Nietzsche, Genealogy, History

Philosophy

Foucault, Michel. 1977. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History." In Language, Counter-Memory, □ Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by D. F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell □ University Press. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History 1. Genealogy is gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and re-copied many times. On this basis, it is obvious that Paul Ree1 was wrong to follow the English tendency in describing the history of morality in terms of a linear development-in reducing its entire history and genesis to an exclusive concern for utility. He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direc- tion, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ignored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, strug- gles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history-in sentiments, love, conscience, inThis essay first appeared in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), pp. 145-72. Along with "Réponse au cercle d'épistémologie, " which became the introductory chapter of The Archaeology of Knowledge, this essay represents Foucault's attempt to explain his relationship to those sources which are fundamental to his development. Its importance, in terms of understanding Foucault's objectives, cannot be exaggerated. It appears here by permission of Presses Universitaires de France. 1. See Nietzsche's Preface to The Genealogy of Morals, 4, 7- Ed. 140 COUNTER-MEMORY stincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. Finally, genealogy must define even those instances where they are absent, the moment when they remained unrealized (Plato, at Syracuse, did not become Mohammed). Genealogy, consequently, requires patience and a knowledge of details and it depends on a vast accumulation of source ma- terial. Its "cyclopean monuments"2 are constructed from "discreet and apparently insignificant truths and according to a rigorous method"; they cannot be the product of 'large and well-meaning errors."3 In short, genealogy demands relentless erudition. Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and pro- found gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the metahistorical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite tele- ologies. it opposes itself to the search for "origins." 2. In Nietzsche, we find two uses of the word Ursprung. The first is unstressed, and it is found alternately with other terms such as Entstehung, Herkunft, Abkunft, Geburt. In The Gene- alogy of Morals, for example, Entstehung or Ursprung serve equally well to denote the origin of duty or guilty conscience;4 and in the discussion of logic or knowledge in The Gay Science, their origin is indiscriminately referred to as Ursprung, Entste- hung, or Herkunft.5 The other use of the word is stressed. On occasion, Nietzsche places the term in opposition to another: in the first paragraph of Human, All Too Human the miraculous origin (Wunder- ursprung) sought by metaphysics is set against the analyses of historical philosophy, which poses questions über Herkunft und Anfang. Ursprung is also used in an ironic and deceptive manner. In what, for instance, do we find the original basis (Ursprung) 2. The Gay Science, 7. 3. Human, All Too Human, 3. 4. The Genealogy, II, 6, 8. 5. The Gay Science, 110, 111, 300. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 141 of morality, a foundation sought after since Plato? "In detestable, narrowminded conclusions. Pudenda origo."e Or in a related context, where should we seek the origin of religion (Ursprung), which Schopenhauer located in a particular metaphysical senti- ment of the hereafter? It belongs, very simply, to an invention (Erfindung), a sleight-of-hand, an artifice (Kunststück), a secret formula, in the rituals of black magic, in the work of the Schwarzkünstler.6 7 One of the most significant texts with respect to the use of all these terms and to the variations in the use of Ursprung is the preface to the Genealogy. At the beginning of the text, its objec- tive is defined as an examination of the origin of moral precon- ceptions and the term used is Herkunft. Then, Nietzsche pro- ceeds by retracing his personal involvement with this question: he recalls the period when he "calligraphied" philosophy, when he questioned if God must be held responsible for the origin of evil. He now finds this question amusing and properly char- acterizes it as a search for Ursprung (he will shortly use the same term to summarize Paul Ree's activity).8 Further on, he evokes the analyses that are characteristically Nietzschean and that began with Human, All Too Human. Here, he speaks of Herkunfthypothesen. This use of the word Herkunft cannot be arbitrary, since it serves to designate a number of texts, begin- ning with Human, All Too Human, which deal with the origin of morality, asceticism, justice, and punishment. And yet, the word used in all these works had been Ursprung.9 It would seem that at this point in the Genealogy Nietzsche wished to validate an opposition between Herkunft and Ursprung that did not exist ten years earlier. But immediately following the use of the two 6. The Dawn, 102 ("Shameful origin"-Ed.). 7. The Gay Science, 151, 353; and also The Dawn, 62; The Genealogy, I, 14; Twilight of the Idols, "The Great Errors," 7. (Schwarzkünstler is a black magician-Ed.) 8. Paul Ree's text was entitled Ursprung der Moralischen Empfindungen. 9. In Human, All Too Human, aphorism 92 was entitled Ursprung der Gerechtigkeit. 142 COUNTER-MEMORY terms in a specific sense, Nietzsche reverts, in the final paragraphs of the preface, to a usage that is neutral and equivalent.10 Why does Nietzsche challenge the pursuit of the origin (Ursprung), at least on those occasions when he is truly a genealogist? First, because it is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities, and their carefully protected identities, because this search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession. This search is directed to "that which was already there," the image of a primordial truth fully adequate to its na- ture, and it necessitates the removal of every mask to ultimately disclose an original identity. However, if the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics, it he listens tõTustbry7 he finds that there is "something altogetherdifferent'' behind things: noTa'tunéléss'ând ^sëntrâl secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms. Examining the history of reason, he learns that it was born in an altogether "reasonable" fashion- frôm~cHancë;1T"devotion to truthand the precision of scientific metKö3s"aföseTröm~fhe passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their spirit of competition-the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason.12 Further, genealogical analysis shows that the concept of liberty is an "invention of the ruling classes"13 and not fundamental to man's nature or at the root of his attach- ment to being and truth. What is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity.14 10. In the main body of The Genealogy, Ursprung and Herkunpt are used interchangeably in numerous instances (I, 2; II, 8, 11, 12, 16, 17). 11. The Dawn, 123. 12. Human, AM Too Human, 34. 13. The Wanderer and His Shadow, 9. 14. A wide range of key terms, found in The Archaeology of Knowledge, are related to this theme of "disparity": the concepts of series, discontinuity, division, and difference. If the same is found in NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 143 History also teaches how to laugh at the solemnities of the origin. The lofty origin is no more than "a metaphysical exten- sion which arises from the belief that things are most precious and essential at the moment of birth."* 15 We tend to think that this is the moment of their greatest perfection, when they emerged dazzling from the hands of a creator or in the shadowless light of a first morning. The origin always precedes the Fall. It comes before the body, before the world and time; it is associated with the gods, and its story is always sung as a theogony. But his- torical beginnings are lowly: not in the sense of modest or discreet like the steps of a dove, but derisive and ironic, capable of un- doing every infatuation. "We wished to awaken the feeling of man's sovereignty by showing his divine birth: this path is now forbidden, since a monkey stands at the entrance."16 Man originated with a grimace over his future development; and Zarathustra himself is plagued by a monkey who jumps along behind him, pulling on his coattails. The final postulate of the origin is linked to the first two in being the site of truth. From the vantage point of an absolute distance, free from the restraints of positive knowledge, the origin makes possible a field of knowledge whose function is to recover it, but always in a false recognition due to the excesses of its own speech. The origin lies at a place of inevitable loss, the point where the truth of things corresponded to a truthful discourse, the site of a fleeting articulation that discourse has obscured and finally lost. It is a new cruelty of history that compels a reversal of this relationship and the abandonment of "adolescent" quests: behind the always recent, avaricious, and measured truth, it posits the ancient proliferation of errors. It is now impossible to believe that "in the rending of the veil, truth the realm and movement of dialectics, the disparate presents itself as an "event" in the world of chance. For a more detailed discussion, see below, "Theatrum Philosophicum," pp. 180, 193-196-Ed. 15. The Wanderer and His Shadow, 3. 16. The Dawn, 49. 