1.4—
Science as Theology by Other Means
One might suppose that, with the triumph of science, Platonism and Christianity are finally overcome, that, within the scientific worldview, "God is dead" or at least forgotten. This certainly is what contemporary scientific culture believes, says Nietzsche. When the madman appears among the atheists in the marketplace crying "God is dead. [ . . . ] And we have killed him," they ridicule and taunt him. He finally leaves, muttering: "I have come too early [ . . . ], my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering: it has not yet reached the ears of men. [ . . . ] This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves " (GS 125). A similar description is found in the Genealogy of Morals . It is said, Nietzsche writes, that modern culture has finally vanquished the otherworldly, this-world-denying "ascetic ideal,"
that it has already conquered this ideal in all important respects: all of modern science is supposed to bear witness to that—modern science which, as a genuine philosophy of reality, [ . . . ] has up to now survived well enough without God, the beyond, and the virtues of denial. [ . . . T]hese hard, severe, abstinent, heroic spirits who constitute the honor of our age; all these
[9] Cf. WP 4–5 (KSA 12: 5 [71]): "in sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism . But among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness; this eventually turned against morality [ . . . ] and now the insight into this inveterate mendaciousness that one despairs of shedding becomes a stimulant. To nihilism"; also WP 3 (KSA 12: 10 [192]): "Radical nihilism [ . . . ] is a consequence of highly developed 'truthfulness': thus itself a consequence of the faith in morality."
pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists; these skeptics, ephectics [ . . . ]; these last idealists of knowledge in whom alone the intellectual conscience dwells and is incarnate today—they certainly believe they are as completely liberated from the ascetic ideal as possible [ . . . ] (GM III: 23–24)
Yet they are mistaken, argues Nietzsche. Science does not represent the triumph over God, the otherworldly, and the ascetic ideal. Though it potentially prepares the way for that triumph, science itself represents, rather, the "kernel " of the ascetic ideal, "this ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, esoteric through and through with all external additions abolished" (GM III:27). Nietzsche elaborates:
No! this "modern science"—let us face this fact!—is the best ally the ascetic ideal has at present, and precisely because it is the most unconscious, involuntary, hidden, and subterranean ally! [ . . . ] The ascetic ideal has decidedly not been conquered: if anything, it became stronger, which is to say, more elusive, more spiritual, more captious, as science remorselessly detached and broke off wall upon wall, external additions that had coarsened its appearance. (GM III: 25)
This seems a rather odd claim. One might well ask how it is that modern science, which explicitly rejects metaphysics and theology, represents the inner essence of "the ascetic ideal." Nietzsche explains:
[T]o disclose to them what they themselves cannot see—for they are too close to themselves: this ideal is precisely their ideal, too [ . . . ]—if I have guessed any riddles, I wish that this proposition might show it—They are far from being free spirits: for they still have faith in truth [ . . . ]; it is precisely in their faith in truth that they are more rigid and unconditional than anyone. [ . . . ] That which constrains these men, however, this unconditional will to truth, is faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even if as an unconscious imperative—don't be deceived about that—it is the faith in the metaphysical value, the value of truth in itself [einen Werth an sich der Wahrheit], sanctioned and guaranteed by this ideal alone (it stands or falls with this ideal). (GM III: 24)
Modern science, that is, represents both the essence and consummation of the ascetic ideal insofar as it strips that ideal of all external coverings and reveals what is essential to it and, indeed, to the entirety of Western thought, which has been predicated upon this ideal.[10] Having rejected the Platonic Forms, the Christian God, and other representatives, modern science retains the one conviction with which Western thought com-
[10] See GM III:24.
mences: faith in the absolute and unconditional value of truth. While it may no longer believe that "God is the truth," science nonetheless still believes that "truth is divine" (GS 344), that truth must govern every inquiry and serve as its incontestable goal. Nietzsche thus makes the striking assertion that the "death of God" has only derivatively to do with theology and Christianity, that it primarily involves what Heidegger has called a "fundamental structuring" of thought, based upon the accordance of an ultimate value to truth.[11] In this sense, according to Nietzsche, even the scientists and "godless anti-metaphysicians" (GS 344) have yet fully to comprehend the meaning of the "death of God."
