some action .n this +ay he gains e-perience of that hidden soul +hich he seeks His o+n soul, in the process, is e-panded to include these most remote of e-periences$ The ,ionysian %reek, the Senatorial <oman, the #rench <evolutionary* all no+ comprise living spirits and potential +ays of 9udging and feeling in his o+n being ?0 The man of the historical sense s+ells and discovers himself at all times and in all places .n the most literal sense he comes to comprehend history Could this be a clue to "iet1sche’s riddle of self5kno+ledge7 The self, in order to kno+ itself, must no+ also kno+ history7 "iet1sche himself suggests that it is

,irect self5observation is not nearly sufficient for us to kno+ ourselves$ 4e re6uire history, for the past continues to flo+ +ithin us in a hundred +aves* +e ourselves are, indeed, nothing but that +hich at every moment +e e-perience of this continued flo+ing ?= ( ne+ species of self55perhaps the superman, perhaps only his forebear55has arisen .t enters a +orld governed by the ne+ relativism of the philosophi1ing gods .t shifts across history, 2+ills the past,3 and ascends as high as the divine discourse itself .ts gro+th, the e-penditure of energy, is consoled by the 'ternal <eturn, +hich stands ransom for truth and the unity of the soul Many are the things +hich are ne+ and different in this man of the historical sense, both virtues and vices ( single e-ample, but one +ith fateful conse6uences, is his notion of honesty Previously honesty had been a virtue of simple nature and comple- application .t had demanded that one seek out and neutrali1e all factors leading to an imbalance of 9udgment .nterest, passion, and habit +ere poised 2to cloud the vision3 and cause a lapse of honesty, against +hich stood the discipline of self5e-amination The honest man +as active in his attempts to prevent himself and others from being deceived, and as +ith all virtues, the higher he aimed, the more difficult it became 'ntirely different from this is the honesty of the man of the historical sense$ The more emotions +e allo+ to speak in a given matter, the more different eyes +e can put on in order to vie+ a given spectacle, the more complete +ill be our conception of it, the greater our 2ob9ectivity 3?? The ne+ honest man is concerned not +ith purifying his o+n perspective in 9udging, but in amassing as many perspectives as possible History, through the historical sense, has taught him to collect many emotions and 2different eyes 3 The more eyes his vision employs, the more emotions his heart e-periences, the greater his ob9ectivity, his truth, and his pro-imity to the philosophy of the gods Honesty, once the virtue of fidelity to kno+n truth, no+ places its pretender under a ne+ 6uantitative demand The more varied the e-perience, the greater the honesty The old 6ualitative demand of fidelity to the kno+n has mean+hile disappeared, for the sundry eyes and emotions +hich can be brought to bear in passing 9udgment +ill necessarily contradict one another 'ach replacement of one perspective +ith another is an infidelity to the kno+n, so that the breach of the old honesty is itself become the very essence of the ne+ 8ut the man of the historical sense need not necessarily become a dilettante as a result )n the contrary, a sublime ne+ type of asceticism is possible to him This asceticism has its activity in the form of a perpetual striving after ne+ e-periences, ne+ emotions, and ne+ perspectives .t renounces cleaving to any one stable perspective as a sin carrying its o+n punishment .t considers 9udgment a +ant of humility, as the 6uantitative re6uirements of honesty can never be ade6uately met (nd there is, of course, a monk5 like disdain55not for this +orld as against the afterlife55but for the narro+ness of one’s o+n +orld compared +ith the breadth of everyone’s (s he negotiates so many different standards of 9udgment the man of the historical sense comes to be 2full of secret entrances 3 "one of the entrances, ho+ever, are authentically his, and he comes inevitably to loathe himself (s +ith the saints of 'gypt, his spiritual e-ercise only intensifies as guilt and shame flo+ from a mysterious image of sin gro+n ever larger and more fearful before his eyes .n his habit he may be delicate and