144 COUNTER-MEMORY remains truthful; we have lived long enough not to be taken in."1' Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.17 8 Moreover, the very question of truth, the right it appropriates to refute error and oppose itself to ap- pearance,19 20the maimer in which it developed (initially made available to the wise, then withdrawn by men of piety to an unattainable world where it was given the double role of con- solation and imperative, finally rejected as a useless notion, superfluous, and contradicted on all sides)-does this not form a history, the history of an error we call truth? Truth, and its original reign, has had a history within history from which we are barely emerging "in the time of the shortest shadow," when light no longer seems to flow from the depths of the sky or to arise from the first moments of the day.90 A genealogy of values, morality, asceticism, and knowledge willnever confuse itself with a quest for their "origins," will nevernêglëcFas inaccessible the vicissitudes of history. On the contrary, it~wiircultivate the "details and accidents that ac- company every beginning; it will be scrupulously attentive to their petty malice; it will await their emergence, once unmasked, as the face of the other. Wherever it is made to go, it will not be reticent-in "excavating the depths," in allowing time for these elements to escape from a labyrinth where no truth had ever detained them. The genealogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin, somewhat in the manner of the pious philosopher who needs a doctor to exorcise the shadow of his soul. He must be able to recognize the events of history, its jolts, its surprises, its unsteady victories and unpalatable defeats- 17. Nietzsche contra Wagner, p. 99. 18. The Gay Science, 265 and 110. 19. See "Theatrum Philosophicum" below, pp. 167-168, for a dis- cussion of the development of truth; and also "History of Systems of Thought: Summary of a Course at the Collège de France-19701971 ," pp. 202-204-Ed. 20. Twilight of the Idols, "How the world of truth becomes a fable." NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 145 the basis of all beginnings, atavisms, and heredities. Similarly, he must be able to diagnose the illnesses of the body, its condi- tions of weakness and strength, its breakdown and resistances, to be in a position to judge philosophical discourse. History is the concrete body of a development, with its moments of intensity, its lapses, its extended periods of feverish agitation, its fainting spells; and only a metaphysician would seek its soul in the dis- tant ideality of the origin. 3. Entstehung and Herkunft are more exact than Ursprung in recording the true objective of genealogy; and, while they are ordinarily translated as "origin," we must attempt to reestablish their proper use. Herkunft is the equivalent of stock or descent; it is the ancient affiliation to a group, sustained by the bonds of blood, tradition, or social class. The analysis of Herkunft often involves a con- sideration of race21 or social type.22 But the traits it attempts to identify are not the exclusive generic characteristics of an in- dividual, a sentiment, or an idea, which permit us to qualify them as "Greek" or "English"; rather, it seeks the subtle, singular, and subindividual marks that might possibly intersect in them to form a network that is difficult to unravel. Far from being a category of resemblance, this origin allows the sorting out of different traits: the Germans imagined that they had finally accounted for their complexity by saying they possessed a double soul; they were fooled by a simple computation, or rather, they were simply trying to master the racial disorder from which they had formed themselves.23 Where the soul pretends unification or the self fabricates a coherent identity, the genealogist sets out to study the beginning-numberless beginnings whose faint traces and hints of color are readily seen by an historical eye. The analysis of descent permits the dissociation of the self, its recognition 21. For example, The Gay Science, 135; Beyond Good and Eoil, 200, 242, 244; The Genealogy, I, 5. 22. The Gay Science, 348-349; Beyond Good and Eoil, 260. 23. Beyond Good and Eoil, 244. 146 COUNTER-MEMORY and displacement as an empty synthesis, in liberating a profusion of lost events.24 / An examination of descent also permits the discovery, under thêinique"aspect of a trait or a concept, of the myriad events ihraügT wKîch-thanks: to which, against which-they were formed. Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to re- store an unbrokenhontinuity that operates beyond the disper- sion of forgotten things; its duty is not to demonstrate that the past actively exists in the present, that it continues secretly to animate the present, having imposed a predetermined form to all its vicissitudes. Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species and does not map the destiny of a people. On the con- trary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the ac- cidents, the minute deviations-or conversely, the complete reversals-the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calcula- tions that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being do not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents.25^This is undoubtedly why every origin of morality from the moment it stops being pious-and Herkunft can never be-has value as a critique.26 Deriving from such a source is a dangerous legacy. In numer- ous instances, Nietzsche associates the terms Herkunft and Erbschaft. Nevertheless, we should not be deceived into thinking that this heritage is an acquisition, a possession that grows and solidifies; rather, it is an unstable assemblage of faults, fissures, and heterogeneous layers that threaten the fragile inheritor from within or from underneath: "injustice or instability in the minds of certain men, their disorder and lack of decorum, are the final consequences of their ancestors' numberless logical inaccuracies, 24. See below, "Theatrum Philosophicum," pp. 172-176-Ed. 25. The Genealogy, III, 17. The abkunft of feelings of depression. 26. Twilight, "Reasons for philosophy." NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 147 hasty conclusions, and superficiality."27 The search for descent is not the erecting of foundations: on the contrary, it disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself. What convictions and, far more decisively, what knowledge can resist it? If a genealogical analysis of a scholar were made-of one who collects facts and carefully accounts for them-his Herkunft would quickly divulge the official papers of the scribe and the pleadings of the lawyer- their father28-in their apparently disinterested attention, in the "pure" devotion to objectivity. Finally, descent attaches itself to the body.29 It inscribes itself in the nervous system, in temperament, in the digestive apparatus; it appears in faulty respiration, in improper diets, in the debili- tated and prostrate body of those whose ancestors committed errors. Fathers have only to mistake effects for causes, believe in the reality of an "afterlife," or maintain the value of eternal truths, and the bodies of their children will suffer. Cowardice and hypocrisy, for their part, are the simple offshoots of error: not in a Socratic sense, not that evil is the result of a mistake, not because of a turning away from an original truth, but because the body maintains, in life as in death, through its strength or weakness, the sanction of every truth and error, as it sustains, in an inverse manner, the origin-descent. Why did men invent the contemplative life? Why give a supreme value to this form of existence? Why maintain the absolute truth of those fictions which sustain it? "During barbarous ages ... if the strength of an individual declined, if he felt himself tired or sick, melancholy or satiated and, as a consequence, without desire or appetite for a short time, he became relatively a better man, that is, less dangerous. His pessimistic ideas could only take form as words 27. The Dawn, 2A7. 28. The Gay Science, 348-349. 29. Ibid., 200. 148 COUNTER-MEMORY or reflections. In this frame of mind, he either became a thinker and prophet or used his imagination to feed his superstitions."30 The body-and everything that touches it: diet, climate, and soil-is the domain of the Herkunft. The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors. These elements may join in a body where they achieve a sudden expression, but as often, their encounter is an engage- ment in which they efface each other, where the body becomes the pretext of their insurmountable conflict. The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by lan- guage and dissolved by ideas), the locus of a dissociated Self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration. Genealogy, as an analysis of descent, is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history's destruction of the body. 4. Entstehung designates emergence, the moment of arising. It stands as the principle and the singular law of an apparition. Às it is wrong tosearcETTor descent in an uninterrupted continuity , we should'avoid thinking of emergence as the final term of an historical development; the eye was not always intended for contemplation, and punishment has had other purposes than setting an example. These developments may appear as a cul- mination, but they are merely the current episodes in a series of subjugations: the eye initially responded to the requirements of hunting and warfare; and punishment has been subjected, throughout its history, to a variety of needs-revenge, excluding an aggressor, compensating a victim, creating fear. In placing present needs at the origin, the metaphysician would convince us of an obscure purpose that seeks its realization at the moment it arises. Genealogy, however, seeks to reestablish the various systems of subjection: not the anticipatory power of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations. Emergence is always produced through a particular stage of 30. The Dawn, 42. