Nietzsche is difficult to parse, given his tendency to hyperbole, aphoristic style, and – as we’ll see, philosophical goals. What follows is an interpretation of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, which purports to tie together many themes of his work, at least during his so-called middle period.

Hyperbole vs Hyperbole

Let’s situate Nietzsche within some relevant historical context. He was operating on the horizon of a shift in humanistic thinking, that shift moving from optimism and pride in humanity and nature to emphasize the darker side of reality. Where Hegel and Kant had suggested we could think our way to understanding reality, if we only tried hard enough, scholars like Kierkegaard suggested some understanding would necessarily be outside our grasp, and others like Schopenhauer suggested such thinking places too much weight on humanity. The latter believed we’re doomed to failure, and that’s simply our plight.

But Nietzsche’s not obviously a pessimist about human nature and reality in the stripe of Schopenhauer, and he’s not obviously a nihilist about value either. One reason to think he’s not either is his emphasis and defense of natural science as a way to understand the world. That shouldn’t sound like something a nihilist would be inclined to say…

We can reconcile this apparent tension by thinking of Nietzsche as throwing hyperbolic shade on the optimists – who champion the “sweetness and light” of human nature and the scope of rationality – which he finds all around him. To be fair, such optimism had taken a hit by Darwin and others. Nietzsche, however, sees shadows remaining of that old optimism, in the form of what scholars and scientists of his day found desirable to research.

God is Dead…Deal with it…

Nietzsche doesn’t simply say “God is dead”. He goes on to say that we’ve killed him, and we’ll be fighting his shadows for some time. He emphasizes that we’ve killed him – I think – so we take seriously our responsibility for the fallout. I take it he thinks scholars of the time have not paid enough attention to that fallout; they know God is dead, and they’re aware we’ve killed him. But they also believe this deicide entails they’re no longer influenced by the notion of God.  This phrasing is Nietzsche’s rather poetic way of turning attention to the need for continued attention. Put another way, it’s not as if the enlightenment God rid of God and started from scratch. At no point in recorded history has anything ever been so insulated (Cp. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy). As a perhaps more concrete example of this, consider the French Revolution, and the impulse those revolting had to remove religion from its central position in dominant culture, and replace it with reason. That sounds nice, I suppose. But they literally created the Church of Reason, the first state-sponsored atheistic religion. Come on now…you can’t make this stuff up…

In any event, what sort of shadows does Nietzsche have in mind? God was a:

• Legislator

• Issued commands

• That had the force of universal law

Hence, that implied there were:

• Objective standards of evaluation

• Purpose in nature

• ·One right way to understand nature, i.e. to “carve nature at its joints”

Scholars of Nietzsche’s time were naturalistic, and so attempting to explain everything in terms of natural science, rather than by making any appeal to, say, supernatural explanations. However, Nietzsche is concerned naturalistic scientists are nevertheless seeking explanations that make most sense if there’s a God in the picture. They hunt “Laws of Nature” e.g. Law of Refraction, Ideal Gas Laws, etc. They privilege one way of understanding the world at the exclusion of all others. And with both laws of nature and privileged perspective, comes purpose in nature. Electrons, they might say, follow a certain trajectory because they’re supposed to…

ASIDE: There are many ways to understand “law” and “supposed to” in this context. Consider, there are laws of chess, such that if you violate them, you simply aren’t playing chess, e.g. moving a rook diagonally. These are called constitutive rules. There are other rules of chess such that violating them doesn’t necessarily mean you’re no longer playing chess, e.g. licking each piece before you move it. These are called regulative rules. The former rules tell you what you must do to engage in a certain practice, while the latter regulate that practice once it’s engaged in.

(Q) Are laws of nature as scientists seem to understand them constitutive, regulative, both, neither?

