Graeber, David. "Dead zones of the imagination: On violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor: The Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2006." HAU: journal of Ethnographic Theory 2.2 (2012): 105-128.
With his
doctrine of the “complete irresponsibility of man,” Nietzsche in different
ways complicates the opposition between responsibility and irresponsibility.
This article traces the different and conflicting senses of irresponsibility
throughout Nietzsche’s development. First, the doctrine is shown to build on
Nietzsche’s early study of Heraclitus (section I), whom Nietzsche admired for
expounding and embodying a radical “innocence” that was both responsible and
irresponsible in different senses. When presented as “philosophical
conviction” in Human, All too Human, Nietzsche paradoxically
speculates about the doctrine’s incorporation out of a sense of responsibility
for the future of mankind (section II). Section III shows how
Nietzsche’s later writings evince an increasing awareness of this paradox by
explicitly positing complete irresponsibility as his own redemptive doctrine
in Twilight of the Idols. After 1881, he has come to affirm a new
notion of responsibility and criticizes a weak sense of irresponsibility as
the abdication of one’s task. I end by discussing the relation of these
different senses of irresponsibility, and argue that the fact that Nietzsche’s
texts often deliberately complicate rather than clarify such distinctions is
an important reflection of how he textually takes responsibility for
“complete irresponsibility” (section IV).
The “complete
irresponsibility of a human being for his behavior and his nature” (HH I 107)
seems to be one of Nietzsche’s most consistently held beliefs.[1] In Human,
All too Human (1878–80), the idea is presented as a “doctrine” (HH I
105) and as the “philosophical conviction” of “the unconditional necessity of
all actions and of their complete irresponsibility [die philosophische
Ueberzeugung von der unbedingten Nothwendigkeit aller Handlungen und ihrer
völligen Unverantwortlichkeit]” (HH I 133). Formulated as a
doctrine, we still find it as late as the 1888 Twilight of the Idols,
where Nietzsche presents as “our doctrine [unsreLehre]”:
“That nobody is held responsible anymore [Dass Niemand mehr verantwortlich
gemacht wird].” Nietzsche consistently ties the idea of complete
irresponsibility to “innocence.”[2] In Twilight
of the Idols, the doctrine is presented as the “only way” to “restore”
the “innocence of becoming” (TI, Errors 8).
「對於自己行為與本性的完全不負責任」（HH
I 107）似乎是尼采最持久的信念之一。在《人性，太人性》（1878-1880）中，這一觀點被作為「教義」（HH I
105）以及「哲學信念」呈現，即「一切行為的無條件必然性及其完全不負責任的哲學信念」（HH I 133）。作為一種教義，即便在1888年的《偶像的黃昏》中，我們依然可以找到該觀點，尼采稱之為「我們的教義」：即「沒有人再被責備」（TI, Errors 8）。尼采始終將完全不負責任的觀點與「純真」緊密聯繫。在《偶像的黃昏》中，該教義被描述為「唯一的途徑」來「恢復生成的純真」（TI, Errors 8）。
What does
irresponsibility mean? A strong “seduction on the part of grammar” (BGE,
Preface) can make us believe that irresponsibility is a negative and
therefore derivative concept: the inflexion “ir-” (the Un- of Unverantwortlichkeit)
tells us that irresponsibility is the negation of the conceptually more
primary notion of responsibility. But, like any negation, this negation is
ambiguous. There are different ways to be irresponsible. First, one can be
irresponsible by failing to live up to a pre-given responsibility or demand.
This is irresponsibility as blameworthy negligence of a given task
(regardless as to whether that task is moral, legal, role-based or
otherwise). In this sense, I act irresponsibly if I fail to follow rules or
adhere to demands that are in principle transparent and possible to
articulate. This transparency makes this type of irresponsibility calculable:
I know (or may be presupposed to know) what I ought to do and what it means
(not) to do it. It also makes responsibility a matter of purity: I am
responsible if I stick to the rules and adhere to my tasks. Conversely, I may
be blamed and “held responsible” if I ignore or break said rules. Thus,
irresponsibility here is a break with given responsibilities.
Although this
conception of responsibility has its necessity, things are not quite so
simple, if only because, ironically, this very responsibility is a common way
of evading one’s responsibility. Hiding behind prescribed
duties is one popular way to avoid facing the music, like those who say:
“don’t look at me, I just followed the rules, I have fulfilled my
responsibility.” This is why we tend to think the most responsible person is
actually not the one who sticks to the rules, but rather the one who is
somehow able to choose or to judge in the absence of given criteria or
rules – a conception of responsibility that is closer to the one held by
Jean-Paul Sartre or
Hannah Arendt.[3] In his thorough study of Nietzsche’s
doctrine of complete irresponsibility, Richard Wisser calls this
“situational” responsibility (situationelle Verantwortung), as opposed
to the calculable responsibility before an already established instance or
authority (instantielle Verantwortung). Rather than hiding behind
preformulated answers or rules, situational responsibility demands the
production of a responsible response in the absence of certainty about what
such a response would entail, which means to stick one’s neck out or to
“stand up for something with one’s existence.”[4]
The paradox of
situational responsibility is that it necessarily involves a measure of
irresponsibility. It can mean a break with given responsibilities, this time
not in the sense of reckless negligence, but because it is demanded by some
higher responsibility. Alternatively, it can mean being in a situation in
which no responsibilities are articulated or given to begin with. Then, the
“ir-” of irresponsibility is no longer a counter-movement or opposition, but
an absence or lack of given responsibilities. This lack can in turn be
conceived in different ways. It may be the lack of given duties that enables
someone to stick out their neck and assume a situational responsibility that
was not previously given. Or this lack may be conceived radically, as that
which falls entirely outside of the sphere of responsibility. Granite is
irresponsible but, clearly, not in the sense that it fails to live up to
given responsibilities or that it fails to assume situational ones; it seems
rather to exist outside of the sphere of responsibilities at all. If it
sounds semantically awkward to call granite irresponsible, then consider that
one of our questions will precisely be how to understand Nietzsche’s claim
in Human, All too Human that the cruel man is “no more
responsible than a piece of granite is for being granite” (HH I 43), which is
one formulation of Nietzsche’s idea of complete irresponsibility.[5]
情境性責任的悖論在於它必然涉及某種程度的不負責任。它可以意味著與既定責任的決裂，這一次不是以魯莽疏忽的意義，而是因為某種更高的責任所要求的。或者，它可以意味著處於一種沒有責任被明確或給定的情境中。在這種情況下，「ir-」前綴的不負責任不再是一種對立的反動，而是一種給定責任的缺乏。這種缺乏又可以以不同的方式來理解。它可能意味著缺乏既定的義務，使人能夠挺身而出，承擔一種先前未曾給定的情境性責任。或者，這種缺乏可以被徹底地理解為，完全超出責任範疇的事物。花崗岩是不負責任的，但顯然不是因為它未能履行既定的責任，或未能承擔情境性責任；它似乎根本存在於責任範疇之外。如果稱花崗岩[1]為不負責任聽起來語義上不合適，那麼我們的問題正是如何理解尼采在《人性，太人性》中提出的觀點，即殘酷之人「不比花崗岩為自己是花崗岩負更多責任」（HH I 43），這是尼采完全不負責任觀念的一種表述。
From these
considerations, we can derive a final sense of irresponsibility. If
irresponsibility can also refer to something that falls entirely outside of
the sphere of responsibility, then in another sense it names something that
can no longer be adequately grasped through the opposition of responsibility
to irresponsibility – something neither responsible nor irresponsible.
Indeed, Nietzsche’s idea of irresponsibility is also a reinterpretation (Umdeutung)
and a revaluation (Umwertung). This is most clearly the case when the
opposition between responsibility and irresponsibility either becomes
undecidable (as we shall see, for example, in the play of the child and the
artist) or paradoxical (as we shall see in the different ways in which
Nietzsche, over time increasingly explicitly, takes responsibility for
complete irresponsibility). Our more customary word for the irresponsibility
of the child, perhaps also of the granite, is innocence. Innocence is
conceptually similar to irresponsibility in the sense of also being a
negative concept, denoting the negation of guilt (reflected more clearly in
the German Un-schuld). It thus suffers all the same ambiguities:
one can be innocent by sticking to given rules, or because no rule applies,
or because the very opposition of innocence to guilt becomes undecidable or
paradoxical.
Following the
ambiguity of the concept of irresponsibility, we can look at Nietzsche’s
“doctrine” in different ways. On the one hand, Nietzsche employs the doctrine
as a counter-idea in his critique of morality, determining the meaning of
irresponsibility in its oppositional relation to responsibility. But that
critique shows that “responsibility” has a specific and limited history. This
already points to the fact that the ideas of irresponsibility and of
innocence exceed the oppositional relation to responsibility and guilt as
they arise in the context of the specific history of European morality. Thus,
in this article, I will not follow Nietzsche’s critique of morality and the
immanent critique of responsibility; of its characteristics, genealogy and
limits.[6] Rather than study the critique of
responsibility, I will focus on those texts where “complete irresponsibility”
and “innocence” are treated in a sense that is somehow non-derivative and no
longer only determined solely by their opposition to responsibility.
Nietzsche mainly proceeds in three ways: (1) by studying the innocence and
irresponsibility in the Greeks that precede the development of moral
responsibility in Europe under the influence of Platonism and Christianity;
(2) by speculatively envisioning a future type of irresponsible human after
that history; and (3) on a conceptual level by showing how “complete
irresponsibility” not only excludes or opposes responsibility, but in various
ways complicates the opposition between responsibility and irresponsibility.
This latter point involves recognizing that in spite of Nietzsche’s
apparently unequivocal positing of complete irresponsibility as a doctrine,
he also (a) criticizes specific forms of irresponsibility as a weak evasion
or abdication of one’s task; (b) allows for a more affirmative notion of
responsibility after 1881; and (c) shows where the determination of
irresponsibility becomes undecidable and paradoxical.
It should come
as no surprise that the “doctrine” of complete irresponsibility does not
function in Nietzsche’s writings as an unequivocal doctrine. His writings are
rarely, if ever, theoretically doctrinal in such a way. As we will see, when
he first presents the doctrine of complete irresponsibility as a
“philosophical conviction” in Human, All too Human, he does so in
the same work in which he criticizes convictions as such. Nietzsche’s
interest is not simply to teach the doctrine as an unequivocal claim to
knowledge. In his excellent and impressive study, Silvio Pfeuffer has
convincingly shown that with the doctrine Nietzsche “does not superficially
follow theoretical paths” or express “universal knowledge [allgemeine
Erkenntnis].”[7] Rather, expressing a “paradox,”[8] the
doctrine “disturbs” and “irritates,” thus preventing one “from legitimizing
one’s own deeds through it.”[9] Its function lies in
its “potential for self-examination” on the part of the reader. Pfeuffer is
entirely right that with the doctrine Nietzsche “does not simply offer the
reader a new morality with new theorems [Lehrsätze] that would replace
Christian European morality.” My aim in this paper is to supplement
Pfeuffer’s account in two ways: by showing how the doctrine is not just set
up as the “counter-hypothesis to christian-European morality”[10] but
is rooted in Nietzsche’s early engagement with Heraclitean “innocence,” and
by showing that Nietzsche gradually came to understand and value man’s
irresponsibility differently, textually positioning the doctrine and his
relation to it differently over time.
I will
structure my argument around three moments that I take to exemplify both the
continuity as well as the development of Nietzsche’s insistence on the
complete irresponsibility of human beings. I will argue that Nietzsche’s
engagement with irresponsibility starts avant la lettre with
his foundational early study of Heraclitus, where he develops the idea that
he will later designate as the “innocence of becoming [die Unschuld des
Werdens].” In the first section, I will show how Nietzsche admires
Heraclitus both for expounding and for embodying a radical innocence. Here,
too, Nietzsche’s interest is not simply doctrinal, but lies in Heraclitus’
doctrine of innocence insofar as it reflects a type of personality
characterized by strength, pride and divinely intuitive insight that he
believes is no longer possible in modern Europe. I will also argue that what
Nietzsche admires in Heraclitus’ innocence paradoxically contains the latent
contours of a responsibility-in-irresponsibility that Nietzsche will later
explicitly affirm, especially with regard to Heraclitus’ refusal to take
shelter from the abyssal truth of becoming. And with the corresponding model
of the play of the child and the artist, Nietzsche pushes innocence beyond
the opposition of responsibility and irresponsibility. The second section
focuses on Human, All too Human, where Nietzsche turns
Heraclitus’ divinely intuitive insight into an explicit philosophical
conviction and “doctrine” but one that he, crucially, does not teach. Instead,
he speculatively and experimentally envisions the possibilities for its
future incorporation, thereby opening complete irresponsibility up to a
responsibility for the future liberation of mankind. In the third section, I
discuss a number of later passages that demonstrate a more acute awareness of
this reflexive entanglement of responsibility and irresponsibility. I focus
on how the doctrine of irresponsibility is now posited as “our teaching” out
of a paradoxical responsibility for the “redemption of the world” in TI,
Errors 8, as well as on how Nietzsche now criticizes weak forms of
irresponsibility, focusing on BGE 21 and GS 285.
我將根據三個片段來結構化我的論證，這三個片段既體現了尼采對人類完全無責任感的堅持的連續性，也體現了其發展。我將主張，尼采對無責任的探討可以追溯到其早期對赫拉克利特的基本研究，在那裡他發展了後來被稱為「生成的純真（die Unschuld des Werdens）」的觀念。在第一部分，我將展示尼采如何欣賞赫拉克利特，不僅因為他闡述了純真，也因為他體現了一種激進的純真。在這裡，尼采的興趣不僅僅是教義性的，而在於赫拉克利特的純真教義反映出一種具有力量、自豪感和神聖直覺洞察力的個性，尼采認為這在現代歐洲已不再可能實現。我還將主張，尼采在赫拉克利特的純真中所欣賞的東西，矛盾地包含了後來尼采明確肯定的「在無責任中的責任」的潛在輪廓，特別是關於赫拉克利特拒絕逃避生成的深淵真理。通過對應的孩子和藝術家的遊戲模型，尼采將純真推向了責任與無責任對立之外。第二部分聚焦於《人性，太人性》中，尼采將赫拉克利特的神聖直覺洞察轉化為明確的哲學信念與「教義」，但這一教義他並未具體教導。相反，他推測並實驗性地設想了這一教義未來被納入的可能性，從而為人類未來解放開啟了無責任感的責任。第三部分則討論了一些後期的段落，這些段落顯示出尼采對責任與無責任之間反身糾結的更深意識。我將重點探討《偶像的黃昏》中，尼采如何以一種對「世界的救贖」的悖論性責任提出無責任的教義（TI, Errors 8），以及尼采如何批判弱形式的無責任，尤其是《善惡的彼岸》第21段（BGE 21）和《快樂的科學》第285段（GS 285）。
How is it that
all these complications should surround what superficially seems like an
unequivocal doctrine? The complication lies in the fact that not just what
Nietzsche writes, but also how he writes it is itself an expression of
(ir)responsibility. Nietzsche’s writings display an increasing performative
awareness of this complication – one that he not only recognized, but
actively exploited in his texts for maximum tension. The fourth section
addresses how the different, often contradictory senses of irresponsibility
in Nietzsche’s texts are related to each other. I will give an account of the
senses of irresponsibility, but I will argue above all that such
categorization must ultimately remain inadequate. That Nietzsche’s texts
often do more to complicate than to clarify such distinctions is an important
performative reflection of how Nietzsche paradoxically takes responsibility
for “complete irresponsibility.”
