How should we live? Or how might we live? Friedrich Nietzsche accepts the latter formulation and rejects the former formulation, as discussed by him in ‘The Four Great Errors’, which can be found in ‘The Twilight of Idols’. To make sense of this, he lists and goes through these four grave errors.
The first error is that we mistake the cause and the effect. He (30-31) exemplifies this with diet. What is a healthy diet? What is it made of? Not too many carbs, surely? Plenty of protein, but not too much either, surely? Plenty of fiber, surely? Fresh produce, plenty of vitamins, surely? Moderation, surely? Well, I don’t think he’d reject any of these views, as such. Instead, he’d ask, why are you eating so much, or so little?
His (30-31) example is Alvise Coronaro, a Venetian noble known for attributing his old age to his meager diet. He reckons that the Venetian lived happily for a long time, not because of he ate a little, but because he lacked appetite to eat more. In other words, the low calory intake was apt for Coronaro, which is why it worked for him. The lesson here is not, however, to imitate the noble. In Nietzsche’s view that would be a mistake, a grave error, because eating too little is bad for you, if you have a greater appetite for food. Why would you need to eat more? Isn’t that bad for you? Well, if you do more in life, to achieve more in life, you need to eat more. Otherwise, you will live a shorter life. Plus, if you are taller and/or are in the habit of exerting yourself physically, perhaps because you works demands that of you, you’ll have to eat more than someone who is shorter and/or who isn’t in the habit of exerting oneself physically, perhaps because their work doesn’t demand that.
Now, that’s just an example. It’d be funny if this was just about food. This is a larger thing for Nietzsche. It’s really about thinking that we should do something, just because it works for someone else. His (30-31) target is religion or, more broadly speaking, morality that gives us the impression that one should live virtuously, do certain things and not do certain other things, in order to be happy. He’s like nah, that’s not how it works. Instead, it’s the other way around. It’s rather that one must do whatever makes one happy and it is those things that make us happy that are virtuous. If it works for you, it works for you. No need to think beyond that.
To put it another way, as he (31) does, if you are unhappy, it’s not because you aren’t living the way you are, somehow, supposed to live, but because the way you live is making you unhappy. Simply put, you are doing something that isn’t working for you. It might be that it works for someone else, but it’s nor working for you, which is all that matters. So, for example, if you find yourself exhausted, perhaps you should do less or rest more.
The second error is related to the first one. It’s all about self-referentiality, as he (31) points out. To be more specific, he (31) reckons that we like to flatter ourselves by thinking that I know, that I know, by which I mean that we like to think that if there’s anything that we for sure know, it is ourselves, that we do things and that we know why we do these things, because, after all, it’s we who do those things. The problem here is that you are saying that I am my own motivation, the cause of my own willing, and thus such and such happened, as he (31) points out. The thing is that you aren’t saying anything.
Why do we think that it is we, the ‘I’, the ‘self’, that simply does this and/or that, just like that, totally autonomously? In his (31-32, 35) view, there are two key reasons for this. Firstly, if we aren’t the cause of our own actions, then we aren’t free. He adds that this is even worse when you make it about thinking. If we aren’t the cause of our own thoughts, who is thinking? When you’ve grown up, being told that, yes, you are the cause of your own actions and thoughts, it’s only likely that you’ll reject this automatically, like in knee-jerk reaction. But see, ever then, is it you who rejects that view? Or is it something that makes you reject that view? See. He is on to something, eh? Secondly, if we aren’t free, if we aren’t the cause of our actions and our thoughts, then can we be held responsible for our actions and our thoughts? He doesn’t expand on that, but I’d say no, yet we are so accustomed to holding people responsible that it seems ludicrous to not hold them accountable. To be fair, I don’t think he is saying that people shouldn’t be held accountable, but rather that it is, ultimately, more productive for everyone if we understand what it is that makes people act and or think the way they do. Oh, and by make I really mean incline them to act or think in a certain way, so that whatever it is that they do or think becomes the thing they think they simply choose.
