![]() The empirical feeling of difference, in short hierarchy, is the essential motor of the concept, deeper and more effective than all thought about contradiction. Nietzsche's "yes" is opposed to the dialectical "no" affirmation to dialectical negation, to dialectical labour lightness, dance, to dialectical responsibilities. And who says that there is more thought in labour than in enjoyment? Difference is the object of a practical affirmation inseperable from essence and constitutive of existence. It is sufficient to say that dialectic is a labour and empiricism an enjoyment. "The pleasure of knowing oneself different", the enjoyment of difference (BGE 260) this is the new, aggressive and elevated conceptual element that empiricism substitutes for the heavy notions of the dialectic and above all, as the dialectician puts it, for the labour of the negative. In its essential relation with the "other" a will makes its difference an object of affirmation. What a will wants is to affirm its difference. The question which Nietzsche constantly repeats, "what does a will want, what does this one or that one want?", must not be understood as the search for a goal, a motive or an object for this will. It is in this sense that there is a Nietzschean empiricism. For the speculative element of negation, opposition or contradiction Nietzsche substitutes the practical element of difference, the object of affirmation and enjoyment. As for the negative concept (that is to say, negation as a concept) "it is only a subsequently-invented pale contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept - filled with life and passion through and through" (GM I 10 p. The negative is a product of existence itself: the aggression necessarily linked to an active existence, the aggression of an affirmation. The negative is not present in the essence as that from which force draws its activity: on the contrary it is a result of activity, of the existence of an active force and the affirmation of its difference. In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference. In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence. We can already feel it in the theory of forces. Anti-Hegelianism runs through Nietzsche's work as its cutting edge. But a particularly important one is that the concept of the Overman is directed against the dialectical conception of man, and transvaluation is directed against the dialectic of appropriation or the suppression of alienation. The question "against whom" itself calls for several replies. If we do not discover its target the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy remains abstract and barely comprehensible. Like Marx he found his habitual targets there. On the other hand we believe that the Hegelian movement, the different Hegelian factions were familiar to him. ![]() ![]() In the sense that one does not know one's opponent well. It has been said that Nietzsche did not know his Hegel. This is why we must take seriously the resolutely anti-dialectical character of Nietzsche's philosophy. Pluralism sometimes appears to be dialectical - but it is its most ferocious enemy, its only profound enemy. Life struggles with another kind of life. But it is important to see that forces enter into relations with other forces. Nietzsche emphasises the fact that force has another force as its object. Is Nietzsche a "dialectician"? Not all relations between "same" and "other" are sufficient to form a dialectic, even essential ones: everything depends on the role of the negative in this relation.
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