I “A Star
without Atmosphere”: Irresponsibility and the “Innocence of Becoming” in
Nietzsche’s Early Reading of Heraclitus
一、「無大氣層的星星」：尼采早期解讀赫拉克利特中的無責任與「生成的純真」
Heraclitus
remains a pivotal figure throughout Nietzsche’s development, and Nietzsche never
breaks with one of the most important ideas he takes from him: that of the
“innocence of becoming [dieUnschuld des Werdens].”
Although that phrase is not coined until 1883, the insight clearly originates
in Nietzsche’s early interpretation of Heraclitus. We find this
interpretation in the lecture series The Pre-Platonic
Philosophers which he taught in 1872, 1873 and 1876 (= PPP),
and also in a condensed and sharpened form in the unpublished text Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks from 1873. There is no doubt about
what Nietzsche saw as Heraclitus’ teaching: Nietzsche hails Heraclitus as the
teacher of “law in becoming and ofplay in necessity [die
Lehre vom Gesetz im Werden und vom Spiel in der Nothwendigkeit]” (PHG 8,
KSA 1.835). The pre-Platonic philosophers comprehended “the eternal problems
and also their eternal solutions” (Nachlass 1871/72, 14[28], KSA 7.387), and
with his teaching in particular Heraclitus “raised the curtain” on the
“greatest of all dramas.” His teaching “must be seen from now on in all
eternity” (PHG 8).
赫拉克利特在尼采的發展中始終是一個關鍵人物，尼采從未放棄從赫拉克利特那裡汲取的最重要的觀點之一：即「生成的純真（die Unschuld des Werdens）」這一觀念。儘管這一短語直到1883年才被創造出來，但這一洞察顯然起源於尼采早期對赫拉克利特的解釋。我們可以在尼采於1872年、1873年和1876年所教授的系列講座《前柏拉圖哲學家》中發現這一解釋（=PPP），並且在1873年未出版的《希臘悲劇時代的哲學》中也有更加精簡和尖銳的表述。毫無疑問，尼采所認為的赫拉克利特教義是什麼：尼采讚頌赫拉克利特是「生成中的法則與必然性中的遊戲（die Lehre vom Gesetz im Werden und vom Spiel in der Nothwendigkeit）」的導師（PHG 8, KSA 1.835）。這些前柏拉圖哲學家理解了「永恆的問題及其永恆的解決方案」（Nachlass 1871/72, 14[28], KSA 7.387），赫拉克利特通過其教義「揭開了『所有劇本中最偉大的』的帷幕」。他的教義「從此在所有的永恆中必須被看到」（PHG 8）。
Why does
Nietzsche regard this doctrine so highly? The central premise of Nietzsche’s
approach in these lectures is to ask “how the ‘philosopher’ appeared among
the Greeks, not just how philosophy appeared among them” (PPP, KGW II 4.212).
It is the philosophers and their work only as it relates to their personality
which interests Nietzsche. Their doctrines belong to what is “refutable”
about them; it is their characters that are “irrefutable.”[11] Even
though several Heraclitean ideas can be seen to find their way into
Nietzsche’s works (such as becoming or strife), the most profound influence
of Heraclitus on Nietzsche does not lie in the refutable specifics of
Heraclitus’ doctrine but in the “irrefutable”[12] aspects
of his personality.[13] What, then, is irrefutable
about a character expounding the innocence of becoming?
為什麼尼采如此看重這一教義？尼采在這些講座中的核心前提是問：「哲學家如何在希臘人中出現，而不僅僅是哲學如何出現」（PPP, KGW II 4.212）。對尼采來說，只有當哲學與哲學家的個性相關時，他們的教義才會引起他的興趣。這些哲學家的教義屬於他們可以被駁斥的部分，而他們的個性則是「無法駁斥」的。【註釋11】儘管赫拉克利特的若干觀念（如生成或爭鬥）可以說是滲透進了尼采的著作，但赫拉克利特對尼采的最深遠影響並不在於他的教義中的可駁斥細節，而在於他個性中「不可駁斥」的部分。【註釋12】【註釋13】那麼，一個宣揚「生成的純真」的個性中，什麼是不可駁斥的？
The first thing
to notice is that innocence does not apply to persons but to becoming as
such, i. e., to the “everlasting and exclusive coming-to-be, the impermanence
of everything actual, which constantly acts and comes-to-be but never is [Das
ewige und alleinige Werden, die gänzliche Unbeständigkeit alles Wirklichen,
das fortwährend nur wirkt und wird und nicht ist]” (PHG 5, KSA 1.824).
Heraclitus thus severs a connection we quickly take to be self-evident,
namely: that between reality or actuality (Wirklichkeit) and being.
Actuality is not what “is,” it is only ever what “acts” or “works” (wirkt)
and “becomes.” Becoming, as an eternal process of growth and decay, never
“is” insofar as it nowhere solidifies into fixed stability. The appearance of
stability comes only from the short-sightedness of man. Outside of that
short-sightedness, there is no land anywhere in “the ocean of coming-to-be
and passing away” (PHG 5). In this way, “innocence” applies to an actuality
that, although in principle accessible to everyone, remains inaccessible “to
the common human eye” (PHG 7).
首先要注意的是，純真並不適用於人，而是適用於「生成本身」，即「持續不斷的唯一生成，一切現實的無常性，它們不斷地運作與生成，但永遠不會『是』【Das ewige und alleinige Werden, die gänzliche Unbeständigkeit
alles Wirklichen, das fortwährend nur wirkt und wird und nicht ist】」（PHG 5, KSA 1.824）。赫拉克利特因此斷開了我們所認為的自明聯繫，即現實或實在（Wirklichkeit）與存在（being）之間的聯繫。現實不是「是」的東西，它僅僅是「運作」或「生成」的東西。生成作為一個永恆的成長與衰亡的過程，永遠不會「是」，因為它從未穩固成固定的穩定性。穩定性的表象僅僅來自於人的短視。離開這種短視，就不再有任何「在生成與消逝的海洋中」的「陸地」（PHG 5）。這樣一來，「純真」便適用於一種雖然原則上對每個人都可得但實際上卻「無法被『普通人眼』所看到」（PHG 7）的現實。
Why is the
insight into actuality as becoming so compelling? It is not because there are
good reasons to conceive of actuality in that way. Nietzsche stresses that
the insight is not “attained by the rope ladder of logic” (PHG 9). Heraclitus
“knows but does not calculate.” His is the truth as “grasped in intuitions.”
In fact, his insight is “a truth of the greatest immediate self-evidence for
everyone.” It corresponds not only to “the present many-colored and changing
world that crowds in upon us in all our experiences” (PHG 5), but also to our
intuition of time and space as conditions for knowing that very world.
Everything we know, we know in time and space, and everything in time and space
only has “relative existence [ein relatives Dasein],” that is to say:
relative in relation to something else that, in turn, is relative again in
the same way. Nietzsche here generalizes to the level of a condition for
knowledge that familiar failure to hold onto any moment that seems to slip
through our fingers as soon as we try to grasp it. Heraclitus’ ability to
articulate this is what made him god-like (dem beschaulichen Gotte ähnlich).
This near-divine “extraordinary power” to think or imagine intuitively (höchste
Kraft der intuitiven Vorstellung) is, writes Nietzsche, Heraclitus’
“regal possession” (PHG 5, KSA 1.823).
But what is
irrefutable about Heraclitus, is not only this highest power of intuition. It
is also a very specific strength. It is this strength which underlies the law
in becoming. Because what is the effect of seeing in actuality nothing but
becoming?
The everlasting
and exclusive coming-to-be, the impermanence of everything actual, which
constantly acts and comes-to-be but never is, as Heraclitus teaches it, is a
terrible, paralyzing thought. Its impact on men can most nearly be likened to
the sensation during an earthquake when one loses one’s familiar confidence
in a firmly grounded earth. It takes astonishing strength to transform this
reaction into its opposite, into sublimity and the feeling of blessed
astonishment. Heraclitus achieved this by means of an observation regarding
the actual process of all coming-to-be and passing away. He conceived it
under the form of polarity, as being the diverging of a force into two
qualitatively different opposed activities that seek to re-unite (PHG 5, KSA
1.824–5).
Das ewige und
alleinige Werden, die gänzliche Unbeständigkeit alles Wirklichen, das
fortwährend nur wirkt und wird und nicht ist, wie dies Heraklit lehrt, ist
eine furchtbare und betäubende Vorstellung und in ihrem Einflusse am nächsten
der Empfindung verwandt, mit der Jemand, bei einem Erdbeben, das Zutrauen zu
der festgegründeten Erde verliert. Es gehörte eine erstaunliche Kraft dazu,
diese Wirkung in das Entgegengesetzte, in das Erhabne und das beglückte
Erstaunen zu übertragen. Dies erreichte Heraklit durch eine Beobachtung über
den eigentlichen Hergang jedes Werdens und Vergehens, welchen er unter der
Form der Polarität begriff, als das Auseinandertreten einer Kraft in zwei
qualitativ verschiedne, entgegengesetzte und zur Wiedervereinigung strebende
Thätigkeiten.
The idea that
actuality is becoming, and is nowhere stable, does not mean that becoming is
unordered. On the contrary: growth and decay are ever “flowing upward and
downward in brazen rhythmic beat” (PHG 5). As such, they follow unwritten
laws. Becoming is structured, and its structure is oppositional: growth and
decay operate “under the form of polarity.” A power divides into two
qualitatively different, opposing activities that strive to be reunited. What
appears to people as light and dark or bitter and sweet belongs together
“like wrestlers of whom sometimes the one, sometimes the other is on top”
(PHG 5). The appearance of stability (say, the sweetness of honey) is but the
temporary victory, the momentary prevalence of one of these two wrestlers
within the eternal strife. All becoming derives from this eternal war of
opposites, which constitutes the “law in becoming” that determines one side
of Heraclitus’ teaching. But what grounds the insight into the polarity of
the law of becoming? It is the ability – the strength – to
recognize in the intuitively grasped actuality as becoming nothing but the
innocence and the justice of becoming itself: in the “everlasting wavebeat
and rhythm of things,” Heraclitus found “Lawful order [Gesetzmäßigkeiten],
unfailing certainties, ever-like orbits of lawfulness [immer gleiche
Bahnen des Rechtes], […] the whole world the spectacle of sovereign
justice [die ganze Welt das Schauspiel einer waltenden Gerechtigkeit]”
(PHG 5, KSA 1.822).
「現實是生成，並且沒有任何穩定之處，但這並不意味著生成是無序的。相反，成長與衰退總是在『銅製的節奏拍打中上下流動』（PHG 5）。因此，它們遵循未成文的法則。生成是有結構的，而這種結構是對立的：成長與衰退在『極性的形式』之下運作。一種力量分裂為兩種質上不同、對立的活動，並努力重歸合一。對人們而言，光與暗、苦與甜看似對立，但實際上它們彼此相連，就像摔跤手，有時這一方佔上風，有時那一方佔上風（PHG 5）。穩定的表象（比如蜂蜜的甜）僅是這兩位永恆鬥爭者中的一方短暫的勝利。在這永恆的對立戰爭中，所有的生成都是源自這種『生成中的法則』，這也構成了赫拉克利特教義的一部分。然而，這生成法則的極性洞見根源於何？它源於一種力量——一種能夠在直觀地把握現實為生成的過程中，認識到生成自身的純真與公正的力量：在『萬物持久的波動與節奏中』，赫拉克利特發現了『法則的秩序（Gesetzmäßigkeiten）、無懈可擊的確定性、持久的法則軌跡（immer
gleiche Bahnen des Rechtes），[…] 整個世界是一場莊嚴的正義之景（die ganze Welt das Schauspiel einer waltenden Gerechtigkeit）』（PHG 5, KSA 1.822）。
What therefore
grounds the insight into the “innocence” of becoming is not primarily that it
is theoretically convincing or rationally necessary, nor that the flux of
becoming precludes any fixed norm for responsibility. What grounds it is the
irrefutable strength of Heraclitus’ personality which enabled him to see
nothing but sublime justice in the most abysmal, destabilizing thought –
the thought that all actuality only ever becomes and never is – a
thought that in turn could present itself to Heraclitus only because of his
near-divine power of intuitive representation.[14]
The idea of
becoming’s innocence is therefore not an ontological knowledge-claim, nor
merely a negative claim about the absence of moral criteria. It is a positive
idea about Heraclitus’ ability – faced with the “paralyzing thought” and
losing the ground beneath his feet – to not try to escape it or judge
it, but to recognize in this intuitive, abyssal truth a divine justice. In
this refusal to seek shelter in the illusion of stability, we can already
recognize the latent contours of what much later for Nietzsche will
constitute an affirmative responsibility in the very idea of complete
innocence and irresponsibility.
But if there
are no criteria with which to judge becoming, surely there are no criteria to
call becoming “just” either. So how exactly are the two spheres – of
strife and justice, of human (ir)responsibilities and divine innocence –
related? Is strife ultimately harmony? Or harmony ultimately strife? Does
Nietzsche’s Heraclitus “sublate” the opposition?
The answer is:
none of the above. The law in becoming applies also to the world as a whole.
Nietzsche believed that, following Anaximander, Heraclitus proclaimed a
periodic renewal of the world through an all-consuming world-fire.[15] For
Nietzsche, the decisive question is what one takes this periodic renewal to
signify. He explains that because the time leading up to it is characterized
as desire, and the consumption of the world through fire as saturation,
Heraclitus had in late Antiquity become known as the “weeping philosopher”
because the world-process was interpreted as a process of punishment for
hybris, following the Greek adage that “satiety gives birth to hybris.”
