Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche (the little red hen read aloud .txt) đ
- Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
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With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous mindsâ ânamely, that a thought comes when âitâ wishes, and not when âIâ wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject âIâ is the condition of the predicate âthink.â One thinks; but that this âoneâ is precisely the famous old âego,â is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an âimmediate certainty.â After all, one has even gone too far with this âone thinksââ âeven the âoneâ contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formulaâ ââTo think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequentlyââ ââ ⊠It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating âpower,â the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operatesâ âthe atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this âearth-residuum,â and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logicianâs point of view, to get along without the little âoneâ (to which the worthy old âegoâ has refined itself).
18It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the âfree willâ owes its persistence to this charm alone; someone is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.
19Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doingâ âhe seems to have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only in nameâ âand it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages. So let us for once be more cautious, let us be âunphilosophicalâ: let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition âaway from which we go,â the sensation of the condition âtowards which we go,â the sensation of this âfromâ and âtowardsâ itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion âarms and legs,â commences its action by force of habit, directly we âwillâ anything. Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought;â âand let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the âwilling,â as if the will would then remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed âfreedom of the willâ is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: âI am free, âheâ must obeyââ âthis consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that âthis and nothing else is necessary now,â the inward certainty that obedience will be renderedâ âand whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. A man who wills commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the willâ âthis affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term âIâ: a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willingâ âto such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the commandâ âconsequently obedience, and therefore actionâ âwas to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a necessity of effect; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. âFreedom of Willââ âthat is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the orderâ âwho, as such, enjoys also the triumph
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