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOCY, HISTORY 149 forces. The analysis of the Entstehung must delineate this inter- action, the struggle tKese~Törces~ wage against each other or against adverse circumstances, and the attempt to avoid degener- ation and regain strength by dividing these forces against them- selves. It is in this sense that the emergence of a species ( animal or human) and its solidification are secured "in an extended battle against conditions which are essentially and constantly unfavorable." In fact, "the species must realize itself as a species, as something-characterized by the durability, uniformity, and simplicity of its form-which can prevail in the perpetual strug- gle against outsiders or the uprising of those it oppresses from within." On the other hand, individual differences emerge at another stage of the relationship of forces, when the species has become victorious and when it is no longer threatened from outside. In this condition, we find a struggle "of egoisms turned against each other, each bursting forth in a splintering of forces and a general striving for the sun and for the light."31 There are also times when force contends against itself, and not only in the intoxication of an abundance, which allows it to divide itself, but at the moment when it weakens. Force reacts against its growing lassitude and gains strength; it imposes limits, inflicts torments and mortifications; it masks these actions as a higher morality, and, in exchange, regains its strength. In this manner, the ascetic ideal was bom, "in the instinct of a decadent life which . . . struggles for its own existence."32 This also describes the movement in which the Reformation arose, precisely where the church was least corrupt;33 German Catholicism, in the six- teenth century, retained enough strength to turn against itself, to mortify its own body and history, and to spiritualize itself into a pure religion of conscience. Emergence is thus the entry of forces; it is their eruption, the 31. Beyond Good and Evil, 262. 32. The Genealogy, III, 13. 33. The Gay Science, 148. It is also to an anemia of the will that one must attribute the Entstehung of Buddhism and Christianity, 347. 150 COUNTER-MEMORY leap from the wings to center stage, each in its youthful strength. What Nietzsche calls IE? Entsfefiungsherd34-öf the concept of goodness is not specifically the energy of the strong or the re- action of the weak, but precisely this scene where they are dis- played superimposed or face-to-face. It is nothing but the space that divides them, the void through which they exchange their threatening gestures and speeches. As descent qualifies the strength or weakness of an instinct and its inscription on a body, emergence designates a place of confrontation but not as a closed field offering the spectacle of a struggle among equals. Rather, as Nietzsche demonstrates in his analysis of good and evil, it is a "non-place," a pure distance, which indicates that the adversaries do not belong to a common space. Consequently, no one is responsible for an emergence; no one can glory in it, since it always occurs in the interstice. In a sense, only a single drama is ever staged in this "non- place," the endlessly repeated play of dominations'The'dönrinatiôn of certaTnnmn" overothers leads' to the differenliätiölr of values;34 5 36class domination generates the idea of liberty;35 and the forceful appropriatiorroFthings necessary to survival and the imposition of a duration not intrinsic to them account for the origin of logic.37 This relationship of domination is no more a "relationship" than the place where it occurs is a place; and, precisely for this reason, it is fixed, throughout its history, in rituals, in meticulous procedures that impose rights and obliga- tions. It establishes marks of its power and engraves memories on things and even within bodies. It makes itself accountable for debts and gives rise to the universe of rules, which is by no means designed to temper violence, but rather to satisfy it. Following traditional beliefs, it would be false to think that total war exhausts itself in its own contradictions and ends by re- 34. The Genealogy, I, 2. 35. Beyond Good and Evil, 260; cf. also The Genealogy, II, 12. 36. The Wanderer, 9. 37. The Gay Science, 111. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 151 nouncing violence and submitting to civil laws. On the contrary, the law is a calculated and relentless pleasure, delight in the promised blood, which permits the perpetual instigation of new dominations and the staging of meticulously repeated scenes of violence. The desire for peace, the serenity of compromise, and the tacit acceptance of the law, far from representing a major moral conversion or a utilitarian calculation that gave rise to the law, are but its result and, in point of fact, its perversion: "guilt, conscience, and duty had their threshold of emergence in the right to secure obligations; and their inception, like that of any major event on earth, was saturated in blood."38 Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces war- fare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. The nature of these rules allows violence to be inflicted on violence and the resurgence of new forces that are sufficiently strong to dominate those in power. Rules are empty in them- selves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those whoTiad used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules. The isolation of different points of emergence does not con- form to the successive configurations of an identical meaning; rather, they result from substitutions, displacements, disguised conquests, and systematic reversals. If interpretation were the slow exposure of the meaning hidden in an origin, then only metaphysics could interpret the development of humanity. But if inteipretation is the violent or surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has no essential meaning, in 38. The Genealogy, II, 6. 152 COUNTER-MEMORY order to impose a direction, to bend it to a new will, to force its participation in a different game, and to subject it to secondary rules, then the development of humanity is a series of interpreta- tions. The role of genealogy is to record its history: the history of morals, ideals, and metaphysical concepts, the history of the concept of liberty or of the ascetic hfe; as they stand for the emergence of cssfferent interpretations, they must be made to appear âs~ëvënt5~üffThe-stage of historical process. 5. How can we define die relationship between genealogy, seen as the examination of Herkunft and Entstehung, and history in the traditional sense? We could, of course, examine Nietzsche's celebrated apostrophes against history, but we will put these aside for the moment and consider those instances when he con- ceives of genealogy as "wirkliche Historie," or its more frequent characterization as historical "spirit" or "sense."39 In fact, Nietzsche's criticism, beginning with the second of the Un- timely Meditations, always questioned the form of history that reintroduces (and always assumes) a suprahistorical perspective: a history whose function is to compose the finally reduced diver- sity of time into a totality fully closed upon itself; a history that always encourages subjective recognitions and attributes a form of reconciliation to all the displacements of the past; a history whose perspective on all that precedes it implies the end of time, a completed development. The historian's history finds its support outside of time and pretends to base its judgments on an apocalyptic objectivity. This is only possible, however, be- cause of its belief in eternal truth, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of consciousness as always identical to itself. Once the historical sense is mastered by a suprahistorical per- spective, metaphysics can bend it to its own purpose and, by aligning it to the demands of objective science, it can impose its own "Egyptianism." On the other hand, the historical sense can evade metaphysics and become a privileged instrument of 39. The Genealogy, Preface, 7; and I, 2. Beyond Good and Evil, 224. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 153 genealogy if it refuses the certainty of absolutes. Given this, it corresponds to the acuity of a glance that distinguishes, separates, and disperses, that is capable of liberating divergence and mar- ginal elements-the kind of dissociating view that is capable of decomposing itself, capable of shattering the unity of man's being through which it was thought that he could extend his sovereignty to the events of his past. Historical meaning becomes a dimension of "wirkliche His- torie" to the extent that it places within a process of development everything considered immortal in man. We believe that feelings are immutable, but every sentiment, particularly the noblest and most disinterested, has a history. We believe in the dull constancy of instinctual life and imagine that it continues to exert its force indiscriminately in the present as it did in the past. But a knowl- edge of history easily disintegrates this unity, depicts its waver- ing course, locates its moments of strength and weakness, and defines its oscillating reign. It easily seizes the slow elaboration of instincts and those movements where, in turning upon them- selves, they relentlessly set about their self-destruction.40 We believe, in any event, that the body obeys the exclusive laws of physiology and that it escapes the influence of history, but this too is false. The body is molded by a great many distinct regimes; it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest, and holidays; it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws; it constructs resistances.41 "Effective" history differs from traditional history in being without constants. Nothing in man-not even his body-is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men. The traditional devices for constructing a comprehensive view of tistory and for retracing the past as a patient and continuous development must be systematically dismantled. Necessarily, we must dismiss those tendencies that encourage the consoling play of recognitions. Knowledge, even under the banner of history, 40. The Gay Science, 7. 