Componentes del Proceso de Planificación Estratégica

This is the conclusion Merleau-Ponty reaches at the end of his investigation into the question of truth. As I show at the end of chapter III, it is also Nietzsche’s conclusion. Demonstrating this, I think, provides a satisfactory and systematic link between the two thinkers’ philosophies. It thereby satisfies the objective of this project. The core question of this project is the question of truth, and the thesis I defend is that both Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche respond to this question in the same way. I think this link satisfies the requirement of being sytematic and intrinsic because it is placed at the ontological level. This means that it is intrinsically connected with every aspect of each thinker’s worldview.

Of course, this involves some presuppositions that I would like to clarify. I think that for this thesis to establish a systematic link between Nietzsche and

Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies, it must be shown that both philosophies are a) systematic, and b) organised around their ontology. Addressing these two points requires me to return to a point I have not yet made explicit.

I have indicated that I shall not provide any explicit argument for my claim that the question of truth has structural importance in the works of the two authors. Recall that it was only under this condition—which I labelled B, i)—that my argument can be said to establish an intrinsic link between the two philosophies. I would like to briefly make explicit two arguments (which will remain implicit in the rest of the thesis) in favour of this claim. The first one is that the question of truth leads both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty into a similar, if unusual, ontology. The structural role assumed by this question for their ontology indicates, I think, that it is a question that goes beyond the simple anecdotic level. The second one is related to the structure of the development of both thinker’s ideas on the question of truth. Even though this is not the central concern of this thesis, I would like to point out that not only do their treatments arrive at similar conclusions but also that they do so in a similar way. As I explained, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty’s treatments of the question of truth are organised around three key ideas. In each part, I have devoted a chapter to each. Firstly, Nietzsche encounters the ground from which the phenomenon of truth arises (chapter I). Like Merleau-Ponty who calls this ground the ‘origin of truth’ (chapter IV), Nietzsche finds this ground to include a pre-objective, intentional structure30. He then seeks a method to attain this authentic ground beyond the

30 _{It is worth clarifying in which sense the word "intentional" is used here. Largely under the}

influence of commentators influenced by the Philosophy of Mind, such as John Richardson and Peter Poellner, the term "intentionality" which traditionally belongs to the context of

false beliefs to which it has given rise: the thing-in-itself, subjects, objects, selves and values. He finds this method in what he calls the ‘incorporation of truth’ (II). Like Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the phenomenological ‘reduction’ (V), the incorporation of truth is intended as a means of obtaining direct knowledge of the ground of truth and to undo our belief in sedimented objects. Finally, Both Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche recognize in this ground the ground of Being, and consequently integrate its characteristics in their ontologies. As a result, Being is conceived as the very movement of the self-differentiation from which originates the phenomenon of truth (III and VI).

denotes the essential activity of the will to power which is to structure itself by positing an implicit object for itself. In other words, the will to power pre-objectively points to an intentional

CHAPTER I:

NIETZSCHE ON SELF-DIFFERENTIATION AND

GENEALOGY

In Chapter One, I examine Nietzsche’s genealogy of the predication of truth. Nietzsche encounters the question of truth as the question of the meaning of ‘truth.' How do we even conceive of something such as truth?

Concepts for Nietzsche are sublimations of our experiences. They are a result of our simplifying and solidifying a perceptual reality which is always indeterminate. This process that Nietzsche calls ‘sublimation’ makes it possible (theoretically, at least) to trace a concept back to an original experience. The question Nietzsche asks is: if the concept of truth did arise from a primary experience, what may this experience have been? If we wish to relate truth to an original experience, Nietzsche thinks, it means that we need to conceive of experience in a new way. It is no longer possible to envisage experience as the experience of pure immanence. Doing so would make it impossible to explain the separation of truth and experience, that is to say, the fact that we can apply the concept true to what is not experienced. Nietzsche claims that any experience involves an implicit predication of truth. (Merleau-Ponty will call such a gap a “zone of subjectivity” ). The explicitation of this predication, which requires concepts, is thus only a radicalisation of the implicit one through language. It is only because we needed to attain mutual comprehension at a linguistic level that this basic form of consciousness expanded.

