Abstract
“Today all of us are sensualists,” Nietzsche writes in Book Five of The Gay Science.1 This striking assertion provides a signal for a set of problems concerning knowledge or, more particularly, the relation between knowledge and life. Nietzsche had been concerned with these questions for a long time, but only after Thus Spake Zarathustra did he define them in the ways that provide the theme of this discussion. As his thinking found its own path more and more, Nietzsche moved decisively away from the pessimism and romanticism which had earlier influenced him, and gained a new appreciation of the philosophers of the French Enlightenment, even describing their sensualism and hedonism as the “best inheritance” available to his own century.2 Hence, for example, his suggestion that the credit for Stendhal, in his opinion the greatest French writer of the nineteenth century, must go to “the best, most rigorous philosophical school in Europe, that of Condillac and Destutt de Tracy.”3 The term “sensualist,” as used here, refers in the first instance to these thinkers who, proceeding from the empiricism of Locke, attempted to derive all ideas from elementary sensations. (Hence the alternative expression, “sensationalism.”) It does not imply a preoccupation with sensual pleasure, although the English word may be used most often in that sense.4 On the other hand, it can hardly be denied that any moral philosophy which finds its basic evidence in sensation will be naturally inclined towards hedonism, or at least utilitarianism. Less evident, but equally seen in these French writers, is the affinity between sensualism and a materialist interpretation of human nature.
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Notes
GS 372. Apart from published works of Nietzsche, including the notes included in The Will to Power,all remaining translations are my own, unless otherwise stated.
Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke [hereafter: KGW], ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973-), VII/2, 234.
KGW VIII/3, 455.
Not trusting his readers on this point, Kaufmann translates Sensualisten as “believers in the senses,” a rather misleading phrase in view of the qualification Nietzsche goes on to make in this passage.
KGW II1/3, 207.
GS 373.
KGW VII/2, 264.
BGE, 12. One may here recall the admiring words of Galileo when referring to the heliocentric theories of Aristarchus and Copernicus: “Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true; they have through sheer force of intellect done such violence to their senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to the contrary.” Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, trans. Stillman Drake, 2nd ed. ( Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967 ), 328.
Daybreak,168. See also KGW VII/3, 278 (WP 443).
Nietzsche, Historische-Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, Band 4, ed. H.J. Mette and K. Schlechta ( München: C.H. Beck’ sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1937 ), 84.
See G.J. Stack, “Nietzsche and Lange,” The Modern Schoolman 57 (1980), 137–49, Jörg Salaquarda, “Nietzsche und Lange,” Nietzsche-Studien 7 (1978), 236–53 and G.J. Stack, Lange and Nietzsche (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1983 ).
F.A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart ( Iserlohn: Verlag von J. Baedecker, 1866 ), 345.
See e.g. Geschichte des Materialismus,405, for this phrase which is often used by Nietzsche: BGE, 21; also KGW VII/3, 224 and 288 (WP 618), KGW VII/3, 439 and KGW VIII/1, 90 and 110 (WP 622).
BGE, 14.
Geschichte des Materialismus,500.
Ibid.,485.
Ibid.,496.
BGE, 10.
BGE, 15. See also KGW VII/1, 88 and 230.
Twilight of the Idols,“`Reason’ in Philosophy,” sect. 3. Similarly, Zarathustra says, “You should think your own senses through to the end.” Thus Spake Zarathustra,“Upon the Blessed Isles.” Cf. KGW VII/2, 124 (WP 1046).
GS, 112.
Twilight of the Idols, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” sect. 2.
KGW V/2, 422.
Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), Band 1, 375.
On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,2 (in the translation of Peter Preuss). A somewhat similar passage occurs in the book which was the occasion of Nietzsche’s first “untimely meditation,” David Friedrich Strauss’s Der alte and der neue Glaube. Strauss writes: “When the great year of the world has thus elapsed, the formation of a new world begins, in which — according to the Stoic fancy — the earlier one repeats itself precisely, down to particular events and persons (Socrates and Xanthippe).” Der alte and der neue Glaube (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1872), 155.
See Robin Small, “Incommensurability and Recurrence: from Oresme to Simmel,” Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 121–37.
For “constellation” see KGW VII1/3, 68 and 165 (WP 551 and 636); and for “smallest detail,” KGW V/2, 421.
KGW V/2, 421.
KGW VIII/1, 244 (WP 565).
Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke,Band 4, ed. M. Oehler and R. Oehler (München: Musarion Verlag), 334.
