Beyond Argument: Nietzsche as Intuitive Text

Nietzsche's principal purpose in and through Beyond Good and Evil is neither to construct a critique of his contemporaries nor an apology for a novel philosophical treatise; his goal, as an individualist motivated primarily by his own actualization, is the sublimation of his compulsions toward certainty into a transformative, purposefully self-contradictory text. In this manner does he attempt to divorce himself from the ranks of nominally rationalist philosophers, who presume that dispassionate analysis leads them to objective reckoning of the truth whereas, in actuality, it is their instincts and prejudices through which they presuppose their conclusions. Nietzsche lays blame on philosophers for their pretensions of impartiality, not for their biases, which he determines to be intrinsic to consciousness; any thinker, whether guided by intuition or reason, experiences his thoughts "secretly guided and channeled into particular tracks by his instincts." In asserting this, however, Nietzsche imposes on his own work a three-fold dilemma:

First, how can Nietzsche make an argumentative case against his contemporaries if the core of his argument is the repudiation of certainty? Indeed, assuming that any kind of repudiation relies on the strength of one's own convictions, how is the repudiation of certainty even possible? At best, Nietzsche seems insincere in denouncing the fallacies of the modern philosophers only to summarily commit them in his argument - although it is uncertain whether he is aware of this, or whether this is his intention;

Second, how does Nietzsche expect to resolve the problem of instinctive presumption if, as he states, it is particular to consciousness itself - so pervasive and compelling that even eminent rationalists such as Descartes were unable to suppress it? Should his declaration of the prejudices of philosophers be true, Nietzsche may have succeeded only in becoming an intellectual Oedipus in its realization, possessing foreknowledge of his fate but unable to alter it;

Third, assuming that Nietzsche could succeed in suppressing his own prejudicial and presumptive compulsions, doesn't this violate the notion he expresses in The Will to Power that instincts are better sublimated than repressed? Nietzsche prides himself in opposition to Christian moral tradition through this principle, and argues that one must "employ," or sublimate, his impulses and instinctive energies, directing them into more desirable actions than they would otherwise produce. Simply to repress any latent or unconscious tendency, no matter how innocuous or inconvenient, would be recourse to one of the moral tactics which Nietzsche most despises.

For these reasons, Beyond Good and Evil cannot be taken seriously as an argumentative text, but excels both as a conduit of sublimation and as an instrument of subtle transformation. Nietzsche cannot avoid making presumptions and self-defeating arguments, nor ought he do so if he could, so instead he exorcises their constituent compulsion by turning it to his advantage. Beyond Good and Evil, although superficially a flawed argument in part against the notion of philosophical certainty, functions best as a kind of hermeneutic meta-text through which the reader must go 'beyond' trust or distrust of the words on the page and glean Nietzsche's message intuitively. It is a work of initiation, and intended to resonate specifically with his "new philosophers," a forthcoming intellectual elite whose job it is to "create values," to exuberantly reshape the world according to their will to power.

It is in this group that Nietzsche automatically places the reader, creating tacit agreement through the subtle but pointed use of the royal "we." Speaking of the "anti-realists" and right-leaning social critics of the time, Nietzsche dismisses their attempts to escape modernity, to move it backward to a simpler and milder epoch: "their retrograde backroads are no concern of ours!" The reader, if he is not paying attention, will instinctively situate himself within Nietzsche's circle of the exempt and philosophically correct with only this slightest syntactical suggestion of the author, and in doing so, paradoxically, joins the ranks of exactly those whom Nietzsche regards as fools - the conforming herd. To Nietzsche's conception of the new philosopher, this sort of reflexive in-grouping is antithetical, and as though manipulating a hall of mirrors the author presents to the invigilate reader an image of himself, the impersonating "free spirit," which belongs "to the levellers, loquacious scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its 'modern ideas': they are all of them people without solitude, without their own solitude..." In contrast, Nietzsche's new philosophers do not belong to Nietzsche, nor do they belong to one another, for the principal quality of a hypothetical Nietzschean would be solitary individuality, not adherence to a creed or membership in an organization. For this reason, no such thing as a Nietzschean can exist, except in disagreement with such a definition. Herein lies the central paradox of Nietzsche's non-doctrine, and defines the metamorphosis that any reader ostensibly tuned into Nietzsche's proverbial wavelength experiences, for the veneer of argumentation and side-taking presents to him a provocative, subliminal question: Do you agree? The answer cannot be yes, but neither can it essentially be no. Rather, the initiate must realize an unknowable third option by passing, alone, into an "enormous, virtually new realm of dangerous insights" beyond morality - and beyond allegiance.

