Nietzsche and the Subject of Knowledge
Aphorisms from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil #15
I would like to continue commenting on aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil (1886). We continue reading the first chapter of this book: “Prejudices of Philosophers.”
As a reminder, you can find the previous posts on the following page: Nietzsche.
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds — namely, that a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” ONE thinks; but that this “one” is precisely the famous old “ego,” is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “one thinks” — even the “one” contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula — “To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently”… It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating “power,” the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates — the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this “earth-residuum,” and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician’s point of view, to get along without the little “one” (to which the worthy old “ego” has refined itself). (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern, The Project Gutenberg, 2003)
This passage of Nietzsche questions the assumption that thoughts must belong to a subject. More precisely, he draws attention to how grammar itself — our inherited linguistic habits — encourages us to see “thinking” (Denken) as an action presupposing an agent: an “I” (Ich) who thinks.
For Nietzsche, however, this is not a fact, but rather a kind of prejudice. The idea that the subject grounds the predicate is something we project onto experience rather than something derived from it.
This criticism targets a type of logical superstition (Aberglauben) that the structure of our sentences reflects the structure of reality. Even the phrase “one thinks” implies the existence of an agent, no matter how anonymous. But what if thinking occurs without such a subject? What if the act of thinking cannot be attributed to an ego?
In this way, Nietzsche rejects the metaphysical tradition, from Aristotle’s concept of substance (οὐσία) to Descartes’s “cogito.” In both cases, thought is based on a stable self.
Nietzsche’s analogy to atomism illustrates this point: just as early physicists posited a hidden substance — the atom — to explain motion, philosophers posited a thinker behind thought. However, physics learned to do without its “earth-residuum.”
Perhaps philosophy can also do without its dependency on the “I.”
To be continued…
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