Chapter 2 02 "Rationality" in philosophy

1 You ask me, what are the characteristics of philosophers? ...For example: their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the idea of ​​becoming, their Egyptianism ('毠A'gyptiB cismns).When they dehistoricalize a thing, sub specieaeterni, when they mummify it, they think they are paying homage to it.Everything that has been dealt with by philosophers for thousands of years has become a conceptual mummy; nothing real has escaped their grasp alive.The servants of these conceptual idols, when they worship, they slaughter, they carve,--when they worship, they make everything life-threatening.Death, change, and age are as much objection—even refutation—to them as birth and growth.That which is does not change; that which changes does not exist...they all (even with despair) believe in that which is.However, they couldn't get it, so they looked for why it was withheld. "There must be an illusion, a deception, that prevents us from perceiving beings. Where is the deceiver hiding?" they exclaimed with joy: "We have found him, and he is sensibility! The senses, they have always been so immoral , it is they that conceal the real world from us. Morality is: freedom from the deceit of the senses, freedom from becoming, history, and lies—history is nothing but belief in the senses, belief in lies. Morality is: negation All faith in the senses, denial of all remnants of humanity, all these are the 'people'. Be a philosopher, be a mummy, embody monotonous monotheism with the face of a gravedigger!—and above all, let go of the body , this poor ideafixe ​​of the senses! ②It bears all the errors that logic points out, refute, and even cannot refute, because it is so arrogant that it acts as if it were a real existence!"  …

-------- ①Latin: from the point of view of eternity. ② French: fixed concept. 2 I admire Heraclitus' fame with great respect.Other schools of philosophers reject the evidence of the senses because they show variety and change.He rejects the evidences of the senses because they show things as if they possessed continuity and unity.But Heraclitus is also unfair to the senses.The senses lie neither in the way that the Eleatics thought nor in the way that he did—they do not lie at all.It is only when we process their evidence that lies are inserted into them, such as the lie of unity, the lie of objectivity, substance, and persistence... "rationality" is the root of our tampering with sensory evidence.As long as the senses show becoming, passing, changing, they do not lie... But Heraclitus is always right on this point: Being (Sein) is an empty fiction. The "illusory" world is the only world; the "real world" is just a fabrication...

3 —and what delicate instruments of observation are our senses!The nose, for instance, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is for the time being even the most ingenious instrument at our disposal, capable of discerning the tiniest movements that not even a spectroscope can discern.We have science today just to the point where we make up our minds to accept the evidence of the senses—to learn to sharpen the senses, to arm the senses, to think through the senses.The rest are deformed and unformed sciences, by which I mean metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology; or formal sciences and semiotics, such as logic and applied logic—mathematics.In these sciences, reality does not exist at all, so it is a problem; just as it is a problem that the value of conventional symbols such as logic is actually worthless.

4 Another trait of philosophers that is equally dangerous is that of confusing the beginning and the end.They set as the "highest concept" that which comes last (a pity! because it will not come at all), that is to say, the most general and empty concept, the last vapor of reality evaporated as a beginning.Again, this is nothing more than an expression of their reverence: the higher is not allowed to grow from the lower, not at all... Morality: everything of the first order must be causasui.Derivation from something else is seen as an objection, as a doubt about value.All highest values ​​belong to the first order, all highest concepts, the being, the absolute, the good, the true, the perfect—all this cannot be becoming, so must be causa sui.But all these cannot be equal to each other, cannot contradict themselves... So they have this amazing concept of "God"... The last, thinnest, most empty thing is assumed to be the first thing, Self-cause, ens realissimum②...Humans must take the brain disease of sick spiders seriously! ——He has already paid dearly for it! ...

-------- ① Latin: self-cause. ②The most real existence. 5 Finally, let's examine how we (I say "we" out of courtesy...) deal with the problem of visual errors and artifacts differently.Transformation, change, becoming, in general, were formerly regarded as proofs of an illusion, as signs that something must be present that would lead us astray.Today, we look at it in reverse, just as far as rational bias drives us to set up unity, identity, duration, substance, origin, thingness, existence, to a certain extent involves us in error and forces us to make error; we can according to Strict accounting determines that something is wrong here.This situation is no different from the movement of giant stars: in the latter, our eyes make mistakes, in the former, our words can be used to provide a lasting justification for the mistakes.Language, in its origin, belongs to the period of the most degenerate form of the psyche: when we become aware of the fundamental postulate of the metaphysics of language—reason in German—we enter into a savage fetish being .He sees agents and deeds everywhere, he believes in the will as the universal cause; he believes in the Self, the Self as Being, the Self as Substance, and projects belief in the Self-substance into all things— —He thus created the concept of "things"...existence is conceived everywhere and presupposed as the initial cause; the concept of "existence" was just extended and derived from the concept of "self"...was shrouded in error at the beginning Great misfortune, mistaking will as something that works, will as a faculty... We now know that it is but a word... Much later, in a world a thousand times more civilized, philosophers were pleasantly surprised Aware of the reliability, the subjective certainty, in the operation of rational categories, they concluded that these categories could not have been derived from experience—all experience contradicted them.So where do they come from? —The same false inference was made in India as in Greece: "We must have dwelt in a higher world (and not in a much lower world, what truth!), We must have been divine, because we have reason!"... In fact, nothing hitherto has a more naive persuasive power than the error of being (Sein), as established by the Eleatic school, Because every word, every sentence we say is in defense of it! —Even the opponents of the Eleatic school were seduced by their conception of being: Democritus, for example, invented his atom... "Reason" in language: what a crooked crone!I'm afraid we haven't gotten rid of God, because we still believe in grammar...

-------- ①In German, Sein is also the copula "is", which is indispensable in everyday language, so there are the following statements. 6 People will thank me if I reduce a knowledge so fundamental and so new into four propositions that I help people understand and challenge opposing views. First proposition.The reasons for describing the world of "this side" as a world of illusion, rather, prove the reality of the world of "this side"—an other kind of reality is absolutely unprovable. Second proposition.The character ascribed to the "true being" of things is that of non-existence, of nothingness—the "true world" is constituted by contrasting it with the real world: since it is purely an illusion of moral optics, It is in fact a false world.

Third proposition.There is no point in imagining a "beyond" world, if an instinct to slander, contempt, and doubt life is not strong in us.In the latter case, we avenge life with a "beyond", "better" life. Fourth proposition.The division of the world into the "real" world and the "imaginary" world, whether in the Christian way or in the Kantian way (after all, a cunning Christian way), is only a harbinger of decadence—it is decay. The representation of the life of the artist...The artist values ​​the appearance higher than the reality! It is not an objection to this proposition. Because the "appearance" here again expresses the reality, but only in a selection, strengthening, modification...The tragic artist is not The pessimist - he affirms even everything dubious and terrible, he is sarcastic...