This series of posts will be given over to considering the possibility that Nietzsche is both realist and relativist (or subjectivist) about value. (Think "New Shimmer.")
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In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche makes a well-known comparison between what he calls "creating values" and the act of legislating (references hereinafter are to section numbers from BGE):
It's quite natural to construe this account of value creation (as Brian Leiter does) as a sort of subjectivist (or perhaps noncognitivist) "projectionism," in which the valuer imbues the objects of his valuing with a quasi-normative force that flows in some way from the manner of his act of valuation. [1] However, as with most matters, it's likely that Nietzsche was of (at least) two minds about the ontological nature of values and our "creation" of them. And indeed immediately after comparing value creation to legislation as excerpted above, Nietzsche goes on to characterize the philosopher's task (again, "creating" values) as one of discovery and exploration:
By applying the knife vivisectionally to the chest of the very virtues of their time, [philosophers] betrayed what was their own secret: to know [wissen] of a new greatness of man, of a new untrodden way to his enchantment. (212)
This analogy imparts a decidedly realist cast to Nietzsche's account of value creation: To discover
something is to discern or recognize something that was there before
the discovery. The viscera were there before the knife cut through to expose them; the unexplored terrain was there before it was trodden upon.
Taking the two passages together, then, we might say that
Nietzsche sees something fundamentally creative about certain types of
discovery; or (conversely) that creative activity involves, or is even constituted by, certain types of discovery. [2] To paraphrase, Nietzsche's "creating" is discovering.
Of course Nietzsche wants to distinguish properly philosophical discovery from the lesser form of discovery engaged in by "scientific men" [wissenschaftliche Menschen], whose project Nietzsche disparages as a philosophical "mishmash," and less than "whole." (204) What's missing from the scientific picture, according to Nietzsche? In the main, an interest in the personal:
[A]mong
scholars who are really scientific men...you may really find something
like a drive for knowledge, some small, independent clockwork that,
once well wound, works on vigorously without any essential
participation from all the other drives of the scholar. The real
"interests" of the scholar therefore lie usually somewhere else....
Indeed, it is almost a matter of total indifference whether his little
machine is placed at this or that spot in science...: it does not characterize
him that he becomes this or that [specialist]. In the philosopher,
conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above
all, his morality bears...witness to who he is--that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other. (6)
In other words, the scientist is too impersonal, to disinterested--in a word, too "objective." (See also BGE 207.) Elsewhere, Nietzsche asks rhetorically, "What was on the mind of that god who counseled: 'Know thyself!' Did he mean: 'Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!'" (80) For by Nietzsche's lights it is just such restricted notions of objectivity that impair the ability to "know thyself" and (thus) develop any meaningful judgment "about life and the value of life...." (205) To be philosophically whole is to move beyond the hyper-narrowly focussed objectivity of the scientific expert, to integrate a more complete range of personal concerns, and to create, to discover, the values that suit this particular life.
(To be continued...)
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NOTES
1. For now I am going to set aside possible objections to this account based on its tacit, semi-circular appeal to the normative legitimacy of commanders and legislators. Suffice it for now to note that military commands and legislatively enacted laws derive their normative force not only from the rank power of those that issue them, but from an institutional framework that imparts to them a perceived legitimacy. If Nietzsche's account is to be read as systematically nonrealist, this residue of normativity has to be suitably eliminated.
2 Indeed, Nietzsche's remark (in 211)-- "[i]hr "Erkennen" ist Schaffen, ihr Schaffen ist eine Gesetzgebung" -- arguably adumbrates this conceptual relationship. Although Leiter (with Kaufmann) translates the nominalized 'erkennen'
as 'knowing', it might be better translated here as 'recognizing', 'discerning' or
'perceiving'.