Nietzsche wants to save Heraclitus from this reading by arguing that for
Heraclitus the periodic destruction of the world is emphatically not the
“punishment of what has come-to-be [Bestrafung des Gewordenen],” but
rather the “justification” of becoming (Rechtfertigung des Werdens):
答案是：以上皆非。生成之法適用於整體的世界。尼采認為，赫拉克利特追隨阿那克西曼德，宣稱透過一場吞噬一切的宇宙大火實現世界的週期性更新。對尼采來說，關鍵問題在於如何理解這種週期性更新的意義。他解釋道，因為在這段時間內，宇宙進程被欲望所特徵化，而世界的毀滅則被火焰所飽和，赫拉克利特在晚期古代被稱為「哭泣的哲學家」，因為世界進程被理解為對過度（hybris）的懲罰，這源於希臘的諺語「飽足滋生過度」。尼采希望將赫拉克利特從這種解讀中拯救出來，他認為赫拉克利特對世界的週期性毀滅明確地並非對已然存在之物的「懲罰（Bestrafung des Gewordenen）」，而是對生成的「正當化（Rechtfertigung
des Werdens）」。
That dangerous
word hybris is indeed the touchstone for every Heraclitan. Here he must show
whether he has understood or failed to recognize his master. Do guilt,
injustice, contradiction and suffering exist in this world?
They do,
proclaims Heraclitus, but only for the limited human mind which sees things
apart but not connected, not for the con-tuitive god. For him all
contradictions run into harmony, invisible to the common human eye, yet
understandable to one who, like Heraclitus, is related to the contemplative
god (PHG 7, KSA 1.830).
Jenes gefährliche Wort, Hybris, ist in der That
der Prüfstein für jeden Herakliteer; hier mag er zeigen, ob er seinen Meister
verstanden oder verkannt hat. Giebt es Schuld Ungerechtigkeit Widerspruch
Leid in dieser Welt?
Ja, ruft Heraklit, aber nur für den beschränkten
Menschen, der auseinander und nicht zusammen schaut, nicht für den
contuitiven Gott; für ihn läuft alles Widerstrebende in eine Harmonie
zusammen, unsichtbar zwar für das gewöhnliche Menschenauge, doch dem
verständlich, der, wie Heraklit, dem beschaulichen Gotte ähnlich ist.
According to
Nietzsche, Heraclitus does not relapse into an Anaximandrian two-world view
that would posit the one law as somehow behind the many as its eternal truth,
which would mean to negate the pervasive nature of becoming. Nor does he
maintain that stability is the mere appearance of a reality that is becoming.
Instead, for Heraclitus, the one is the many, and the law is in becoming. But
this also means that becoming is never “justified” in any colloquial sense.
Becoming is indeed the “spectacle of a sovereign justice [Schauspiel einer
waltenden Gerechtigkeit],” but not in order to conform to some criterion
or principle of justice (i. e., this justice is neither rewarding nor
punishing), but by conceiving all opposition itself as harmony.[16]
根據尼采的看法，赫拉克利特並未倒退回類似阿那克西曼德的「兩個世界觀」，這種觀點會將「一個法則」設想為隱藏在多樣事物背後的某種永恆真理，這意味著否定了生成的普遍本質。他也並不認為穩定性僅僅是生成的現實之表象。對赫拉克利特來說，「一」即是「多」，法則存在於生成之中。然而，這也意味著生成並不以任何通俗的意義來「正當化」。生成的確是「一場主宰之正義的壯觀景象（Schauspiel einer waltenden Gerechtigkeit）」，但這並非是為了符合某種正義的標準或原則（例如，這種正義既不獎勵也不懲罰），而是透過將所有的對立本身視作和諧。
So why does
pure fire periodically release itself into the impure and limited multitude?
Clearly not in order to tear it down again, nor to punish the world. The
right answer, according to Nietzsche, is: for no reason. Innocence also
signifies this lack of reason. Nothing or no one is accountable for the
world. Heraclitus articulated this innocence through the image of fire or
Zeus playing a game with and for themselves, exhibiting “coming-to-be and
passing away, structuring and destroying, without any moral additive, in
forever equal innocence” (PHG 7). With this, Heraclitus becomes not just the
teacher of the “law in becoming,” but also of “play in necessity.”
For two
reasons, I have emphasized that this notion of justice-in-opposition also is
not a dialectical solution: the first reason is that, as we have seen, the
insight into actuality as becoming is not a rational but an intuitive
insight; the second reason is (and for Nietzsche this is crucial) that
Heraclitus’ solution is not only not rational but in an important sense
absurd.
The idea that
the world-process is Zeus or fire playing a game with itself is a ludicrous
proposition that undoubtedly belongs to the refutable part of the system.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche emphasizes that, with this idea, Heraclitus has
joined his most intuitive insight with the most counter-intuitive
possibility, one that nobody could guess “by dialectic detective work nor
figured out with the help of calculations.” It is “a rarity even in the
sphere of mystic incredibilities and unexpected cosmic metaphors” (PHG 6). In
explaining this teaching, Heraclitus expounded something that is wildly
contrary to all common sense and public opinion. This is another sense of
Heraclitus’ innocence, and a large part of his irresponsibility: he was
unaccountability incarnate. Nietzsche’s admiration for the pre-Platonic
philosophers in general lay in their being “pure types,” in contrast to the
emergence of a “mixed” culture after Plato that Nietzsche still found
prevalent in modern Europe when knowledge had become a goal in itself severed
from its essential ties to life. But for the pure types, there was a strict
necessity binding their thought to their character, which drove them to lead
solitary lives devoted to knowledge through a one-sidedness or “unity of
style” that Plato and his successors lacked. But for Nietzsche, even among
the pre-Platonic philosophers, Heraclitus’ solitude was radical. Unlike
Empedocles or Pythagoras, who’s connection to the people was restored through
their compassion or sense of the unity of life, Heraclitus’ writings convey
no “feeling of compassionate emotions, no desire to help, to heal, to save”
whatsoever (PHG 8). Heraclitus showed no interest in redeeming the world. He
was, writes Nietzsche, “a star without atmosphere.” Heraclitus’ will to
solitude, reflected in his will to conjoin the most intuitive with the most
counter-intuitive insight, was a symptom of his pride: “Heraclitus was proud,
and when a philosopher exhibits pride, it is a great pride indeed” (PHG 8).
Of the pure types, Heraclitus was possibly the purest: where Pythagoras was
“the wise man as religious reformer” and Socrates “the wise man as the
eternal investigator of all things,” Heraclitus was “the wise man as proud,
solitary searcher after truth [der Weise als stolz-einsamer
Wahrheitsfinder],” the proud-lonely truth-finder (PPP, KGW II 4.265).
世界過程是宙斯或火與自身玩弄遊戲的想法是一種荒謬的命題，毫無疑問，它屬於系統中可被駁斥的部分。然而，尼采強調，通過這一想法，赫拉克利特將其最直觀的洞察與最反直觀的可能性聯結起來，這種可能性既不能通過辯證的偵探工作猜出來，也無法藉助計算得出。這是一種即便在神秘不可思議和意外的宇宙隱喻領域中也罕見的概念（PHG 6）。在解釋這一教義時，赫拉克利特闡述了一種完全違背常識和公眾觀點的東西。這是赫拉克利特純真的一個層面，也是其不負責任的一個重要部分：他就是一個不負責任的化身。 尼采對前柏拉圖哲學家的一般崇敬在於他們是「純粹的類型」，相較之下，柏拉圖之後出現的「混合」文化在現代歐洲依然盛行，這種文化使知識成為一個自我目的，脫離了與生命的本質聯繫。然而，對於純粹的類型來說，他們的思想與性格之間有著一種嚴格的必然聯繫，驅使他們過著孤獨的生活，致力於通過某種偏執或「風格的統一性」來追求知識，而這正是柏拉圖及其繼承者所缺乏的。 然而，在前柏拉圖哲學家中，赫拉克利特的孤獨是徹底的。與恩培多克勒或畢達哥拉斯不同，他們通過憐憫或對生命之統一性的認識重新與人們建立聯繫，赫拉克利特的著作中並沒有表達任何「憐憫的情感，沒有幫助、治癒或拯救的願望」（PHG 8）。赫拉克利特對拯救世界毫無興趣。尼采寫道，他是一顆「無大氣層的星星」。赫拉克利特對孤獨的意志，反映在他將最直觀的洞察與最反直觀的洞見相結合的意志中，這是他自豪的表現：「赫拉克利特是驕傲的，而當一位哲學家展現驕傲時，那就是極大的驕傲」（PHG 8）。在這些純粹的類型中，赫拉克利特可能是最純粹的：在畢達哥拉斯作為「宗教改革者的智者」和蘇格拉底作為「一切事物的永恆探求者」的對比下，赫拉克利特則是「作為驕傲的、孤獨的真理探求者的智者（der Weise als stolz-einsamer Wahrheitsfinder）」，即這位驕傲且孤獨的真理尋求者（PPP, KGW II 4.265）。
Finally, we
should stress that however counter-intuitive Heraclitus’ explanation was, it
did rest on an insight that is itself highly intuitive. Here we encounter a
final type of irresponsibility that will remain decisive throughout
Nietzsche’s development. This type, too, puts the conventional opposition
between irresponsibility and responsibility in question. The
counter-intuitive notion of Zeus’ divine play has, writes Nietzsche,
analogues in “this world.” These analogues of eternal innocence are found in
the play of the child and of the artist. This model of play will inform many
of Nietzsche’s later ideas:
And as children
and artists play, so plays the ever-living fire. It constructs and destroys,
all in innocence. […] Not hybris but the ever self-renewing impulse to play
calls new worlds into being. The child throws its toys away from time to
time – and starts again, in innocent caprice. But when it does build, it
combines and joins and forms its structures regularly, conforming to inner
laws (PHG 7, KSA 1.830–1).
Und so, wie das Kind und der Künstler spielt,
spielt das ewig lebendige Feuer, baut auf und zerstört, in Unschuld –
[…]. Nicht Frevelmuth, sondern der immer neu erwachende Spieltrieb ruft andre
Welten ins Leben. Das Kind wirft einmal das Spielzeug weg: bald aber fängt es
wieder an, in unschuldiger Laune. Sobald es aber baut,
knüpft fügt und formt es gesetzmäßig und nach inneren Ordnungen.
同上
I restrict
myself here to the model of the artist.[17] What do we
learn about play and necessity from the artist? The central terms are those
that are the central concepts of any traditional theory of responsibility:
freedom and necessity. In the creation of the work of art, we see:
how the
struggle of the many can yet carry rules and laws inherent in itself, how the
artist stands contemplatively above and at the same time actively within his
work, how necessity and random play, oppositional tension and harmony, must
pair to create a work of art (PHG 7, KSA 1.831).
wie der Streit der Vielheit doch in sich Gesetz
und Recht tragen kann, wie der Künstler beschaulich über und wirkend in dem
Kunstwerk steht, wie Nothwendigkeit und Spiel, Widerstreit und Harmonie sich
zur Zeugung des Kunstwerkes paaren müssen.
同上
The work of art
combines contradiction (Widerstreit) and harmony, necessity and play
because the artist both stands “contemplatively above [beschaulich über]”
the work of art and is efficacious in (wirkend in) the work of art.
How can we understand this and why does it complicate the distinction of responsibility
from irresponsibility?
On one level,
the artist is undoubtedly “responsible” for the work of art. Consider a
painting: it is undoubtedly the artist who is responsible for the stroke of
the brush, for the fact that it comes out in the way that it does. This is
the moment of freedom. Especially in the domain of art, this freedom is
radical: what we call the autonomy of art is that the work in principle does
not serve any purpose or conform to a demand. However, precisely for this
reason, cracks appear in this model of responsibility: art may be autonomous
in this respect, but the artist is not since the form of self-legislation
involved is not reducible to rational autonomy. The artist will be unable to
give reasons why every stroke is there in the precise way that it is. No true
work of art is the simple externalization of a prior intention, the
realization of a blueprint, or any type of application or externalization.
But the absence of reasons does not make the stroke arbitrary, as if it could
have been on the canvas in any other way. On the contrary: for the artist,
the stroke must go there. This is the moment of necessity. The actions of the
artist are no longer fully the result of conscious intent. In that sense,
they are no longer “actions” strictly speaking, for which the artist could
take or assume responsibility. Nor can we say that the artist “decides” that
the stroke goes there, for such a decision is not legislated by some rule or
criterion. Artistic freedom is therefore a freedom-in-necessity that is
irreducible to “freedom of the will” or “freedom of choice.” Therefore,
rather than in terms of decisions Nietzsche – in later works (in a
language that is especially prominent in and after Thus SpokeZarathustra) –
will work out this moment in terms of commanding (Befehlen). As such,
the radical innocence of the play of the artist in this experience is such
that the artist is just as much responsible (because beschaulich über)
as not responsible for (because wirkend in) the work.[18]
By relegating
all judgement to the rank of human short-sightedness, Heraclitus’ teachings
reflected for Nietzsche his intuitive power to see the world in complete
innocence, but also his strength to recognize harmony and justice in the
abyssal thought of becoming. Heraclitus personified irresponsibility in his
bold and proud conjoining of his divine intuition with the most
counter-intuitive possibility, but in this bold truth-seeking and in his
refusal to take shelter in stability from the abyssal truth of becoming, one
can paradoxically recognize the latent contours of what Nietzsche will later
identify as the kind of “higher responsibility” of which only higher men are
capable. Finally, in the play of the child and the artist we see the
structure of an experience of innocence that is neither fully irresponsible
nor fully responsible: a freedom in commanding necessity.
If everyone
were as enlightened as Heraclitus, everyone would live “in accordance with
the eye of the artist.” This would involve recognizing that, insofar as there
is no simple freedom of the will, everything about the human is “completely
necessary.” This notion of complete necessity will return in Human,
All too Human, when Nietzsche first formulates the complete
irresponsibility and innocence of humans as a doctrine, but it can already be
found in Nietzsche’s reading of Heraclitus:
Man is
necessity down to his last fibre, and totally “unfree,” that is if one means
by freedom the foolish demand to be able to change one’s essentia arbitrarily,
like a garment – a demand which every serious philosophy has rejected
with the proper scorn (PHG 7, KSA 1.831).
Der Mensch ist bis in seine letzte Faser hinein
Nothwendigkeit und ganz und gar „unfrei“ – wenn man unter Freiheit den
närrischen Anspruch, seine essentia nach Willkür wie ein Kleid wechseln zu
können, versteht, einen Anspruch, den jede ernste Philosophie bisher mit dem
gebührenden Hohne zurückgewiesen hat.
同上
II Complete
Irresponsibility and the “Necessity of all Actions” in Human, All too
Human
第二部分：完全不負責任與《人性，太人性》中「一切行為的必然性」
The next big
step in Nietzsche’s thinking of irresponsibility comes in the second half of
the 1870’s, and its culmination can be found in Human, All too Human.
