Nietzsche on Causality

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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Volume 28, Number 3, 2014,

pp. 327-334 (Article)

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journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 28 , no. 3, 2014

Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

Nietzsche on Causation

Joshua Raymanuniversity of south florida

abstract: Snowed by his affirmation of certain model natural sciences, popular

naturalist readings of Nietzsche, which assert that he is “engaged in giving causal

explanations of various human phenomena,” fail to account for his critique of causal-

ity. This critique is at the heart of his critiques of metaphysics and natural science, for

causality is the mechanism by which metaphysical concepts are generated and nature

is transformed into a system of universal laws. I explain this connection by reference to

his Aristotelian interpretation of causality and examine the radical entailments of this

critique.

keywords: Nietzsche, causality, Hume, naturalism, Aristotle

Nietzsche’s critique of causality is at the heart of his critiques of metaphys-ics and natural science, for causality is the mechanism by which meta-

physical concepts are generated and nature is transformed into a system

of universal laws. Yet the nature, variety, and radical entailments of his cri-

tique of causality have been insufficiently appreciated in the scholarship.

By eliminating cause, he deals a death blow to the naturalism currently in

vogue in Nietzsche studies,1 according to which Nietzsche is “engaged in

giving causal explanations of various human phenomena.”2 The mistake is

to read his metaphysically deflationary views concerning nonnatural cau-sality and his privileging of nature and philosophical psychology, physics,



joshua rayman328

chemistry, and biology as acceptance of natural causality.3 Nietzsche uses

physics and chemistry for his critique of causality, disputing the logic “that

science is possible should prove to us a principle of causality” (Early 1888,14[81], KSA 13.260–61). So, any reading of Nietzschean naturalism will

have to reconstruct his model sciences without causality, a task facilitated

by the fact that many sciences have embraced noncausal, probabilistic

thinking similar to the kind permitted by Hume and Nietzsche’s regulative

or useful fictions.4 A more difficult hurdle for this nonmetaphysical, non-

causal account of the sciences is that by regarding causality as intertwined

with or basic to the metaphysics of subjectivity, objectivity, action, and free-

dom of the will, Nietzsche’s radically skeptical attitude toward natural andnonnatural causality deprives us of the language and metaphysical con-

cepts that we have traditionally used to explain the order and connection

of events in the world. The only thing remaining is the occurrence: “In the

belief in cause and effect the main thing is always forgotten: the occurrence

itself [das Geschehen selbst ]” (Early 1888, 14[81], KSA 13.261). Yet, without

causality, we lack a language to describe change. Hence, Nietzsche’s cri-

tique of causality radically delimits the possibilities for such alternative

explanatory candidates as scientific naturalisms, pragmatisms, and will topower.

Nietzsche’s critique of causality is explicitly Humean,5 an empiricist

critique that the meaning, proper source, and validation of a concept con-

sist in its psychological derivation from sensation or feeling. What cannot

be derived from the senses is the product of imagination with no real exis-

tence. Causality is an example of just such an imaginary product. Accord-

ing to Nietzsche, “We have absolutely no experience of a cause” (Early 1888,

14[98], KSA 13.274): “Every ground of movement and change remainsinvisible to us. . . . [C]onsciousness never delivers us an example of cause

and effect” (Early 1888, 14[145], KSA 13.329). Hence, sense experience

cannot supply a ground for the application of causal explanations even to

observed changes. The absence of any experience of causality also warrants

Hume and Nietzsche in denying that the concept of causality even has a

meaning.6 Nietzsche argues that “there is not what Kant meant, no sense

of causality” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.276): “We have nothing of a ‘sense

of efficient cause’ [Sinn der causa efficiens]” (1885, 2[83], KSA 12.102). Wehave not given sense or meaning to the concept of cause by deriving it from

some experience or feeling, and thus, according to the empiricist criterion

of meaning, it has no meaning.7



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But Nietzsche is not satisfied with merely translating causal metaphysics

into regulative fictions (JGB 21, KSA 5.36),8 for he regards causality as inex-

tricable from the metaphysics of the subject, object, will, and intention.Hence, he argues that the overcoming of causality entails the overcoming

of metaphysics. He says that “the thing, the subject, the will, the inten-

tion—all inhere in the concept ‘cause’”; that “we have grasped together our

feeling of will, our ‘feeling of freedom,’ our feeling of responsibility and our

intention of an action in the concept ‘cause’”; and that “a ‘thing’ is a sum

of its effects, bound synthetically by a concept, image” (Early 1888, 14[98],

KSA 13.275). If all major metaphysical concepts are contained analytically

within the concept of cause, then the critique of causality destroys thesemetaphysical concepts. But this alleged entailment is hardly self-evident,

for the concepts of causality, subjectivity, objectivity, freedom, will, and so

forth do not seem analytically reducible to one another, singly or in combi-

nation. Causality seems too narrow, for example, to include notions of con-

sciousness and too broad to include the specific differentia of thinghood.