KGW VIII/1, 201 (WP 563).
KGW VIII/1, 244 (WP 565).
Critique of Pure Reason,A162 = B203 and A168 = B210.
The proposition that intensive magnitudes cannot be added together has been put to ingenious use by C.S. Lewis. He begins by observing that if two people are each suffering a toothache of intensity x, it does not follow that anyone is suffering a toothache of intensity 2x. He goes on: “There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there can ever be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain.” The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), 103–04. A reply is that sensations have not only intensive but also extensive magnitude, in the multiplicity of subjects who experience them and, within a single person, in their bodily extent and temporal duration. Accordingly, we can say that there is more or less pain in so far as any of these magnitudes increases or decreases. Someone who overlooks that consideration might attempt to prove that eternal punishment is no more severe than the most brief or even momentary punishment, since the intensities of the successive states of pain cannot be added together. Anyone arguing in that way, though, would be forced to concede that eternal bliss is no more rewarding than a very fleeting pleasure.
Critique of Pure Reason,B207.
The pioneers in this area were E.H. Weber and G.T. Fechner, who developed a model for estimating the intensities of sensations, and on that basis postulated a formula in which the magnitudes of sensation and stimulus are related in a logarithmic function.
He goes on: “It is the same with morality. Here accompanying feelings of beneficence or utility arise in someone who perceives a human characteristic in a certain quantum; doubled or tripled, he is afraid of it…” KGW VII/2, 238.
KGW VII/2, 234; reading die `Sinn’ for das ‘Sein,’ as indicated by KGW VII/4/2, 654.
Human, All-too-Human, i 483.
Paul Rée, Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen ( Chemnitz: Verlag von Ernst Schmeitzner, 1877 ).
KGW VIII/l, 244 (WP 565).
KGW VII/2, 183.
For an outline of Dumont’s life and work, see Alexander Buechner, Un philosophe amateur. Essai biographique sur Léon Dumont (1837–1877) avec des extraits de sa correspondance ( Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1884 ).
Léon Dumont, Vergnügen and Schmerz. Zur Lehre den Gefühlen (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1876). This volume is a translation of Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité. Le plaisir et la peine ( Paris: Librairie Germer Baillière, 1875 ).
The term “science” may suggest consistency with a reductionist and materialist program in psychology, hut does not imply a reliance on empirical evidence; indeed, Dumont argues that a science of pleasure and pain is like dynamics or mathematics, in being concerned not with facts, but with more general and abstract objects. Vergnügen and Schmerz,100.
Vergnügen and Schmerz,98.
Ibid.,307.
Ibid.,82.
Ibid.,129.
Ibid.,136. An equally surprising result of his theory emerges when the principle of the conservation of energy is taken into account. This law implies that any increase of energy in one location must correspond to a decrease of energy elsewhere. According to Dumont’s theory, these processes are identical with pleasure and pain respectively. Hence, the amount of pleasure in the world must always be exactly equal to the amount of pain. This invalidates any claim that existence as a whole contains more pain than pleasure, or vice versa — in other words, it disposes of both pessimism and optimism, so understood. It has an even more startling implication: that for every subject experiencing pleasure, another must experience pain. Dumont acknowledges this only by referring to the successes of the human race at the expense of other species in the struggle for existence. He forbears to mention that a similar conclusion must also apply to individuals. Accordingly, he does not address the novel ethical problems that would arise from an assumption that one person’s pleasure necessitates another’s pain.
KGW VII/1, 308 and 322.
BGE 225. See also KGW VIII/1, 338; VIII/2, 272 and 275; VIIU3, 127 and 152 (WP 579, 701, 669, 478 and 702).
KGW VIIU3, 127 (WP 478).
KGW VII1/3, 92 (WP 688).
KGW VIII/3, 150 (WP 699).
BGE 13.
GS 127.
Vergnügen and Schmerz, 57.
See KGW VII/1, 322.
KGW VIIU3, 150 (WP 699).
Twilight of the Idols,“Maxims and Arrows,” sect. 12. It is only fair to point out that this is not how Englishmen see themselves. As A.P. Herbert puts it, “The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose.” Uncommon Law (London: Eyre Methuen, 1977), 198.
KGW VIII/3, 70 (WP 695).
KGW VIIU2, 33 (WP 516).
KGW VIII/1, 200 (WP 1045).
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Small, R. (1999). We Sensualists. In: Babich, B.E. (eds) Nietzsche, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 204. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2428-9_6
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