fastidious like Proust, volcanic and reactionary like ,ostoyevsky, or sublime and frightened like >afka (t a certain point in self5kno+ledge, +hen other circumstances favoring self5scrutiny are present, it +ill invariably follo+ that you find yourself e-ecrable 'very moral standard55 ho+ever opinion may differ on it55+ill seem too high ;ou +ill see that you are nothing but a rat’s nest of miserable dissimulations These dissimulated intentions are so s6ualid that in the course of your self5scrutiny you +ill not +ant to ponder them closely but +ill instead be content to ga1e at them from afar These intentions aren’t all compounded from selfishness Selfishness seems in comparison an ideal of the good and beautiful The filth you +ill find e-ists for its o+n sake* you +ill recogni1e that you came dripping into the +orld +ith this burden and +ill depart unrecogni1able again55or only too recogni1able55because of it ?@ This is the man of the historical sense, the man "iet1sche sa+ forming all around him and in the future #rom him he dre+ both despair and a hope in the form of the superman (t this point it is finally possible to return to the riddle of self5kno+ledge Ho+ does the man of the historical sense approach self5kno+ledge7 Ho+, indeed, do +e approach self5 kno+ledge7 .t is hard to be satisfied +ith the remark that history is no+ re6uired in addition to direct self5observation "iet1sche’s o+n riddle makes us fear that the true ans+er could not be so easily forthcoming, or so blithely optimistic .M Self5kno+ledge +as to be a +ay of bringing the higher culture to defend its aging religion of unsatisfied narcissism and loveless pangs, self5accusation and guilt* a means of dispelling something of the fog and paraly1ing uncertainty of modern life 8ut to ourselves +e seemed a+k+ard and critical strangers, unsure in our kno+ledge and unsure again +hy Modernity set itself to confound self5kno+ledge .t opened +ith "ie5t1sche’s anti5 Socratic dictum, 24e kno+ers are unkno+n to ourselves, and for a good reason$ Ho+ can +e ever hope to find +hat +e have never looked for73?A .t closes no+ +ith a crisis of identity and disintegration "iet1sche’s riddle of self5kno+ledge has, in truth, already found its ans+er The man of the historical sense is dispersed over history, his essence mi-ed +ith that of the %reeks, the <omans, and +hoever else he has applied himself to kno+ He has no center (ll this stands bet+een him and self5kno+ledge 8ut let us grant for a moment that some kind of self5kno+ledge is possible to him through his study of history 4hat +ould be the nature of his ga1e, and ho+ +ould he e-amine himself7 8y no other means than the historical sense itself, for the historical sense is his +ay of kno+ing .t applies to an individual no less than to +orld history That most important individual, himself, far from being an e-ception, is its finest ob9ect (gain$ &ike the rider on a steed snorting to go further on+ard, +e let the reins drop before the infinite, +e modern men, +e half5barbarians55and +e feel supremely happy only +hen +e are in the most55danger There is but one supreme danger for the man of the historical sense .t is loss of self and infinite fractionali1ation He is in danger of becoming nothing kno+able He applies the historical sense to himself, and is reflected back onto the kno+ledge gathered by that same sense 'very part of +hat he tries to kno+ dissolves into something else He

considers his o+n development, and it replies +ith Neno’s parado-$ .n the race bet+een his self and its history, as in that of (chilles and the tortoise, the one can never catch the other He has made a pact +ith history not unlike #aust’s +ith the devil, and for the e-ercise of po+er over the past has gained a soul full of +ormholes The riddle of self5kno+ledge +as in fact never a riddle The historical sense pillages history to enrich the self, granting an unlimited sense of self5e-pansion ,irect self5 e-amination, mean+hile, has precisely the opposite effect .t dispatches the self back to history, +hence it came #or each attribute of a man’s character, it finds only historical episodes, real or imagined There is no part of the self immune from the annihilative and forgetful agency of the historical sense (t length, the very pursuit of self5kno+ledge in the man of the historical sense must lead to self5destruction The original man of the historical sense +as at least in temperament an aristocrat Passing from an age of pathos to one of bathos, +e have had our say in directing and reinventing his sense Psychoanalysis taught us to mine our souls for buried gods and gave us a death +ish '-istentialism removed the need for actual historical kno+ledge or a grand theater of