What explains this connection to a larger metaphysics is Nietzsche’s

Aristotelian understanding of causality as material, formal, final, and effi-

cient, rather than the narrow modern sense of efficient causality. His identi-fication and critique of final and efficient causes undermine intentionalism

and teleology. Thus, his identification of intentionalism as the key problem

in causal attribution should not be taken merely as another modern scien-

tific criticism of Aristotelian final causes, for he argues that “efficient cause

and final cause are one in their basic conception” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA

13.275); both are invalid in their common reliance on metaphysical inten-

tions. Hence, he parts from modern or early modern science in applying

its critique of final causality to efficient causality as well. Viewing the worldon the model of intentional consciousness leads us to see occurrences as a

“doing,” which entails a doer, an independent subject acting through inten-

tional willing: “Psychologically accounted, the whole concept [of cause]

comes to us from the subjective conviction that we are causes, namely, that

the arm moves itself. . . . But that is an error ” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA

13.274). It is an error because “we differentiate ourselves, the doers, from

the deed and we make use of this schema everywhere, — we search for a

doer for every occurrence” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.274). This explainswhy Nietzsche argues that the concept of causality contains within it the

notion of subjectivity: “Our ‘understanding of an occurrence’ consists in

that we invented a subject which would be responsible for the fact that



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something occurred and how it occurred” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.274).

Similarly, we “understand the will to do this and that as cause because the

action follows on it” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.274). But in examining ourexperience, we never unearth the cause: “‘Cause’ is not found at all: from

some cases, where it seemed given to us and from where we have projected

it into the understanding of the occurrence, the self-deception is demon-

strated [nachgewiesen]” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.274). Thus, we lack any

justification for asserting that our experiences are caused by free will. And

thus, for Nietzsche, efficient and final causal claims conceived in terms of

intentionality underwrite our belief in metaphysical subjects and objects,

which he elsewhere ascribes to our historically conditioned belief in gram-mar, grammatical subjects and predicates. Nietzsche’s critique of the mate-

rial and formal causes similarly undermines metaphysics in rejecting their

explanation of factical changes by reference to static objective correlates

of the metaphysical subject and universal essences removed from change.

The ahistorical universality of the formal cause cannot stand in a world

defined by flux, as in Nietzsche’s account, and the material cause falls with

his concomitant rejection of matter or atoms as a final hiding place for

static universals, as something that “stands fixed,” “the belief in ‘substance’[Stoff ], in ‘matter’” (JGB 12, KSA 5.26). In this sense, Nietzsche’s critique of

causality undermines an entire metaphysics.

But he sets up different models of how the critique of causality can be

used to undermine the belief in other metaphysical concepts, structural par-

allelism, causal foundationalism, and metaphysical foundationalism. The

argument to structural parallelism asserts that “we seek such metaphysical

concepts, like causation, to explain change; the atom itself is still such an

imagined [hinzugedachtes] ‘thing’ and ‘originary subject’ [Ursubjekt ]” (Early1888, 14[98], KSA 13.275). Causation involves the same metaphysical leap

as the atom, thing, and transcendental subject, as an imagined explana-

tion for change that transcends all experience. On this view, Nietzsche’s

critique of causality would undermine these other metaphysical concepts

not because causality was fundamental to them but because they all relied

on the same kinds of metaphysical arguments. The structural parallelism

between the argument to causality and the argument to thinghood, atom-

ism, and so forth would mean that to bring down the first would be to bringdown the rest.

In the metaphysical foundationalist model, Nietzsche attacks the con-

cepts underwriting causality: “Finally, we conceive that things, consequently




even atoms effect [wirken] nothing: because they are just not there . . . that the

concept causality is completely unusable—from a necessary sequence of

conditions its causal-relationship does not follow (—that means its effecting power to make 1 leap to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5)” (Early 1888, 14[98], KSA 13.275).

Causality cannot exist, because it presupposes the existence of certain non-

existent metaphysical entities such as atoms. This account subordinates

the critique of causality to a greater metaphysical critique of atoms and

things, reversing the order of precedence we have often seen in Nietzsche’s

critique of causality. Here causality does not underlie an entire metaphys-

ics; an entire metaphysics underlies causality, and with the absence of the

metaphysics, causality disappears as well. This approach is also at workabove in Nietzsche’s view that intentionalist belief in subjects underlies any

causal metaphysics. On this account, the critique of causality would work

through the critique of a general metaphysics of subjects and objects, and

hence, the general undermining of metaphysics would precede and make

possible any critique of causality.