It might be objected that the "truth" sought after by science is quite different from the "truth" desired by Platonism and Christianity. For this latter pair, truth is something otherworldly, not to be found within the natural world; while, for science, truth is entirely this-worldly, aiming simply at the discovery of demonstrable, empirical "facts" about the natural world. Nietzsche acknowledges this difference and, indeed, often praises science for its this-worldliness.[12] Yet he points out that science still retains the essence of the ascetic ideal insofar as it accords truth an absolute, unconditional value . This conviction, Nietzsche insists, is nothing other than a "metaphysical" faith.
Again, one might ask how this is so. Science does indeed claim truth as its ultimate goal. But the truth it demands is not metaphysical; it is, rather, physical and empirical, available for all to see. To explain his strange accusation, Nietzsche cites another passage from Book Five of The Gay Science: §344, entitled "How We, Too, Are Still Pious." This passage begins by praising science for its "intellectual conscience," for its "mistrust" of "convictions" and its decision to demote them "to the modesty of hypotheses, of a provisional experimental point of view, of a regulative fiction." Yet he notes that, while the scientific method grants admission only to such provisional, revisable hypotheses, the entire enterprise of science rests upon a prior conviction that it is unwilling to relinquish:
We see that science also rests on a faith; there is simply no "presuppositionless" science. The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to such a degree that the principle, the
[11] Heidegger, "Word of Nietzsche," 64–65.
[12] See, especially, A 47-49, where, against the otherworldly "lies" of Christianity, Nietzsche calls science "the 'wisdom of this world.'" See also GS 293, 355, 357, and TI "Reason" 3.
faith, the conviction finds expression: "Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value." (GS 344)
Nietzsche does not object to this conviction on the grounds that it is a "presupposition," because he denies the possibility of a "'presuppositionless' science."[13] What he does object to, however, is the dogmatic nature of this conviction, a dogmatism that proves to be metaphysical. This becomes apparent, Nietzsche argues, if we inquire into the motivations and reasons behind the conviction that truth is of ultimate value. He asks what justifies this conviction and considers two possible answers. Perhaps the justification is pragmatic: "One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility." Yet he argues that this explanation fails to justify the ultimacy of the will to truth, because, on pragmatic considerations, we can see that it is not unconditionally harmful to allow oneself to be deceived. While the will to truth certainly does serve the interests of life in important ways (e.g., by helping us to determine more or less accurately the conditions that obtain in the world so that we can respond accordingly), it is one of Nietzsche's recurrent insights that the opposite will, the will to ignorance, is equally beneficial for life.[14] He continually points out that human survival is predicated upon conceptual and linguistic abstractions that allow us to reify the ever-changing world and to simplify and select from our multifaceted experience. In this way, he argues, we "lie" in "an extramoral sense"; that is, we strategically, and often unconsciously, overlook and forget features of the world that are not relevant or crucial to our survival or to our particular purposes, interests, values, and goals. Furthermore, Nietzsche points out that, in art and dreams, we continually allow ourselves to be deceived and take pleasure in this deception. If not beneficial, such "lies" cannot be considered harmful, except to the most obstinate Platonist.[15] Hence, the ultimacy of the will to truth is not to be justified on pragmatic grounds.
[13] See also GM III: 24 and II: 12. This notion is discussed more fully below.
[14] For some instances of this line of thought, see TL; HL (on the "value for life" of "forgetting" and "the unhistorical"); GS 110–12, 354; BGE 1, 4, 9, II, 24; TI "Reason," "World," "Errors"; WP 466–617. See also Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), chap. 2. I discuss these issues further below (§1.5.2).
[15] On the "deception" of dreams, see TL, 80. On the "deception" of art, see BT SC: 5 and GM III: 25.
