LITMIR.BIZ

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But then our bodies, as a part of this outer world, would, in fact, be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would, in fact, be—the work of our organs. It seems to me that this is a fundamental reductio ad absurdum [absurd conclusion] provided that the idea of causa sui [something being its own cause] is fundamentally absurd. Consequently, is the exterior world not the work of our organs —?

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      There are still harmless observers of themselves who believe that there are “immediate certainties,” for example, “I think,” or that superstition of Schopenhauer’s, “I will,” just as if perception here was able to seize upon its object pure and naked, as “ thing in itself,” and as if there was no falsification either on the part of the subject or on the part of the object.¹² However, the fact is that “immediate certainty,” just as much as “absolute cognition” and “thing in itself,” contains within itself a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction in terms]. I’ll repeat it a hundred times: people should finally free themselves of the seduction of words! Let folk believe that knowing is knowing all of something. The philosopher must say to himself, “When I dismantle the process which is expressed in the sentence ‘I think,’ I come upon a series of daring assertions whose grounding is difficult, perhaps impossible—for example, that I am the one who thinks, that there must be some general something that thinks, that thinking is an action and effect of a being which is to be thought of as a cause, that there is an ‘I’, and finally that it is already established what we mean by thinking—that I know what thinking is. For if I had not yet decided these questions in myself, how could I assess that what just happened might not perhaps be ‘willing’ or ‘feeling’?” In short, this “I think” presupposes that I compare my immediate condition with other conditions which I know in myself in order to establish what it is. Because of this referring back to other forms of “knowing,” it certainly does not have any immediate “certainty” for me. Thus, instead of that “immediate certainty,” which the people may believe in the case under discussion, the philosopher encounters a series of metaphysical questions, really essential problems of intellectual knowledge, as follows: “Where do I acquire the idea of thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an ‘I,’ and indeed of an ‘I’ as a cause, finally even of an ‘I’ as the cause of thinking?” Anyone who dares to answer those metaphysical questions right away with an appeal to some kind of intuitive cognition, as does the man who says “I think and know that at least this is true, real, and certain”— such a person nowadays will be met by a philosopher with a smile and two question marks. “My dear sir,” the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, “it is unlikely that you are not mistaken but why such absolute truth?”—

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      So far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned, I will never tire of emphasizing over and over again a small brief fact which these superstitious types are unhappy to concede—namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants to and not when “I” wish, so that it’s a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but that this “it” is precisely that old, celebrated “I” is, to put it mildly, only an assumption, an assertion, in no way an “immediate certainty.” After all, we’ve already done too much with this “it thinks”: this “it” already contains an interpretation of the event and is not part of the process itself. Following grammatical habits we conclude here as follows: “Thinking is an activity. To every activity belongs someone who does the action, therefore —.” With something close to this same pattern, the older atomists, in addition to the “force” which created effects, also looked for that clump of matter where the force was located, out of which it worked—the atom. Stronger heads finally learned how to cope without this “remnant of earth,” and perhaps one day people, including even the logicians, will also grow accustomed to cope without that little “it” (to which the honourable old “I” has reduced itself).

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      It’s true that the fact that a theory can be disproved is not the least of its charms: that’s precisely what attracts more sophisticated minds to it. Apparently the theory of “free will,” which has been refuted hundreds of times, owes its continuing life to this very charm alone—someone or other comes along again and again and feels he’s strong enough to refute it.

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      Philosophers habitually speak of the will as if it was the best-known thing in the world. Indeed, Schopenhauer let it be known that the will is the only thing really known to us, totally known, understood without anything taken away or added. But still, again and again it seems to me that Schopenhauer, too, in this case has only done what philosophers just do habitually—he’s taken over and exaggerated a popular opinion. Willing seems to me, above all, something complicated, something which is unified only in the word— and popular opinion simply inheres in this one word, which has overmastered the always inadequate caution of philosophers. So if we are, for once, more careful, if we are “un-philosophical,” then let’s say, firstly, that in every act of willing there is, first of all, a multiplicity of feelings, namely, the feeling of the condition away from which, a feeling of the condition towards which, the feeling of this “away” and “towards” themselves, then again, an accompanying muscular feeling which comes into play through some kind of habit, without our putting our “arms and legs” into motion, as soon as we “will.” Secondly, just as we acknowledge feelings, indeed many different feelings, as ingredients of willing, so we should also acknowledge thinking. In every act of will there is a commanding thought—and people should not believe that this thought can be separated from the “will,” as if then the will would still be left over! Thirdly, the will is not only a complex of feeling and thinking but, above all, an affect, and, indeed, an affect of the commander. What is called “freedom of the will” is essentially the feeling of superiority with respect to the one who has to obey: “I am free; ‘he’ must obey”— this awareness inheres in every will, just as much as that tense attentiveness inheres, that direct gaze fixed exclusively on one thing, that unconditional value judgment “Do this now— nothing else needs to be done,” that inner certainty about the fact that obedience will take place, and everything else that accompanies the condition of the one issuing commands. A man who wills—gives orders to something in himself which obeys or which he thinks obeys. But now observe what is the strangest thing about willing—about this multifaceted thing for which the people have only a single word: insofar as we are in a given case the one ordering and the one obeying both at the same time and as the one obeying we know the feelings of compulsion, of pushing and pressing, resistance and movement, which habitually start right after the act of will, and insofar as we, by contrast, have the habit of disregarding this duality and deceiving ourselves, thanks to the synthetic idea of “I,” a whole series of mistaken conclusions and, consequently, false evaluations of the will have attached themselves to the act of willing, in such a way that the person doing the willing believes in good faith that willing is sufficient for action. Because in the vast majority of cases a person only wills something where he may expect his command to take effect in obedience and thus in action, what is apparent has translated itself into a feeling, as if there might be some necessary effect. In short, the one who is doing the willing believes, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that will and action are somehow one thing—he ascribes his success, the carrying out of the will, to the will itself and, in the process, enjoys an increase in that feeling of power which all success brings with it. “Freedom of the will”— that’s the word for that multifaceted condition of enjoyment in the person willing, who commands and at the same identifies himself with what is carrying out the order. As such, he enjoys the triumph over things which resist him, but in himself is of the opinion that it is his will by itself which really overcomes this resistance. The person doing the willing thus acquires the joyful feelings of the successful implements carrying out the order, the serviceable “under-wills” or under-souls—our body is, in fact, merely a social construct of many souls—in addition to his joyful feeling as the one who commands. L’effet c’est

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