What is my take on this then? Well, I’d say that we are free, but only inasmuch as we are aware of how our acts and thoughts are prompted by other acts and thoughts (inasmuch they are expressed somehow). But are we really free then? Well, that depends on what counts as free. It’s like a yes, but also a no, in the sense that it is not freedom of action and thought as it is generally understood. If we assess the past, and how we got here, it is clearly deterministic, because for things had to happen the way they did for things to be the way they are, as otherwise they wouldn’t be the way they are. Then again, I’d say that there could have been numerous ways things could have happened and led to the way things are, at least in my limited view, by which I mean that whatever I am assessing, which is not entirety of existence, could have ended up the way it is in numerous ways. Plus, even if we recognize that, okay, whatever happened in the past, this or that, I can’t be sure of it all, made it all the way it is now, in the present, that doesn’t mean that it must remain the way there are. Things can be changed and they indeed do change, to this or that extent, with or without us. Anyway, this is not really about me, nor my clearly Spinozist take on it (or is it Leibnizian, I’m no sure).
The strangest thing is, however, that he (32) reckons that we’ve gone beyond this, like way back then already, during his lifetime. Clearly not. We still think that it is the autonomous, thinking subject, the self, the ‘I’, that is in charge. We still talk about what motives someone had for doing something. That doesn’t mean that things haven’t changed, that views haven’t changed, no, but I’d say we cling to what (32) refers to mental causes. In any case, he (32) does summarize the problem neatly and concisely:
“The oldest and most long-standing psychology was at work here, and this is all it did: for it, all happening was a doing, all doing the effect of a willing; for it, the world became a multitude of doers, a doer (a ‘subject’) was imputed to everything that happened.”
So, what’s happening, going on, is substituted by doing. The problem with doing is that it requires a doer. To be clear, we generally attribute doing to humans, so it is the humans that are doing, but this ends up being extended beyond us, as he (32) goes on to add:
“Human beings projected their three ‘internal facts,’ the objects of their firmest belief—will, mind, ‘I’—beyond themselves; they originally derived the concept of being from the concept ‘I,’ they posited ‘things’ as existing in their own image, according to their concept of the ‘I’ as a cause.”
To unpack that, things are understood as beings, in the sense that they have existence, but we get being from thinking ourselves, as the ‘I’. He (32) then adds to this, noting that what we recognize as this, or that, even something as small as an atom, is simply our own reflection, what we want it to be, not what it is, only to go even further to mock the very idea of what Immanuel Kant would refer to as the thing-in-itself. How’s that wrong? Well, even the thing-in-itself is what we think there is, not what there is. It is we who reckon that there is some thing-in-itself, inasmuch as we are Kantians, of course, as, these days, I’d be surprised if people even knew what is and what it has to do with Kant, or who Kant even is.
The third error is not as straightforward as it first appears. He (32-34) has a lot to say about it, but instead of going through it, like he does, I’m gonna summarize it. So, he reckons that we are in the habit of thinking that everything must have a meaning. It’s like what was that, what was it, where did it come from, what caused it? I’d say that still fine with him, even though he doesn’t really say that. What bothers him is rather that instead of just going with it, finding out more, we jump to conclusions. We think that we know what it means, that it must be whatever we think it was. That might the case, I’d say fair enough, but his (33) point is rather that we default to this, because uncertainty troubles us:
“Tracing something unfamiliar back to something familiar alleviates us, calms us, pacifies us, and in addition provides a feeling of power.”
Simply put, it’s just easier to deal with this way. He (33) continues:
“The unfamiliar brings with it danger, unrest, and care—our first instinct is to do away with these painful conditions.”
Oh, and to be fair, it’s not like he’s saying that this doesn’t make sense. It makes plenty of sense. To be clear, this not the problem itself. What is it then? Well, as already pointed out, we prefer pre-existing explanations, instead of putting in the effort figure things out, because the former is comforting, whereas the latter is discomforting.
I’ve encountered this many, many times. To connect this to themes of this blog, landscape is something that we, supposedly, just know. Like it’s there, what’s the fuss? There’s this landscape, and that landscape, etc. Or, if I bring this is up among academics, some have told me just run with something pre-existing, instead of going on and on, and on and on, about it, trying to figure it out, on my own. But that’s the thing. That’s the error he’s talking about.
Most people like to things the way they’ve been presented to them and then just relate whatever they encounter to with all that. Oh, and don’t me wrong. I get it. I get it. That’s just way easier. Taking a step back, piling up a ton of previous research and dedicating time to read it, well, that’s a lot of work and a lot of that will make you question what you already know. I remember being under the impression that academics is all about that. Imagine my horror when, naïve me, realized that, oh no, it’s actually about just running with whatever happens to be established as the truth.