41. Ibid. 154 counter-memory does not depend on "rediscovery," and it emphatically excludes the "rediscovery of ourselves."42 History becomes "effective" to I the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being- as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself. ''Effective" history deprives the self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, and it will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millenial ending. It will uproot its traditional foundations and relentlessly disrupt its pretended continuity. This is because I knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.43 From these observations, we can grasp the particular traits' of historical meaning as Nietzsche understood it-the sense which opposes "wirkliche Historie" to traditional history. The former transposes the relationship ordinarily established between the eruption of an event and necessary continuity. An entire his- torical tradition (theological or rationalistic) aims at dissolving the singular event into an ideal continuity-as a teleological movement or a natural process. "Effective" history, however, deals with events in terms of their most unique characteristics, their most acute manifestations. An event, consequently, is not-a decision, a treaty, a reign, or a' battle, but the reversal of a rela- tionship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it, a feeble domination that poisons itself as it grows lax, the entry of a masked "other." The forces operating in history are not con- trolled by destiny or regulative mechanisms, but respond to haphazard? conflicts.44 They do not manifest the successive forms of a primordial intention and their attraction is not that of a conclusion, for they always appear through the singular random42. See "What Is an Author?" above, p. 134, on rediscoveries- Ed. 43. This statement is echoed in Foucault's discussion of "differ- entiations" in The Archaeology of Knowledge, pp. 130-131, 206; or the use of the word "division" above in "A Preface to Transgression," p. 36-Ed. 44. The Genealogy, II, 12. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 155 ness of events. The inverse of the Christian world, spun entirely bya divine spider, and different from the world of the Greeks, divided between the realm of will and the great cosmic folly, the world of effective history knows only one kingdom, without providence or final cause, where there is only "the iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance."45 Chance is not simply the drawing of lots, but raising the stakes in every attempt to master chance through the will to power, and giving rise to the risk of an even greater chance.46 The world we know is not this ultimately simple configuration where events are reduced to accentuate their essential traits, their final meaning, or their initial and final value. On the contrary, it is a profusion of en- tangled events. If it appears as a "marvelous motley, profound and totally meaningful," this is because it began and continues its secret existence through a "host of errors and phantasms."47 We want historians to confirm our belief that the present rests upon profound intentions and immutable necessities. But the true historical sense confirms our existence among countless lost events, without a landmark or a point of reference. Effective history can also invert the relationship that tradi- tional history, in its dependence on metaphysics, establishes be- tween proximity and distance. The latter is given to a contempla- tion of distances and heights: the noblest periods, the highest forms, the most abstract ideas, the purest individualities. It ac- complishes this by getting as near as possible, placing itself at the foot of its mountain peaks, at the risk of adopting the famous perspective of frogs. Effective history, on the other hand, shortens its vision to those things nearest to it-the üody, the nervous systemTnutrition, digestion, and energies; it unearths the periods of decadence and if it chances upon lofty epochs, it is with the suspicion-not vindictivebut joyous-of finding a barbarous and shamefurconfuHon? It has no fear of looking down, so long as it 45. The Dawn, 130. 46. The Genealogy, II, 12. 47. Human, AU Too Human, 16. 156 COUNTER-MEMORY is understood that it looks from above and descends to seize the various perspectives, to disclose dispersions and differences, to leave things undisturbed in their own dimension and intensity.48 It reverses the surreptitious practice of historians, their preten- sion to examine things furthest from themselves, the grovelling manner in which they approach this promising distance (like the metaphysicians who proclaim the existence of an afterlife, situated at a distance from this world, as a promise of their reward). Effective history studies what is closest, but in an abrupt dispos- session, so as to seize it at a distance (an approach similar to that of a doctor who looks closely, who plunges to make a diag- nosis and to state its difference). Historical sense has more in common with medicine than philosophy; and it should not surprise us that Nietzsche occasionally employs the phrase "his- torically and physiologically,"49 since among the philosophers idiosyncracies is a complete denial of the body. This includes, as well, "the absence of historical sense, a hatred for the idea of development, Egyptianism," the obstinate "placing of conclu- sions at the beginning," of "making last things first."50 History has a more important task than to be a handmaiden to philosophy, to recount the necessary birth of truth and values; it should be- come ä differential knowledge of energies and failings, heights and degenerations, poisons and antidotes? Its task is to become a curative science.51 The final trait of effective history is its affirmation of knowl- edge as perspective. Historians take unusual pains to erase the elements in their work which reveal their grounding in^a J?articular time and place, their preferences in a controversy-the un48. See "Theatrum Philosophicum" below, p. 183, for an analysis of Deleuze's thought as intensity of difference-Ed. 49. Twilight, 44. 50. Twilight, "Reason within philosophy," 1 and 4. 51. The Wanderer, 188. (This conception underlies the task of Madness and Civilization and The Birth of the Clinic even though it is not found as a conscious formulation until The Archaeology of Knowl- edge; for a discussion of archaeology as "diagnosis," see especially p. 131-Ed.) NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 157 avoidable obstacles of their passion. Nietzsche's version of his- torical sense'Is explicit irfltsTperspective and acknowledges its system of injustice. Its perception is slanted, being a deliberate appraisal, affirmation, or negation; it reaches the lingering and poisonous traces in order to prescribe the best antidote. It is not given to a discreet effacement before the objects it observes and does not submit itself to their processes; nor does it seek laws, since it gives equal weight to its own sight and to its objects. Through this historical sense, knowledge is allowed to create its own genealogy in the act of cognition; and "wirkliche Historie" composes a genealogy of history as the vertical projection of its position. 6. In this context, Nietzsche links historical sense to the his- torians history. They share a beginning that is similarly impure and confused, share the same sign in which the symptoms of sickness can be recognized as well as the seed of an exquisite flower.62 They arose simultaneously to follow their separate ways, but our task is to trace their common genealogy. The descent (Herkunft) of the historian is unequivocal: he is of humble birth. A characteristic of history is to be without choice: it encourages thorough understanding and excludes qualitative judgments-a sensitivity to all things without distinc- tion, a comprehensive view excluding differences. Nothing must escape it and, more importantly, nothing must be excluded. His- torians argue that this proves their tact and discretion. After all, what right have they to impose their tastes and preferences when they seek to determine what actually occurred in the past? Their mistake is to exhibit a total lack of taste, the kind of crudeness that becomes smug in the presence of the loftiest elements and finds satisfaction in reducing them to size. The historian is insensi- tive to the most disgusting things; or rather, he especially enjoys those things that should be repugnant to him. His_ apparent serenity follows from his concerted avoidance of the exceptional and his reduction of all things to the lowest common denominator. 52 52. The Gay Science, 337. 