Naturalistic scientists of the day seemed to be searching for what we might call robust laws of nature, i.e. laws of nature that govern the natural world, much like God’s commanded laws of nature, e.g. “Let there be light!” governed the natural world. We might think of such robust laws of nature as being necessary, that is, having no exceptions. Electrons travel in a particular trajectory at a particular place and time, and there’s no way they couldn’t; it’s the law.

Nietzsche is questioning the need for anything as robust as inviolable laws of nature. He suggests everything science is concerned with can be explained in terms of regular patterns of observable phenomenon. In other words, you don’t need robust laws of nature to explain and predict, say, the migration patterns of geese, electron trajectory, gas movement, etc. Natural scientists need only be engaged – Nietzsche claims – in descriptions of the world, and insofar as laws of nature enter into the description, they’re derived from repeated observations of patterns in nature. It’s fallacious to move from such patterns to governing laws.

By the same token, if there are only regular patterns in nature, then there’s no obvious purpose in nature, and no obviously privileged perspective on nature. Patterns emerge everywhere, and may differ based on one’s perspective. From an economic perspective, one might observe the flow of money entering and existing a hospital one afternoon, while from a disease transmission perspective, one might observe an outbreak.  

Moreover, Nietzsche strongly suggests, these perspectives have no other source than us. God is dead and we killed him. We should take responsibility for that by attending to how we’re still influenced in many ways by our past. But we should also take responsibility insofar as we are the only remaining source of what we take to be objectivity, purpose, and laws….

…by Adopting the Role of God.

Aristotle claimed we’re social creatures by nature, and that anyone who could thrive outside society was either an animal or a God.

Nietzsche suggests we take responsibility by being intentional about our practices, and to take seriously the truth of perspectivalism, the view that there is no privileged perspective on reality. Let’s make sense of this with a stepwise procedure:

1.      Focus on a proper part of reality, all it P
2. View P at either granular, microscopic, macroscopic, interstitial, etc. levels
3.  Divide P into proper parts, call them partitions of P
4.      Focus on a particular partition of P
5.      Say what is true or false within that partition

More concretely:

1.      Focus on Chicago, Illinois
2.      View Chicago, Illinois at the surface level or granular perspective
3.      Divide Chicago, Illinois into, say, buildings, people, pets, etc.
4.      Focus on our classroom
5.      There is at least one human in that classroom; there are no puppies

For contrast:

1.      Focus on Chicago, Illinois
2.      View Chicago, Illinois at quantum perspective
3.      Divide Chicago, Illinois into electrons, neutrons, etc.
4.      Focus on our classroom
5.      There are no humans in that classroom; there are electrons

Note, each of (1)-(4) are independent of each other in an important sense. For example, you need not partition P into the same shapes or sizes, or even consistently. Each provides an impressive degree of freedom with respect to how you look at the same phenomenon. Moreover, fixing each variable as you move down the list, leads to you being able to say more ‘true’ things. In the preceding, at step 3, you can already say there are electrons, by step 4, you can say there is a smaller number of them than you could’ve said in step 3, etc.

This is – I think – how perspectivalism operates in scientific inquiry. Scientists focus on a part of reality, fix variables for focus, then define truth with respect to that partition. This suggests, however, truth is always relative to a partition. In other words, there is no objective truth. And since partitions are determined by our interests, truth ultimately stems from us. So-called ‘laws’ are regular patterns observed in these partitions, and purpose follows from those laws and so our interests.

Acknowledging perspectivalism is the first step in taking on the role of God. But intellectual understanding is insufficient for adopting the role. This is because it’s not enough to simply realize there are multiple equally valid perspectives; one must seek flexibility among them at any given time. Great individuals acknowledge the plurality of perspectives. The best individuals, however, are those who remain flexible in moving among them if needed. I read Nietzsche as advocating such flexibility. Indeed, I read Nietzsche as advocating what the ancient skeptics called the mental state of aporia among these ways of understanding the world.  