I thought university was going to be unlike school. I thought it wouldn’t be about learning ready made answers and then writing those answers in some exam, but I was wrong about that. It was still about matching what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (15) mention as “the teacher’s language” in ‘A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’. It was and, I’d say, still is about teaching you to know your place, as they (76) point out, by explaining that it’s not about the information itself, what we could also refer to as knowledge in the academic setting, nor about communicating it from to others, in this case from the teacher to the student, but about making sure that only the, supposedly, right kind of information is communicated and that the arrangement itself, the teacher student relationship and how knowledge is produced, is not challenged.
The reasons for that are obvious. I was just naïve. Like why would you go through all that effort? Why would you not just listen to your teacher? Why would you not just take the word of your older colleagues? Firstly, figuring things on your own is demanding. It takes time and effort. Secondly, it’s challenging. It’s not a nice feeling to realize that you were wrong about something or that your teachers, or older colleagues, weren’t telling you the whole story. Addressing both at the same time, well, there’s a certain fear to it all, having to deal with any painful conditions, as Nietzsche (33) puts it.
But why is it like that? Well, there’s a third reason. Universities have two functions: they do research and then provide education that is based on that research. To account for the research, much of research just is just following on someone’s footsteps, because it’s all about the metrics these days. The more you publish, the better. The problem with that is that a publication is a publication, regardless of how long it is, and regardless of how good it is. To account for the education, it’s all about students completing a certain number of courses needed for a degree and then they move on to working life. Then that goes on, and on, and on, because more and more people are supposed to have university degrees today, only to compete with just about everyone who also have university degrees.
What I’m getting at is that universities are more like schools today. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone, nor claim that this is exactly how it is in all universities, but I’d day that’s how it is in Finland. There’s very little time to do research, unless you do it in your free time, like I do, because, well, I’m driven to read difficult books and what not, because a constant lack of teaching resources. I remember there being optional courses at the intermediate and advanced levels when I studied, but nowadays optionality is more like choosing two out of three, three out of four or four out of five mandatory courses. It used to be possible for the staff to teach what they specialized in, making it truly provision of research based education, but nowadays that’s just not the case, because there’s barely enough staff to run the mandatory courses, kinda like to just get by to teach the basics to the students.
If you want to have a very good university education, like actually knowing stuff, instead of just having degrees, you really, really have to put in the hours, on your own, figuring stuff out, because there just aren’t enough teachers around to provide you that in class or in the lecture halls. Nowadays it’s almost like the purpose of university education is to have this and/or degree, just because it’s a prerequisite for this and/or that job.
So, yeah, it’s not simply that people want the easy way out. It’s more like they’ve ended up wanting it because it’s the only way that they can get by. Putting in more effort just isn’t doable beyond a certain point.
He (34) exemplifies this by distinguished causes from types of causes. The former is just what it is, the cause. The latter is already recognized as a certain kind of cause, classified as such and such. It might not be super accurate, no, but as he (33) points out, “some explanation is better than none.” It’s at least somehow familiar to us, instead of being totally out there, unfamiliar, if not unknown to us, as he (34) goes on to add.
So, if you didn’t get it already, he (34) is really trying to make you understand that once relying on pre-existing knowledge, you know, taking things for granted, becomes a habit, we no longer find it in ourselves to question things. In his (34) words:
“So we not only look for some type of explanation as the cause, but we single out and favor a certain type of explanation, the type that eliminates the feeling of the alien, new, and unexperienced, as fast and as often as possible—the most customary explanations.”
To be clear, that doesn’t mean that you have doubt everything, all the time. That’s just paranoia. It’s more like, hmmm, what if, what if … and seeing if there’s something to it.
This is not all there is to this though. He (34-35) adds to this that the problem with this is that it is not just an individual issue that concerns one person, you, me, or someone else, but rather that it is a collective, systematic issue. The customary explanations, what’s taken for granted, is then thought to be basis for our pleasant and unpleasant feelings, as he (34-35) goes on to explain. Relating this back to knowledge then, it feels unpleasant to be uncertain and pleasant to be certain. It’s just way, way easier to just go with it, to rely on what’s considered given. Conversely, it’s way, way harder to think otherwise.
To put this very simply, even simpler than he (35) does, we don’t feel good because we are right. Instead, we think we are right because we feel good. Conversely, we don’t feel bad because we are wrong. Instead, we think that we are wrong, because we feel bad. We been taught that the feelings of discomfort and uncertainty indicate that something is wrong, and that feelings of comfort and certainty indicate that we are right.