We will see that we can recognize the main themes of the reading of
Heraclitus but with modifications. Whereas in Philosophy in the
Tragic Age of the Greeks Nietzsche read the Greeks as the epitomes
of a culture no longer possible in modern Europe, he now speculatively asks
what form of human life would result if modern Europeans were to incorporate
Heraclitean insights. In both cases, Nietzsche confronts his modern readers
with an extreme thought, showing them how radically demanding the ideas of
complete innocence, complete irresponsibility and complete necessity are, how
incomprehensibly near-divine Heraclitus was, and how unfathomably demanding
their incorporation would be.
Nietzsche seems
to shift his attention from the innocence of becoming to the innocence of
humans and their actions, although, as we will see, the latter is presented
as rooted in the former and thus continues Nietzsche’s commitment to the
innocence of becoming. The biggest change is that man’s complete
irresponsibility is now approached as a “conviction,” as “doctrine” and as
“knowledge,” namely: as the “philosophical conviction of the unconditional
necessity of all actions and of their complete irresponsibility [die
philosophische Ueberzeugung von der unbedingten Nothwendigkeit aller
Handlungen und ihrer völligen Unverantwortlichkeit]” (HH I 133); as
“the doctrine [Lehre] of everyone’s complete lack of responsibility
and innocence” (HH II, WS 81) and as the knowledge (Erkenntnis) that
“All is necessity – so says the new knowledge […]. All is innocence: and
knowledge is the way to insight into this innocence” (HH I 107). We will see,
however, that Nietzsche does not explicitly teach the conviction or
theoretically posits this knowledge. Instead, he experimentally and
speculatively asks what would happen if the thought of complete
irresponsibility were to be incorporated as conviction and what type of human
would be capable of it. With this, Human, All too Human hints
at a different kind of responsibility out of which the doctrine of complete
irresponsibility would be taught.
尼采似乎將注意力從生成的純真轉移到了人類及其行為的純真上，然而正如我們將看到的，後者被呈現為根植於前者，因而延續了尼采對生成純真的堅持。最大的變化在於，尼采現在將人類的完全不負責任作為一種信念、一種「教義」以及一種「知識」來處理，即：一種「對一切行為無條件必然性及其完全不負責任的哲學信念」（HH I 133）；作為「每個人完全缺乏責任感與純真的教義」（HH II, WS
81）以及作為「新知識所宣稱的『一切都是必然的』...一切皆為純真：而知識是通往這純真洞見的道路」（HH I 107）。然而，我們將看到，尼采並未明確教授這種信念或理論性地提出這一知識。相反，他以實驗性和推測性的方式問道：如果完全不負責任的思想被吸收為信念，那將會發生什麼？而什麼樣的人類能夠擁有這種信念？通過這樣的思考，《人性，太人性》暗示了一種不同的責任感，這種責任感可能是教授完全不負責任教義的出發點。
It should not
be overlooked that in Human, All too Human I Nietzsche
spends a significant amount of time criticizing convictions as such.
Convictions are a greater danger to truth than lies (HH I 483), because they
represent an unwillingness to examine or change one’s ideas (HH I 511).[19] Rather
than explicitly teaching the doctrine, or endorsing the conviction, of
complete irresponsibility, Nietzsche is interested in the efficacy and
consequences of convictions. He therefore experiments with them, and asks
what might be the consequences if the conviction or doctrine that “everything
is necessary” were incorporated as “a new gospel” (HH I 107). At this point,
he presents the doctrine as counter-doctrine to the opposite doctrines that
determine modern European culture, to wit: the “doctrine of free will”[20] (to
which he opposes the unconditional necessity of all actions and their
irresponsibility) and the “doctrine of everyone’s complete responsibility and
guilt,” in other words the Christian doctrine of original sin (HH II, WS 81),
to which he opposes the complete irresponsibility and innocence of everyone.
It should also not go overlooked that at least in one sense the doctrine of
original sin achieved the same thing that Nietzsche thinks its opposite
(which we could call the doctrine of original innocence, i. e., the innocence
of becoming) would achieve, namely: “to turn worldly justice upside down [die
weltliche Gerechtigkeit aus den Angeln zu heben]” (HH II, WS 81).[21] We
recognize the Heraclitean view of a divine justice: the teaching of Christ
and that of complete irresponsibility both deny the validity of “worldly”
judgement and worldly justice. The doctrine of irresponsibility and the
Christian doctrine both show the vacuity of all merely human moral praise and
blame. The difference is that the Christian view retains judgement: according
to Nietzsche, Christ (as God himself) held himself to be the supreme judge
(HH II, WS 81).
值得注意的是，在《人性，太人性》第一卷中，尼采花了大量篇幅批判信念本身。信念對真理的危險超過謊言（HH I 483），因為它代表著對檢驗或改變自己思想的抗拒（HH I 511）。尼采並非在明確教授完全不負責任的教義或信念，而是對信念的效力與後果感興趣。因此，他以實驗的方式探討它們，並詢問如果「一切皆為必然」的信念或教義被納入為「新福音」，將會有什麼結果（HH I 107）。此時，他將這一教義作為與現代歐洲文化所主導的對立教義的對立教義，即「自由意志的教義」（他反對一切行為的無條件必然性及其不負責任）和「每個人完全負責與有罪的教義」，換句話說，就是基督教的原罪教義（HH II, WS 81），而他則反對每個人的完全不負責任與純真。
還應該注意的是，在某種意義上，原罪教義達到了尼采認為其對立面（我們可以稱之為原初純真的教義，即生成的純真）所能達到的同樣的效果，即：「顛覆世俗的正義」（HH II, WS 81）。我們可以認出赫拉克利特對神聖正義的看法：基督的教導與完全不負責任的教義都否認了「世俗」審判與世俗正義的有效性。不負責任的教義和基督教教義都展示了所有僅僅是人類的道德讚譽與譴責的空虛。不同之處在於，基督教觀點保留了審判：根據尼采的說法，基督（作為神本身）認為自己是最高的審判者（HH II, WS 81）。
The doctrines
or convictions of irresponsibility concern three different, though inherently
related, subjects: that all actions are necessary; that praise and blame are
not justified; that guilt is not justified. I start with the first. In what
sense are all actions necessary?
The argument
in Human, All too Human is based on the notion of the
complete necessity of actions already articulated in Philosophy in
the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Nietzsche’s use of the concept of necessity
is many-layered and not easy to interpret. In Human, All too Human alone,
the concept points to several tendencies that Nietzsche does not resolve conclusively.
In my view, this is at least partly because Nietzsche is translating Greek
ideas into Kantian-Schopenhauerian terminology. Specifically, he is fusing
the Heraclitean “law in becoming and play in necessity” (the necessity of
cosmic harmony, fate and play) with Schopenhauer’s (and eo ipso Kant’s)
notion of calculable causal necessity as expressed in the laws of empirical
nature (as opposed to the noumenal or intelligible character of freedom).
Regarding the necessity of human actions, Nietzsche now credits Schopenhauer
with the insight “that all human action is preceded by necessity” (HH I 39;
cf. HH II, VM 33). A clear enough picture of the type of causal necessity
that Nietzsche has in mind here can be found at HH I 106. He writes there
that the movements of the waterfall are all necessary in the sense of being
in principle mathematically calculable and predictable. Nietzsche’s thesis
in Human, All too Human is that the realm of human action is
no different from that of the waterfall. The cruel man is not responsible for
his cruelty any more than the granite is for being granite (HH I 43). The
necessity or fatality pervading nature extends without exception to human
action: “A real person is something absolutely and entirely necessary [Ein
wirklicher Mensch ist etwas ganz und gar Nothwendiges]” (HH I 160).
Nietzsche suggests elsewhere that even man’s opinions are “as necessary and
irresponsible as their actions” (HH I 376). But whereas Schopenhauer retained
the Kantian idea of intelligible freedom by deducing it from the existence of
remorse (the feeling of guilt) and the sense of responsibility that the
acting agent has, Nietzsche rails against Schopenhauer for smuggling freedom
(as “intelligible”) in through the “back door” (HH II, VM 33). According to
Nietzsche, the feeling of remorse could well be (and in fact is) irrational.[22] Remorse
(and with that guilt, and thus responsibility) is learned, and it can be
unlearned. The mere existence of the feeling proves nothing. In fact,
according to Nietzsche, even the very fact that the agent has this illusion
of free will is itself not exempt from this calculable mechanism (HH I 106).
Nietzsche is very clear on the matter in HH I 133: if man were to become
convinced of the “unconditional necessity of all actions and of their
complete irresponsibility” and were to succeed in incorporating that
conviction and absorbing it “into his flesh and blood,” then all remorse and
guilty conscience would completely disappear.
關於人類行為的必然性，尼采現在將叔本華的觀點歸功於認識到「所有人類行為都以必然性為前提」（HH I 39；參見HH II, VM 33）。尼采在這裡所指的因果必然性類型可以在《人性，太人性》I的第106節找到清晰的描述。他在該處寫道，瀑布的運動都是必然的，因為這些運動在原則上都是可以數學計算和預測的。尼采在《人性，太人性》中的論點是，人類行為的領域與瀑布的領域沒有區別。殘酷的人對他的殘酷不負責任，就像花崗岩對其作為花崗岩不負責任一樣（HH I 43）。貫穿於自然中的必然性或命定性毫無例外地延伸到人類行為：「一個真實的人是完全且絕對必然的事物」（HH I 160）。尼采在其他地方指出，甚至人的觀點也「與其行為一樣，既是必然的，也是不負責任的」（HH I 376）。
然而，叔本華保留了康德的「可知性」自由的觀念，通過悔恨（罪惡感的感受）和行動者所擁有的責任感來推導它。對此，尼采對叔本華表示不滿，認為他通過「後門」偷偷引入了自由（作為「可知的」）（HH II, VM 33）。尼采認為，悔恨感可能（事實上也確實是）非理性的。悔恨（以及隨之而來的罪惡感，進而責任）是學習而來的，而它也可以被遺忘。單單這種感覺的存在並不能證明任何事情。事實上，根據尼采的說法，即便行動者擁有這種自由意志的錯覺本身也不例外，仍屬於這種可計算的機制（HH I 106）。尼采在HH I 133中非常明確地表示：如果人類能夠確信「所有行為的無條件必然性及其完全不負責任性」，並成功地將這種信念融入自己的血肉之中，那麼所有的悔恨和內疚感將徹底消失。
The “necessity”
of all actions seems therefore at first to mean calculability, and therefore
it seems to imply a type of determinism. By denying even “intelligible”
freedom, this determinism seems radical. But things are not so simple. Most
importantly because we will see that, as the absence of guilt, complete
necessity is for Nietzsche above all a liberating notion, in a sense that it
is neither simply freedom of choice nor intelligible freedom. Moreover, in
Nietzsche’s critique of the distinction of phenomena from noumena (thus of
Schopenhauer and Kant) we see a different, Heraclitean sense of
necessity – the necessity inherent in the play of opposing forces that
forms Heraclitus’ “law in becoming” is not the same as the calculable
necessity of modern natural laws.[23] Nietzsche
criticizes the distinction between appearances and things in themselves on
the grounds that it presupposes that life or experience lay before one like a
finished painting, whereas life and experience are the results of a process
of becoming and remain at all times involved in that process (HH I 16).
Therefore, everything that we project onto this process of becoming is just
that: mere projection or representation (Vorstellung). This includes
the idea of free will, which is “an atomistics in the realm
of willing and knowing” insofar as it presupposes the possibility to
discriminate between discrete actions, which “is incompatible with the
representation of a continuous, homogeneous, undivided, indivisible flowing”
(HH II, WS 11).
「一切行為的『必然性』」起初似乎意味著可計算性，因此看似暗示了一種類似決定論的觀點。透過否認甚至「可理解的」自由，這種決定論似乎極為激進。但事情並不如此簡單。最重要的是，我們將看到，對於尼采來說，作為一種無罪的狀態，完全的必然性首先是一種解放性的概念，這並非僅僅是選擇自由或理智自由的簡單表達。此外，尼采在對現象與物自體區分的批判中（因而對叔本華和康德的批判），我們看到了不同的、赫拉克利特式的必然性——赫拉克利特「生成的法則」中對立力量之間的遊戲所蘊含的必然性，與現代自然法則中的可計算必然性並不相同。【註釋23】尼采批判了現象與物自體之間的區分，理由是這一區分預設了生命或經驗像一幅完成的畫卷一般擺在我們面前，而實際上生命與經驗是生成過程的結果，並在所有時刻都處於這一過程中（HH I 16）。因此，我們投射到這一生成過程中的一切，僅僅是：單純的投射或表象（Vorstellung）。這包括自由意志的概念，它在「意願與知識領域中的原子主義」範疇內，因為它預設了將離散行為加以區分的可能性，而這種預設「與持續、同質、未分割且不可分割的流動之表象相矛盾」（HH II, WS 11）。
Everything is
thus necessity in the sense that the Heraclitean flow excludes free will, a
reproduction of the insight Nietzsche already articulated in Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks as the claim that “man is necessity
down to his last fibre, and totally ‘unfree’” (PHG 7). Nietzsche also uses a
different term for this necessity of the flowing of becoming: Fatum.
Through his discussions of fatalism, we learn that even though science can
force us to believe in fatalism, the important part is what the consequences
of such a belief would be:
The fatalist. – You have to believe
in fate – science can force you to do so. What then grows out of this
belief for you – cowardice and resignation or grandeur and
sincerity – that bears witness to the soil in which that seed has been
spread; but not to the seed itself, for it can turn into anything and
everything (HH II, VM 363).
宿命主義者——你必須相信命運——科學可以迫使你這樣做。那麼，這種信仰為你帶來了什麼？是怯懦和放棄，還是崇高和真誠——這見證了種子所撒播的土壤，而非種子本身，因為它可以變成任何東西（HH II,
VM 363）。
Der Fatalist. – Du musst an das
Fatum glauben, – dazu kann die Wissenschaft dich zwingen. Was dann aus
diesem Glauben bei dir herauswächst – Feigheit, Ergebung oder Grossartigkeit
und Freimuth – das legt Zeugniss von dem Erdreich ab, in welches jenes
Samenkorn gestreut wurde; nicht aber vom Samenkorn selbst, denn aus ihm kann
Alles und Jedes werden.
同上
Note that it is
not the truth or falsity of fatalism that Nietzsche seeks to establish here.
Here, too, Nietzsche is not being simply doctrinal. Even if science can force
one to accept fatalism, even if fatalism entails the belief in a determinism
so radical that it even excludes intelligible freedom, then still “anything
and everything” can follow from this, depending on the person in question.