158 COUNTER-MEMORY Nothing is allowed to stand above him; and underlying his de- sire for total knowledge is his search for the secrets that belittle everything: "base curiosity." What is the source of history? It comes from the plebs. To whom is it addressed? To the plebs. And its discourse strongly resembles the demagogue's refrain: "No one is greater than you and anyone who presumes to get the better of you-you who are good-is evil." The historian, who functions as his double, can be heard to echo: "No past is greater than your present, and, through my meticulous erudition, I will rid you of your infatuations and transform the grandeur of history into pettiness, evil, and misfortune." The historian's ancestry goes back to Socrates. This demagogy, of course, must be masked. It must hide its singular malice under the cloak of universals. As the demagogue is obliged to invoke truth, laws of essences, and eternal neces- sity, the historian must invoke objectivity, the accuracy of facts, and the permanence of the past. The demagogue denies the body to secure the sovereignty of a timeless idea and the his- torian effaces his proper individuality so that others may enter the stage and reclaim their own speech.53 He is divided against himself: forced to silence his preferences and overcome his distaste, to blur his own perspective and replace it with the fiction of a universal geometry, to mimic death in order to enter the king- dom of the dead, to adopt a faceless anonymity. In this world where he has conquered his individual will, he becomes a guide to the inevitabjg law of a superior will. Having curbed the de- mands of his individual will in his knowledge, he will disclose the form of an eternal will in his object of study. The objectivity of historians inverts thêrelationships of will and knowledge and it is, in the same stroke, a necessary belief in Providence, in final causes and teleology-the beliefs that place the historian in the j family of ascetics. "I can't stand these lustful eunuchs of history, 'all the seductions of an ascetic ideal; I can't stand these whited sepulchres producing life or those tired and indifferent beings 53. See below, "Intellectuals and Power," p. 211-Ed. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 159 who dress up in the part of wisdom and adopt an objective point of view."51 The Entstehung of history is found in nineteenth-century Europe: the land of interminglings and bastardy, the period of the "man-of-mixture." We have become barbarians with respect to those rare moments of high civilization: cities in ruin and enigmatic monuments are spread out before us; we stop before gaping walls; we ask what gods inhabited these empty temples. Great epochs lacked this curiosity, lacked our excessive deference; they ignored their predecessors: the classical period ignored Shakespeare. The decadence of Europe presents an immense spectacle (while stronger periods refrained from such exhibi- tions ), and the nature of this scene is to represent a theater; lack- ing monuments of our own making, which properly belong to us, we live among crowded scenes. But there is more. Europeans no longer know themselves; they ignore their mixed ancestries and seek a proper role. They lack individuality. We can begin to understand the spontaneous historical bent of the nineteenth century: the anemia of its forces and those mixtures that effaced all its individual traits produced the same results as the mortifica- tions of asceticism; its inability to create, its absence of artistic works, and its need to rely on past achievements forced it to adopt the base curiosity of plebs. If this fully represents the genealogy of history, how could it become, in its own right, a genealogical analysis? Why did it not continue as a form of demagogic or religious knowledge? How could it change roles on the same stage? Only by being seized, dominated, and turned against its birth. And it is this movement which properly describes the specific nature of the Entstehung: it is not the unavoidable conclusion of a long preparation, but a scene where forces are risked in the chance of confrontations, where they emerge triumphant, where they can also be con- fiscated. The locus of emergence for metaphysics was surely Athenian demagogy, the vulgar spite of Socrates and his belief 54. The Genealogy, III, 26. 160 COUNTER-MEMORY in immortality, and Plato could have seized this Socratic phi- losophy to turn it against itself. Undoubtedly, he was often tempted to do so, but his defeat lies in its consecration. The problem was similar in the nineteenth century: to avoid doing for the popular asceticism of historians what Plato did for Socrates. This historical trait should not be founded upon a philosophy of history, but dismantled beginning with the things it produced; it is necessary to master history so as to turn it to genealogical uses, that is, strictly anti-Platonic purposes. Only then will the historical sense free itself from the demands of a suprahistorical history. 7. The historical sense gives rise to three uses that oppose and correspond to the three Platonic modalities of history. The first is parodic, directed against reality, and opposes the theme of history as reminiscence or recognitïonj the sëcond is dissocia- tive, directed against identity, and opposes history given as continuity or representative of a tradition; the third is sacrificial, directed against truth, and opposes history as knowledge. They imply a use of history that severs its connection to memory, its metaphysical and anthropological model, and constructs a counter-memory-a transformation of history into a totally dif- ferent form of time. First, the parodic and farcical use. The historian offers this confused and anonymous European, who no longer knows him- self or what name he should adopt, the possibility of alternate identities, more individualized and substantial than his own. But the man with historical sense will see that this substitution is simply a disguise. Historians supplied the Revolution with Roman prototypes, romanticism with knight's armor, and the Wagnerian era was given the sword of a German hero-ephem- eral props that point to our own unreality. No one kept them from venerating these religions, from going to Bayreuth to commemorate a new afterlife; they were free, as well, to be trans- formed into street-vendors of empty identities. The new his- torian, the genealogist, will know what to make of this mas- querade. He will not be too serious to enjoy it; on the contrary, NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 161 he will push the masquerade to its limit and prepare the great carnival of time where masks are constantly reappearing. No longer the identification of our faint individuality with the solid identities of the past, but our "unrealization" through the exces- sive choice of identities-Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Caesar, Jesus, Dionysus, and possibly Zarathustra. Taking up these masks, revitalizing the buffoonery of history, we adopt an identity whose unreality surpasses that of God who started the charade. "Per- haps, we can discover a realm where originality is again pos- sible as parodists of history and buffoons of God."55 In this, we recognize the parodic double of what the second of the Un- timely Meditations called "monumental history": a history given to reestablishing the high points of historical development and their maintenance in a perpetual presence, given to the recovery of works, actions, and creations through the monogram of their personal essence. But in 1874, Nietzsche accused this history, one totally devoted to veneration, of barring access to the actual intensities and creations of life. The parody of his last texts serves to emphasize that "monumental history" is itself a parody. Genealogy is history in the form of a concerted carnival. The second use of history is the systematic dissociation of identity. This is necessary because this rather weak identity, which we attempt to support and to unify under a mask, is in itself only a parody: it is plural; countless spirits dispute its possession; numerous systems intersect and compete. The study of history makes one "happy, unlike the metaphysicians, to pos- sess in oneself not an immortal soul but many mortal ones."59 And in each of these souls, history will not discover a forgotten identity, eager to be reborn, but a complex system of distinct and multiple elements, unable to be mastered by the powers of synthesis: "it is a sign of superior culture to maintain, in a fully conscious way, certain phases of its evolution which lesser men pass through without thought. The initial result is that we can understand those who resemble us as completely determined systems and 55. Beyond Good and EvU, 223. 56. The Wanderer (Opinions and Mixed Statements), 17. 162 COUNTER-MEMORY as representative of diverse cultures, that is to say, as necessary and capable of modification. And in return, we are able to separate the phases of our own evolution and consider them in- dividually."57 The purposê of history, guided by genealogy, is not to discover the roots of our identity but to commit itself to its dissipation. It does not seek to define our unique threshold of emergence, the homeland to which metaphysicians promise a re- turn; it seeks to make visible all of those discontinuities that cross us. "Antiquarian history," according to the Untimely Medi- tations, pursues opposite goals. It seeks the continuities of soil, language, and urban life in which our present is rooted and, "by cultivating in a delicate manner that which existed for all time, it tries to conserve for posterity the conditions under which we were bom."58 This type of history was objected to in the Medita- tions because it tended to block creativity in support of the laws of fidelity. Somewhat later-and already in Human, All Too Human-Nietzsche reconsiders the task of the antiquarian, but with an altogether different emphasis. If genealogy in its own right gives rise to questions concerning our native land, native language, or the laws that govern us, its intention is to reveal the heterogenous systems which, masked by the self, inhibit the formation of any form of identity. The third use of history is the sacrifice of the subject of knowl- edge. In appearance, or rather, according to the mask it bears, historical consciousness is neutral, devoid of passions, and com- mitted solely to truth. But if it examines itself and if, more generally, it interrogates the various forms of scientific conscious- ness in its history, it finds that all these forms and transformations are aspects of the will to knowledge: instinct, passion, the in- quisitor's devotion, cruel subtlety, and malice. It discovers the violence of a position that sides against those who are happy in their ignorance, against the effective illusions by which hu- manity protects itself, a position that encourages the dangers of 57. Human, All Too Human, 274. 