Chapter 51 Twilight of Idols Five or Four Great Fallacies

dusk of idols Five or four great fallacies 1 The Fallacy of Confusing Cause and Effect—There is no more dangerous fallacy than that of inverting the effect into the cause, which I call the true corruption of reason.Nevertheless, this fallacy belongs to the ever-new habit of mankind, it is even sanctified among us, and it bears the name of "religion" and "morality".Every proposition established by religion and morality contains it; priests and moral legislators are the authors of the corruption of reason. — Let me give you an example: everyone knows the book of the famous Cornaro, in which he recommends his diet as a recipe for a long, happy (and virtuous) life.Few books are so widely read that, until now, thousands of copies are printed every year in England.I have no doubt that hardly any book (except, of course, the Bible) has done so much mischief, and shortened so many lives, as this well-meaning monster.Its source lies in: confusing the effect with the cause.This kind Italian regards his diet as the cause of his longevity; in fact, the prerequisites for longevity, that is, an extremely slow metabolism and negligible consumption,

①Cornaro: Born in 1467 and died in 1566, he wrote a book about his secret of longevity. That's why he's on a diet.For him, whether to eat more or less is not arbitrary, and his frugality is not a kind of "voluntary", and he will get sick if he eats too much.But without this carp body, one is not only best but must eat in moderation.Scholars of our time, whose nervous powers are exhausted so rapidly, use the Hornaro regimen only to kill themselves. Crede expertto①. ① Test the creed. 2 The most general formula upon which every religion and morality is based is: "Do this and this, and don't do this and this—and you will be happy! Otherwise..." Every morality, every religion is such an imperative,—I Call it the great original sin of reason, the immortal irrationality.In my mouth, this formula turns into its opposite - my first example of "revaluation of all values": a well-developed human being, a "lucky one", who must act in a certain way, while others Instinctively hesitating in this action, he brings the sequence of his biological configuration into his relationship with people and things.Formula: His virtue is the result of his happiness...Longevity, prosperity, is not the reward of virtue, but virtue is a slowing down of metabolism, among other results, long life, prosperity, in short Cornaroism The result of this slowdown. —Church and morality say: "A race, a people are extinct by crime and luxury." My reconstructed reason says: When a people declines and degenerates physiologically, crime and luxury follow (which means need more and more intense and frequent stimulation, as is familiar to every exhausted nature).The young man was prematurely pale and wilted.His friends say: So-and-so disease is to blame.I said: he is sick, he cannot resist the disease, which in itself is the result of a decaying life, of a conventional exhaustion.The newspaper readers say: the party has ruined itself with such a mistake.My higher politics say: A party that errs like this is doomed—it has lost its instincts of safety.Errors of any kind in any sense are the result of the decay of instinct and the disintegration of the will: this is almost the definition of evil.All goodness is instinct—therefore easy, necessary, free.Difficulty is a protest, and gods and heroes are of different types (in my words: light feet are the first attribute of divinity.

