In the case of Kant, theological prejudice, his unconscious dogmatism, his moralistic perspective, were dominant, directing, commanding.
The proton pseudos: how is the fact of knowledge possible? is knowledge a fact at all? what is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question whether there is knowledge.—Very well! But if I do not already “know’ whether there is knowledge, whether there can be knowledge, I cannot reasonably put the question “what is knowledge?” Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he wants is a piece of naivete: knowledge of knowledge!
“Knowledge is judgment!” But judgment is a belief that something is thus and thus! And not knowledge! “All knowledge consists of synthetic judgments” of universal validity (the case is thus and not otherwise in every case), of necessary validity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur).
The legitimacy of belief in knowledge is always presupposed: just as the legitimacy of the feelings of conscience-judgments is presupposed. Here moral ontology is the dominant prejudice.
The conclusion is therefore:
1. there are assertions that we consider universally valid and necessary;
2. necessity and universal validity cannot be derived from experience;
3. consequently they must be founded, not upon experience, but upon something else, and derive from another source of knowledge!
(Kant infers (1) there are assertions which are valid only under a certain condition; (2) this condition is that they derive, not from experience, but from pure reason.)
Therefore: the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such assertions? No, how our belief is caused! But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and a very narrow and limited experience often produces such a belief! It already presupposes that there is not “data à posteriori” but also data à priori, “preceding experience.” Necessity and universal validity could never be given to us by experience: why does that mean that they are present without any experience at all?
There are no isolated judgments!
An isolated judgment is never “true,” never knowledge; only in the connection and relation of many judgments is there any surety.
What distinguishes the true from the false belief? What is knowledge? He “knows” it, that is heavenly!
Necessity and universality can never be given by experience! thus they are independent of experience, prior to all experience! That insight that occurs a priori, therefore independently of all experience, out of sheer reason, is “a pure form of knowledge”!
“The basic laws of logic, the law of identity and the law of contradiction, are forms of pure knowledge, because they precede all experience."—But these are not forms of knowledge at all! they are regulative articles of belief.
To establish the à priori character (the pure rationality) of the judgments of mathematics, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason.
Hume had declared: “There are no synthetic à priori judgments.” Kant says: But there are! Those of mathematics! And if there are such judgments, perhaps there is also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by pure reason!
Mathematics is possible under conditions under which metaphysics is never possible. All human knowlege is either experience or mathematics.
A judgment is synthetic; i.e., it connects different ideas.
It is à priori; i.e., every connection is a universally valid and necessary one, which can never be given by sense perception but only through pure reason.
If there are to be synthetic a priori judgments, then reason must be in a position to make connections: connection is a form. Reason must possess the capacity of giving form.
531 (1885-1886)
Judgment is our oldest belief, our most habitual holding-true or holding-untrue, an assertion or denial, a certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, a belief that here we really “know"— what is it that is believed true in all judgments?
What are attributes?—We have not regarded change in us as change but as an “in itself” that is foreign to us, that we merely “perceive”: and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a “quality"—and in addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e., we have regarded the effect as something that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept “effect” is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion: “every change must have an author”;—but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become."—To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.
532 (1885)
Judgment—this is the belief: “This and that are so.” Thus there is in every judgment the avowal of having encountered an “identical case”: it therefore presupposes comparison with the aid of memory. The judgment does not produce the appearance of an identical case. Rather it believes it perceives one: it works under the presupposition that identical cases exist. Now, what is that function that must be much older and must have been at work much earlier, that makes cases identical and similar which are in themselves dissimilar? What is that second function, which on the basis of the first, etc. “Whatever arouses the same sensation is the same”: but what is it that makes sensations the same, “accepts” them as the same? There could be no judgments at all if a kind of equalization were not practiced within sensations: memory is possible only with a continual emphasizing of what is already familiar, experienced.—Before judgment occurs, the process of assimilation must already have taken place; thus here, too, there is an intellectual activity that does not enter consciousness, as pain does as a consequence of a wound. Probably an inner event corresponds to each organic function; hence assimilation, rejection, growth, etc.
Essential: to start from the body and employ it as guide. It is the much richer phenomenon, which allows of clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the spirit.