operation &iterature provided the illusion of a secondary immediacy of life +ithin the philosophi1ing divinity #eminist philosophy +as successful in undoing the se-ual difference, though less successful in reinventing it Post5colonial philosophy replaced the cultures of the past +ith those of the present, and it added a strong measure of morali1ing The deconstructionist, high priests of the historical sense, construct a universe of differance and non5being, and live in the sickly5pale image of beauty that the slo+ eclipse of the historical sense radiates at their elevation &ike all solipsists, they are prophets only to themselves The historical sense, spread +ide and diluted in our times, finds its home in the myriad competing +orldvie+s of modern culture Partly because of its lack of true heroes, it is seen as much in the +hole as in its parts .n this age of crisis, +e can decide neither +ho +e are, nor +hat +e +ant Philosophy, +hich has kno+n many functions in the intellectual government of the +orld, no+ in e-ile hatches plots for our salvation .n her absence the opposing forces gather under many banners, and +ithout banner, against her and her tainted higher culture #rom the fading, closing mind of 4estern civili1ation comes but incoherent and feeble protest There is disintegration lurking about the riddle of self5kno+ledge, the same to +hich the man, #riedrich "iet1sche, eventually succumbed )ne stricken by its advanced stages degenerates in a t+ofold manner .n the first place, so far as he is active, he is compelled to a perpetual mental reconstruction of himself55a process +ell chronicled in modern literature The tangled causes and effects of his life become short5circuited, and he slides to+ard premature senility (t the same time, things are no longer e-perienced in se6uence, for every e-perience is the center of an e-panding ne+ +orld The constant shifting of his frame of reference e-acts a heavy toll as his kno+ledge and e-perience suffer steady attrition He is condemned, +ith the accumulation of e-perience, to gro+ not +iser but younger His tortuous, involuted paths lead no+here but to a second childhood of senility This disease +as present at the onset of modernity .ts glo+ing embers persist +herever the historical sense leaves its mark on our collective thought and memory Philosophy’s recovery has been long, and the outcome is uncertain )ur civili1ation totters mightily and gro+s un6uiet The hori1on darkens imperceptibly much as it did at the close of

anti6uity To begin afresh, to kno+ once again +hat man and the +orld are, to abandon the historical sense decisively and regain a history55fe+ are ready for the losses in cultural capital this +ould inflict 4e need identity in order to begin again to feel life The +orld around us is simplifying even in its massive comple-ity, and great things are being lost This is suffering and a call to decision for a truer kind of freedom The crisis of our civili1ation bla1es and smolders* let us not +ander, year by year, gro+ing old and young under a +aning sun M Though "iet1sche and his philosophy belong to a bygone age, still +e recogni1e in the portrait of the man of the historical sense many things +hich ring true of us today The lack of center and loss of identity of +hich our age complains are clearly his o+n invented torment His an-ious instability resounds in our art and our lives He resembles us in his tendency to confuse his 2. understand3 +ith his 2. agree 3 4herever he happens to understand, there he stands55for the moment 4e come more than a century after "iet1sche 4e are not precisely ourselves men of the historical sense 4e lack something of his ambition, something of his romance 4e also lack, in plain 'nglish, his sense of history )ur debt to the man of the historical sense is no+ become something painfully like the debt of the Middle (ges to %reek ideals 4e live in its shado+, +ithout ourselves matching it 4e have made of it a great casuistry, +ithout rising to its challenge or raising a challenge to it .t has been our cruel and necessary duty to drag the man of the historical sense through history, to +atch him shrivel a+ay and assume our o+n likeness (nd as +e escort him through history in our imaginations, +e must deprive him, firstly, of the 'ternal <eturn The 'ternal <eturn, it is likely, did not outlast even "iet1sche 4ith it goes all hope of truth and of the integrity of the soul .ts loss also removes his 9oyful 2+illing of the past 3 He still 2becomes3 