58. Untimely Meditations, II, 3. NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY, HISTORY 163 reserach and delights in disturbing discoveries?0 The historical analysis ot this rancorous will to Knowledge" reveals that all Knowledge rests upon injustice (that there is no right, not even in the act of Knowing, to truth or a foundation for truth) and that the instinct for Knowledge is malicious ( something murder- ous, opposed to the happiness of manhind). Even in the greatly expanded form it assumes today, the will to Knowledge does not achieve a universal truth; man is not given an exact and serene mastery of nature. On the contrary, it ceaselessly multiplies the risKs, creates dangers in every area; it breaKs down illusory de- fences; it dissolves the unity of the subject; it releases those elements of itself that are devoted to its subversion and destruc- tion. Knowledge does not slowly detach itself from its empirical roots, the initial needs from which it arose, to become pure specu- lation subject only to the demands of reason; its development is not tied to the constitution and affirmation of a free subject; rather, it creates a progressive enslavement to its instinctive violence. Where religions once demanded the sacrifice of bodies, Knowledge now calls for experimentation on ourselves,81 calls us to the sacrifice of the subject of Knowledge. "The desire for Knowledge has been transformed among us into a passion which fears no sacrifice, which fears nothing but its own extinction. It may be that mankind will eventually perish from this passion for Knowledge. If not through passion, then through weaKness. We must be prepared to state our choice: do we wish humanity to end in fire and light or to end on the sands?"82 We should now replace the two great problems of nineteenth-century philosophy, passed on by Fichte and Hegel ( the reciprocal basis of truth and liberty and the possibility of absolute Knowledge), with the theme that "to perish through absolute knowledge may well form a 59. Cf. The Dawn, 429 and 432; The Gay Science, 333; Beyond Good and Evil, 229-230. 60. "Vouloir-savoir": the phrase in French means both the will to knowledge and knowledge as revenge-Ed. 61. The Dawn, 501. 62. Ibid., 429. 164 COUNTER-MEMORY part of the basis of being."63 This does not mean, in terms of a critical procedure, that the will to truth is limited by the in- trinsic finitude of cognition, but that it loses all sense of limita- tions and all claim to truth in its unavoidable sacrifice of the subject of knowledge. "It may be that there remains one prodigi- ous idea which might be made to prevail over every other aspira- tion, which might overcome the most victorious: the idea of humanity sacrificing itself. It seems indisputable that if this new constellation appeared on the horizon, only the desire for truth, with its enormous prerogatives, could direct and sustain such a sacrifice. For to knowledge, no sacrifice is too great. Of course, this problem has never been posed."64 The Untimely Meditations discussed the critical use of history: its just treatment of the past, its decisive cutting of the roots, its rejection of traditional attitudes of reverence, its liberation of man by presenting him with other origins than those in which he prefers to see himself. Nietzsche, however, reproached critical history for detaching us from every real source and for sacrificing the very movement of life to the exclusive concern for truth. Somewhat later, as we have seen, Nietzsche reconsiders this line of thought he had at first refused, but directs it to altogether different ends. It is no longer a question of judging the past in the name of a truth that only we can possess in the present; but risking the destruction of the subject who seeks knowledge in the endless deployment of the will to knowledge. In a sense, genealogy returns to the three modalities of history that Nietzsche recognized in 1874. It returns to them in spite of the objections that Nietzsche raised in the name of the affirmative and creative powers of life. But they are metamorphosized; the veneration of monuments becomes parody; the respect for ancient continuities becomes systematic dissociation; the critique of the injustices of the past by a truth held by men in the present be- comes the destruction of the man who maintains knowledge by the injustice proper to the will to knowledge. 63. Beyond Good and Evil, 39. 64. The Dawn, 45.


Cosmological Argument - A Socratic Dialogue

Philosophy

Socratic dialogue written for use as an undergrad or highschool resource in the Philosophy of Religion. This dialogue covers the standard formulation and objections to Aquinas' Second Way. Unpublished at this time - to be updated and included in book (in progress).

The Cosmological Argument and the Existence of God A Socratic Dialogue By BRENT SILBY I have spent many years engaging thoughtful people in dialogue. This morning I happened, quite by accident I assure you, to visit a small Bible discussion group. The discussion was being led by a wonderful young man by the name of Joshua. Because I arrived late, I sat near the back and listened for a few minutes until the group took a break for coffee and cakes. The food was tempting, but not nearly as tempting as the opportunity to meet Joshua. He seemed like he could use some help in properly formulating his argument for the existence of God. The following is my recollection of our dialogue. Socrates SOCRATES: What is it you are doing here? JOSHUA: I help people interpret The Bible so that they may learn how to live according to God's plan. SOCRATES: Ah, I see. Back in Athens we had many gods, some of whom spoke to us. In fact, my life mission was directed by the god Apollo who spoke through the Oracle at Delphi-a point I tried to make clear during my trial. JOSHUA: Back in Athens? Apollo? A trial? Who are you pretending to be? SOCRATES: I am no actor. I pretend to be no-one. I am myself. JOSHUA: Hmmm. I see. Who are you then? SOCRATES: Do you not know? JOSHUA: If I knew, I wouldn't ask. SOCRATES: I believe you have studied philosophy during your training. Do you not recognize me? JOSHUA: How do you know I studied philosophy? SOCRATES: I watch and learn about people. And I visit when needed. JOSHUA: You are strange. You aren't trying to be Socrates, are you? SOCRATES: I try only to be who I am. Can we talk about your God? JOSHUA: Okay, I'll take the bait. What would you like to know? SOCRATES: You said that you help people live according to God's plan. Tell me, does your god guide you to do this? JOSHUA: Yes, I believe that I receive guidance from God. SOCRATES: As a stranger to your world I am ignorant, but I am seeking knowledge. Can you please enlighten this old man. What form does God's guidance take? JOSHUA: It can be difficult to express in words. But often the guidance presents itself as a feeling. At times it may present itself as words. When I read The Bible, God's guidance is implicit in the interpretation of the text. SOCRATES: How do you know this guidance comes from God and not from your own thoughts? JOSHUA: It is a matter of faith, Socrates. SOCRATES: I have read many of your books and I understand the role that faith plays in your religion. But I am seeking more. I do not know whether the god of your faith exists, so I am interested in your reasons for believing that you receive guidance from God. JOSHUA: Believing in God is a matter of faith, not reason. This is not the sort of thing we should be arguing about. Nor is it the sort of thing that requires evidence. SOCRATES: Are you suggesting that faith and reason must be opposed? JOSHUA: I am suggesting that one finds God through faith, not reason. SOCRATES: I see. Tell me, when you help people interpret The Bible, what method do you use? JOSHUA: It is a complex process, Socrates. We identify selections of text that jointly provide a message which helps people understand how to live according to God's will. The word of God is revealed through the books of The Bible. SOCRATES: So, based upon your interpretation of selected text you draw conclusions about the word of God? JOSHUA: I suppose you could put it that way. SOCRATES: This certainly seems like a process that involves reason. You analyze your object of faith in order to gain a deeper understanding. Perhaps faith and reason are not as opposed as you think. JOSHUA: Perhaps. But there is a difference between reasoning about the word of God and having faith that God exists. I maintain that belief in God is a matter of faith. SOCRATES: Tell me, my wise friend, have you ever encountered a non-believer? JOSHUA: Yes, often. It seems that as the years pass, fewer people believe. Atheism is on the rise. But it is part of our Christian mission to spread the word, so we continue to do whatever we can to help people find their way to God. SOCRATES: How do you convince an atheist that God exists? JOSHUA: