Part 18

575.

To know is to point to past experience: in its nature it is a regressus in infinitum. That which halts (in the face of a so-called causa prima or the unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness.

576.

Concerning the psychology of metaphysics--the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the greatest suffering (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the "real" world. Thus the passions have been step by step struck out, God posited as the opposite of evil--that is to say, reality is conceived to be the negation of the passions and the emotions (i.e. nonentity).

Irrationality, impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incalculable suffering). Consequently they denied this element in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute "rationality" and "conformity of means to ends."

Change and perishability were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with Spinoza: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm).

A nature overflowing and playing with energy, would call precisely the passions, irrationality and change, good in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc.

577.

Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza's artlessness and Descartes' likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita----

578.

Moral values in epistemology itself:--

The faith in reason--why not mistrust?

The "real world" is the good world--why?

Appearance, change, contradiction, struggle, regarded as immoral: the desire for a world which knows nothing of these things.

The transcendental world discovered, so that a place may be kept for "moral freedom" (as in Kant).

Dialectics as the road to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: probably because sophistry was held to be the road to immorality).

Time and space are ideal: consequently there is unity in the essence of things; consequently no sin, no evil, no imperfection, a justification of God.

Epicurus denied the possibility of knowledge, in order to keep the moral (particularly the hedonistic) values as the highest.

Augustine does the same, and later Pascal ("corrupted reason"), in favour of Christian values.

Descartes' contempt for everything variable; likewise Spinoza's.

579.

Concerning the psychology of metaphysics.--This world is only apparent: therefore there must be a real world;--this world is conditioned: consequently there must be an unconditioned world;--this world is contradictory: consequently there is a world free from contradiction;--this world is evolving: consequently there is somewhere a static world:--a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also exist). Pain inspires these conclusions: at bottom they are withes that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is likewise revealed by the fact that another and better world is imagined: the resentment of the metaphysician against reality is creative here.

The second series of questions: wherefore suffer? ... and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the real world to our apparent, changing, suffering, and contradictory world: (1) Suffering as the consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as the consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (A host of experiences drawn from the sphere of nature or society, universalised and made absolute.) But if the conditioned world be causally determined by the unconditioned, then the freedom to err, to be sinful, must also be derived from the same quarter: and once more the question arises, to what purpose? ... The world of appearance, of Becoming, of contradiction, of suffering, is therefore willed; to what purpose?

The error of these conclusions; two contradictory concepts are formed--because one of them corresponds to a reality, the other "must" also correspond to a reality. "Whence" would one otherwise derive its contradictory concept? Reason is thus a source of revelation concerning the absolute.

But the origin of the above contradictions need not necessarily be a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose the real genesis of the concepts, this springs from practical spheres, from utilitarian spheres, hence the strong faith it commands (one is threatened with ruin if one's conclusions are not in conformity with this reason; but this fact is no "proof" of what the latter asserts).

The preoccupation of metaphysicians with pain, is quite artless. "Eternal blessedness": psychological nonsense. Brave and creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions--they are incidental conditions: both of them must be desired when one will attain to something. It is a sign of fatigue and illness in these metaphysicians and religious men, that they should press questions of pleasure and pain into the foreground. Even morality in their eyes derives its great importance only from the fact that it is regarded as an essential condition for abolishing pain.

The same holds good of the preoccupation with appearance and error the cause of pain. A superstition that happiness and truth are related (confusion: happiness in "certainty," in "faith").

580.