3 The fallacy of false causality. —Man has always believed himself to know what a cause is, but where do we get our knowledge, or rather the belief that we have it?From the well-known field of "inner facts," of which none of these "facts" have hitherto been proved to be true, we believe ourselves to be the cause in acts of the will; we think that at least on this occasion causality is captured on the spot. Nor does one doubt the antecedentia of an action, its cause, which can be sought in consciousness, and is always found if one seeks it—as a "motivation", without which the action cannot be freely performed and cannot be held accountable.In the end, who would deny that a thought has a reason, that the "ego" is the cause of the thought? ... Of these three "inner facts" which seem to serve as safeguards for causality, the first and most convincing fact is that the will is the cause; The idea of ​​a "subject"), that is, a cause, is purely derivative and arises after the determination of causality by the will as a given fact, experience ... We have become better at thinking during this time, we no longer believe all these statements today. The "inner world" is full of phantoms, and will is one of them.The will no longer moves anything, so it no longer explains anything - it merely accompanies the process, and it cannot be absent.The so-called "motivation" is another fallacy.It is purely a superficial phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment to an action; rather than embodying it, it conceals the antecedents of an action.As for the ego, it has become a fable, a fiction, a wordplay, it has completely stopped thinking, feeling, wishing! ... What is the conclusion?There is no spiritual reason at all!To hell with all the so-called experience in this field!This is the conclusion! —And we have educatedly misused what is called "experience," and we have created a world as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirit.Here the oldest and most ancient psychology is at work, which does nothing else, for which every event is an act, and every action is the result of a will, and the world is incarnated into many actors, one actor (a "subject") quietly lurks behind every event.Man projects from himself the three "inner facts" he most firmly believes in, namely, will, spirit, and ego. According to his concept of self as cause, he presupposes the existence of "things".Is it any wonder then that in things he always only finds again what he has put into them? —Again, the thing itself, the concept of the thing, is only a reflection of the belief that the self is the cause... Even your atoms, my gentlemen mechanists and physicists, are so erroneous and degenerate. Psychology remains in your atoms! — Not to mention the "thing in itself," the horrendum pudendu m of the metaphysicians!The fallacy of spirit as cause is passed off as reality!Be established as a real standard!Called God!

①Latin: the preceding item ② Latin: something terrible and shameful. 4 The fallacy of fantasy causes. —From dream talk: for example, a sensation caused by a distant shelling, to which a cause is added (often a whole short novel in which the dreamer plays the leading role).In the meantime the sensation continues in a reverberating manner, as if it waits until the causal impulse admits it into the foreground,—no longer an accident, but a "meaning."The bombardment occurs in a causal fashion, in an apparent reversal of time.The later motive was felt first, with a thousand details that seemed to flash by like lightning, and then the shelling... What happened?The imagination created by a state is misunderstood as the cause of that state. — In fact, we do the same when we are awake.Most of our usual sensations—inhibitions, stresses, tensions, outbursts, especially states of the nervus sympathicus—when the organs are active or blocked—provoke our causal impulses: we wish to have reasons for being in such-and-such states—good good or bad state.Simply affirming the fact that we are in such-and-such a state never satisfies us.We tolerate this fact—that is, become aware of it—only when we give it a motivational account.Memory works automatically on such occasions without our knowledge, calling up similar past states and their associated causal accounts (not their causal connections).Of course, the belief that the idea, the accompanying conscious process, is the cause is also a result of memory.A certain habit of causal explanation is thus formed, which actually hinders or even eliminates the study of causes.

①Latin: sympathetic nerve. 5 A psychological account of this. —Reducing something unknown to something known is relaxing, calming, satisfying, and, moreover, empowering.The unknown makes one feel dangerous, uneasy, apprehensive—the first impulse is to eliminate this distressing state.First principle: Any explanation is better than no explanation.For the matter is essentially concerned only with getting rid of oppressive ideas, and the method of getting rid of them is less critical.The first idea by which the unknown is interpreted as the known does so well that people "take it as truth."Evidence of pleasure ("power") is the criterion of truth. —The causal impulse is therefore determined and caused by the feeling of fear. The "why" question, as far as possible, is not to provide reasons for reasons, but rather to provide reasons of a certain kind - a reason of calming, relief, relief.The setting as cause of something known, experienced, inscribed in memory is the first consequence of this need.The new, the unexperienced, the strange is denied as a cause. —Therefore, not only a certain kind of explanation is sought for the cause, but a chosen and preferred explanation by which the feeling of the strange, the new, the unexperienced is most swiftly and promptly extinguished,— — is the most common explanation. ——As a result, a certain kind of reason setting becomes more and more dominant and merges into a system.finally achieved dominance, that is, ruled out other causes and explanations. ——The banker immediately thinks of "business", the Christian immediately thinks of "sin", and the girl immediately thinks of her love.

