553 (1886-1887)
The sore spot of Kant’s critical philosophy has gradually become visible even to dull eyes: Kant no longer has a right to his distinction “appearance” and “thing-in-itself"—he had deprived himself of the right to go on distinguishing in this old familiar way, in so far as he rejected as impermissible making inferences from phenomena to a cause of phenomena—in accordance with his conception of causality and its purely intra-phenomenal validity— which conception, on the other hand, already anticipates this distinction, as if the “thing-in-itself” were not only inferred but given.
554 (1885-1886)
Causalism.—It is obvious that things-in-themselves cannot be related to one another as cause and effect, nor can appearance be so related to appearance; from which it follows that in a philosophy that believes in things-in-themselves and appearances the concept “cause and effect” cannot be applied. Kant’s mistakes
In fact, the concept “cause and effect” derives, psychologically speaking, only from a mode of thought that believes that always and everywhere will operates upon will—that believes only in living things and fundamentally only in “souls” (and not in things). Within the mechanistic view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time), that concept is reduced to the formulas of mathematics—with which, as one must emphasize again and again, nothing is ever comprehended, but rather designated and distorted.
555 (1885-1886)
Against the scientific prejudice.—The biggest fable of all is the fable of knowledge. One would like to know what things-in-themselves are; but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even supposing there were an in-itself, an unconditioned thing, it would for that very reason be unknowable! Something unconditioned cannot be known; otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Coming to know, however, is always “placing oneself in a conditional relation to something” one who seeks to know the unconditioned desires that it should not concern him, and that this same something should be of no concern to anyone. This involves a contradiction, first, between wanting to know and the desire that it not concern us (but why know at all, then?) and, secondly, because something that is of no concern to anyone IS not at all, and thus cannot be known at all.—
Coming to know means “to place oneself in a conditional relation to something”; to feel oneself conditioned by something and oneself to condition it—it is therefore under all circumstances establishing, denoting, and making-conscious of conditions (not forthcoming entities, things, what is “in-itself").
556 (1885-1886)
A “thing-in-itself” just as perverse as a “sense-in-itself,” a “meaning-in-itself.” There are no “facts-in-themselves,” for a sense must always be projected into them before there can be “facts.”
The question “what is that?” is an imposition of meaning from some other viewpoint. “Essence,” the “essential nature,” is something perspective and already presupposes a multiplicity. At the bottom of it there always lies “what is that for me?” (for us, for all that lives, etc.)
A thing would be defined once all creatures had asked “what is that?” and had answered their question. Supposing one single creature, with its own relationships and perspectives for all things, were missing, then the thing would not yet be “defined”.
In short: the essence of a thing is only an opinion about the “thing.” Or rather: “it is considered” as the real “it is,” the sole “this is.”
One may not ask: “who then interprets?” for the interpretation itself is a form of the will to power, it exists (but not as a “being,’ but as a process, a becoming) as an affect.
The origin of “things” is wholly the work of that which imagines, thinks, wills, feels. The concept “thing” itself just as much as all its qualities.—Even “the subject” is such a created entity, a “thing” like all others: a simplification with the object of defining the force which posits, invents, thinks, as distinct from all individual positing, inventing, thinking as such. Thus a capacity as distinct from all that is individual—fundamentally, action collectively considered with respect to all anticipated actions (action and the probability of similar actions).
557 (1885-1886)
The properties of a thing are effects on other “things”: if one removes other “things,” then a thing has no properties, i.e., there is no thing without other things, i.e., there is no “thing-in-itself.”
558 (Spring-Fall 1887)
The “thing-in-itself” nonsensical. If I remove all the relationships, all the “properties,” all the “activities” of a thing, the thing does not remain over; because thingness has only been invented by us owing to the requirements of logic, thus with the aim of defining, communication (to bind together the multiplicity of relationships, properties, activities).
559 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
“Things that have a constitution in themselves"—a dogm idea with which one must break absolutely.
560 (Spring-Fall 1887)
That things possess a constitution in themselves quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a quite idle hypothesis: it presupposes that interpretation and subjectivity are not essential, that a thing freed from all relationships would still be a thing.
Conversely, the apparent objective character of things: could it not be merely a difference of degree within the subjective?—that perhaps that which changes slowly presents itself to us as “objectively” enduring, being, “in-itself"—that the objective is only a false concept of a genus and an antithesis within the subjective?
561 (1885-1886)
Suppose all unity were unity only as an organization? But the “thing” in which we believe was only invented as a foundation for the various attributes. If the thing “effects,” that means: we conceive all the other properties which are present and momentarily latent, as the cause of the emergence of one single property; i.e., we take the sum of its properties—"x"—as cause of the property “x”: which is utterly stupid and mad!
All unity is unity only as organization and co-operation—just as a human community is a unity—as opposed to an atomistic anarchy, as a pattern of domination that signifies a unity but is not a unity.
562 (1883-1888)
“In the development of thought a point had to be reached at which one realized that what one called the properties of things were sensations of the feeling subject: at this point the properties ceased to belong to the thing.” The “thing-in-itself” remained. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us is based on the older, naive form of perception which granted energy to things; but analysis revealed that even force was only projected into them, and likewise—substance. “The thing affects a subject”? Root of the idea of substance in language, not in beings outside us! The thing-in-itself is no problem at all!