There were three major schools of thought operating when the Skeptics were around. Their own school, the Dogmatists, and the Academics. Dogmatists claimed to know things with certainty; Academics claimed to know things were not the case with certainty; Skeptics claimed to know nothing with certainty. Skeptics also claimed they were the only philosophers who were still searching for knowledge since they were the only ones who didn’t claim to have it. They recognized claiming to have knowledge closed off flexibility to alternatives. Skeptics esteemed the journey for truth over the destination. Maintaining flexibility among competing theories and claims about the world was a desirable philosophical goal, and being in the corresponding mental state, the goal they sought. That mental state, as mentioned above, was called aporia. It’s a state of being uncertain – for any claim - whether a claim is true or false. It ain’t easy. Try it out. Try to doubt that you exist…

Nietzsche seems to be just such a seeker of truth, and seems also to be claiming such seeking is the best way to live. Skeptics cultivated virtues of argumentation to help them achieve aporia. It’s plausible to see Nietzsche as gesturing at similar virtues himself.

Traits of a Dancing Star

Let’s examine a few plausible exemplars of ‘overcoming dominant perspectives’ and see if we can line up observed characteristics with claims Nietzsche makes about perspectivalism.

• Genius and Confidence: Einstein was a genius who changed the world by providing ample evidence for a paradigm shift in physics. But genius isn’t enough. Confidence is needed as well. Einstein’s theory was motivated initially on purely explanatory grounds. It made predictions, but they were difficult to test given the macroscopic scale on which the theory operated. Eddington tested Einstein’s theory eventually, and after empirical predictions confirmed the theory, Einstein was asked what he’d have thought if the results conflicted with his theory. He said, “The world would have been wrong, because the theory is true.” That’s quite a bit of confidence. Some might say too much…but perhaps ‘too much’ confidence is precisely what’s needed to take seriously alternative perspectives.

• Grit and Diligence: Genius and confidence aren’t enough. Heisenberg had both during his ventures into the quantum world. Many of his discoveries were met with derision by physicists. Later, when his ideas were finally taking hold, he was asked how one changes the minds of old physicists. He said “You don’t, they just die eventually.” Heisenberg maintained his theory in the face of disbelief by peers. That surely must’ve taken quite an emotional toll, but he remained diligent and continued his work. Eventually, he was not only able to overcome an existing – prevalent – view of physics with his novel theoretical claims, but also the derision of his respected peers. In this case, he learned to pick his battles.

• Cognitive Friction and Exploration: W.E.B. Du Bois couldn’t understand – as a child – why white children wouldn’t play with him. He first thought they believed he wasn’t intelligent, so he achieved academic excellence. They didn’t play. He then thought they believed he wasn’t athletic, so he became an athlete. They didn’t play. Eventually, he inferred the color of his skin was the issue. The white children didn’t notice this, because they didn’t have to explain why other people weren’t playing with them in the same way Du Bois needed to explain that. He experienced cognitive friction that led to a need for an alternative explanatory framework.

• Etiology of Values and Courage: Joy James observes much literature on race and racism in the U.S. calls for political, economic, and moral change in how, say, Black people are treated. This in turn generates much policy discussion on, say, reparations, respect, etc. James asks, however, why one might want money? That’s a colonizer value. Dignity? That’s a colonizer value. Political change? Colonizer value. James questions whether these values should be the targets for marginalized individuals. They’re the values of the colonizer, and so always play to that advantage. James suggests constructing new values, creatively, as best as one can. One must be wide-eyed and courageous.

• Errors as Victories: Henkin is known mostly for simplifying a very difficult proof by Kurt Godel. Henkin claimed, however, that his discovery of this proof was an accident. He was intending to do something else entirely, but he recognized the proof for what it was when he saw it. He used that error to overcome.

Let’s take these themes and combine them to gain a picture of the aporia goal. One must exhibit genius, creativity, confidence, remain steadfast, have grit, experience cognitive friction and seek to explore and explain, understand where their values come from and be courageous enough to overcome them, and recognize errors are often how one makes progress. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Nietzsche was suggesting such as virtues for those elite seekers of aporia…