Different people still relate to this belief in different ways; a relation
that is no longer a choice that would itself be external to fate.[24] Rather,
one’s response (cowardly submission or liberating boldness) testifies to the
“soil” in which this idea takes root. The idea – the fear – that
resignation is the only possible result from fatalism (that there is no sense
in doing anything because fate always wins) is only one particular type of
fatalism that Nietzsche dismisses as “Turkish fatalism [Türkenfatalismus]”
(HH II, WS 61).
需要注意的是，尼采並非試圖在此確立宿命論的真偽。在這裡，尼采同樣不是在簡單地提出教義。即使科學能迫使人接受宿命論，即使宿命論包含了一種如此激進的決定論，以至於它甚至排除了理性上的自由，即便如此，「任何事情」都可以隨之而來，這取決於具體的人。不同的人對這種信仰有不同的回應，而這種回應不再是外在於命運的選擇。相反，一個人對這種信念的回應（怯懦的屈從或解放的勇敢）見證了這個思想所紮根的「土壤」。那種認為宿命論只能帶來消極放棄的觀點（認為做任何事都沒有意義，因為命運總會勝出）只是尼采所摒棄的一種特殊形式的宿命論，即「土耳其式宿命論（Türkenfatalismus）」（HH II, WS 61）。
What would the
consequences be of the incorporation of the idea of complete
irresponsibility? The effects for responsibility are worked out by Nietzsche
through a sketch of the “phases” of the “history of moral feelings” or the
feelings through which we hold someone accountable or find someone
responsible. Nietzsche holds that man attributed the good and the bad to
feelings, but then forgot that he was himself the source of this attribution.
Nietzsche likens this mechanism to the linguistic misunderstanding, “as when
language describes the stone itself as hard, the tree itself as green,” and
the mechanism is also reminiscent of the oblivion through which truths are
held to be valuable in On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
(namely, as illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions). In
this way in Human, All too Human, people are held responsible
first for the consequences or effects (Wirkungen) of their actions,
then for the acts themselves as their causes, then the motives behind these
acts, and ultimately for their “whole being.” But no one can be responsible
for any of these, as this being, too, is wholly necessary, in the sense of being
a necessary effect of “the elements and influences of past and present
things.” That knowledge shows the history of moral feelings to be the history
of an error:
No one is
responsible for his actions, no one for his nature; judging is the same as being
unjust. This holds equally true when the individual judges himself. The
principle is as clear as daylight, and yet here everyone prefers to go back
into the shadows and into untruth: from fear of the consequences (HH I 39).
沒有人對自己的行為負責，也沒有人對自己的本性負責；判斷就等同於不公正。這同樣適用於個體對自己的判斷。這一原則如日光般清晰，但在這裡，每個人卻更願意回到陰影和謊言中去：因為害怕後果（HH I 39）。
Niemand ist für seine Thaten verantwortlich,
Niemand für sein Wesen; richten ist soviel als ungerecht sein. Diess gilt
auch, wenn das Individuum über sich selbst richtet. Der Satz ist so hell wie
Sonnenlicht, und doch geht hier Jedermann lieber in den Schatten und die
Unwahrheit zurück: aus Furcht vor den Folgen.
同上
Nietzsche
emphasizes that the distinction of responsibility for actions from
responsibility for what one is, is not relevant. In all these senses, man is
completely irresponsible. In “judging is the same as being unjust” we
recognize the aforementioned parallel with Christianity: all “worldly”
judgement, all praise and blame (no matter whether one holds others, oneself,
history, God or destiny responsible) is unjust (HH II, VM 78).
尼采強調，將對行為的責任與對自我本性的責任區分開來，是毫無意義的。在所有這些意義上，人都是完全不負責任的。在「判斷等同於不公正」中，我們可以看出前面提到的與基督教的類似之處：所有「世俗的」判斷、所有的讚美與譴責（無論人是將責任歸咎於他人、自己、歷史、上帝或命運）都是不公正的（HH II, VM 78）。
If the claim
that all judgement is unjust is “as clear as daylight,” then why do people
persist in the error? What consequences do they fear? Nietzsche gives
different answers. First of all, if no regret, remorse or guilt were to
follow upon bad deeds, then no feeling of reward or achievement would follow
good ones. Nietzsche makes the latter point in HH I 91: much enjoyment (Vergnügen)
and agreeable tears (angenehme Tränen), indeed much of the charm or
appeal (Reiz) of life, would disappear if the belief in complete
irresponsibility took hold. Worse still, since all actions are guided by
their prospects of pleasure or pain (Lust und Unlust), one would
ultimately be forced to reconsider the value of acting at all and ultimately
the value of living over not-living. Removing responsibility has nothing less
than potentially suicidal consequences.[25]
如果說所有判斷都是不公正的這一主張「如日光般清晰」，那麼為什麼人們仍堅持這一錯誤？他們害怕什麼後果？尼采給出了不同的回答。首先，如果對於壞事不再有悔恨、懊悔或內疚，那麼對於好事也就不再會有成就感或回報的感覺。尼采在《人性，太人性》I 91中指出了這一點：若完全無責任的信念占據了人心，許多的快樂（Vergnügen）、愉悅的淚水（angenehme Tränen），乃至於生活的魅力（Reiz）都會隨之消失。更糟的是，因為所有行為都是由快樂或痛苦的前景所引導（Lust und Unlust），人們最終會被迫重新考慮行動的價值，並最終考慮生存是否優於不生存。取消責任甚至可能帶來潛在的自殺後果。
A second answer
is more genealogical: man will not be able to resist much longer the insight
that behind every back door there is “the glittering bronze wall of fate;”
that we are “in prison” and that we can at best “dream that we
are free, not make ourselves free” (HH II, VM 33). Moral man
is cracking at the seams. But praise and blame have been incorporated for so
long, that man comes up with the most “despairing and unbelieving postures
and contortions” to maintain the faith in free will, such as the idea that,
if individual man – “the poor wave caught up in the necessary play of
the waves of becoming” – is not responsible, then this wave-play itself
is held responsible, blaming world-history or God himself; a position
Nietzsche calls “Christianity turned on its head” – for then it is God
who is guilty and man who is the innocent redeemer of God (HH II, VM 33).
第二個答案更具系譜學意涵：人們無法再長久地抵抗這樣的認識，即在每一道背後的門後都有一面「閃閃發光的銅牆命運之牆」；我們「身處牢獄」中，最多只能「夢想自己是自由的，卻無法讓自己變得自由」（HH II, VM 33）。道德人正逐漸崩解，但讚美與譴責已經融入人類生活太久，以至於人們為了維持對自由意志的信仰，編造了各種「絕望且無信的姿態與扭曲」，如認為如果個體人——「那個被卷入生成之波的必然遊戲的可憐浪花」——並不負責任，那麼這個波浪遊戲本身就該被責備，把責任歸咎於世界歷史或上帝本身；尼采將此稱為「顛倒的基督教」，因為這樣一來，便是上帝有罪而人是上帝的無辜救贖者（HH II, VM 33）。
So, people
adhere to the illusion of responsibility as a justification for praise and
blame because it has been incorporated for centuries and because removing it
could deprive life of its perceived worth.[26] But the
possibility of suicide is merely the immediate response to embracing the
knowledge of the necessity of action and our complete irresponsibility.
Indeed, if man were to incorporate man’s complete necessity and
irresponsibility, then “all these motives, however lofty the names we give to
them, have grown from the same roots in which we think evil poisons reside”
(HH I 107). To be sure, this would make the complete irresponsibility of man
for his actions “the bitterest drop that the man of knowledge must swallow.”
But even so, they are still only growing pains:
因此，人們堅持責任的幻象作為讚美與譴責的正當理由，是因為它已經被吸收了幾個世紀，而且取消它可能會剝奪生命的價值感。但自殺的可能性僅僅是接受行動的必然性與我們完全無責任的知識之後的直接反應。事實上，如果人類吸收了人類完全必然性與無責任的觀念，那麼「所有這些動機，不論我們賦予它們多麼崇高的名字，都來自於我們認為邪惡毒素居住的相同根源」（HH I 107）。可以肯定的是，這將使得人對其行為的完全無責任成為「知識者必須吞下的最苦澀的一滴」。然而，即便如此，這仍然只是成長的陣痛。
The butterfly
wants to break through its sheath, it pulls at it, it tears it apart: then
the unknown light, the kingdom of freedom, blinds and confuses it. In such
people, ones who are capable of that sorrow – how few
it will be! – the first attempt is being made to see whether
humanity could transform itself from a moral into
a wise humanity (HH I 107).
蝴蝶試圖突破它的外殼，它拉扯著、撕裂著外殼：隨後，那未知的光明，那自由的王國，使它感到眩目和困惑。在那些有能力承受這種悲痛的人身上——而這樣的人將會非常少——第一次嘗試轉變人類，從一個道德的人類變為一個智慧的人類，已經開始了（《人性，太人性》 I 107）。
Der Schmetterling will seine Hülle durchbrechen,
er zerrt an ihr, er zerreisst sie: da blendet und verwirrt ihn das unbekannte
Licht, das Reich der Freiheit. In solchen Menschen, welche jener
Traurigkeit fähig sind – wie wenige werden es sein! –
wird der erste Versuch gemacht, ob die Menschheit aus
einer moralischen sich in eine weise Menschheit umwandeln
könne.
同上
With that, we
catch a glimpse of what Nietzsche will slowly start to designate after 1882
as a “higher” or “greater” responsibility. With this move, Nietzsche places
his own thought on a grand scale of no less than thousands of years and its
effects in the light of nothing less than the future or destiny of humanity.[27] In
this remarkable closing passage, Nietzsche describes the effect of embracing
complete irresponsibility for the very few who would be capable of swallowing
that bitterest drop – capable, that is, of the immense sadness of losing
the possibility of praise and blame, guilt or achievement, as follows. Liberation
from responsibility does not stand in opposition to the suffering of giving
up responsibility. Liberation follows only for those who are capable of this
suffering and sadness: the man capable of this sadness is presented by
Nietzsche as “the necessary, preliminary stage” and “not [the]
opposite” of a new kind of human being. This is consistent with the very
knowledge that fuels the transition: “All is necessity – so says the new
knowledge: and this knowledge itself is necessity.” As a stage leading up to
the new man, the very illusion of responsibility was itself no less
necessary. Because the knowledge that everything is necessary and innocent
collapses the difference between good and bad deeds, everything pertaining to
morality becomes “changeable, unsteady”: “everything is in flux, it is true,”
writes Nietzsche, “but everything is also streaming: toward a
single goal” (HH I 107).
隨著這一點，我們瞥見了尼采在1882年之後慢慢開始稱之為「更高的」或「更偉大的」責任。通過這樣的變動，尼采將自己的思想置於一個無不涉及人類未來或命運的宏大尺度之上，影響的時間跨度更是數千年。在這段非凡的結語中，尼采描述了接受完全無責任的影響，那些少數能夠吞下這最苦澀的一滴——能夠承受失去讚美與譴責、內疚或成就可能性所帶來的巨大悲痛的人。擺脫責任並不意味著與放棄責任的痛苦對立。解放僅僅隨之而來，對於那些能夠承受這種痛苦與悲痛的人而言：對於能承受這種悲痛的人來說，他在尼采筆下成為「一種必然的、初步的階段」，並且「並不是」一種新型人類的對立面。這與支撐這一過渡的知識非常一致：「一切都是必然的——這是新的知識所言；而這知識本身也是必然的。」作為邁向新人的階段，責任的幻象本身也同樣是不可或缺的。由於一切事物的必然性和純真的知識消除了善與惡行為的區別，道德上的一切變得「易變、不穩定」：「一切確實都在流動，」尼采寫道，「但一切也都在向著一個目標湧動」（《人性，太人性》 I 107）。
The necessary
goal in question is the type of man capable of incorporating the necessity of
everything. Such a man is conscious of his innocence and irresponsible in the
sense of being beyond praise and blame. As has been noted, at this stage
Nietzsche formulates his ideal in Spinozistic terms.[28] What
names this non-judgmental mode is no longer Heraclitus’ intuition, strength
and pride, but wisdom or comprehending: a “new habit of comprehending, not
loving, not hating [des Begreifens, Nicht-Liebens, Nicht-Hassens],”
replaces the old one “of erroneously evaluating, loving, hating” (HH I 107).
We can still recognize, however, Heraclitus’ divine insight into the limited
standpoint of judgement. But Nietzsche will abandon this conception of
non-judgmental wisdom soon after, and already at BGE 198 he will deride
Spinoza’s intellectual notion of wisdom for dismissing the affects.
這裡所指的必然目標是指一種能夠吸納一切必然性的人類。這樣的人意識到自己的純真，並在遠離讚美與譴責的意義上是不負責任的。如前所述，在這個階段，尼采以斯賓諾莎的語言來表述他的理想。這種無判斷的狀態不再是赫拉克利特式的直觀、力量與驕傲，而是智慧或理解：一種「新的理解習慣，而非愛或恨（des Begreifens, Nicht-Liebens, Nicht-Hassens）」取代了舊的「錯誤評價、愛、恨」的習慣（《人性，太人性》 I 107）。然而，我們仍然可以辨認出赫拉克利特對判斷立場的有限性之神聖洞察。但尼采很快就會放棄這種非判斷性的智慧觀點，並在《善惡的彼岸》198段中嘲諷斯賓諾莎以智性方式理解智慧，因為這樣的智慧忽視了情感。
Ultimately,
although in a different way than Nietzsche’s reading of Heraclitus, Human,
All too Human also paints an ambiguous picture with respect to the
thought of complete irresponsibility and the necessity of all actions. Rather
than as intuitive Heraclitean insight, Nietzsche now considers the thought as
a philosophical conviction and asks experimentally: what if it were
incorporated? On the one hand, such incorporation can still yield many types
of man, and the outcome is speculative. On the other hand, after meeting with
strong resistance initially, the incorporation of the doctrine of complete
necessity is also itself said to be necessary. Finally, through that
self-fulfilling dynamic of necessity and its incorporation, man is to find
his true liberation, but in a paradoxical sense of freedom that remains
undetermined in Human, All too Human[29] –
a liberation from a freedom that is opposed to necessity, to a freedom in necessity.
In this way, Nietzsche’s speculation about the liberation involved in
incorporating the conviction of complete irresponsibility paradoxically
evinces, at least implicitly, a sense of responsibility for the fate of
humanity. Rather than solve the paradox, Nietzsche will come to textually
account for it more explicitly. He will do this, on the one hand, by no
longer experimentally considering the thought of complete irresponsibility as
philosophical conviction but instead by blatantly declaring it “our doctrine,”
while on the other hand acknowledging that such a teaching cannot but proceed
from a specific kind of responsibility: one for the “future of mankind” and
the “redemption of the world.”