Through friendly dialogue. SOCRATES: Ah, music to my ears. I have always argued that the best route to knowledge is through dialogue. May I ask, what do you talk about when you engage an atheist in dialogue? JOSHUA: We discuss a range of things. It depends on the interests of the person I'm talking to. Sometimes we discuss the apparent design in the natural world. Sometimes we talk about miracles. But the most popular topic is the origin of the universe. Why does the universe exist? Or as the philosopher Leibniz put it, why is there something rather than nothing? SOCRATES: And what do you hope to accomplish by talking through such questions? JOSHUA: Isn't is obvious? I have already said that I do this to help people find their way to God. SOCRATES: Tell me good sir, would I be interested in finding my way to the city of Western Heights if I didn't think Western Heights exists? JOSHUA: Of course not. SOCRATES: It seems to me, then, that in order for an atheist to find his way to God, he must first accept that God exists. JOSHUA: That is true. SOCRATES: So in discussing the fascinating topics you just mentioned, you are really seeking to demonstrate that God exists. Am I right? JOSHUA: Sure. That is an important part of the process. SOCRATES: And if you are seeking to demonstrate that God exists, you are making a reasoned case to support that conclusion, right? JOSHUA: Of course. SOCRATES: Reasoned argument to demonstrate God's existence? Again, it seems that faith and reason are not opposed. For the atheist it would appear that God's existence is not merely a matter of faith. Rather, it is a matter of reason. JOSHUA: If it leads them to God, then the method is surely justified. SOCRATES: My friend, I am the sort of person who loves wisdom, even though I have little of it myself. And I think that you are the sort of person who is eager to share your wisdom. So would you spare me some time? I am interested in understanding how the question: why is there something rather than nothing? can lead to an argument for God's existence. Do you have time to carry out your Christian mission with this old man who knows nothing? JOSHUA: Certainly. Helping people find God is my life's calling. SOCRATES: Then please teach me. How does the question why is there something rather than nothing? lead to an argument for God's existence? JOSHUA: Well, the question seeks an explanation for the existence of the universe. Now, all events have a cause, right? And the creation of the universe was an event, which means there was a cause of the universe. So, to answer the question why is there something rather than nothing? we need to look to the cause of the universe. The name of the cause of the Universe is God, therefore God exists. This was beautifully expressed by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his grand work Summa Theologica. SOCRATES: Ah, Saint Thomas Aquinas. A worthy Theologian. Is this his argument? It seems thin on details. Can you please help me learn more? The argument concludes that the universe had a cause, which is God. Have I understood you correctly? JOSHUA: That is correct. SOCRATES: And this conclusion is based on the premise that everything has a cause, am I right? JOSHUA: Exactly. SOCRATES: How do you defend that claim? JOSHUA: Just look at the world. All events are caused by something. That is a basic truth in science, is it not? SOCRATES: I am not a scientist, so I do not know whether or not that is a basic truth. But let us assume it is true. You seem to be suggesting that because everything has a cause, the universe must have had a cause, and that the cause is God. Is that what you are saying? JOSHUA: That's what I just said, Socrates. SOCRATES: I must be unwise because I have a foolish question. Could not the universe have been its own cause? If so, your conclusion that God caused it would not follow from your premises and you would need another argument to convince your atheist friends that God exists. JOSHUA: You can't be serious, Socrates. How can something cause itself? SOCRATES: I don't know. But judging by your response you appear to believe something is wrong with my suggestion. Perhaps we should explore this in more detail. Can you tell me why something can't cause itself? JOHSUA: It's common sense, Socrates. Things don't cause themselves. SOCRATES: You are saying that things don't cause themselves because there is a commonsense belief that things don't cause themselves. Forgive me, but I do not find this convincing. Can you offer more? JOSHUA: I'm not sure how to put it into words, Socrates. SOCRATES: Shall we work together and defend your claim that things don't cause themselves? JOSHUA: Now I know you're not the real Socrates. I've read the dialogues. You always refute arguments and confuse people. And here you are, wanting to help me. You can't be the real Socrates. SOCRATES: I am an explorer and a lover of wisdom. And I am as real as I have ever been. If helping you construct an argument leads to wisdom, then I am at your service. Let us work on defending your claim. What does it mean for one event to cause another? JOSHUA: I'm not sure how to put it into words, Socrates. But it seems to me that for an event to cause another event, the first event must trigger something that makes the second event follow. SOCRATES: When you refer to a first event followed by a second event, you seem to be placing these events in sequence. Is that correct? JOSHUA: Yes, it is. SOCRATES: And can this sequence be such that the first event occurs after the second event? JOSHUA: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Can an event be caused by an event that has not yet happened? JOSHUA: Of course not. An event cannot be caused by an event that has not yet happened. SOCRATES: I wonder if that is true. Let us suppose that it is. We shall assume that the cause of an event must exist prior to the event itself. Does this sound reasonable to you? JOSHUA: Well, yes. SOCRATES: Let's consider how this connects to the point I raised about the universe causing itself. If causes of events exist prior to those events, what can we say about the universe causing itself? JOSHUA: Thanks Socrates. You have helped me find the words. For something to cause itself, it would have to exist prior to itself. But something can't exist before it is caused to exist-in other words, nothing can exist before it exists. So, nothing can be the cause of itself. This includes the universe. SOCRATES: Well put my wise friend. You have made an argument that is clear and easy to follow. Allow me to restate it in premise / conclusion form: 1. (premise) If something were the cause of itself, it would exist prior to itself 2. (premise) Nothing can exist prior to itself 3. (conclusion) Therefore, nothing is the cause of itself (from 1, 2) Now, can you please show me how this sweet little syllogism can be used to demonstrate God's existence? JOSHUA: You are a forgetful fellow. As I said before, because everything has a cause the universe must have had a cause. And since it can't cause itself, it must have been caused by something else, namely God. SOCRATES: Yes, I am forgetful. Sometimes when I read through a lengthy article or listen to a long winded speech, I get to the end and find that I have forgotten what was said at the start. Because I do not have your wisdom you will need to be patient with me. I still do not understand how you conclude that the cause of the universe is God. We have agreed that nothing can be the cause of itself-including the universe-but could it not be that the universe was caused by some natural event, perhaps another universe? JOSHUA: If that were the case, we would simply be pushing the problem back a step. We would need to explain the cause of that universe. SOCRATES: Why is that a problem? Perhaps it was caused by yet another universe. JOSHUA: No, that doesn't work, Socrates, because we would end up with an infinite chain of universes. SOCRATES: Are you saying that there cannot be an infinite chain of universes? JOSHUA: That's right. There cannot be an infinite chain of causes. SOCRATES: How do you defend this statement? JOSHUA: Well, it just seems nonsensical. It's like that old story where the child tells her teacher that the Earth sits on the back of a giant turtle, and when the teacher asks: what is the turtle sitting on? the child replies: it's turtles all the way down. SOCRATES: What's wrong with that? JOSHUA: It is a cluttered, messy model of reality. SOCRATES: Is there a rule that reality must be uncluttered? Whoever made that rule has never visited my house. JOSHUA: That's funny. SOCRATES: Let us explore this and see if we can figure out why you don't like the idea of an infinite chain of universes. JOSHUA: Okay. I am certain that there can't be an infinite number of universes, but I'm not sure how to explain why I hold this belief. SOCRATES: We shall work together. Suppose you set out on a journey and you need to travel for an infinite amount of time to reach your destination. Would you ever get there? JOSHUA: Maybe. Uh, maybe not. I'm not sure. SOCRATES: Think about how long it would take. How long does it take to travel for an infinite amount of time? JOSHUA: Forever. SOCRATES: Can we connect this idea to the notion of a chain of universes stretching infinitely into the past? How much time would have to pass before we find ourselves sitting together having this wonderful conversation? JOSHUA: Ah, an infinite amount of time, which would mean we'd never be able to have this conversation. We'd never get here. If the chain of causes went infinitely into the past, an infinite amount of time would need to pass to get to the present. It would take literally forever. But we clearly exist in the present, so only a finite amount of time has occurred prior to this point in