6 The whole realm of morality and religion falls under the category of fanciful causes. - the usual "explaining" of unpleasantness.They are created by beings hostile to us (evil specters: most famous case - hysterics misinterpreted as witches).They are caused by impermissible behavior (put: "guilty", "guilty" feeling imposed on a physical discomfort - people can always find reasons to be dissatisfied with themselves).They come as a punishment and a retribution for something we don't seem to be, what we don't seem to be (Schopenhauer has the audacity to reduce it to a proposition in which morality appears as truth, as the poison of life and detractors: "Every great suffering, whether physical or mental, proves that we deserve it; for it would not come to us if we had not deserved it." See Book II).They are the consequences of indiscretion (passions and senses are posited as causes, as "faulty"; physical pain plus other pains are interpreted as "just deserved"). - The usual "interpretation" of pleasure.They are caused by believing in God.They are caused by a sense of good behavior (the so-called "clean conscience", a physiological state, sometimes so similar to good digestion that it is almost indistinguishable).They are caused by success in business (naive and false inference: success in business does not at all produce the usual pleasure in a melancholic or in a Pascal).They are created by Christian virtues such as faith, love, hope. —In fact all these pseudo-interpretations are subsequent states, as if translating pleasure or displeasure into a false dialectic.One hopes because the basic physical sense is still strong and full; one believes in God because the sense of fullness and strength makes him serene. —Morality and religion belong entirely to a false psychology: in every case confounding cause and effect; or confounding truth with the effect of what is believed to be true; or confounding a state of consciousness with the cause of that state.

7 The fallacy of free will. - we are no longer sympathetic to the concept of "free will", we know all too well what it is - it is the most notorious artifice theologians have had for making humans "responsible" as they mean it , that is, to make human beings dependent on them... I am here only to speak of the psychological substance of any practice of making men accountable. —Wherever there is an intention to hold someone accountable, the instinct to punish and to judge is often to be found there.Man is deprived of his innocence if such-and-such a condition is traced to an act of will, purpose, responsibility.The doctrine of the will was invented essentially for punishment, that is, for the desire to find evil.The whole of ancient psychology, the psychology of the will, presupposes that its founders, the priests of the upper classes of ancient society, wanted to create for themselves a right to punish men—or to give God such a right...  Man is considered "free" in order to be judged and punished--in order to be guilty.As a result, every act must be seen as voluntary, the source of every action must be seen as conscious (by which counterfeiting, the most basic of psychology, is established as a psychological principle itself...) Today, we put We immoralists in particular have endeavored to purge the world of the concepts of crime and punishment, to purify the mind, history, nature, social institutions and their sanction, and we have seen nothing more so than the theologians. Their rebellion has become more violent, they continue to rely on the concept of "moral order of the world", and use "punishment" and "crime" to sully the innocence of birth, Christianity is the metaphysics of the executioner...

8 What can our doctrine be? —No one can give man his character, neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor himself (the absurdity of the idea finally denied here, as "intellectual freedom", has been described by Kant, perhaps also taught by Plato).No one can be responsible for the fact that he exists, that he is made so, that he is in such circumstances and circumstances.The destiny of his nature cannot be freed from the destiny of all that is and will be.He is not the product of a particular intention, of a will, of an end, which cannot be used to experiment with the realization of an "ideal of man," or an "ideal of happiness," or a "ideal of morality,"—want It would be absurd to mold his nature to a purpose.We have invented the concept of "purpose", in fact the absence of purpose...someone is necessary, so-and-so is a piece of fate, so-and-so belongs to the whole, so-and-so is in the whole, - there is nothing to judge, measure , comparing, condemning our existence, because that means judging, weighing, comparing, blaming all... yet outside all there is nothingness! —No one is responsible anymore for the kind of being that cannot be traced back to a causa prima, for the world being a unity that is neither as perception nor as "spirit", and this is the great liberation, — Becoming In this way the innocence of man is re-established... The concept of "God" is hitherto the greatest objection to existence... We deny God, we deny the responsibility God implies: we save the world.

① Latin: the first cause.