In a third model, the critique of causality is basic to the critique of

metaphysics because causality grasps in itself the properties of metaphysi-

cal entities: “But the ‘thing’ in which we believe is invented in addition[hinzuerfunden] only as ferment [Ferment ] for various predicates. If the

thing ‘effects,’ that thus means that: we grasp all remaining properties,

which otherwise are still present at hand here and momentarily latent, as

cause, that now a single property steps forward: i.e. we take the sum of its

properties — x as cause of property x: which is after all entirely dumb and

crazy! ‘The subject’ or the ‘thing’” (Fall 1885–Fall 1886, 2[87], KSA 12.105).

The entailments of a critique of causality differ according to which of

these three models of the relationship between causality and metaphys-ics inheres. If metaphysics underlies causality, then its critique would

undermine causality, but a critique of causality might very well leave meta-

physics standing unchallenged, cutting off one of its branches but not its

roots. However, if metaphysics simply derives analytically from causality or

depends logically on it, or there is a structural parallelism between causality

and metaphysics, a relation of equality, then the critique of causality simul-

taneously constitutes a critique of metaphysics. In the latter cases, causal-

ity’s end eliminates an entire metaphysical system, along with the languageand concepts of change. Even in the former case, where the elimination of

causality brings with it no necessary further entailments, causality’s demise

obviates any explanation of the sequence of events. Whether causality is at



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the basis of, parallel to, or inextricable from metaphysics, its elimination

creates the need to replace an entire metaphysical system. For this reason,

the significance of rejecting causality goes far beyond replacing onemechanistic explanation of relations among things and events to the central

metaphysical conceptions of the self, world, and being.

notes

1. See Ken Gemes and Christopher Janaway, “Naturalism and Value in

Nietzsche: Review of Nietzsche on Morality by Brian Leiter,” Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research 71, no. 3 (November 2005): 729–40; Maudemarie Clark,Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);

Brian Leiter, “Perspectivism in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals,” in Nietzsche,

Genealogy, Morality, ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1994), 334–57; Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (New York: Routledge,

2002); Richard Schacht, Nietzsche (London: Routledge, 1983); John Richardson,

Nietzsche’s System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Gemes and Janaway

disagree with Leiter’s view that an insistence on causal explanation instantiates

agreement with the natural sciences, on grounds that the natural sciences do not

always apply causal forms of explanation, which is correct but ignores the fact thatNietzsche rejects causal explanation. It is difficult to see how Leiter can recognize

Nietzsche’s affinity with “the naturalist camp” of Freud and Hume (Gemes and

Janaway, “Naturalism and Value in Nietzsche,” 731) when the latter provides the

model for Nietzsche’s critique of causality.

Quotations of Nietzsche come from Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische

Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (New York: Walter de

Gruyter, 1967–77 and 1988); hereafter cited as KSA by volume and page number,

along with the Nachlaß fragment or specific work being cited. All translations are

my own.2. Gemes and Janaway, “Naturalism and Value in Nietzsche,” 731; Leiter,

Nietzsche on Morality, 5, 8, 10–11.

3. Nietzsche accords psychology a high status. When it is freed “from moral

prejudices and fears” and “grasped as morphology and doctrine of the development

of the will to power , as I grasp it,” “psychology is once again the path to the basic

problems” ( Jenseits von Gut und Böse [JGB] 23, 04/08/1886, KSA 5.38–39);

“psychologically reckoned: the concept ‘cause’ is our feeling of power of the

so-called will [Wollen]—our concept ‘effect’ the superstition [Aberglaube] that

the feeling of power is power itself, which moves [bewegt ]” (1888, 14[81], KSA13.260). He favors the biological study of morality (1887, 8[4], KSA 12.333). He

refers to a “chemistry of moral, religious, aesthetic representations and sensations

[Empfindungen]” (Menschliches Allzumenschliches, 1.1, KSA 2.23) and argues that




“in chemistry it is shown that all matter drives its force [ jeder Stoff seine Kraft

so weit treibt ] as far as it can” (1885, 34[51], KSA 11.436). He says that “we have

dragged in [eingeschleppt ] the unchanging, always still from metaphysics, my LordPhysicists [meine Herren Physiker ]” (1888, 14[187], KSA 13.374). And finally, he says,

“Long live, physics!” (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [FW], 335, KSA 3.560).

