Abstract
MARIO BUNGE (Revista Continental de Filosofia, 2, No. 4, Nov.–Dec. 1944) has written a useful perspective of Nietzsche's attitude towards science. Nietzsche's main ideas are both anti-scientific and anti-rational, and his own confession, "I know very little about the results of science", was quite unnecessary, as is obvious from the puerility of his views on different sciences. Apart from his great influence on contemporary thought—which is not always recognized—he was a typical product of the decadence of European culture, and in general of the decadence of the philosophy which originated with positivism and culminated in the modern anti-intellectualism. Hence, Bunge says, we may say that Nietzsche is not only the direct forerunner, but also to a large extent the characteristic exponent, of so-called modern philosophy. He attempted to destroy standards of values and to create others, and he made no secret of the fact that those he wished to destroy were cultural—the scientific, philosophical, ethical, æsthetic, religious, etc., and above all, the social and political values which were an obstruction to the junker class. His attitude towards cultural interests is seen in his reply to the question, "What is science?", and the whole epistemology of Nietzsche is summed up in this reply: "It is the experience of men for their instincts and the instinct to know their instincts." The summum bonum is the instinctive life, not just an animal existence, but the free manifestation of the desire for domination; not the longing for quiet joy, but the peril of action, the struggle, and through this the ascendancy. Nietzsche had no desire for science but for knowledge; though not knowledge of the contemplative kind, but a knowledge active and authoritative. His ideas do not constitute so much a system of philosophy as a vague and obscure vision of the world, more suitable to a demoniac than to a philosopher seeking truth. In short, one might say that his attitude to science is, generally speaking, negative; and when it is not that, it is something much worse—a restrained pretence but brutal and also pragmatic in the worst sense, namely, that of the prostitution of science as a priestess of Moloch.
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Nietzsche and Science. Nature 156, 263 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156263c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156263c0