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CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS


1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous
enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have
hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not
laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is
already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn
impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions
ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really
is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the
question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired
about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT
RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the
value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented
ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which
the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of
interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as
if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first
to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk
in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth
out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the
wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest
value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this
transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of
delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in
the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the
'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This
mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which
metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation
is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of
theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that
is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of
metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred
even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where
doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn
vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations
and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional
perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current
among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true,
the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher
and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It
might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and
respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously
related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!
For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous
"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I
see such new philosophers beginning to appear.

3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between
their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of
conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and
it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to
learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As
little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process
and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his
instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and
its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak
more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite
mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may
be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things."

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is
here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic
judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that
without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of
reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be
a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A
CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of
value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.