Now, this isn’t to be understood as some sort of endorsement of masochism. It’s not like you want to feel uncomfortable or uncertain. It’s rather that comfort and certainty might be illusory. You might even be taken advantage of.
Speaking of being taken advantage, this is exactly what concerns him (35). Ask yourself, how did you come to think that something is good or bad, or, depending on the context, evil? Was it you? Or did someone else make you think that way? Was it your parent, guardian or teacher? Probably yes. But who make them think that way? Was it their parent, guardian or teacher? Again, probably yes, but we must also take into account who is responsible for the production of knowledge. In his day, and before that, they were priests or theologians, as he (30, 35) points out.
To be clear, he (36) reckons that it’s the religious authorities who are to blame here and I agree. He’d be happy to realize that they no longer have such influence over people. Hurrah! The thing is, however, that while they have little influence over people these days, the priests haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve just shapeshifted, so that there’s no shortage of what he (30) also refers to as “moral lawgivers”. These days they are among the experts.
I think he’d find that appalling. It’s like you managed to eliminate the priests, only to become priests yourselves. Oh, and this also applies to academics. I find it infuriating when I have to read or hear from some academic, no matter what the title, nor their level of expertise, that they know something, that they are right about whatever it is, and thus people should do or think accordingly. Now, I don’t doubt their knowledge and expertise. What angers me is that they tend to present themselves as having authority over others. Why not present it as might, instead of should? I know, I know, that doesn’t give you any authority, but that’s my point and that’s also Nietzsche’s point.
Why is he against them? Well, it’s because they don’t know what’s good, nor bad, any better than anyone else, yet they want you to believe that they and only they know that, as stated by him (35). In fact, there is nothing that is inherently good, nor inherently bad, as he (30-31) points out with the diet example. So, in short, he (35) the problem with such people is that they want you to be dependent on them.
To tie this with another theme of this blog, discourse, the priests, or any experts, reserve themselves the right to be right. He (35) isn’t saying this here, I am, or rather, the Michel Foucault in me is saying this here, but I reckon that by doing that, they expect you to understand that by doing what they say is right, you are also right. But what if you do something that’s considered wrong? Well, firstly, they’d say that, shame on you, for doing what’s wrong, only to add to it that it’s not too late to do the right thing, which is to start doing the right thing. Secondly, they might punish you if you don’t start doing the right thing or, at least, they might threaten to punish you, in hopes of making you do the right thing in the future.
He is a bit more straightforward with that. For him (35), it is crucial to understand that the priests, or the experts, want to find people guilty of having done or thought something wrong. Why? Well, because that way they can control and rule over them, as noted by him (35). It’s a ruse.
But who can you trust, if not an expert? Well, this might not be his answer, but I’d still trust the expert, by which I mean find the person who knows the most about whatever it is that concerns you. If you need to know about furniture, like how they are made, find a carpenter, or read books about carpentry. Or, if you need to know about the society, find a sociologist or read sociology books.
But how can I trust an expert? Isn’t that what Nietzsche tells us not to do? Okay, again, it might just be my interpretation, but he isn’t saying that we can’t trust experts, but rather the experts who are actually priests. They are the ones telling you that this is how you must or should live, not how you might live.
How do you know which one is which? Well, I don’t think there’s any set of criteria for that. Maybe the most obvious red flag is when someone appeals to their position, their knowledge, and/or expertise, and expects you to trust them on that basis. They want you to do as they do, to think as they do, because that way you depend on them, as Nietzsche (35) points out.
It’s a different thing when you tell people that it is up to them to figure out what to do with that information. I am an academic, I am an expert, but I am not a priest. Even if I slip, using the word should, or must, and I’m sure I do occasionally, I believe that it is up to others to do as they see fit with what I’ve said or written.
Anyway, this also has to do with the fourth error, which has to do with how the notion of self-referentiality or self-causation, what he (35) also calls free will, also makes us responsible for our actions. Simply put, if you did it, you chose to do it, which means that you are also responsible for doing it, for having chosen to do it. The trick here is that the priests need this. If people don’t have free will, if they aren’t deemed to be the cause of their actions, and thoughts, then you can’t find them guilty, nor punish them, which makes it impossible to control them, to rule over them in this way, through the combination of discourse and authority.