history. So, the chain of causes cannot be infinite. SOCRATES: Bravo. Well said. Now, if the chain of causes cannot be infinite, and if nothing is the cause of itself, what follows? JOSHUA: That there must be one original cause? SOCRATES: A first cause? Yes, that would seem to follow. Well done my friend. You have provided a reasonable defense and you are helping me learn. Shall we insert our additional premise and conclusion into the argument, and perhaps return to it for further examination if needed? JOSHUA: Go ahead. SOCRATES: Our argument may now be constructed as follows: 1. (premise) If something were the cause of itself, it would exist prior to itself 2. (premise) Nothing can exist prior to itself 3. (conclusion) Therefore, nothing is the cause of itself (from 1, 2) 4. (premise) A chain of causes cannot be infinite 5. (conclusion) Therefore, there is a first cause (from 3, 4) Are you happy with this formulation of our argument? JOSHUA: Uh, yes. I think so. I'm still not sure whether you are trying to refute me or help me. SOCRATES: I am simply following the argument where it leads. During our journey we may find a premise that requires refutation. If so, we shall refute it. If not, we shall leave it be. JOSHUA: That sounds like a reasonable approach. Yes, I am happy with the argument so far. As it stands we can now conclude that the first cause is God. Short and sweet. SOCRATES: It is short indeed, but perhaps not as sweet as you think. Let me ask you this, my wise friend: Can you imagine a universe in which things exist but do not have any causal influence on other things? JOSHUA: I don't know what you mean, Socrates. SOCRATES: I'm thinking of a universe in which nothing ever causes anything. In such a universe our premises would be true, because nothing would ever be the cause of anything, including itself. And there would be no infinite causal chains because there would be no causal chains at all. But in such a universe, our conclusion would be false because in a universe with no causes there is no first cause. An argument with true premises and a false conclusion is invalid, so it seems that we have a problem. How do you propose we solve this problem? JOSHUA: We need another premise, don't we? I recall that in his Second Way-that's the argument we are talking about-Aquinas stated that there is an order of causes. So, he suggests that there are in fact causes. And we observe this in the real universe, do we not? SOCRATES: That is what the natural philosophers tell us. So, we should include a premise to indicate that causes exist-at least one cause, anyway. Do you agree? JOSHUA: Yes. SOCRATES: Let us do so and re-examine the argument. This is our new argument (I will emphasize the new premise). 1. (premise) If something were the cause of itself, it would exist prior to itself 2. (premise) Nothing can exist prior to itself 3. (conclusion) Therefore, nothing is the cause of itself (from 1, 2) 4. (premise) At least one thing has a cause 5. (premise) A chain of causes cannot be infinite 6. (conclusion) Therefore, there is a first cause (from 3, 4, 5) Does this formulation accurately express our argument? JOSHUA: It looks good to me, Socrates. We have fixed the argument and can now conclude that God exists. He must be the first cause, after all. SOCRATES: Must he? We shall see. First, we have more work to do. JOSHUA: What work? Haven't we finished? SOCRATES: Not quite. We have not yet considered causal loops such as A causes B, which causes C, which causes A. In such a case, nothing is the cause of itself since each event is caused by another event. And the loop isn't infinite since it has a finite number of cause effects, 3 of each, A, B, C. But because the loop is circular, there would be no first cause. So a causal loop is an example of a situation in which the premises are true and the conclusion is false. That makes the argument invalid. JOSHUA: So you are suggesting that the cycle of universe creation and destruction could go on forever? Didn't we already refute that possibility? SOCRATES: Not quite. Not in a linear fashion, but perhaps in a circular fashion. It is important to represent the thought accurately. JOSHUA: I understand what you mean, but that would mean that something can cause itself, in a roundabout way. Is there a way to get around this? SOCRATES: I am unsure, my friend. I have no knowledge other than knowledge of my own ignorance. What do you think Aquinas really meant when he concluded that nothing is the cause of itself? JOSHUA: He meant what he said. I don't know how else to express it. SOCRATES: In a causal loop where A causes B, which causes C, which causes A, does it not appear that A is somehow responsible for itself? JOSHUA: Yes, that follows. SOCRATES: Then is it not reasonable to suggest that Aquinas would want to rule out that possibility? JOSHUA: Of course. SOCRATES: I agree. But that is not what his argument is doing is it? At least not in the way we have represented it. In the first deduction we have moved from the premises: 1. (premise) If something were the cause of itself, it would exist prior to itself 2. (premise) Nothing can exist prior to itself To the conclusion: 3. (conclusion) Therefore, nothing is the cause of itself (from 1, 2) which we have shown to be invalid because of the possibility of causal loops. So would you agree that we may have misrepresented the first two premises? JOSHUA: Okay, so how can we fix the argument? SOCRATES: We need to reconstruct the syllogism with better premises. What do you think Aquinas really wants to say? JOSHUA: That there is a first cause. SOCRATES: We know that is his conclusion. But how can he best reach this conclusion. What does he want to say in his premises? What types of causal relations does he need to consider? JOSHUA: The normal linear cause effect chain as well as circular ones, right? SOCRATES: That sounds correct. We are making good progress. And in terms of linear chains, what options does he consider? JOSHUA: Chains that have a first cause and chains with no cause, that go on forever. SOCRATES: And in terms of accounting for causal loops in which it seems that an event can bring about its own cause, what premise do we need? JOSHUA: We need to rule out the possibility that something can be responsible for itself, even if not immediately so. SOCRATES: Nicely put, my friend. Let us adjust our argument accordingly (I will emphasize the modified premises): 1. (premise) Every causal chain must be EITHER circular, OR infinite, OR have a first cause 2. (premise) If something were the cause of itself, or causally responsible for itself, it would be prior to itself 3. (premise) Nothing can be prior to itself 4. (conclusion) Therefore, nothing is either the cause of itself or is causally responsible for itself (from 2, 3) 5. (premise) At least one thing has a cause 6. (premise) A chain of causes cannot be infinite 7. (conclusion) Therefore, there is a first cause (from 1, 4, 5, 6) Notice how Premise #1 establishes the possibilities; the deduction #4 (from 2, 3) rules out circular chains; and Premise #6 rules out infinite chains. This leaves us with the possibility of a first cause, which can then be validly deduced because Premise #5 states that at least one thing has a cause. JOSHUA: It looks like we are now finished. Thank you Socrates. SOCRATES: It may look as if we are finished, but in this case looks may be deceiving my friend. JOSHUA: I am starting to tire, and my reading group are starting to return. SOCRATES: We are nearly there. Can you remind me, why are we analyzing the Aquinas's Second Way? JOSHUA: It is an example of an argument for the existence of God. SOCRATES: Ah yes, I recall. But I am foolish and perhaps blind. Can you please tell me how has this established the existence of God? JOSHUA: Well, it's simple, Socrates. We have shown that there must have been a cause of the universe. This is exactly what Aquinas set out to do. He says in his writing that "Therefore, it is necessary to admit a first cause to which everyone gives the name 'God'" SOCRATES: Suppose I change that statement to read: "Therefore, it is necessary to admit a first cause to which everyone gives the name 'Fred'". Would that tell us anything meaningful? JOSHUA: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Let me rephrase my question. Would naming the first cause "Fred" tell us anything about the nature of the first cause? JOSHUA: Other than its name, no. SOCRATES: It seems to me, then, that merely naming the first cause "God" does not tell us anything about the nature of the first cause. Aquinas falls short of establishing the existence of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being that people usually think of when they use the term "God". He effectively established the existence of a first cause, and then gave it the name "God", but any other name could have been used. He hasn't told us anything useful about the nature of the first cause. Am I wrong? Refute me! JOSHUA: I cannot refute you Socrates. But I still believe God exists. How else can we explain the existence of the universe? SOCRATES: Can Aquinas offer further assistance? JOSHUA: He has another argument known as the Third Way. Perhaps that would lead us to a better conclusion. SOCRATES: Well, let us not waste any time. Let's examine the Third Way. JOSHUA: I fear that I am growing tired, Socrates. I cannot manage any more analysis at this time. Besides, the Bible discussion group will soon be back from their break and I must give them my remaining energy. SOCRATES: I need you in your most able state, and I certainly do not want to steal any more of your time from your Bible readers. Let us adjourn then. We shall return tomorrow and start on Aquinas's Third Way. JOSHUA: Thank you Socrates. ------------------ COMPOSED BY BRENT SILBY