If this will does not receive a naturalistic, conditional, pragmatic justification, from where does its justification come? If it is not justified by the role it plays in the actual process of inquiry and the actual exigencies of life, what justifies it? Nietzsche argues that it must rest on the moral prescription never to deceive, not even oneself. Science, then, would represent simply a "translation and sublimation" of the Christian commandment: "thou shalt not lie" (see GS 357). Were it to be strictly enforced, however, this unconditional proscription would be extremely harmful to natural life, which, in so many ways, requires the "extramoral lie." Nietzsche thus concludes that the absolute and unconditional value accorded the will to truth by science is antinatural, otherworldly, metaphysical:
For you only have to ask yourself carefully, "Why do you not want to deceive?" especially if it should seem—and it does seem!—as if life rested upon semblance, I mean error, deception, simulation, delusion, self-delusion, and when the great sweep of life has actually always shown itself to be on the side of the most unscrupulous polytropoi . Charitably interpreted, such a resolve might perhaps be a quixotism, a minor slightly mad enthusiasm; but it might also be something more serious, namely a principle that is hostile to life and destructive. . . . "Will to truth"—that might be a concealed will to death.—Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are "unmoral"? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world"—look, must they not by the same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world? . . . But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith [Glaube ] that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. . . . But what if this should become more and more incredible [unglaubwürdig ], if nothing should prove to be divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie—if God himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?—(GS 344; cf. WP 1011)
Briefly put, Nietzsche argues that, while the "intellectual conscience" that animates modern science demands a rejection of every unconditional faith, science itself is "still unconditional on one point," regarding its belief in "the absolute value of truth" (GM III:24). This unconditional belief is not only unconscionably dogmatic but also unconscionably metaphysical, insofar as—against the requirements of "this world,
our world," "the world of life, nature, and history"—it receives its justification solely from the otherworldly domain of Christian morality. The "intellectual conscience" thus demands that this final conviction be put into question.
Yet this final conviction is not just one among many. Nietzsche takes it to be the conviction upon which all of Western thought is based. A questioning of this conviction, then, amounts to a questioning of Western thought itself. Nietzsche makes clear that this is just what the "death of God" entails and just what the "intellectual conscience" requires. Impelled by the "intellectual conscience," science demands its own self-overcoming. Insofar as science represents the kernel and esoteric form of the ascetic ideal, this self-overcoming of science is, at the same time, a self-overcoming of the ascetic ideal:
This pair, science and the ascetic ideal, both rest on the same foundation—I have already indicated it: on the same overestimation of truth (more exactly: on the same belief that truth is in estimable and cannot be criticized). Therefore they are necessarily allies, so that if they are to be fought they can only be fought and called in question together. A depreciation of the ascetic ideal unavoidably involves a depreciation of science: one must keep one's eyes and ears open to this fact! (GM III: 25)
And this self-overcoming of the ascetic ideal points to the self-overcoming of the foundations of European thought:
Consider on this question both the earliest and most recent philosophers: they are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself first requires justification; here there is a lacuna in every philosophy—how did this come about? Because the ascetic ideal has hitherto dominated all philosophy, because truth was posited as being, as God, as the highest court of appeal—because truth was not permitted to be a problem at all. [ . . . ]—From the moment faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, a new problem arises: that of the value of truth. The will to truth requires a critique—let us thus define our own task,—the value of truth must for once be experimentally called into question . (GM III:24; cf. BGE 1; A 8)
[W]hat meaning would our whole being possess if it were not this, that in us the will to truth becomes conscious of itself as a problem? . . . As the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness, from now on—there can be no doubt about it—morality [read: the ascetic ideal and the otherworldly, generally] will go to ruin: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe—the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps the most hopeful of all spectacles. . . . (GM III: 27)
With this, the trajectory of Western thought nears its end; or rather, it nears its midpoint, because, for Nietzsche, our modernity marks not the end of history but the inauguration of a new history, "a higher history than all history hitherto" (GS 125), not the "dusk" of infinite wisdom, but the innocence of "daybreak." Even so, that dawn is as yet merely announced. At present, we remain at "midnight," between the old day and the new. This dark night is characterized by "nihilism," the general malaise brought upon European culture by its recognition that "the highest values [i.e., truth, God, being] devaluate themselves" (WP 2). This nihilism, Nietzsche argues, still essentially belongs to the old day; it remains a "shadow of God" (GS 108). For, though the nihilist acknowledges that all absolute values have devaluated themselves, he or she still laments the loss, and what remains still appears valueless. The nihilist does not yet affirm the "death of God" and its consequences.
Nietzsche, however, urges us to push what is falling (see Z: 3 "On Old and New Tablets"; A 2). Wishing to become "the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has [ . . . ] lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself" (WP P:3), Nietzsche encourages an "active nihilism" (WP 22–23) that will bring the old epoch to a close. This is the momentous task toward which Nietzsche directs his energies; and the achievement of this task will bring us to the final phase of his genealogy of Western thought.
Thus far, we have seen that metaphysics and theology overcome themselves through science, and that science, too, ends in a self-overcoming. What follows this self-overcoming of science? To answer this question, and to move from science to its successor, we must first take up the task announced above, the initial phase of the revaluation of values: the revaluation of truth.