endlessly but no more becomes the great heroes of history* an idea +hich at any rate must no+ strike us as 6uaint His 2becoming3 cries out for meaning 28ecoming3 demands a tra9ectory, an aim .n all the nations men of the historical sense took solace in a philosophi1ing divinity There, fickle in their myths and +ith varying degrees of piety and fulfillment, they found their gods and learned to sacrifice to them )ne in %ermany, thinking to finish "iet1sche’s +ork, proclaimed that the greatest, the authentic of all man’s possible 2becomings3 is death Lust so, the man of the historical sense became, for a +hile in %ermany, he +ho is to death 4hat +as this +orld behind it Jthe songK, +hich his intuitive scruples told him +as a +orld of forbidden love7 .t +as death ?B .n #rance, +here spirits most longed for release, it +as first declared that man is simply all his possibilities .t +as a happier time 8ut +ith the gradual muffling of the philosophi1ing of the gods by +ar5s+ept irony Ethat 4agnerian cacophony!F, man’s dance of possibilities +as stranded +ithout music 'ven the #rench +ere subse6uently forced to admit that man is absurd Man is the absurd animal, they said, and made a theater of lament #inally, man gre+ so tired of himself and his absurdity that he began to gro+ +eary even of his angst, +hich +as replaced gradually by a certain over+helmed apathy .t +as from

this last transformation that he emerged post5modern .t +as then that he turned into us55 the truthless pilgrim J)nK an endless, unrehearsed intellectual adventure in +hich, in imagination, +e enter a variety of modes of understanding the +orld and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all ?C (nd if some ne+ manner of man +ere to approach our truthless pilgrim as he +anders no+here, someone, it may be, +ith less kno+ledge, less depth of soul, less subtlety for discerning the 2potential3* someone not 6uite the 2half5barbarian3 of the nineteenth century, but resembling the fuller barbarian of the t+enty5first55if he should say to the truthless pilgrim$ 2;ou have no Soul!3 .f that should happen, +ould the truthless pilgrim, shamed to the marro+ by the verity of the accusation, have courage enough to begin again7 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Lonathan ;udelman is a student of Le+ish thought and philosophy at the Hebre+ :niversity of Lerusalem "otes 0 (le-ander Pope, Selected Poetry and Prose E"e+ ;ork$ Holt, <inehart, and 4inston, 0GA0F, p @@G = (scribed to the .talian philosopher and politician %iuseppe Ma11ini, 0DHA50DC= ? %eorg 4ilhelm #riedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Sub9ective Spirit, ed and trans Michael Lohn Petry E,ordrecht$ , <eidel, 0GCDF, p ? @ #riedrich "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil$ Prelude to a Philosophy of the #uture, ed <olf Peter Horstmann, trans Ludith "orman ECambridge$ Cambridge, =HH=F, pp 0BG5 0CH A "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p D? B &et us assume that the desire to gain possession55possession here meaning love, control, and mastery$ nothing short of the constituent elements of the +ill5to5po+er55 re6uires us to kno+ and reveal ourselves .f so, cannot our lies, too, be vehicles of self5 revelation7 "iet1sche’s riddle could then be seen as another irony engineered by the man +ho so admired Socrates’ irony His point +ould be that precisely the lie e-presses something of the liar +hich strict truth +ould stutter to speak C "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p BH D 'rnest Lones, The &ife and 4orks of Sigmund #reud, vol = E"e+ ;ork$ 8asic 8ooks, 0GAAF, p ?@@ G "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, pp 0CA50CB 0H "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p 0CB 00 "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p 0CB 'mphasis added 0= The idea can perhaps be pictured as follo+s .f a unit of measurement, the meter, for instance, +ere to change its length from time to time, nothing could measure that change besides another unit of measurement The ne+ unit of length +ould then become the absolute and unchanging standard .f, on the other hand, there is no absolute unit of length beyond the meter, changes in the length of the meter have no meaning as there is no possibility of discovering them 0? #ollo+ing %otthold 'phraim &essing’s tradition of progressive and educative revelation