III The Twilight
of the Idols: Complete Irresponsibility and the Redemption of the World
三、偶像的黃昏：完全無責任與世界的救贖
We have seen
that in Human, All too Human the question remains whether
the insight into man’s complete irresponsibility can be incorporated fully
and whether such incorporation would be liberating, albeit in a sense yet to
be determined. Elsewhere, Nietzsche will write that the insight provides
relief (erleichtert).[30] In a remarkable
autobiographical passage – that Nietzsche first wrote in 1883 when
looking back and critically reflecting on The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
(Nachlass 1883, 7[7], KSA 10.237–40), then rewrote and edited in 1885 (Nachlass
1885, 36[10], KSA 11.553) for the new edition of Human, All too Human[31] but
ultimately did not select for publication – Nietzsche identifies as a
guiding thread running through his own development his attempt to prove the
innocence of becoming to himself: “How long has it been that I have made an
effort to prove the complete innocence of becoming to
myself! [Wie lange ist
es nun her, daß ich bei mir selber bemüht bin, die vollkommne Unschulddes
Werdens zu beweisen!] And what strange paths I have already walked in doing so!”[32] The
paths he mentions are the aesthetic justification of existence; the idea that
all morality is mere appearance; that all concepts of guilt are objectively
worthless; his denial of all natural purposes (Zwecke) and the unknowability
of causality. All of these now appear as ways in which Nietzsche has time and
again attempted to prove the innocence of becoming to himself. Before adding:
我們看到，在《人性，太人性》中，關於人類完全無責任的洞察是否能夠被完全納入，這一問題仍然存在，而這種納入是否能夠帶來解放仍然尚待確定。在其他地方，尼采曾寫道，這種洞察提供了「解脫」（Erleichtert）的感受。在一段非凡的自傳性文字中——尼采最早於1883年撰寫這段文字，反思並批判性地回顧其早期著作《悲劇的誕生》（1872年）（Nachlass 1883, 7[7], KSA
10.237–40），並於1885年對《人性，太人性》新版進行了修訂（Nachlass 1885, 36[10], KSA 11.553），但最終未選擇出版——尼采指出，一個貫穿他自身發展的指導線索便是他試圖向自己證明生成的純真：「我已經努力向自己證明生成的完全純真有多久了！【Wie
lange ist es nun her, daß ich bei mir selber bemüht bin, die vollkommne
Unschuld des Werdens zu beweisen!】而為此我已走過了多少奇特的道路！」
And why did I
do all this? Was it not to provide myself with the feeling of complete irresponsibility –
to position myself outside of any praise and blame, independent of all
formerly and today, in order to pursue my goal in my way? – (Nachlass
1885, 36[10], KSA 11.553)
Und wozu dies Alles? War es nicht, um mir selber
das Gefühl völliger Unverantwortlichkeit zu schaffen – mich außerhalb
jedes Lobs und Tadels, unabhängig von allem Ehedem und Heute hinzustellen, um
auf meine Art meinem Ziele nachzulaufen? –
同上
Even if it
turns out to be impossible to incorporate complete irresponsibility, Nietzsche
has consistently tried to sell himself on the idea, because the feeling of
irresponsibility could still be productive. Productive for what? The 1883
version is a bit more specific: Nietzsche wanted to give himself that
feeling, make himself independent of praise and blame, not just because
science shows it to be true, but “in order to pursue goals that concern the
future of humankind” (Nachlass 1883, 7[7], KSA 10.238).[33] In
this remarkable passage we see Nietzsche applying his own distrust of conscious
motives to himself. What did he find? The advocation of complete
irresponsibility, including the denial of all purposes (Zwecke) was
not an end in itself. It was a means to pursue a higher goal (Ziel).
Nietzsche catches himself in the act, and the passage expresses Nietzsche’s
awareness of the reflexive character of his own endeavor. His denial of all
purposes itself served a purpose.
Whence that
purpose? Should we say that Nietzsche gave himself the feeling of
irresponsibility out of a sense of responsibility for the future of mankind?
This would be consistent with one shift in Nietzsche’s use of the concept of
responsibility. Although the expression “the innocence of becoming” stays
with Nietzsche and is an important candidate-title for a theoretical work
during and after the period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, from about
1882 onwards Nietzsche adds a new, less pejorative, “higher” sense of
responsibility to his register. This culminates for example in Beyond
Good and Evil’s (1886) definition of the philosopher as “someone of the
most comprehensive responsibility [der Mensch der umfänglichsten
Verantwortlichkeit]” (BGE 61), or in Twilight of the Idols’s
definition of freedom: “For what is freedom! That we have the will to
self-accountability [Dass man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat]”
(TI, Skirmishes 39).[34] In his later works, the
doctrine of complete irresponsibility does not disappear, but Nietzsche’s
late writings increasingly evince his awareness that a consistent application
of the doctrine would entail new kinds of responsibilities.[35] This
is perhaps nowhere more evident than in one of the most emphatic affirmations
of the doctrine, in the final section of Twilight of the Idols (TI,
Errors 8), written in 1887–88.
The four great
errors in question are: (1) confusing cause with effect; the belief in (2)
false or (3) imaginary causes and in (4) free will. The belief in false,
imaginary or confused causes is rooted in two psychological mechanisms. With
this, Nietzsche expands the familiar critique of free will and
responsibility. The belief in free will psychologically does not just
facilitate judgement (as in Human, All too Human), but it is
above all the “most disreputable theologians’ artifice” that makes man
dependent by making him guilty in order to unleash upon him the instinct for
punishment and revenge: “everywhere that responsibilities are looked for, it
tends to be the instinct of wanting to punish and judge that
is doing the looking” (TI, Errors 7). Aside from this instinct for punishment,
the other mechanism for the belief in confused or false causes is
psychological reassurance. False and imagined are all the causes of actions
that are of the order of consciousness: the mind, the self, and especially
the will (TI, Errors 3). We only believe in the efficacy of motives, the
authority of the self and free will (without which there would be no
responsibility) because of their reassuring psychological effect. Nietzsche
argues that morality and religion belong to this “psychology of error” in
their entirety (TI, Errors 6): at bottom they confuse cause and effect by
promising a state of well-being or happiness as attainable through specific
actions or a particular morality or politics. Nietzsche turns this around:
one’s morality is already an expression of one’s well-being or degeneration
(TI, Errors 2). What Nietzsche therefore criticizes is the very possibility
to judge actions on the basis of any given purpose (whether happiness,
well-being, moral good, religious duty, divine authority, etc.). In this
sense, man is radically irresponsible in a very basic sense because there is,
quite simply, nothing that anyone “should be” (a thought that Nietzsche also
forcefully defends in the subsequent section of Twilight of the Idols,
against The “Improvers” of Humanity). This is the thought that
TI, Errors 8 insists on, but also radicalizes.
What is posited
as “our doctrine” is “that nobody gives a human
their characteristics,” and Nietzsche crucially emphasizes that this includes
man himself: “neither God, nor society, nor parents and ancestors, nor
they themselves” (TI, Errors 8, italics in the original). The
problem of responsibility is therefore not just that there are external
constraints to what one should be (whether prescribed by morality or society
or tradition or religion). The solution to this could be some model of
individual autonomy, but Nietzsche’s critique is much more radical. What the
psychology of errors showed was that the very idea of internal constraints
(that we decide for ourselves who and what we are or will
be) was invented as a tool for those external constraints. The doctrine of
irresponsibility therefore emphatically does not entail that we get to decide
for ourselves who or what we should be. Consistent with the thought of the
necessity of all actions found in the early reading of Heraclitus as well as
in Human, All too Human, Nietzsche calls the idea that I would
give myself my properties the very “nonsense [Unsinn]” of
“intelligible” freedom. Instead:
Nobody is responsible for the fact that
they are there at all, that they are created in such and such a way, that
they are in these circumstances and in this environment. The fatality of our
nature cannot be separated from the fatality of all that has been and will
be. We are not the consequence of an intention, a will, a
purpose; with us the attempt is not made to achieve an
“ideal human” or “ideal happiness” or “ideal morality” – it is absurd to
want to offload our nature into a purpose of some sort (TI,
Errors 8, translation amended).[36]
Niemand ist
dafür verantwortlich, dass er überhaupt da ist, dass er so und so beschaffen
ist, dass er unter diesen Umständen, in dieser Umgebung ist. Die Fatalität
seines Wesens ist nicht herauszulösen aus der Fatalität alles dessen, was war
und was sein wird. Er ist nicht die Folge einer eignen Absicht,
eines Willens, eines Zwecks, mit ihm wird nicht der Versuch
gemacht, ein „Ideal von Mensch“ oder ein „Ideal von Glück“ oder ein „Ideal
von Moralität“ zu erreichen, – es ist absurd, sein Wesen in irgend einen
Zweck hin abwälzen zu wollen.
We are by now
familiar with how Nietzsche dissolves all constraints, whether external or
internal, in the notion of fatality. In the space I have left, I will be
making a few remarks around one term that is of special interest here, and
that is abwälzen: to abdicate, offload or devolve. It is absurd
to offload man’s (irresponsible) existence into a purpose.[37] Tracing
the connotations of this term will allow us to show how complete
irresponsibility is here both expounded and complicated.
First of
all, abwälzen is a term that Nietzsche typically reserves
for the shirking, abdicating or offloading of a responsibility that one
should take.[38] He makes this point for example in
BGE 21, where he distinguishes a weak will to responsibility from a weak will
to irresponsibility (or so I submit, contrary to some commentators).[39] There,
Nietzsche discusses the “unfreedom of the will” as being equally
“mythological” as the “free will.” Much like how the seed of fatalism can
still grow differently in different soils, here the decisive question is what
feeling is evoked by the notion of the unfree will: if causality or
psychological necessity evoke “some kind of compulsion, need, being forced to
follow, pressure, unfreedom [etwas von Zwang, Noth, Folgen-Müssen, Druck,
Unfreiheit],” then a weak-willed personality shows itself. Nietzsche then
presents two examples of this weak will that come from contrary directions.
The first refuse such an unfree will out of vanity: they display a will to
“responsibility” (in quotes in the text because such vain self-interest is
hardly responsibility) because they are unwilling to give up the possibility
of accomplishment and merit (Verdienst). The second are those that
“conversely, motivated by inner self-contempt, want to be responsible for
nothing and guilty of nothing [wollen umgekehrt nichts verantworten, an
nichts schuld sein], and wish they were able to shift
responsibility for themselves to some other place [sich selbst irgend
wohin abwälzen zu können]” (BGE 21). Nietzsche calls this:
“fatalism of the weak-willed.” These people equally experience the unfree
will as coercive, but this time because it exculpates them. This is why
Nietzsche writes that the latter position expresses itself in literature as
sympathy for criminals: the poor criminal was forced by circumstance,
upbringing, etc. – it was not their fault.
首先，abwälzen是一個尼采通常用來指代推卸或逃避應當承擔的責任的詞語。例如，在《善惡的彼岸》第21節中，他區分了一種對責任的弱意志和一種對無責任的弱意志（與某些評論者相反，我的解讀如此）。在這裡，尼采討論了「意志的不自由」與「自由意志」一樣，是一種神話。就像宿命論的種子可以在不同的土壤中成長出不同的結果一樣，這裡的關鍵問題是，對於不自由意志的觀念，所引發的是何種感受：如果因果性或心理必然性引發「某種強制感、必須追隨的壓力、不自由【etwas von Zwang, Noth, Folgen-Müssen, Druck, Unfreiheit】」，那麼這就表明了一種弱意志的個性。
尼采接著舉出了兩個來自相反方向的例子。第一類人出於虛榮，拒絕接受這種不自由意志：他們顯示出一種對「責任」的意志（在文本中以引號標註，因為這種虛榮的自利行為並不是真正的責任），因為他們不願意放棄成就和功績的可能性。第二類人則相反，由於內在的自我蔑視，他們「希望對任何事情都不負責，對任何事情都無罪【wollen umgekehrt nichts verantworten, an nichts schuld sein】，並且希望能夠將責任推卸到其他地方【sich selbst irgend wohin abwälzen zu können】」（BGE 21）。尼采稱這種情況為「弱意志的宿命論」。這類人同樣感受到不自由意志的壓迫，但這一次因為這種觀念可以為他們開脫責任。因此，尼采指出，這類人通常會在文學中表達出對罪犯的同情：這個可憐的罪犯是由於環境、成長背景等被迫如此——這並非他的錯。
Some surprising
insights follow from this. First, apparently embracing complete
irresponsibility is not necessarily a sign of strength: there is also a weak
will to complete irresponsibility that does the opposite of what Nietzsche’s
doctrine intends. Secondly, and conversely, apparently there is a kind of
responsibility that these weak people are fleeing from but should not be
fleeing from.[40] What would it mean not to devolve
oneself into something else?
A remarkable
passage from The Gay Science (1882–87) may be taken to paint
a vivid picture of precisely what it would mean not to devolve oneself into
something else (GS 285). It addresses a “man of renunciation” or
of abnegation (Mensch der Entsagung) who is asked to renounce all
“resting places,” whether they be prayer or worship, wisdom or power,
guardians or love – anything in which to find “ultimate peace” or any
type of finality. Nietzsche does not specify what these resting places entail
and the passage is open to interpretation, but it may be read as the kind of
unburdening whereby a weight is shifted or abdicated from oneself to some
external authority. The renunciation of “avengers” and “improvers” certainly
suggests some form of displacement of all worldly judgement and justification
that we saw in Heraclitus and in Human, All too Human. Rather
than using the concept abwälzen, Nietzsche presents an image of
it in the form of a lake that one day refused to flow off (abzufließen),
that formed a dam and has been rising higher ever since (the section is
titled Excelsior!). The section ends as follows: “Perhaps this
very renunciation will lend us the strength to bear renunciation; perhaps man
will rise ever higher when he no longer flows off into a god
[vielleicht wird der Mensch von da an immer höher steigen, wo er nicht
mehr in einen Gott ausfliesst]” (GS 285). This reflects two
important thoughts.