To counter that view, the view that still prevails, much to his chagrin were he alive, he (36) reckons that no one is responsible for their own actions like that. How so? Well, simply because you aren’t your own master, because you never were in the first place, as he (36) is keen to point out:
“Nobody is responsible for being here in the first place, for being constituted in such and such a way, for being in these circumstances, in this environment.”
You owe your existence to your parents, who owe their existence to their parents, and that’s just limiting that discussion of owing one’s existence to being born and inheriting the likelihood of being physically constituted similarly to your parents as you get older. There’s also those other circumstances, which are too many to list here. Like, you don’t get to choose almost anything when you’re growing up. You parents make almost all the decisions for you. There may seem to be some choice, like whether to be friends with this and/or that person in school, but that ignores how limited that choice is. Plus all that goes on for years, so that once you’re adult, and now free to choose, everything that occurred in the past makes you liable to choose in a certain way. That’s why he (36) states that:
“The fatality of our essence cannot be separated from the fatality of all that was and will be.”
In other words, who we are, in the present, and who we will be, in the future, is always tied to who we were, in the past. That should be pretty obvious. That’s the case with everything, yet people often think they themselves, as subjects, as selves, as the ‘I’, are somehow exceptions to that.
He (36) adds this that just as there is no real choice, there are no real goals, by which I believe he is commenting on the absence of Aristotelian notion of telos. What is to be a human for him then? Well, because the only essence we have is what we happen to be at any given moment, he (36) is happy to argue that we are not what we will to be, seek to be, like having a will or a goal, and that we aren’t really expected to will or become anything particular. I’d say that, for him, that’s actually what makes you free, because doing or thinking is not bound to any goals.
He (36-37) expands on that in the final passages, how being free is a matter of becoming, not of being, which makes me think of Baruch Spinoza. Why? Well, because he (36) states that:
“One is necessary, one is a piece of destiny, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole.”
That is definitely Spinoza speaking through Nietzsche. It’s like Spinoza (45) explains things in his ‘Ethics’, how there is just substance and modes, modifications of that substance, that are understood as part of that substance. Like I pointed out already, things have to be the way they are out of necessity and destiny. For them to be the way they are, they have to be the way they are. It also has that one is part of a larger whole thing, which is Spinoza alright. There’s more of him speaking through Nietzsche (36):
“There is nothing that could rule, measure, compare, judge our being, for that would mean ruling, measuring, comparing, and judging the whole . . . But there is nothing outside the whole!”
Again, totally Spinoza, because, for him, nothing can be outside the substance. All that is, what we deal with, is merely a mode, which is a modification of substance, as explained by him (45) in his ‘Ethics’. Judging is a matter of posing, acting as if there was something outside that could indeed do all that which Nietzsche (36) lists there. That’s what priests do. They persuade you to believe that there is an outside and they are somehow privileged to access it, which then then gives them the license to tell how things really are, in themselves, if you will, as well as to judge you and punish you in case you act or think otherwise.
That outside would, of course, be God, as he (37) points out, which is why it is apt that he (30) calls the “moral lawgivers” priests. To be clear, that’s not Spinoza’s God, which is substance, or reality, all that there is, in its infinity, but rather what Nietzsche (37) refers to as “[t]he concept of ‘God’”. The thing with priests is that they appeal to the outside, to something transcendent, to something that is beyond, outside substance, reality, all that there is, which grants them the license to control and rule over people, as noted by him (35). Once they are in place, once they’ve made it in a dominant system, it is tremendously difficult to oppose them, as also noted by him (34). They have the right to tell people what’s right and punish the wrongdoers, which is only apt that he (36) calls that system, as exemplified by Christianity, “a metaphysics of the hangman”.
You might not be convinced by this, by what I’ve written, nor by what Nietzsche has written about these errors in this book and in his other books. Okay, fair enough, but this is also what Spinoza points out. So, if you doubt my sincerity, or Nietzsche’s sincerity, thinking that we are just two curmudgeons, against authorities, just read Spinoza. Just give him a chance. He is so meticulous and mathematical in his formulations that you’ll find yourself just agreeing with him, no matter how much you want to fault him. Once you get it that there’s just substance, and nothing beyond it, Nietzsche’s recurring opposition of priests suddenly makes sense.
References
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1980] 1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
- Nietzsche, F. ([1889] 1997). Twilight of the Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer (R. Polt, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
- Spinoza, B. ([1667] 1884). The Ethics. In B. Spinoza, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, Vol. II (R. H. M. Elwes, Trans.) (pp. 43–271). London, United Kingdom: George Bell and Sons.