0@ The historical sense is not merely a sense of history, +hich certainly did not arise only in the nineteenth century <ather, it signifies a ne+ +ay of thinking and feeling +hose original, though by no means e-clusive, ob9ect is history Here . dra+ passing attention to Lohann %ottfried von Herder, +hose philosophy of history contains an early <omantic e-pression of the historical sense as the art of conceptuali1ing history empathetically 0A #rom "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, pp 00@500B$ 2The historical sense Eor the ability 6uickly to guess the rank order of the valuations that a people, a society, an individual has lived by, the 2divinatory instinct3 for the connections bet+een these valuations, for the relationship bet+een the authority of values and the authority of effective forcesF$ this historical sense that +e 'uropeans claim as our distinguishing characteristic comes to us as a result of that enchanting and cra1y half5barbarism into +hich 'urope has been plunged through the democratic mi-ing of the classes and races55 only the nineteenth century sees this sense as its si-th sense Thanks to this mi-ture, the past of every form and +ay of life, of cultures that used to lie side by side or on top of each other, radiates into us, +e 2modern souls 3 (t this point, our instincts are running back every+here and +e ourselves are a type of chaos55 2Spirit,3 as . have said, eventually finds that this is to its o+n advantage 8ecause of the half5barbarism in our bodies and desires, +e have secret entrances every+here, like no noble age has ever had, and, above all, access to the labyrinths of unfinished cultures and to every half5barbarism that has ever e-isted on earth (nd since the most considerable part of human culture to date has been 9ust such half5barbarism, the 2historical sense3 practically amounts to a sense and instinct for everything, a taste and tongue for everything$ 8y +hich it immediately sho+s itself to be an ignoble sense! Perhaps our great virtue of historical sense is necessarily opposed to good taste, at least to the very best taste, and it is only poorly and haltingly, only +ith effort that +e are able to reproduce in ourselves the trivial as +ell as the greatest serendipities and transformations of human life as they light up every no+ and then$ Those moments and marvels +hen a great force stands voluntarily still in front of the boundless and limitless! Moderation is foreign to us, let us admit this to ourselves* our thrill is precisely the thrill of the infinite, the unmeasured &ike the rider on a steed snorting to go further on+ard, +e let the reins drop before the infinite, +e modern men, +e half5barbarians55and +e feel supremely happy only +hen +e are in the most55danger 3 0B "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p 0CB 0C "iet1sche, 8eyond %ood and 'vil, p 00A 0D The charge of ignominy aside, the concluding sentence of the aphorism comes close to describing )s+ald Spengler’s #austian man, said by him to characteri1e the spirit of 4estern civili1ation 0G That is, the history of +hat has happened to him* the history of his passive formation by circumstance =H .t is perhaps "iet1sche’s systematic neutrality +ith regard to the dispute bet+een realism and idealism, and his partial acceptance of the arguments of both parties, e-pressed in part 0 of 8eyond %ood and 'vil and else+here, +hich lead him to build a ne+ philosophy upon the historical sense, being a certain fact of e-perience in his eyes Consider, for e-ample, #riedrich "iet1sche, Human, (ll Too Human, trans <eginald Lohn Hollingdale ECambridge$ Cambridge, 0GGBF, p 0A$ 2Metaphysical +orld 55.t is true,

there could be a metaphysical +orld* the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed 4e behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head* +hile the 6uestion nonetheless remains +hat of the +orld +ould still be there if one had cut it off 3 =0 This parado- is clearly of a different nature than the dualism +hich forms the basis of >ant’s philosophy .n that philosophy the ob9ect is a combined result of mind and thing5 in5itself, or +orld, but mind remains of a constant and uni6ue nature == The historical sense is the main ingredient in that +eak broth served up by the contemporary philosopher under the moniker 2the )ther 3 =? (nselm of Canterbury, The Ma9or 4orks, eds 8rian ,avies and %illian 'vans E)-ford$ )-ford, 0GGDF, p 0? =@ (t this point it is possible to notice by +ay of digression that 'instein’s theory of relativity belongs to the ne+ relativism rather than the old, and that by e-tension