Encuestas aplicadas a los colaboradores del Departamento de Talento Humano

The impossibility of the last human and of the Overhuman leads to infinite timeliness: no ‘standstill’ can be reached. Indeed, for Nietzsche, there is an intrinsic link between the historical order and the logical order: history exhausts all possibilities and “if the motion of the world aimed at a final state, that state would have been reached,” consequently, “becoming does not aim at a final state, does not flow into ‘being.’”172 This places the ideology of survival in a precarious situation: recall that the two pillars of this ideology are truth and values. Yet, as I have pointed out, they are in a dissymetric relationship: values depend on truth, but not the reverse, so that truth is bound to be attributed regardless of values. Within the period of stability of the slave rule, the independence of truth from values is inconsequential; it expresses itself when, for instance, truth is attributed to facts which are morally neutral. However, this means that truth itself is morally neutral. Eternal becoming guarantees that truth will one day contradict values. Here, we arrive at the crisis of the ideology of survival, or in Nietzsche’s terms, the crisis of nihilism: “Why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence. We require, sometime, new values.”173

The crisis of nihilism is reached when truth and values oppose each other and their difference turns into incompatibility. Values cease to be “true” and truth ceases to be valuable. This involves a revision of what was hitherto called “truth”: so far, truth was considered to be necessarily useful. Usefulness (in the

172_{WP 708 [Nov. 1887-March 1888].} 173_{KSA,XIII, 190.}

sense of usefulness for survival), in turn, was the basis for values. It appears now that truth uncovers its own opposition to values and utility, thereby proving that truth itself has been misconstrued. The new truth, which is a more independent version of truth, exposes the other truth as a instrument of morality. Consider:

“the position of pure knowledge, scientific integrity, is at once abandoned as soon as the claims of morality must be answered. Morality says: I need many answers--reasons, arguments; scruples can come afterwards, or not at all.”174

The will-to-truth uncovers itself as morally informed. Yet it exceeds its moral prerogatives and becomes able to will truth even against morality and thereby to transform truth into the highest value.175 Nietzsche calls this moment the “self-undercutting of truth”: the immoral truth undercuts the moral truth. The self-undercutting of truth, is also necessarily coincidental to the undercutting of values by truth.176 On the one hand, the genealogical account given by Nietzsche ensured the dependence of values on truth through their reference to the empirical world. On the other hand, it ensured truth’s independence from values: as I discussed earlier, values are valuable because they have a reference to truth (there exists a world where these values are the object of perceptual faith), but truth need not be good in order to be true.

Nihilism faces mankind with a painful alternative: truth or values. Choosing values of course means embracing the path of survival leading towards

174_{WP, 423 [March-June 1888].} 175_{GS 344, D, Preface, 4, GM, III, 24.}

176 _{“Morality itself, as honesty, compells us to negate morality” V [58] (Summer 1886-Autumn}

the last human. Values serve utility, security, and sociability, all of which which are the greater aspirations of the last human. Choosing truth, on the other hand, involves a total liberation from values. This liberation is the promise of an overcoming of ressentiment, bad conscience, and all sorts of sickness that plague the modern condition. In this respect, it means, choosing life and the path to the overhuman. This confronts us with the alternative of “passive” and “active” nihilism: is nihilism a liberation or a cause of despair? “Nihilism,” Nietzsche writes, “is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as

active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as

passive nihilism.”177 We then obtain two antagonistic pairs: values and survival on the one hand, and life and truth on the other,178 the future of mankind will depend on the choice made by those who are undergoing the crisis of nihilism. Nietzsche rejects the first alternative. His entire project is directed towards saving us from the pitfall of the last human. It is, however, unclear on what grounds he can advance this project. This question, I believe, can only be addressed with regard to Nietzsche’s cosmological ontology. This will be my focus in chapter III.

Nietzsche’s hope is for humanity to embrace the path of truth without values. This path is a “great promise,”179 but it is also a frightful prospect, because one cannot walk this path with the help of crutches such as values.180 Indeed, this path involves the liberation from all falsifications, and there lies the

177_{WP, 22 [Spring-Fall 1887].} 178_{EH, « Destiny," 4.}

179_{GM, II, 16.}

‘great danger’: these falsifications were originally put in place as means of survival. Henceforth, Nietzsche shall seek those able to survive truth. This challenge is first presented in GS, 110 as the challenge of the incorporation of truth: “to what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question, that is the experiment.” I now turn to this question.