Nietzsche and Objectivity

Nietzsche and Objectivity:

If You Use It, Don’t Abuse It

            In this essay, I will develop Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of objectivity as developed in his essay The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.  I will then argue that Nietzsche’s interpretation of the Greek culture exemplified Nietzsche’s conception of plastic power.

            Nietzsche’s critique of objectivity centers on the illusion of certainty and truth that objectivity provides the one who upholds it. While one may be persuaded in the purported epistemic privilege of objectivity, one is in fact merely caught up in the ‘mysterious misty vapour’ of deception. (97) This illusion is instantiated when one possesses the ‘naïve belief’ in the validity of contemporary standards and uses them when ‘assessing the deeds of the past’. (90) How exactly is objectivity as an enterprise illusory for Nietzsche?

            Nietzsche argues that the subject attempting objectivity falsely assumes that he or she can separate themselves from the object of inquiry. When one claims to have an ‘objective’ view of the past, one is essentially claiming that he or she can ‘observe an event in all its motivations and consequences so purely that it has no effect on his own subjectivity’. (91) While Nietzsche is primarily arguing that the implicit assumptions of objectivity are unfounded and illusory, he is also making the more profound claim that the illusion of objectivity is a by-product of masquerading an anachronistically driven ethical critique of history as a historiography grounded in truth; one mistakes ethical superiority for revelatory historical analysis.

            Another problem with objectivity for Nietzsche is that the subject believes he or she has completely captured the object of interest. However, while objectivity may provide one with conviction in knowledge of the ‘empirical nature of the things in themselves’, this is simply a futile attempt by man to, as quoted from Grillparzer, ‘apprehend events impenetrable to him; (unify) things when God alone knows whether they belong together.’(91). Whereas man thinks he is uncovering the things in themselves, this is in fact ‘superstition’ and he ultimately fails to do justice to the complexity and life of the object of enquiry. Nietzsche compares this to reducing Beethoven’s Eroica to an arrangement for two flutes; while it may contain traces of the original work, it ultimately leaves out the ‘solidity and power of the original’. 

            What do solidity and power have to do with objectivity? Nietzsche’s third critique of man’s attempt at objectivity is directly related to distance between those who have taken up the task of illustrating the past’s complex contours and those who entrenched these very contours. For Nietzsche, it is impossible for those who know nothing of what it is like to ‘experience greater and more exalted things’ to get close to the ‘great and exalted things of the past. (94) Hence, this is why ‘true history is written by experienced and superior man’ for Nietzsche; those who have not lived through great experiences are ill-equipped to do history justice. (94)

            While Nietzsche unleashes a scathing attack on the use of objectivity in the modern age, he does leave the door open for possibility of objectivity as useful insofar as it is line with justice; objectivity only works if it coupled with ‘a drive for justice’; a ‘pure will to justice’. (89) Nietzsche argues that one of the reasons objectivity is ultimately useless is that its sources are generally mistaken as virtuous when they are in fact reducible to commonplace drives like ‘curiosity, flight from boredom, envy, vanity, and desire for amusement.’ (89) Nietzsche claims that the ‘virtue of justice is rarely present’ in those who are held as the standard of a times thought; he ventures so far  as to even ask the reader whether the ‘virtuoso’ of his or her time is also the ‘justest man of his time’. (89)

            Nietzsche’s position on the correct use of objectivity, I would argue, is linked with his notion of plastic power and sets up his argument for the Greeks as embodying the correct use of facts from the past. Plastic power is defined early in the text as the ability to take out of everything available (all historical facts), that which is needed to ‘develop out of oneself in one’s own way’. (62) This appropriation of the past requires an ‘architect of the future’ who possesses ‘knowledge of the present’ (91).  Nietzsche argues at the conclusion of the essay that the Greeks were in a position to wither away insofar as they were ‘in danger of being overwhelmed by what was past and foreign’ and needed to ‘organise the chaos’. (122) Nietzsche then argues that the Greeks correctly reacted to the threat of objectivity and history; they used history to ‘address their real needs, letting their pseudo needs die out’. (122) This use of history mirrors the definition of plastic power provided by Nietzsche at the beginning of the essay. The link between objectivity and justice resonates when Nietzsche finally argues that it was a by-product of the ‘higher nature of their moral nature that the Greeks achieved victory over all other cultures.’ (123) Greek culture, for Nietzsche, are an example of the way in which objectivity and history can be used in the service of life when coupled with a ‘pure will to justice’ and plastic power in order for one to sift through the many-sidedness of history and do justice to life.

            In conclusion, while Nietzsche unleashes a devastating critique of objectivity, he does argue 

that there are ways, and in fact there have been ways, in which objectivity can be used in the service 

of life when the subject uses plastic power with an inherent thirst for justice. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. Print.