This transformation, however, cannot occur only once, as if crossing a line dividing the "enlightened" from the "rabble." Rather, the passing "beyond" is a sustained process, and Nietzsche does not take for granted that anybody who has done so will stay there. Tied up in his own philosophical aphorisms throughout the text are a variety of doctrinal statements which seem to ignore Nietzsche's criticism of dogmatism. Among the first of these are Nietzsche's forays into physiology. "As regards materialistic atomism," he writes, "hardly anything has ever been so well refuted...However, we must go even further and declare war, a merciless war unto the death against the 'atomistic need' that continues to live a dangerous afterlife in places where no one suspects it..." Nietzsche's strong, almost violent opinion about the implications of modern science betray the fact that he is a philosopher, not a physicist, and though there might be validity to his words, he offers no empirical evidence with which to back his quasi-scientific claims. He seems to suggest an imminent coup of the scientific world by his new philosophers, who will clear a path for "concepts such as the 'mortal soul' and the 'soul as the multiplicity of the subject' and the 'soul as the social construct of drives and emotions,' " stating that these and many others "will claim their rightful place in science." Following so closely his exhortations on the value of uncertainty and the laziness of presumption, these statements seem grossly immature. One wonders, however, whether he is simply playing a role, especially in light of a glibly ironic aphorism shortly subsequent, which states:

"Truly, a theory is charming not least because it is refutable: that is just what attracts the better minds to it. It would seem that the theory of 'free will', which has been refuted a hundred times over, owes its endurance to this charm alone - someone is always coming along and feeling strong enough to refute it."

By refuting a theory or idea, one edifies and preserves it, for to expend the effort at all is indirect proof of its power. Nietzsche, by rejecting materialistic atomism in Aphorism Twelve, and offering a refutation by proxy of Boscovich and Copernicus, subliminally elevates the notion in the mind of the reader, even though he may consciously agree with the author in dismissing it. Briefly, Nietzsche hints at the flimsiness of his argumentative premise, noting that the new philosopher "knows that he is thereby also condemned to inventing, and - who knows? - perhaps to finding" his own prejudices in reality, dubiously confirmed. After this momentary flickering of doubt, however, Nietzsche returns to his faux-scientist persona in the successive aphorism:

"Physiologists should think twice before deciding that an organic being's primary instinct is the instinct for self-preservation. A living being wants above all else to release its strength; life itself is the will to power, and self-preservation is only one of its indirect and most frequent consequences.

"Here as everywhere, in short, we must beware of superfluous teleological principles! And this is what the instinct for self-preservation is (which we owe to the inconsistency of Spinoza). Such are the dictates of our method, which in essence demands that we be frugal with our principles."

Here Nietzsche's argument approaches the metaphysical, with no corroborating evidence except that of his own presumptions, and yet he admonishes physiologists for hastiness, and Spinoza for inconsistency. Amazingly, he refers to the elimination of "superfluous" ideas as a tenet of his "method," whereas the author has so far revealed only the absence of one. This occurs early in the text, and Nietzsche's initial words on presumption and uncertainty should remain fresh in the mind of the reader, and yet the author continues to play games:

"In order to practise physiology with a good conscience, you have to believe that the sense organs are not phenomena in the philosophical idealist sense, for then they could not be causes! This is sensualism as a regulative hypothesis at least, if not as an heuristic principle.

"What's that? And other people are actually saying that the external world is created by our sense organs? But then our body, as part of this external world, would be the creation of our sense organs! But then our very sense organs would be - the creation of our sense organs! It seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum: assuming that the concept causa sui is something completely absurd. It follows that the outer world is not the creation of our sense organs - ?"

That Nietzsche even uses the words "good conscience" in seeming sincerity should indicate that something is amiss. He dissects and refutes meticulously the theory that the world is created by our sense organs, in defense of the opposite notion, but manages to elevate the first and destabilize the second with a lingering question mark. The result is a reciprocal feeling of doubt, as the reader feels simultaneously that these aphorisms are both sensible and unreasonable, and is left to wonder about Nietzsche's purpose.

