Asking the Right Questions Is the Most Important Bit
Beyond Good & Evil
Introduction to this series.
The following quote comes from the first section in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil:
And though it scarcely seems credible, it finally almost seems to us as if the problem had never even been put so far - as if we were the first to see it, fix it with our eyes, and risk it.
You know, we have come a very, very long way from Australopithecus but what we usually overlook is that everything that separates us today from him has had to be fought for very dearly and for a very long time. Again, this is not an all-too-obvious fact: by default, we take everything we have from birth for granted. We take it for granted that we should live in cities, have running water and the convenience to run to a close-by supermarket for food, that we can instantly connect to almost any person in the world, etc.
Take science as an epitome of this over-development that we as a species seem to be quite predisposed for. We now take it for granted what it is to be classified as scientific thinking and would easily dismiss even Nietzsche’s theory on the Will to Power on that account (but I believe this dismissal to be wrong). But you see, not only the most beautiful theories of physics today but even the methods of how you do physics have had to be worked upon very hard.
So in this sense, we consider the Will to Power an unscientific theory based on Karl Popper’s property of falsifiability that every theory should have in order to be considered scientific. This is the standard of doing science today. And then we can go back to what is perhaps the single greatest achievement of the Renaissance in terms of science: the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiments. Again, when this was discovered it was revolutionary and seriously improved the methods of how we do science, it set the ground for how science would be done for many centuries. And you can still go further back down the road to the ancient Greeks coming up with formal logical systems at a time when men attributed every pattern observed in nature to deities.
In this sense, Nietzsche is the first to actually ask the right questions. He is the first to lay down the problem, the task, on which posterity should work upon.
These questions encompass an array of topics from art, science, morality, truth, the impending risk of nazism (which Nietzsche rather precisely predicts 50 years before it happened) and much more important ones like how is the human species to be enhanced.
I personally believe that this is the most important bit: laying down the problem on which other people might work. You see Einstein came up with general relativity thanks to some of the greatest minds of mankind: Maxwell, Netwon, and Galilei who had defined these problems. And he then defined other problems on which we are working today. So what is crucial is laying down the path on which the future generations will work upon, asking the right questions. And indeed the next generation of philosophers worked on the problems laid down by Nietzsche exactly as he said they would.
A process of appending
Science and knowledge, in general, seem to be a process of continual appending and improvement. Nietzsche knew this and he did not claim any ‘truth’, he rather said that it simply does not exist (whether or not this is ultimately true, belongs to the future). As a matter of fact, at his best period, when his powers of philosophizing were at a pinnacle he writes this:
A new species of philosophers is coming up: I venture to baptize them with a name that is not free of danger. These philosophers of the future might have a right — it might also be a wong — to be called attempters. The name itself is in the end a mere attempt and, if you will, a temptation.
So again, he is simply defining the problems on which he thinks posterity should work upon. He is not claiming that the discovery of knowledge should end with him and that he represents a pinnacle in our species’ pyramid of knowledge and insight (something philosophers are in the habit of doing). No, he is simply a powerful ladder in the edifice of our species’ ‘truths’ but a ladder that must be overcome nonetheless.
In addition, notice how he calls these future philosophers, attempters for, in the end, it is merely an attempt to gain knowledge.
As always, any constructive comments or suggestions are highly appreciated. Thanks for reading.