Beings will have to be thought of as sensations that are no longer based on something devoid of sensation.
In motion, no new content is given to sensation. That which IS, cannot contain motion: therefore it is a form of being.
N.B. The explanation of an event can be sought firstly: through mental images of the event that precede it (aims);
secondly: through mental images that succeed it (the mathematical-physical explanation).
One should not confuse the two. Thus: the physical explanation, which is a symbolization of the world by means of sensation and thought, can in itself never account for the origin of sensation and thought; rather physics must construe the world of feeling consistently as lacking feeling and aim—right up to the highest human being. And teleology is only a history of purposes and never physical!
563 (1886-1887)
Our “knowing” limits itself to establishing quantities; but we cannot help feeling these differences in quantity as qualities. Quality is a perspective truth for us; not an “in-itself.”
Our senses have a definite quantum as a mean within which they function; i.e., we sense bigness and smallness in relation to the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish; i.e., with regard to making possible our existence we sense even relations between magnitudes as qualities.
564 (1885-1886)
Might all quantities not be signs of qualities? A greater power implies a different consciousness, feeling, desiring, a different perspective; growth itself is a desire to be more; the desire for an increase in quantum grows from a quale; in a purely quantitative world everything would be dead, stiff, motionless.— The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: what appears is that the one accompanies the other, an analogy—
565 (Fall 1886)
Qualities are insurmountable barriers for us; we cannot help feeling that mere quantitative differences are something fundamentally distinct from quantity, namely that they are qualities which can no longer be reduced to one another. But everything for which the word “knowledge” makes any sense refers to the domain of reckoning. weighing, measuring, to the domain of quantity; while, on the other hand, all our sensations of value (i.e., simply our sensations) adhere precisely to qualities, i.e., to our perspective “truths” which belong to us alone and can by no means be “known”! It is obvious that every creature different from us senses different qualities and consequently lives in a different world from that in which we live. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy peculiar to man; to demand that our human interpretations and values should be universal and perhaps constitutive values is one of the hereditary madnesses of human pride.
566 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
The “real world,” however one has hitherto conceived it, it has always been the apparent world once again.
567 (March-June 1888)
The apparent world, i.e., a world viewed according to values; ordered, selected according to values, i.e., in this case according to the viewpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and enhancement of the power of a certain species of animal.
The perspective therefore decides the character of the “appearance”! As if a world would still remain over after one deducted the perspective! By doing that one would deduct relativity!
Every center of force adopts a perspective toward the entire remainder, i.e., its own particular valuation, mode of action, and mode of resistance. The “apparent world,” therefore, is reduced to a specific mode of action on the world, emanating from a center.
Now there is no other mode of action whatever; and the “world” is only a word for the totality of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every individual part toward the whole—
No shadow of a right remains to speak here of appearance—
The specific mode of reacting is the only mode of reacting; we do not know how many and what kinds of other modes there are.
But there is no “other,” no “true,” no essential being—for this would be the expression of a world without action and reaction—
The antithesis of the apparent world and the true world reduced to the antithesis “world” and “nothing."—
568 (March-June 1888)
Critique of the concept “true and apparent world."— Of these, the first is a mere fiction, constructed of fictitious entities.
“Appearance” itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e., in a world where there is no being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance: a tempo at which observation and comparison are possible, etc.
Appearance is an arranged and simplified world, at which our practical instincts have been at work; it is perfectly true for us; that is to say, we live, we are able to live in it: proof of its truth for us—
The world, apart from our condition of living in it, the world that we have not reduced to our being, our logic and psychological prejudices, does not exist as a world “in-itself”; it is essentially a world of relationships; under certain conditions it has a differing aspect from every point; its being is essentially different from every point; it presses upon every point, every point resists it—and the sum of these is in every case quite incongruent.
The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power; in what form, force, constraint it acts or resists.
Our particular case is interesting enough: we have produced a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to endure it—
569 (Spring-Fall 1887)
Our psychological perspective is determined by the following: 1. that communication is necessary, and that for there to be communication something has to be firm, simplified, capable of precision (above all in the [so-called] identical case). For it to be communicable, however, it must be experienced as adapted, as “recognizable.” The material of the senses adapted by the understanding, reduced to rough outlines, made similar, subsumed under related matters. Thus the fuzziness and chaos of sense impressions are, as it were, logicized;
2. the world of “phenomena” is the adapted world which we feel to be real. The “reality” lies in the continual recurrence of identical, familiar, related things in their logicized character, in the belief that here we are able to reckon and calculate;
3. the antithesis of this phenomenal world is not “the true world,” but the formless unformulable world of the chaos of sensations—another kind of phenomenal world, a kind “unknowable” for us;
4. questions, what things “in-themselves” may be like, apart from our sense receptivity and the activity of our understanding, must be rebutted with the question: how could we know that things exist? “Thingness” was first created by us. The question is whether there could not be many other ways of creating such an apparent world—and whether this creating, logicizing, adapting, falsifying is not itself the best-guaranteed reality; in short, whether that which “posits things” is not the sole reality; and whether the “effect of the external world upon us” is not also only the result of such active subjects—The other “entities” act upon us; our adapted apparent world is an adaptation and overpowering of their actions; a kind of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable; hypothesis that only subjects exist—that “object” is only a kind of effect produced by a subject upon a subject a modus of the subject.