“No matter how strongly a thing may be believed, strength of belief is no criterion of truth.” But what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life? In that case, to be sure, strength could be a criterion; e.g., in regard to causality.
533 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Logical certainty, transparency, as criterion of truth ("omncillud verum est, quod clare et distincte percipitur.” Descartes): with that, the mechanical hypothesis concerning the world is desired and credible.
But this is a crude confusion: like simplex sigillum veri. How does one know that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect?—Could it not be otherwise? that it is the hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, that is most preferred, valued and consequently characterized as true?—The intellect posits its freest and strongest capacity and capability as criterion of the most valuable, consequently of the true—
“True”: from the standpoint of feeling—: that which excites the feeling most strongly ("ego");
from the standpoint of thought—: that which gives thought the greatest feeling of strength;
from the standpoint of touch, seeing, hearing—: that which calls for the greatest resistance.
Thus it is the highest degrees of performance that awaken belief in the “truth,” that is to say reality, of the object. The feeling of strength, of struggle, of resistance convinces us that there is something that is here being resisted.
534 (1887-1888)
The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535 (1885)
“Truth”: this, according to my way of thinking, does not necessarily denote the antithesis of error, but in the most fundamental cases only the posture of various errors in relation to one another. Perhaps one is older, more profound than another, even ineradicable, in so far as an organic entity of our species could not live without it; while other errors do not tyrannize over us in this way as conditions of life, but on the contrary when compared with such “tyrants” can be set aside and “refuted.”
An assumption that is irrefutable—why should it for that reason be “true”? This proposition may perhaps outrage logicians, who posit their limitations as the limitations of things: but I long ago declared war on this optimism of logicians.
536 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
Everything simple is merely imaginary, is not “true.” But whatever is real, whatever is true, is neither one nor even reducible to one.
537 (1885-1888)
What is truth?—Inertia; that hypothesis which gives rise to contentment; smallest expenditure of spiritual force, etc.
538 (1883-1888)
First proposition. The easier mode of thought conquers the harder mode;—as dogma: simplex sigillum veri.— Ditto: to suppose that clarity proves anything about truth is perfect childishness—
Second proposition. The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development—
Third proposition. Logic was intended as facilitation; as a means of expression—not as truth—Later it acquired the effect of truth—
539 (March-June 1888)
Parmenides said, “one cannot think of what is not”,—we are at the other extreme, and say “what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction.’’
540 (1885)
There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes— and consequently there are many kinds of “truths,” and consequently there is no truth. Spencer.
541 (March-June 1888)
Inscriptions for the Door of a Modern Madhouse
“What is thought necessarily is morally necessary.” Herbert
“The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the conceivability of its negation.” Herbert Spencer.
542 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
If the character of existence should be false—which would be possible—what would truth, all our truth, be then?—An unconscionable falsification of the false? The false raised to a higher power?—
543 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
In a world that is essentially false, truthfulness would be an antinatural tendency: such a tendency could have meaning only as a means to a higher power of falsehood. In order for a world of the true, of being, to be invented, the truthful man would first have to be created (including the fact that such a man believes himself “truthful").
Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, durable, remaining always the same, without wrinkle, volt, concealment, form: a man of this kind conceives a world of being as “God” in his own image.
For truthfulness to be possible, the whole sphere of man must be very clean, small and, respectable; advantage in every sense must be with the truthful man.—Lies, deception, dissimulation must arouse astonishment—
544 (1885-1887; rev. Spring-Fall 1888)
Increase in “dissimulation” proportionate to the rising order of rank of creatures. It seems to be lacking in the inorganic world— power against power, quite crudely cunning begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The highest human beings, such as Caesar, Napoleon (Stendhal’s remark on him), also the higher races (Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); a thousandfold craftiness belongs to the essence of the enhancement of man— problem of the actor. My Dionysus ideal—The perspective of all organic functions, all the strongest instincts of life: the force in all life that wills error; error as the precondition even of thought. Before there is “thought” there must have been “invention”; the construction of identical cases, of the appearance of sameness, is more primitive than the knowledge of sameness.