Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology

The discussion throughout is clear, provocative, insightful, and sometimes astutely critical—and the research is first-rate. To enjoy the ride, however, readers need to accept the Nachlass into their hearts. The second section of Moles’s Introduction provides thoughtful reasons for why he utilizes the unpublished writings, so check that out. I should also add that there have been recent illuminating developments in the debate over using the notebooks that back Moles’s approach (see Huang (2019) “Did Nietzsche want his notes burned? Some reflections on the Nachlass problem.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27(6), 1194–1214). Regardless of one’s stance towards the Nachlass, however, Moles uses the unpublished writings exactly as he should: he presents an astoundingly detailed and wide-ranging account of Nietzsche’s thinking.

There are also those who pick up Nietzsche’s theme that the structures embedded in our language are not the mirror of nature, but more the other way around: it serves as the model for our understanding of ourselves, and so for the way we choose to live our lives. An author in whom writing is a dominant passion does not live first and write secondly, or incidentally; instead, life becomes itself a species of literature. Alexander Nehamas is among the best representatives of this type of Nietzsche interpretation.

Closely allied to this view of Nietzsche is that of the textualists. Their point of departure is Nietzsche’s claim that there are no ultimate facts to be found in our perception of nature, but only interpretations. There is no original text of the world, against which interpretations can be checked for veracity. A new interpretation thrives in part by building on old ones, in part by destroying them. There is an ongoing stratification of interpretations, but any attempt to provide an archaeology is itself interpretive; there is no original or primal interpretation, no primordial first stratum. What makes new interpretations plausible is the success of their réprisement, or reappropriation, of the text as hitherto interpreted: they must meet intrinsic standards of coherence and depth of illumination, since there are no extrinsic standards to judge them by. The Yale school of Paul de Man, Harold Bloom and others has been the dominant influence on this interpretation of Nietzsche.

On the other hand, there are authors who have discovered different possibilities of interpretation—who have found in Nietzsche not only such postmodern themes but also quite well articulated views on many different topics, from aesthetics to religion, from education to ethics, from epistemology to criticism of the mechanistic account of natural events and its replacement with what he calls a “dynamical” view of the world. These authors have labored to systematize Nietzsche’s various writings on such topics, and have presented organized accounts of Nietzsche as a philosopher in a more traditional sense. Arthur Danto is one such author; but the most detailed of these accounts, and the one that presents the richest critical analysis, is that by Richard Schacht.

The situation within Nietzsche scholarship at the present time seems quite confusing, therefore—there are fundamental differences even in the methods of interpretation, not to mention the results. This book does not offer any attempt to resolve the conflict, but if anything contributes to making matters more complex yet, by adding another thread to the tapestry. It draws attention to Nietzsche’s admiration for science, and the distinction he draws between scientific and non-scientific forms of interpretation, the latter including most of philosophy and all of religion. It becomes evident that Nietzsche bad a higher estimation of the scientific world-view (although it can be shown that he had criticisms to make of it, too). But this distinction doesn’t fit well with the textualists’ view of Nietzsche: how can this distinction and higher valuation be justified? Also, Nietzsche did claim that one scientific viewpoint he expected soon to become dominant was (in a sense to be explained later) “truer” than an older one; he also spent much time writing down notes detailing this viewpoint, some of which found their way into published books.

Yet, it might be objected, why promote an interpretation such as this, which appears to demonstrate that Nietzsche is an author of the second rank, in debt to creative thinkers but not himself creative to a high degree? Instead, why not emphasize his greatest claim to fame, his forging of a new, postmodern way of thinking? But at this point it must be suggested that posing the questions in this way draws the alternatives too simply. There are two reasons for this suggestion.

