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Abstract:
Nietzsche is thought of as someone who destroys reason. As such he has been attacked by authors ranging from Lukács through to Habermas1. In the following I would like to introduce his attempt at a restoration of reason. I will provide a short reconstruction of Nietzsche's theses on reason. First of all, I will set out Nietzsche's pragmatic reinterpretation of reason, secondly the relationship of reason to different types of life and then, thirdly, the relation between reason and passion. Following this, I will move on to Nietzsche's "restored reason".
Keywords: Reason, Nietzsche, knowledge, philosophy, "restored reason".
Friedrich Nietzsche declared that "human reason" is "not all that reasonable"2 and that "not only the reason of millennia", but "their madness too" breaks out in us (Zarathustra, 189)3. But Nietzsche also suggested a novel view of reason, which he called his "restored reason" ("The Four Great Errors", § 2, Twilight, 58)4. In the following I would like to set out this perspective on reason. To me it seems worth thinking about (even though, of course, it is only one possible perspective on reason and, in the first place, that of Nietzsche).
1. From truth to usefulness.
The pragmatic reinterpretation of reason
Nietzsche's criticism of the standard view of reason is well known. This view advocates the dogma of unsoiled knowledge, or "immaculate perception" (Zarathustra, 233). Reason, one says, does nothing to things, but wants only to cognize them. The activity of reason is apprehended as pure theory, as viewing, as contemplation of the being.
Against this Nietzsche objects, firstly, that reason in fact does something quite different: it does not simply render things, but schematizes them, knocks them into shape, reshapes them as lies. "'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses" ("Reason in Philosophy", § 2, Twilight, 75). Nietzsche continually points out the way in which we cover up the singularity and variability of phenomena by means of fictive generality and constancy5.
Going beyond such singular objections, however, Nietzsche questions the whole principle of the conventional understanding of reason. He calls the "contemplation" (Beschaulichkeit) purported of reason "emasculated leers" (Zarathustra, 235). The theoretician does not simply contemplate, but distorts, and this he does in castrating conditions. He denies...