Concerning this, several possible explanations come to mind: first, that these aphorisms are sincere and held to be certainties by the author, which means in turn that his discussion of the value of doubt and open-mindedness is insincere, or untenable despite the author's efforts, or that Nietzsche is simply unaware a contradiction exists. The second, and perhaps more compelling, explanation takes the opposite view, holding that Nietzsche's uncertainty principle is sincere and that the aforementioned aphorisms, and many others, serve only as "gut checks" to test the reader's grasp of the author's unspoken directive. The truth likely falls somewhere between the two extremes, in which Nietzsche's aphorisms are heartfelt and based on a dynamic set of ideas formulated with the notion of uncertainty in mind; under such conditions, philosophical gut checks could present themselves without necessarily delegitimating the content of the aphorisms which surround them, for whose sake it would otherwise seem a gross waste of effort to write an entire book. Aphorism Eight in particular seems to corroborate this. It divides Nietzsche's remonstration of philosophy with a series of his own arguments, and through it he acknowledges the intellectual peril that accompanies such a sharp contradiction:

"In every philosophy there is a point when the philosopher's 'conviction' makes its entrance; or, in the language of an old mystery play:

"adventavit asinus
pulcher et fortissimus."

Translated, the proverb reads "the ass entered, beautiful and most brave." Since Nietzsche has already established his low opinion of other philosophers, it doesn't follow that he would reinforce this with an aphorism which basically states that, at some point, all philosophers begin acting like philosophers. Rather, this is a veiled bit of self-criticism. Nietzsche realizes that, by presenting his convictions in the text that follows, he runs a high risk of rendering his sermon on bias and certainty meaningless, and appearing like a fool in the process. If this assumption holds, it is evidence that Nietzsche is aware of the dilemma he creates for himself, similar to that affecting the reader. He cannot wholeheartedly endorse his subsequent viewpoints, but neither can he explicitly reject his convictions in the text and remain what he claims to be; in other words, he cannot be insincere. Reason alone is insufficient to explain the gist of his perspective, because it offers only a binary option to the author: consistency or contradiction, and neither alone is sufficient. In order to encompass both, Nietzsche has to communicate his ideas both rationally and intuitively. The text becomes two in one, a marriage of the Apollonian and Dionysian, in which one reasons and repudiates while the other senses and sublimates.

If one regards Beyond Good and Evil as a dualistic text, two baffling logical turns emerge suddenly into clarity. The first is Nietzsche's seemingly outright rejection of intuition. He derides Kant and the Romanticists for the facetious generation of "faculties" by which they detect phenomena of their own invention, in what Schelling calls "intellectual intuition." Nietzsche dismisses this entire mode of thought as dreamy and "arrogant," characterized by dangerously circular thought. However, assuming that intuition is an impulse and not simply aberrant or incomplete reasoning, Nietzsche cannot reject it through and through without resembling the repressing Christian moralist, nor does the body of his text reflect an abandonment of intuition in favor of the "cold, pure, divinely unhampered dialectic" that would result. Kant goes wrong in his attempts to rationally affirm intuition; Nietzsche realizes that the two deny one another, and does not make the same mistake. His dualism affords him the ability to affect the paradox, to deny every impulse as he employs it. Confirmation of this occurs late in the text, when Nietzsche goes so far as to repudiate scepticism in the manner of a dispassionate scientist. "For scepticism," he writes, "is the most spiritual expression of a certain complex physiological condition that in common parlance is called bad nerves or sickliness; it invariably presents itself whenever races or classes that have long been kept apart intermix significantly and suddenly." One wonders if Nietzsche has completely forgotten the origins of his argument, or if this is not a cynical joke intended to provoke the reader to nihilism in the absence of consistency. Neither seems likely in the context of the aphorisms which precede it; one is prone to the notion that, despite no explicit indication in the text that this is the case, Nietzsche is in fact being sceptical about his own scepticism, and encouraging the reader to do the same. Importantly, the reader has stumbled upon this idea intuitively, for neither evidence nor a rational standard exists that would allow him to determine whether Nietzsche's tactics indicate dualistic artifice or dialectical neglect.

Beyond Good and Evil is an intuitive text only so far as it presents itself as a rational argument. Nietzsche's view, in the words of critic Walter Kaufmann, was that "[both impulse (passion) and reason (spirit) are manifestations of the will to power; and when reason overcomes the impulses, we cannot speak of a marriage of two diverse principles but only of the self-overcoming of the will to power. This one and only basic force has first manifested itself as impulse and then overcomes its own previous manifestation." Reason succeeds the intuitive impulse, but first the philosopher must pass through it, and then move beyond both. Nietzsche's intention, perhaps, is that the reader embrace neither at the expense of the other, but instead hold these mutually exclusive faculties to be part of the same elusive body of truth.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Oxford University Press.

Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton University Press, 1975.