尼采在《快樂的科學》（1882-1887）中的一段引人注目的文字或許可以生動地描繪出「不將自己推卸成他物」的意涵（GS 285）。他針對一位「放棄的人」（Mensch der Entsagung）進行了探討，要求他放棄一切的「安息之地」，無論是祈禱、崇拜、智慧或力量、守護者或愛情——任何尋求「終極安寧」或某種終結的東西。尼采並未明確指出這些安息之地的具體內容，但這段話可以解釋為一種負擔的卸下，即將重擔或責任轉移或推卸給某種外部權威的過程。這裡所放棄的「復仇者」和「改善者」暗示了一種世俗審判和正當性的轉移，這種轉移我們在赫拉克利特和《人性，太人性》中已經看見過。尼采沒有使用「推卸」的概念，而是以一個湖泊的形象來呈現：有一天，這個湖拒絕繼續流走（abzufließen），築起了一道堤壩，從此不斷上升（這一段被命名為「更高！Excelsior!」）。這一節的結尾寫道：「也許正是這種放棄會賦予我們承受放棄的力量；也許人類將不斷上升，從此不再流逝於神中」（GS 285）。這反映了兩個重要的思想。
First, for the
later Nietzsche, Heraclitus can no longer furnish the model of strength. To
be sure, what guides Nietzsche’s critique up to Twilight of the Idols is
still the Heraclitean insight that man is judged only on the basis of his own
fictional creations (“We have invented the concept ‘purpose’: in
reality, purpose is lacking,” TI, Errors 8) and that in reality
man is part of the whole which cannot itself be judged:
You are
necessary, a piece of fate, you belong to the whole, you are in
the whole – there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, condemn
our being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, condemning the
whole … But there is nothing except for the whole! (TI,
Errors 8)
Man ist nothwendig, man ist ein Stück
Verhängniss, man gehört zum Ganzen, man ist im Ganzen, – es
giebt Nichts, was unser Sein richten, messen, vergleichen, verurtheilen
könnte, denn das hiesse das Ganze richten, messen, vergleichen,
verurtheilen … Aber es giebt Nichts ausser
dem Ganzen![41]
同上
Since judgement
arises only in man’s misconceptions, Nietzsche still presents as his teaching
the restoration of Heraclitus’ “innocence of becoming” through the complete
renunciation of all responsibility. The difference is, however, that there is
so much more to renounce for modern Europeans than for the ancient Greek.
Christian morality, with all its mechanisms of reassurance, has been
incorporated so much longer. Precisely for that reason, there is now the
opportunity for an unprecedented build-up of strength:[42] “No
one yet has had the strength!” (GS 285) – and that includes Heraclitus.
The same is true for the doctrine of irresponsibility: it requires not just
the strength to see divine justice and cosmic harmony in the experience of
becoming, but rather the strength to renounce all those purposes,
responsibilities, goals, causes, free will, etc. that have been incorporated
over centuries into European (Christian) culture. At the time of Twilight
of the Idols, it has become crystal clear to Nietzsche what today stands
in the way of Heraclitean wisdom. It is the ultimate idol,[43] God
himself, as a false criterion for the judgement of the whole: “The concept
‘God’ has hitherto been the greatest objection to
existence … We repudiate God, we repudiate responsibility in God [Wir
leugnen Gott, wir leugnen die Verantwortlichkeit in Gott]” (TI, Errors
8). Ultimately, the resting-place given by Christianity is the belief in some
responsible entity (whether God or history or society or oneself) in which to
offload oneself or in which to flow off like the lake. This means that it is
not enough to simply avoid making the great errors, it is a matter of
harnessing the tension that comes from exposing and fighting against them.
The ideal that Nietzsche sketches at GS 285 is to not offload or devolve in
such a way, but that of an ever-building tension. Or as he writes a bit
further on: “a continual sense of ascending stairs and at the same time of
resting on clouds [ein beständiges Wie-auf-Treppen-steigen und zugleich
Wie-auf-Wolken-ruhen]” (GS 288).
The second
thought that can be taken from this reading in GS 285 is that such
renunciation of resting-places, such a refusal to offload oneself, could
itself be interpreted as a way of taking responsibility, but a responsibility
of a very different order. It would be consistent with the aforementioned
affirmative use of responsibility we find later in Beyond Good and
Evil and Twilight of the Idols. But one can also find
such formulations in the Nachlass, for example at Nachlass 1887,
9[43], KSA 12.356. There, nihilism is said to consist not in moral
responsibility (as one might think) but in the abdication of responsibility:
“one wants to abdicate responsibility (– one would
accept fatalism) [man möchte die
Verantwortung abwälzen (– man würde den Fatalism acceptiren)].”
Is that not precisely what TI, Errors 8 teaches us? But here the acceptance
of fatalism and renunciation of responsibility are symptoms of the greatest
weakness. They constitute the attempt to avoid “willing;” that is to say: to
avoid “willing a goal [das Wollen eines Zieles]” or to avoid
“the risk of giving oneself a goal [das Risico, sich selbst ein Ziel zu
geben].” The nihilistic question “for what? [Wozu?]” arises only
out of the common assumption that some goal or purpose must be found
somewhere, the assumption that such a goal or purpose is externally posited,
given or demanded. One desires such given commands or purposes “merely to
avoid having to will [nur um nicht wollen zu
müssen],” to not have to risk “having to posit the ‘what-for’ for oneself
[sich selbst das „Wozu“ setzen zu müssen].”[44]
「第二個可以從《歡愉的科學》第285節中讀取的思路是：這種放棄依託之處、這種拒絕將自身負擔轉移的行為，本身可以被解釋為一種責任的承擔，但這是一種完全不同層次的責任。這與我們在《超越善惡》和《偶像的黃昏》中發現的積極責任用法是一致的。此外，我們也可以在手稿中找到類似的表述，例如在1887年的手稿（Nachlass 1887, 9[43], KSA 12.356）中，虛無主義被認為並不體現在道德責任上（如同人們可能以為的那樣），而是表現為責任的退讓：『人們希望卸下責任（——人們會接受宿命論）[man möchte die Verantwortung
abwälzen (– man würde den Fatalism acceptiren)]。』這不正是《偶像的黃昏·錯誤》第8節教導我們的嗎？但在這裡，接受宿命論和放棄責任被視為極度的軟弱的表現，它們構成了一種試圖逃避『意志』的企圖；也就是說，逃避『賦予自身目標的風險』[das Risico, sich selbst ein Ziel zu geben]。虛無主義的問題——『為了什麼？[Wozu?]』——正是出自一個普遍的假設，即某種目標或目的必須在某處被發現或給定的假設，以及這樣一個外在的命令或目標是給定的、要求的。人們渴望這些給定的命令或目的『僅僅是為了避免必須意志[um nicht wollen zu müssen]』，為了避免不得不『自己設定「為什麼」[sich selbst
das „Wozu“ setzen zu müssen]。』[44]
After following
the connotations of abwälzen we can see how the doctrine of
irresponsibility is now complicated in two ways: (1) there is also a weak
will to irresponsibility, and this weak will is (2) an attempt to flee from a
strong (affirmative, higher) responsibility. That a more affirmative
responsibility is paradoxically implicit in these later formulations of the
doctrine of complete irresponsibility, comes out especially in TI, Errors 8,
if we approach that text from a performative perspective. Let me make two
remarks on this point.
First, we might
ask whether the text of TI, Errors 8 does not – in the name of a
rejection of all judgement – performatively still precisely pass
judgement on judgement? Nietzsche is well aware of this problem that he calls
a problem of “desirability [Wünschbarkeit]”, of “every ‘thus it should
be, but it is not’”:
But when we say
this, we do what we renounce; the standpoint of desirability, of playing
judge without authority, is comprehended in the character of the movement of
things (Nachlass 1886/87, 7[62], KSA 12.316).
Aber, indem wir dies sagen, thun wir das, was
wir tadeln; der Standpunkt der Wünschbarkeit, des unbefugten Richterspielens gehört
mit in den Charakter des Gangs der Dinge.
同上
Nietzsche does
not solve this problem, but he does respond to it: this line of thinking
would end up declaring desirability itself to be unavoidable, to be the basic
phenomenon: “is desirability perhaps the driving force itself? Is it –
deus?” But this would be saying that “everything” is ultimately desirability,
and Nietzsche’s response is precisely:
It seems
important to me to get rid of the all, of unity, of some
power, some unconditioned; it would be impossible to avoid taking it as the
highest instance and baptizing it God. One must shatter the all; unlearn the
respect for the all; what we have given away to the unknown and the whole
must be taken back for the closest, for what is ours (Nachlass 1886/87,
7[62], KSA 12.316, my translation).
Es scheint mir wichtig, daß
man das All, die Einheit los wird, irgend eine Kraft, ein
Unbedingtes; man würde nicht umhin können, es als höchste Instanz zu nehmen
und Gott zu taufen. Man mu<ß> das All zersplittern; den Respekt vor dem
All verlernen; das, was wir dem Unbekannten <und> Ganzen gegeben haben,
zurücknehmen für das Nächste, Unsre.
同上
Is this
possible? This exhortation to destroy “the all” (zersplittern:
to shatter or to fragment the whole) does not, as Maurice Blanchot suggests,[45] undermine
the fatalism in TI, Errors 8 that declares there is “nothing except for the
whole,” but it is in fact in line with Nietzsche’s declaration in Twilight
of the Idols “that the nature of being [die Art des Seins]
may not be traced back to a causa prima, that the world is neither a unity of
sensation nor of ‘mind’ [dass die Welt weder als Sensorium, noch als
„Geist“ eine Einheit ist] – this alone is the great
liberation” (TI, Errors 8, translation amended).
這是可能的嗎？這種破壞「一切」的呼籲（「zersplittern」：打碎或分裂整體），並沒有像莫里斯·布朗肖所建議的那樣，[45] 破壞《偶像的黃昏·錯誤》第8節中宣稱「除了整體之外什麼都沒有」的宿命論，反而與尼采在《偶像的黃昏》中宣告的觀點一致，即「存在的本性[die Art des Seins] 不能被追溯至一個最初的因；世界既不是一個感覺的統一體，也不是一個『精神』的統一體[dass die Welt weder als Sensorium, noch als „Geist“ eine Einheit
ist]——這才是真正的解放。」（《偶像的黃昏·錯誤》第8節，經修訂的翻譯）
Second, perhaps
the biggest textual difference between Twilight of the Idols and
the early and middle works is that in Twilight of the Idols the
doctrine is finally posited explicitly as “our doctrine.”[46] The
speculation about what might follow from the incorporation of the doctrine
in Human, All too Human is replaced by a much more direct
involvement, explicitly taking up the perspective of the teacher. With that,
through this text, Nietzsche performatively takes upon himself the
responsibility for the future of mankind.[47] How
could “complete irresponsibility” be taught, if not out of such a sense of
responsibility? If irresponsibility were absolute, why teach at all? This
problem is reflected especially in the final sentence of the passage: “We
repudiate God, we repudiate responsibility in God: only with that do
we redeem the world. –” Recall that it was a fundamental characteristic
of Heraclitus’ pride that he was not interested in helping or redeeming
anyone. But now, complete irresponsibility is explicitly no longer an end in
itself, but it is placed in the service of the redemption of the world. These
questions bring us back to the question of what kind of freedom is involved
in the relief, the Erleichterung, of the renunciation of all
judgement and guilt. How to posit for oneself a “for what? [Wozu]” if
this cannot follow the model of individual autonomy rejected in TI, Errors 8?
What form of self-legislation is involved here? In Human, All too
Human, the doctrine of irresponsibility only implicitly hinted at a new,
affirmative responsibility. But in Twilight of the Idols, this
paradox is radicalized into a most unexpected result: a critique of
irresponsible freedom, in the name of freedom as a capacity for
responsibility. There, what passes for freedom is an “irresponsible” life that
lives only for today: “one lives for today, one lives at great speed –
one lives very irresponsibly: and precisely this is called ‘freedom’” (TI,
Skirmishes 39). Instead: “For what is freedom! That we have the will to
self-accountability [Dass man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat]”
(TI, Skirmishes 39).
第二，或許《偶像的黃昏》與尼采早期及中期著作之間最大的文本差異在於，《偶像的黃昏》中，這一教義終於被明確地闡述為「我們的教義」[46]。《人性，太人性》中對於教義的納入可能帶來的後果的推測，被一種更直接的介入取代，明確地採取了教師的視角。由此，透過這一文本，尼采以表演的方式承擔了對人類未來的責任。[47] 如果「完全的無責任」是真正的終極目標，那麼為什麼還要去教導呢？如果無責任是絕對的，那為何要進行教導？這一問題尤其體現在該段落的最後一句話：「我們否定上帝，否定上帝的責任：唯有如此，我們才能救贖世界。——」回想一下，赫拉克利特的驕傲的一個基本特徵在於，他並不熱衷於幫助或救贖他人。但如今，完全的無責任明確地不再是其本身的目的，而是被置於救贖世界的服務之中。這些問題將我們帶回到對所有判斷和罪責的放棄所帶來的解脫（Erleichterung）中涉及的自由問題。如果這種「為什麼？[Wozu]」無法遵循《偶像的黃昏·錯誤》第8節中所拒斥的個人自主模式，那麼它要如何為自己建立一種形式的自我立法呢？在《人性，太人性》中，無責任的教義僅暗示了一種新的、肯定性的責任。但在《偶像的黃昏》中，這一悖論被激進地推向了一個最為出人意料的結果：對不負責任的自由的批判，這是一種以責任能力名義進行的自由批判。在那裡，自由被視為「今天而活，一味追求速度，過著非常不負責任的生活——而這恰恰被稱為『自由』」（《偶像的黃昏·爭鬥》第39節）。相反地，「什麼是自由！自由即我們有意願為自己負責[Dass man den Willen zur Selbstverantwortlichkeit hat]」（《偶像的黃昏·爭鬥》第39節）。
What grounds
the responsibility to redeem the world? And how does it relate to the free
will to self-responsibility? Answering these questions requires a closer look
at the development of Nietzsche’s more affirmative notion of a “higher” or
“greater” responsibility, and this is a task that must be left for another
time. In any case, it cannot be done without taking Nietzsche’s own
development into account: how he finds that for himself a more rudimentary
model of aimless freedom (as negatively free from the constraints of the old
morality) developed into a more sophisticated freedom as finding oneself in
one’s task,[48] and how with that also the model of
the strong individual shifts. Goethe exemplifies this richer model. To be
sure, we still clearly recognize the Heraclitean rejection of the partial in
favor of a fatalist affirmation of the whole:
Such a
spirit who has become free stands with joyful and trusting
fatalism in the midst of the universe, in the belief that
only what is isolated is to be shunned, and that in the whole, everything is
redeemed and affirmed – he no longer negates … But such
a belief is the highest of all possible beliefs: I have baptized it with the
name of Dionysus. – (TI, Skirmishes 49)
Ein solcher freigewordner Geist steht
mit einem freudigen und vertrauenden Fatalismus mitten im All,
im Glauben, dass nur das Einzelne verwerflich ist, dass im Ganzen sich
Alles erlöst und bejaht – er verneint nicht mehr … Aber
ein solcher Glaube ist der höchste aller möglichen Glauben: ich habe ihn auf
den Namen des Dionysos getauft. –
同上
But where
Heraclitus’ virtue was to be unmixed and cut from a single cloth, Goethe
represents the excelsior-model: a cultivation of a maximum inner
complexity and tension. Such an individual is certainly irresponsible, but
also assumes responsibility in the sense of the refusal to flow out. And the
doctrine of complete irresponsibility is now taught by Nietzsche out of an
exhortation to redeem the world, while the early Nietzsche still admired
Heraclitus for rejecting just such a desire for redemption.
