Being vs. Becoming - Стара Страст

Nietzsche shouted to the world: “God is dead”. His discovery was so alarming that people who needed desperately their deity turned away from him horrified, failing to see that it was his hand that was covered with the divine blood. God must have existed in order to face death, even if his existence was merely a fictional one. Just as any other illusion that is not reality-based, God was born and hence had to be killed by man. After Nietzsche had buried Platonic metaphysics, the deity could no longer stand. In this essay, I shall argue that Nietzsche’s refutation of metaphysics is based on his realization that humans perceive themselves as unchanging and necessary real agents of causality and by projecting this notion onto the world, create the idea of metaphysical concept. Referring mainly to extracts from Nietzsche’s “Reason in Philosophy” (Twilight of the Idols), I shall attempt to demonstrate that such projection of the concept of “self” onto the world is the mistake that Plato makes in creating the world of forms as a separate, metaphysical reality. Such dualism of realities is factually unsupported and in Nietzsche’s view hence absurd. In the final paragraphs I will explore the alternative to Platonic philosophy that Nietzsche proposes, namely that by refuting metaphysical reality we can no longer define the world of the senses as opposition of metaphysics or give it any definition at all.

Nietzsche’s refutation of metaphysics is direct reaction towards the Platonic model of reality dualism. In Plato’s Republic, the allegory of the cave presents a through depiction of this idea. There are two worlds: one “true” and one “apparent”. The “true” world is the word outside of the cave. It is the daylight where the forms dwell – the essences of things in themselves. The forms are immutable, perfect: they are a standard. One only has true knowledge of something if he or she apprehends the form of it. The form is an archetype which defines the shape of particulars. The “apparent” world, on the other hand, is the world of particulars – less perfect copies of the forms. All particulars resemble the forms but they can never equal their perfection. The “apparent” world is governed by the subjectivity of the senses. The senses have access to the different cases of beauty but they can never grasp what beauty is “in itself”. Only reason has the power to go beyond the particulars and apprehend the very essence of things, the forms. Plato believes only such knowledge is knowledge of the truth.

By placing truth in a reality different from our own, Plato lays the very foundations of metaphysics in philosophy. It is to this reality dualism that Nietzsche attaches a question mark. Nietzsche asks: “Why?”. Why do we believe, or need to believe, that concepts, or forms, are closer to true knowledge than the particulars for which our senses testify daily? Why should we trust reason more than we trust the senses? Why did Plato need to create the conceptual world of metaphysics in order to gain access to truth?

Nietzsche’s psychoanalysis of Platonic metaphysics begins at the level of human self-perception. Reason, Nietzsche says, has the main role in what he believes to be the tragedy of mankind’s deception. He continues:

Reason sees actors and actions everywhere: it believes in the will as an absolute cause; it believes in the “I,” in the I as being, in the I as a substance, and projects its belief in the I-substance onto all things – that’s how it first creates the concept “thing”… (Nietzsche 20) 

I believe that I am the same person that I was yesterday; I believe that I am the same person that I was four, five, ten years ago. People don’t see themselves as constantly changing, growing, aging. The “I” is, the “I” does not become. The concept of “being is derived from the concept of I”. (Nietzsche 32) The “I” perceives itself as immutable with the help of reason. Reason shapes the idea that the “I” has of itself - unchanging and necessary real agent of causality through the “power” of human will. By projecting that idea onto the world, the concept of a concept is formulated. The concept of a concept, as an accurate projection is identical to the concept of “I” – a concept is an unchanging and necessary real agent of causality. Reason is the only access the “I” has to its own idea of itself and analogically, reason becomes the sole path that leads to any other concept. Reason helps the “I” realize the truth of its own existence and hence the conclusion is reached that every concept that possesses the characteristics of the “I” must also be necessary true. Every contradiction to that principle is therefore to be denied.

The reality dualism depicted by Plato’s theory of the forms supports Nietzsche’s analysis. As a result of the projection of the “I” onto the world, Plato has the idea of a concept as an unchanging and necessary real agent of causality made available to him through reason. What disturbs him is the fact that the world he is part of is not a world of conceptual categories, “all experience stands in contradiction to them, after all.” (Nietzsche 21)  It is a world of constant change, of permanent becoming rather than fixed being. But as concepts are necessary true and all contradiction to this principle must be denied on the basis of the truthfulness of the self, Plato comes to deny the sensual world through building the world of forms. The forms define the image of the particulars and this case of causality is a projection of the causality that human will embodies. Nietzsche’s diagnosis confirms:

The “highest concepts,” that is, the most universal, the emptiest concepts, the final wisp of evaporating reality – these they posit at the beginning as the beginning. (Nietzsche 19) 

This is how Plato succeeds to overcome the disappointment that the sensual world presents to his expectation of truthfulness. A reality of truth, a reality of being is created as an opposition of the reality of becoming, which is disowned as a deception.

The process of projection of the idea that the “I” has of itself onto the world is a purely subjective psychological process, Nietzsche concludes. It has no factual support in reality. Thus, metaphysics as the result of such projection cannot be accepted as realistic model of reality depiction. By realizing Platonic metaphysics as a product of archaic reasoning, Nietzsche deprives it from its status of objective super-natural truth and thus, he deprives it from any existence at all. Along with metaphysics, all the conceptual deities that have been hiding behind it have to go as well. God is dead!

The alternative to Platonic metaphysics that Nietzsche proposes is not another system of beliefs. To do that for him would mean to build new Gods on the place of the old ones. Nietzsche responds to the expectation to assert new philosophical system on the place of the one he had brought down by himself posing the question: “We have done away with the true world: what world is left over? The apparent one maybe?” (Nietzsche 24). He answers his own question by exclaiming: “But no! Along with the true world, we have also done away with the apparent!” (Nietzsche 24) The reality of the senses that Plato’s metaphysics has defined and denied as its opposition can no longer be described in the same way after the fall of the “idols”. Every definition of life, Nietzsche says, is absurd. It is a definition given to our reality by us, people, and thus is a contradiction in itself because “the value of life cannot be assessed by the living, since they are parties to the dispute.” (Nietzsche 13) Definitions breed dogmatism and dogmatism breeds new idols. It is almost morning… Burn the deities, de-conceptualize life, live it…