4. Hans Seigfried develops Nietzsche’s affirmation of science in an explicitly

noncausal direction. Hans Seigfried, “Autonomy and Quantum Physics:

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Heisenberg,” Philosophy of Science 57, no. 4

(December 1990): 619–30, at 628.

5. Nietzsche’s frequent references to Hume most often concern his critique of

causality. In Nietzsche’s library, there was a German edition of Hume’s Dialogues

Concerning Natural Religion (C279 David Hume, Gespräche über natürliche Religion [Leipzig, 1781]); early on in his notes for a work called “On Teleology,” Nietzsche

wrote down the name of Hume’s text (Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, Weimar, 10: 71/63,

s. 55 or 56 [pagination unmarked]); in an early manuscript of Karl Schaarschmidt’s

Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie in the Nietzsche Archive, he wrote the names

Berkeley and Hume in the margin where Schaarschmidt refers to Hume’s attack

on the concept of causality (Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, Weimar, 7: 71/41, s. 25);

in April–June 1885, Nietzsche wrote a note approving Hume’s critique of the

attempt to provide a rational ground for the concept of causality (but rejecting the

request to provide a rational ground for rational ground; 34[70], KSA 11.442); hewrote another note at the time that “Hume explained the sense of causality from

custom” (34[82], KSA 11.445); and he wrote further on Hume’s critique of causality

in the Fall 1885–Fall 1886 notes (2[83], KSA 12.102–3) and in The Gay Science:

“Let us recall . . . Kant’s monstrous question marks, which he wrote of the concept

‘causality,’—not that he had doubted its right [Recht ] in general like Hume: he

began much more cautiously to delimit the realm within which this concept has

sense in general” (FW 357, KSA 3.598).

6. Nietzsche uses the empiricist criteria of knowledge and meaning without

accepting many empiricist tenets. His contemporaneous published work of themid- to late 1880s criticizes standard empiricist understandings of experience for

their individualistic, ahistorical assumptions and their reduction of experience

to sensation. His genealogies provide an alternative to an empiricist account

of sensation as the origin of ideas. Thus, he says that “the jurisdiction [Bann]

of determinate grammatical functions is in the final ground the jurisdiction of

physiological judgments of value and conditions of race [Rasse-Bedingungen].—So

much for the refutation [Zurückweisung ] of Locke’s superficiality in regard to

the origin of ideas” (JGB 20, KSA 5.35). Ideas originate not in the individual’s

abstraction from the sensation of singular individuals but from the commonmetaphysics of grammar shared within language families, which metaphysics

is itself determined by physiological and “racial conditions.” Nietzsche also

argues against the reduction of science to sense evidence, praising physics for its



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resistance to sense evidence and the “eternally popular sensualism” (JGB 14, KSA

5.28), though the antiteleologists and Darwinists oppose this resistance to the

senses (dumbly) and the imperative that the investigation of knowledge can onlyproceed through the senses is attractive to a future race of rough machinists and

bridge builders (JGB 14, KSA 5.28–29): “In order to pursue physiology with a good

conscience, one must hold that the sense organs are not appearances in the sense

of the idealist philosophy: as such they could be no causes! Sensualism at least

therein as a regulative hypothesis, in order not to say as a heuristic principle . . .

would the outside world be the work of our organs? But then our body, as a piece

of this outside world, would be the work of our organs! This is, as it seems to me,

a fundamental reductio ad absurdum : assuming that the concept of a causa sui is

something fundamentally absurd. Consequently is the outside world not the workof our organs—?” (JGB 15, KSA 5.29). Hence, Nietzsche is no thoroughgoing

empiricist in the Humean or Lockean sense, for he criticizes empiricists for

equating sense experience with knowledge, assigning to individuals the capacity

of autonomously constructing ideas independently of society, and identifying all

reality by discrete individuals.

7. Hume also argues in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that we can

rule out cause because it is contradictory, which is a distinct criticism from

the one dependent on the empirical criterion of meaning: thus, he speaks of

“the contradictions which adhere to the very ideas of matter, cause and effect,extension, space, time, motion; and in a word, quantity of all kinds” (David Hume,

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith [Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1947], 131). Berkeley’s critique of matter similarly depends

sometimes on the assertion of contradiction in the very idea and sometimes on

the absence of an intuitive source of the idea.

8. For instance, Nietzsche notes that “pleasure and displeasure [Lust und

Unlust ] are mere consequences [Folge], mere accompanying appearance

[Begleiterscheinung ]” (Early 1888, 14[174], KSA 13.360).

Nietzsche on Causality

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