The first reason: all thinkers borrow from earlier ideas, but this does not necessarily imply any loss of originality. In Nietzsche’s case, not only did these borrowed ideas spark an enormous and highly original creative outpouring: they also provided the occasion for an extraordinary transformation and synthesis. In the process of this work Nietzsche anticipated ideas whose full development was achieved only in the twentieth century revolution in physics, and which few, perhaps none, of his contemporaries bad foreseen. But if his thinking can be proved to represent a hash, rather than a rehash, what is his unique contribution? Here too there is no simple answer. One of the aims of this book, however, is to show that Nietzsche anticipated the cosmological viewpoint embedded in Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Max Planck’s quantum theory, several decades before these were published. If this thesis can be supported, Nietzsche’s historical significance is remarkable. If he really is their philosophical precursor, his claim to originality is surely guaranteed.

The second reason: perhaps it is not necessary to assume that thinkers must be categorized as either original or derivative (but not both), likewise either postmodern or traditional, repudiators of “truth” or promoters of their own truths. There is the danger of a false dilemma here. There is the possibility that Nietzsche was all of these, in different ways. In what follows it will appear that at least one aspect of his thinking has its own inner dynamism and evolutionary development—that precisely the conclusions he reached in one dimension of thought propelled him into another dimension, even though his view of the new world transcends that of the old and can hardly be rendered consistent with it.

If this is the case, a Proteus of thought, a self-transforming power, exists in Nietzsche’s philosophy. And here finally a new aspect of its inexhaustibility would emerge, one which will always reduce to partiality any interpretation which tries to grasp it, recognize one form only—and then let go.

Thanks to fellow members of the North American Nietzsche Society for critical comments on some preliminary versions of parts of this work, given as papers there: especially to Harold Alderman, Daniel Breazeale, George Stack, Richard Schacht.

Much gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for abundant assistance: first in enabling me to attend Bernd Magnus’ remarkable Summer Seminar (on the influence of Nietzsche on postmodern thought) at the University of California, Riverside, in 1985; and then in awarding me a Summer Stipend in 1986, which allowed me to investigate the influence of certain scientific writers (primarily Robert Mayer and Friedrich Zöllner) on Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature.

Appreciation to Robin Small for being a forerunner in exploring many aspects of Nietzsche’s scientific interests, and for being an energetic correspondent willing to supply me with many documents and ideas.

Thanks to all the participants in and visitors to the Summer Seminar, especially those who opened my eyes to new perspectives: Kathleen Higgins, Christine Keyt, Diane Michelfelder, Dan Shaw.

Gratitude to California State University at Sacramento, for awarding me a Scholarly and Creative Activity grant, which enabled me to undertake the task of upgrading a text which had been unscrutinized for years (so that it would be acceptable for publication), and which covered the costs of preparing the manuscript according to the publisher’s specifications.

Thanks to Olaf Scholz, and especially to Daniela Ubsdell, for undertaking the heroic task of documenting nearly a thousand of Nietzsche’s notebook entries published in an antiquated German edition of his complete works (the best that was available to me when this work was begun in the early 1970’s), and then finding them in the newer and definitive—and completely different—Colli-Montinari edition.

Last but by no means least, thanks to Suzanne Elliott for the use of her marvellously equipped Macintosh II; and especially to Spencer W. Brown of Spencer’s Publication of Sacramento, California, for taking on the massive job of OCR scanning almost 600 pages of an originally typewritten manuscript, editing it admirably, and allowing me almost unlimited freedom to make all the necessary alterations.

These published works are cited by the abbreviated titles given above, followed by section or aphorism number. For example: GS 360 refers to section 360 of The Gay Science. If there are divisions within a work (so that the numbering begins anew with each) the citation refers first to the number of the division (book, part, essay or chapter) in Roman numerals, and then to the number of the section (aphorism or discourse) in Arabic numerals. For example: GM 11.17 refers to section 17 of the second essay in The Genealogy of Morals. The works cited in this manner are Z, GM, TI, EH and NCW. If there are subsections within sections, the citation refers first to the number of the division, then to the number of the section, and last to the number of the subsection, again in Arabic numerals. For example: Z IIl.12/1 refers to the first subsection of the twelfth discourse of the third part of Thus Spake Zarathustra. An exception is made in the case of the third chapter of EH, where the sections which deal with Nietzsche’s commentaries on his own earlier books are cited using the abbreviations for the books themselves: for example, EH BT.1, EH Z.2, and so on.