For Nietzsche, primary consciousness and implicit predication are correlative. Nietzsche expresses this point most strikingly in his genealogy of human consciousness. For him, human consciousness and self-consciousness are two sides of the same coin. Consciousness is represented as a ‘gap’ between the human subject and the object of consciousness, whereas self-consciousness is represented as a ‘gap’ within the self. For Nietzsche, this double gap is genealogically primary. It cannot be conceived as derived from any anterior principle.

Nietzsche conceives of this primary ‘gap’ as establishing a certain reversibility of the subject-object relation. I shall refer to this reversibility as ‘self-differentiation.' The human ‘subject’ is self-differentiated because it can take itself as an object and adopt an external outlook towards itself. For Nietzsche, neither the subject (self) nor the object is primary. Anterior to them is a purely intentional structure described as ‘interest.' Another name for interest is ‘will to power.' It is this structure which is at the root of the experience of truth: something is true if I have a relation of interest with it. This interest can be directed towards an external object (for conquest) or towards the self (for self- preservation). In the first case, I am the subject of the interest; in the latter, I am its object. For Nietzsche, this reversibility of interest is prior even to any subject or object of interest. By contrast, subject and objects are fictions induced by the

structure of interest. This is because Nietzsche not only places self- differentiation within the self, but he places it as anterior to the self too. In terms of the question of truth, this suggests two points: firstly, truth, as structured by objectivity is impossible (by objectivity, I shall mean the view that sees subject

and object as two opposed, real and self-identical entities) because neither the subject nor the object, nor their separation is primary. Secondly, it demonstrates how even this error is informed by the real ground of experience: the belief in truth is the inauthentic expression of the authentic ground of interest.

For Nietzsche, we must come to the recognition that truth is a falsification of reality because our belief in truth supports our belief in values, and these values make us sick. He defines sickness as an inner antagonism and health as inner harmony. As a consequence, Nietzsche seeks a way for us to live according to the truth that he proposes; namely, the truth that truth is a falsification of reality, and thus so are values.

A.

TRUTH AND VALUES: from Perceptual Faith to Blind Faith

“ Basic problem: whence this omnipotence of faith? Of faith in morality?” WP, 253 [1885-1886] Nietzsche's Nietzsche’s method for disproving truth is to expose its concealed

essence through the genealogical inquiry. He uncovers that truth is valued not because it is true, but because it is useful, to the point that true has come to be said not of the true, but of the useful. here, truth and values collide. Yet, the very importance of the value of utility is warranted only with reference to reality, a reality which is presented as an object of interest or as a threat, and which, consequently, we must know the truth about. For Nietzsche, this uncovers the basic ground which I have called the experience of truth: the concept of truth is derived from an original experience which is the primal encounter with the world. This exposes our basic relation with the world as a

relation of interest, while at the same time, establishing that this relation of interest is also an epistemic relation: there is an equation between truth and interest. It is necessary for us to examine further this relation for two reasons. First, it will help us understand the essence of truth itself, and give us access to the ground which produced the phenomenon of truth, and from which the concept of truth has been abstracted. Secondly, in relation with Merleau-Ponty, it will help us clarify what is meant when we talk of”intentionality" in Nietzsche. For the phenomenologists, it doesn't seem (at first sight, and we will see that this must be refined) that intentionality has anything to do with interest, on the contrary, in a typically Husserlian setup, intentionality comes through when personal interest is removed. Yet, as I will argue, we may see in Nietzsche' ultra-refined notion of interest, a way to reconcile the intentionality as interest with the intentionality of the phenomenologists. This is because for Nietzsche, interest is an expression of an intentionality which pre-exists any subject or object of this very interest, and therefore this intentionality is not defined by personal interest either.

i.

From Reality to Unreality.