Tracing the
idea of complete irresponsibility throughout Nietzsche’s development has
yielded different, at times mutually exclusive senses of irresponsibility.
From a developmental standpoint, we started with Nietzsche’s admiration of
Heraclitus as the embodiment of an innocence that has become unthinkable in
his contemporary Europe. Nietzsche listens in Heraclitus for what the modern
European ear can no longer hear. What is irrefutable in him is not the
doctrine of the innocence of becoming as such, but the type of human capable
of endorsing it: near divine intuition, the strength to see in strife itself
justice and harmony, and the pride and capacity for solitude to wed his
divine intuition to the most counter-intuitive possibility. But in his
refusal to take shelter in stability from the abyssal truth of becoming, we
also find the latent contours of what Nietzsche will later identify as a
“higher” responsibility. In Human, All too Human, Nietzsche
speculates how a type of man capable of Heraclitus’ insight into humanity’s
complete necessity and irresponsibility could ever develop out of a modern
European who has now so thoroughly incorporated the need for praise and blame
that life seems to have become unthinkable and unlivable without it.
Consistent with Human, All too Human’s critique of convictions as
such, actually teaching the doctrine of irresponsibility is not the main
point of the passages. Instead, Nietzsche experiments with complete
irresponsibility as a conviction by speculatively envisioning man’s
liberation from responsibility as the result of its hypothetical future
incorporation. In the later works, Nietzsche more explicitly acknowledges
this paradoxical responsibility involved in the thought of complete
irresponsibility, making his reflexive entanglement with the problem of
irresponsibility clear to himself: he denied all purposes only to pursue his
own purposes, pertaining to nothing less than the future of mankind. Thus,
in Twilight of the Idols, we see Nietzsche finally explicitly
appropriating complete irresponsibility as “our teaching,” as
well as acknowledging that to teach that doctrine means assuming
responsibility for the redemption of the world. That Heraclitus rejected
precisely such desire had constituted an important reason for the early
Nietzsche’s admiration of him. Yet in the early Nietzsche’s conviction of the
“irrefutability” and thus the contemporary relevance of at least Heraclitus’
“personality” one can see the explicit later responsibility for the future of
mankind as latently present in Nietzsche’s early concern for the fate of
culture. Finally, we have seen that the later doctrine of complete
irresponsibility also entails a critique of the “irresponsible” life of
modernity that shies away from positing a goal for itself; abdicating this
higher responsibility to will by seeking refuge in externally given goals and
offloading one’s existence into a purpose.
What do these
changes in Nietzsche’s development tell us about the meaning of
irresponsibility? I started by pointing out the ambiguities involved in the
grammatical seduction of treating complete irresponsibility solely as a
counter-thesis to responsibility. It would be short-sighted to concluded that
Nietzsche taught that there simply “are no” responsibilities. Nor is the
point to consider the thought of complete irresponsibility refuted because it
is taught out of some sense of responsibility and thus contradicts itself.
Karl Jaspers famously
wrote that no interpretation of Nietzsche is sufficient if it does not seek
out contradictions in order to keep the tension of different possibilities
alive.[49] We would then have to ask how to understand
the contradiction between the doctrine of complete irresponsibility and
Nietzsche’s critiques of irresponsibility. One common way to reconcile such
contradictions, and to respond to the famous question of the unity of
Nietzsche’s fragmentary writing, is by distinguishing different senses of the
concept at hand. Since such commentary is geared towards the reconciliation
of contradictions, it often has the specifically binary form of identifying a
“positive” and a “negative” irresponsibility; an irresponsibility that
Nietzsche “endorsed” and a different one that he “criticized.”[50] Although
such expressions do occur in Nietzsche’s texts and have their place in
commentary, I see three main shortcomings in this approach.
The first
problem is that Nietzsche’s texts, to put it very plainly, most often are
just not like that. Rarely are Nietzsche’s criticisms and affirmations so
unequivocal. Understanding the contradictions in Nietzsche’s work has often
been interpreted as the challenge to reconcile one passage or fragment with
another. This then leads to the famous question of the unity of Nietzsche’s
fragmentary writing. Taking a cue from Blanchot, one could thus say that the
challenge in the famous question of Nietzsche’s fragmentary writing is not
that of reconciling one passage with another that would contradict it, but of
reading the same passage in different senses simultaneously.[51] It
is not only that Nietzsche in fact never wrote a text that unequivocally or
definitively distinguishes a bad, criticized form of irresponsibility from a
good, affirmed one. It is that he often expends extra effort to complicate
such distinctions. Nietzsche’s specific type of Umdeutung does
not just push concepts into new and uncharted territory; retaining the old
names as well as deliberately mixing “old” and “new” levels is a crucial part
of that practice. The identification of “good and bad” senses of a concept in
these texts is an imposition that cannot but reduce the ways in which
Nietzsche deliberately textually complicates the possibility of
distinguishing such contradictory senses. Part of that has to do with
Nietzsche’s specific suspicion of the philosophical tradition of which he
shows in many different ways that it is animated by the very things it
pretends to be able to keep at bay (the intellectual by the affects, the good
by the bad, etc.).
But the
equivocality of Nietzsche’s concepts, the fact that they do not fit neatly
into the binary distinction of the positive from the negative, does not
deliver them over to an entirely open, more or less contingent, more or less
determinable plurality of senses. This brings me to the second problem. In a
codification loosely inspired by Jacques Derrida’s interpretive strategy,[52] I
suggested at the start of this text that, more than the binary symmetry of
contradictions, Nietzsche’s affirmations of irresponsibility seem always to
entail not two but three senses or connotations: (1) a break with given
responsibilities; (2) the absence of given responsibilities; and (3) what is
not determinable through the opposition of responsibility and
irresponsibility as either undecidable or paradoxical (if one wishes to label
these ambiguities of the negation, one could perhaps say that the
irresponsible can either be the anti-responsible, the unresponsible or the
quasi-responsible). When Heraclitus chalked up all responsibility to mere
human shortsightedness, his irresponsibility simultaneously broke with
prevailing responsibility, denied any given standards for responsibility, and
he did so out of a sense of responsibility and by seeing the world through
the undecidably (ir)responsible “eye of the artist.” Paradoxically, the
“proud-lonely truth-finder” was irresponsibility incarnate as proud-lonely,
and was responsible as truth-finder in his refusal to take shelter in
stability from the abyssal truth of becoming. In Human, All too Human,
complete irresponsibility became the anti-responsible counter-doctrine as
well as a denial of all responsibility, the incorporation of which would
result in an experimental (and indeed unresolved) form of great liberation
that Nietzsche paradoxically envisions out of a sense of responsibility for
the fate of humankind. This implicit paradox then became explicit in Twilight
of the Idols, which is at once a forceful anti-responsible critique of
responsibility as resulting from the instinct for punishment, a complete
affirmation of unresponsibility by positing the denial of all purposes as “our doctrine,”
as well as an explicitly paradoxical advocation of irresponsibility out of
the responsibility for the redemption of the world.
This rough
threefold codification is not meant to be exhaustive, but it should rather
serve to emphasize that all of these senses belong to irresponsibility and
that irresponsibility cannot be reduced to any one of them. One cannot say
that one of them is the truer or better sense of irresponsibility. But why
could we still not say that, rather than having a “positive and negative”
sense, irresponsibility simply has this threefold conceptual character? This
brings me to the third problem. One reason is that the third sense is
inherently experimental and therefore open. But more importantly, it is
because the problem of Nietzsche’s equivocality does not just reflect the
general logics of Umdeutung, but it performatively reflects his
very (ir)responsibility. In the will to fixate such distinctions one can
recognize the very will to Verantwortung that goes against
the way Nietzsche textually assumes his (responsibility for) “complete
irresponsibility.” Nietzsche’s texts deliberately shun the impulse to be held
to account, to provide legitimization, to seek shelter in justification or
exemption. In this way, in their thoroughgoing defiance, Nietzsche’s texts
also performatively embody the complete irresponsibility they espouse.
When Richard
Wisser published his text on Nietzsche’s doctrine of complete
irresponsibility in 1972, the main impetus of his research was still the question
to what extent Nietzsche could be held “responsible” for the horrors of
Nazism.[53] We owe to the likes of Wisser (and his
mentor Karl Jaspers) that the reductive readings involved in that idea are
now well known, and Nietzsche’s relation to Nazism is no longer our most
pressing question in engaging with Nietzsche today. Wisser showed that
nothing of the horrors of Nazism can be attributed to Nietzsche because
Nietzsche’s insistence on complete irresponsibility was neither simply
destructive, nor did it ever turn into a new, positive doctrine of
responsibility. But if Nietzsche is never responsible on those grounds, can
he ever be fully exculpated? Does there not belong an essentially excessive,
dangerous character to a thinking of complete irresponsibility? Is not
something essential about Nietzsche’s writing lost if his domestication were
truly complete?
當 Richard Wisser 在 1972 年發表關於尼采「完全不負責任」教義的文本時，他的研究主要動機依然是探討尼采在多大程度上應對納粹主義的恐怖負責。[53] 我們要感謝像 Wisser 及其導師 Karl Jaspers 這樣的學者，因為他們揭示了將尼采的思想簡化解讀為與納粹主義聯繫在一起的錯誤方式已經廣為人知。如今，尼采與納粹主義之間的關係不再是我們在探討尼采時的最緊迫問題。Wisser 表示，納粹主義的恐怖不能歸咎於尼采，因為尼采對「完全不負責任」的堅持既不單純具有破壞性，也未曾轉變成一種新的、積極的責任教義。然而，如果尼采在這方面不需負責，他是否真的能完全被無罪釋放？完全不負責任的思想難道沒有某種本質上過度且危險的特質嗎？如果尼采的思想真的完全被馴化，是否會失去某些本質的東西呢？
Pfeuffer has
done Nietzsche even more justice by showing how Nietzsche did come to
recognize (not positively but paradoxically) in the very idea of complete
irresponsibility his own affirmative responsibility, which we have recognized
latently in the model of the artist and explicitly in Nietzsche’s concern for
the fate of mankind. This responsibility can be likened to the one Derrida
described when characterizing literature’s right to say anything. For
Derrida, the literary writer must “demand a certain irresponsibility”: “this
duty of irresponsibility, of refusing to reply for one’s thoughts or writing
to constituted powers, is perhaps the highest form of responsibility.”[54] Such
is also the freedom in Nietzsche’s writing that allowed Pfeuffer to
illuminate the most improbable connection: between Nietzsche and Emmanuel
Levinas. For Pfeuffer, their shared “responsibility for irresponsibility”
resides in a transformed relation to the other that exceeds the sphere of all
worldly judgement, resentment and the spirit of revenge: “Responsibility for
the other, as Nietzsche and Levinas think it, exists exactly where, according
to general ethical guidelines, nothing points to it.” It is “not
comprehensible by third parties and eludes any evaluation.”[55] But
when Pfeuffer proceeds to declare this Nietzsche’s “real” or “proper [eigentliche]”
responsibility,[56] the question arises: is something
of the will to Verantwortung still active in this gesture?
Is this a justification? Does it protect the right kind of responsibility
from the wrong ones? It would be easy to show that declaring Nietzsche
irresponsible in the sense of promoting destructive recklessness is entirely
reductive.[57] But that holds also for a reading that
wants to exculpate Nietzsche from it.
Perhaps
Pfeuffer’s gesture serves to curb the risk on the part of the reader. Because
we will recall that Pfeuffer rightly pointed out that what Nietzsche’s
doctrine of irresponsibility does most fundamentally is not to teach but to
disturb and irritate. Preventing the reader “from legitimizing [their] own
deeds through it,” its function lies in its “potential for self-examination.”[58] But
the results of such examination can never be guaranteed; there are no
safeguards for what is triggered by an irritation; a disturbance consists
precisely in providing no assurances and safeguards. It belongs to
Nietzsche’s writings (and to his paradoxical responsibility for complete
irresponsibility) that he takes that risk deliberately, exploiting and
putting into play a multiplicity of senses he could not oversee or control,
affirming the limits of authorial authority.
As for
Nietzsche himself, he made this abundantly clear especially in the period
following that “dangerous book,”[59]Beyond Good
and Evil – a designation that delighted Nietzsche so much that he
famously declared himself dynamite (EH, Destiny 1). When conceived as a
disturbance, as it should be, we can agree with Jaspers that at the heart of
Nietzsche’s work, and at the center of the different senses of
irresponsibility, we find “not a concept, a world-view, or a system;” not so
much a “basic doctrine,” but a “basic drive” (not Grundlehre,
but Grundantrieb).[60] What constitutes
this animating drive – this exigency, as Blanchot calls it – may be
given different names. Nietzsche himself has called it righteousness or
justice (Gerechtigkeit), love, intellectual honesty (Redlichkeit)
and courage (Tapferkeit). But a favorite among those names is
also Verwegenheit, that is, an audacity that always has an
element of bold courageous recklessness. Rather than worry whether his
thought – including that of complete irresponsibility – might be
misunderstood as dangerous, he worried that he might be understood; i. e.:
domesticated, without taking into account the radicality of his thought. He
accordingly appropriated bold and reckless irresponsibility as a fundamental
characterization of his thought. By experimentally pushing the concept of
(ir)responsibility into new and unforeseen directions in the third of the
three senses of irresponsibility mentioned above, and especially in the
refusal to reduce this multiplicity of senses and provide the reader with
reassurances, Nietzsche’s experimental writing textually embodies his call to
audacious knowledge.
Much of the
work for this article was done in the context of the research project Nietzsche –
Experiment en Nihilisme, carried out at Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen
between 2018 and 2021. The author is grateful to the supervisors of that
project, Prof. Gert-Jan van der Heiden and Prof. em. Paul van Tongeren, and
to the Laura Foundation for their generous sponsorship and initiation of the
project. Special thanks also go to Aukje van Rooden and to the participants
in the Leiden Nietzsche Seminar and the seminar of the Leiden Centre for
Continental Philosophy for their critical comments on early versions of this
article.
本文章的大部分工作是於2018年至2021年間，在奈梅亨拉德堡德大學（Radboud Universiteit）進行的研究項目「尼采——虛無主義中的實驗」的背景下完成的。作者對該項目指導教授 Gert-Jan van der Heiden 和名譽教授 Paul van
Tongeren 表示感謝，並感謝 Laura 基金會慷慨的資助和對該項目的啟動。特別感謝 Aukje van Rooden 以及參與萊頓尼采研討會和萊頓大陸哲學中心研討會的成員們，他們對本文早期版本的批判性評論提供了重要幫助。