it belongs to the historical sense The definition of 2simultaneity3 in that theory is given 2the perception of t+o events at once 3 .n order to prove that events +hich are simultaneous for one perceiver are not so for another, it is demonstrated that t+o events seen as simultaneous by a stationary man +ill not be so perceived by a moving man Ho+ever, in order to speak of the same t+o events at all55those +hich are assumed, be both simultaneous and unsimultaneous55it is nevertheless necessary to assume that they occur at one time .f their time is set by their perception and they become different events, four in total Therefore, in setting the e-periment, only one time for the events +as considered, on +hich all further calculations +ere based There is a logically illicit simultaneity prior to the one defined 55That forgetful thought has been handled by the annihilative agency of the historical sense The resulting description of the universe as 2finite and unbounded3 is also analogous to the 'ternal <eturn =A 2#amily failing of philosophers 55(ll philosophers have the common failing of starting out from man as he is no+ and thinking they can reach their goal through an analysis of him They involuntarily think of Iman’ as an aeterna veritas, as something that remains constant in the midst of all flu-, as a sure measure of things 'verything the philosopher has declared about man is, ho+ever, at bottom no more than a testimony as to the man of a very limited period of time &ack of the historical sense is the family failing of all philosophers! 3 "iet1sche, Human, (ll Too Human, pp 0=50? =B #riedrich "iet1sche, The 8irth of Tragedy and The %enealogy of Morals, trans #rancis %olffing E%arden City, " ; $ (nchor, 0GABF, p 0CG =C The philosophi1ing gods solve the problem of groundless thought by positing a real e-istence from +hich to derive both man and +orld &ater philosophy does so by inventing various entities +hich have ontological priority to man and +orld, e g , Hurserl’s phenomena, Heidegger’s ,asein, #reud’s comple-es, Lung’s archetypes, #oucault’s episteme, Sartre’s mauvais foi, Mar-’s class consciousness, ,errida’s 2differance,3 4ittgenstein’s language games, etc Here, too, are the distant origins of today’s sub9ectless philosophies and phenomenologies of the 2)ther 3 =D #riedrich "iet1sche, The :se and (buse of History, trans (drian Collins E.ndianapolis, .nd $ 8obbs5Merrill, 0GACF, p BG =G This is +hat brings Heidegger, commenting on "iet1sche and the formation of his o+n philosophy, to define value as a 2point5of5vie+ 3 This is also the definition inherited by the 2conceptual frame+ork3 of modern philosophy, +hich like 2valuation3 both

follo+s from man, and precedes his conceptuali1ation /alue is a 2point of vie+3 +hich someho+ brings both the vie+er and the vie+ed into e-istence ?H This is probably the meaning of "iet1sche’s e-hortations to 2+ill the past 3 .n reliving the past through the historical sense, there can be no opportunity for decision or choice, but a type of +illing does remain in setting the level of energy e-pended in affirming or denying the e-perience To 2+ill the past3 is to apply the historical sense +ith gusto ?0 'arlier, . considered the idea that the 'ternal <eturn +as born of the desire to find the last means of preserving truth from the ne+ relativism of the historical sense Here, it seems 9ust as likely that that same 'ternal <eturn +as born to preserve the integrity and immortality of the self The scattered self of the historical sense, stre+n across the universe and all time5past, and finding itself every+here in kno+n history55ho+ could it have a unity of parts, if those parts +ere perpetually ceasing to be7 .f the soul is to be one, if it is to be eternal, so too must all its parts The only +ay for all these details of the +orld Eof +hich the self, it seems, is composedF to approach eternity and integrity is the 'ternal <eturn ?= "iet1sche, Human, (ll Too Human, pp =BC5=BD ?? "iet1sche, The 8irth of Tragedy and The %enealogy of Morals, p =AA ?@ #ran1 >afka, The ,iaries of #ran1 >afka$ 0G0@50G=?, ed Ma- 8rod E"e+ ;ork$ Schocken, 0G@DF, p ??H 'mphasis added ?A "iet1sche, The 8irth of Tragedy and The %enealogy of Morals, p 0@G ?B Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans Lohn ' 4oods E"e+ ;ork$ (lfred ( >nopf, 0GGAF, p B@= ?C Michael )akeshott, <ationalism in Politics and )ther 'ssays E&ondon$ Methuen, 0GB=F, pp 0GD50GG

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