Presupposition
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| - | '''''Beyond Good and Evil''''' ('''Jenseits von Gut und Böse'''; subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future" (Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft)) is a book by the philosopher [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], first published in 1886. | + | In the branch of linguistics known as [[pragmatics]], a '''presupposition''' (or '''ps''') is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in [[discourse]]. Examples of presuppositions include: |
| + | *''Do you want to do it again?'' | ||
| + | **Presupposition: that you have done it already, at least once. | ||
| + | *''Jane no longer writes fiction.'' | ||
| + | **Presupposition: that Jane once wrote fiction. | ||
| - | It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]'', but approached from a more critical, [[polemic]]al direction. | + | A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance. |
| - | In ''Beyond Good and Evil'', Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting [[Judeo-Christian]] premises in their consideration of morality. The work moves into the realm "beyond [[good and evil]]" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the [[perspectival]] nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual. | + | Crucially, [[negation]] of an expression does not change its presuppositions: ''I want to do it again'' and ''I don't want to do it again'' both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; ''My wife is pregnant'' and ''My wife is not pregnant'' both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from [[entailment (pragmatics)|entailment]] and [[implicature]]. For example, ''The president was assassinated'' entails that ''The president is dead'', but if the expression is negated, the [[entailment]] is not necessarily true. |
| - | ==Background and themes== | ||
| - | Of the four "late-period" writings of Nietzsche, ''Beyond Good and Evil'' most closely resembles the [[aphorism|aphoristic]] style of his middle period. In it he exposes the deficiencies of those usually called "philosophers" and identifies the qualities of the "new philosophers": imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality, and the "creation of values". He then contests some of the key [[presupposition]]s of the old philosophic tradition like "self-consciousness," "knowledge," "truth," and "[[free will]]", explaining them as inventions of the moral consciousness. In their place he offers the "[[will to power]]" as an explanation of all behavior; this ties into his "perspective of life", which he regards as "beyond good and evil", denying a universal morality for all human beings. Religion and the [[master-slave morality|master and slave moralities]] feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply held [[humanism|humanistic]] beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and injury to the weak as not universally objectionable. | ||
| - | ==Structure of the work== | ||
| - | The work consists of 296 numbered sections and an "epode" (or "aftersong") entitled "From High Mountains". The sections are organized into nine parts: | ||
| - | * Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers | + | ==See also== |
| - | * Part Two: The Free Spirit | + | *[[Fallacy of many questions]] |
| - | * Part Three: The Religious Essence | + | *[[Loaded question]] |
| - | * Part Four: Maxims and Interludes | + | *[[Exception that proves the rule]] |
| - | * Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals | + | *[[Assumption]]/[[Presumption]] (similar words) |
| - | * Part Six: We Scholars | + | |
| - | * Part Seven: Our Virtues | + | |
| - | * Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands | + | |
| - | * Part Nine: What is Noble? | + | |
| - | ==On philosophers, free spirits, and scholars== | ||
| - | In the opening two parts of the book, Nietzsche discusses in turn the philosophers of the past, whom he accuses of a blind [[dogmatism]] plagued by moral prejudice masquerading as a search for [[objective truth]]; and the "free spirits", like himself, who are to replace them. | ||
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| - | He casts doubt on the project of past philosophy by asking why we should want the "truth" rather than recognizing untruth "as a condition of life." He offers an entirely psychological explanation of every past philosophy: each has been an "involuntary and unconscious memoir" on the part of its author (§6) and exists to justify his moral prejudices, which he solemnly baptizes as "truths". | ||
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| - | In one passage (§34), Nietzsche writes that "from every point of view the ''erroneousness'' of the world in which we believe we live is the surest and firmest thing we can get our eyes on". Philosophers are wrong to rail violently against the risk of being deceived. "It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance". Life is nothing without appearances; it appears to Nietzsche that it follows from this that the abolition of appearances would imply the abolition of "truth" as well. Nietzsche asks the question, "what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'?" | ||
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| - | Nietzsche singles out the [[Stoic]] precept of "living according to nature" (§9) as showing how philosophy "creates the world in its own image" by trying to regiment nature "according to the Stoa". But nature, as something uncontrollable and "prodigal beyond measure", cannot be tyrannized over in the way Stoics tyrannize over themselves. Further, there are forceful attacks on several individual philosophers. [[Descartes]]' ''[[Cogito ergo sum|cogito]]'' presupposes that there is an I, that there is such an activity as thinking, and that I know what thinking is (§16). [[Spinoza]] masks his "personal timidity and vulnerability" by hiding behind his geometrical method (§5), and inconsistently makes self-preservation a fundamental drive while rejecting [[teleology]] (§13). [[Kant]], "the great [[Chinaman (term)|Chinaman]] of [[Königsberg]]" (§210), reverts to the prejudice of an old [[moralism|moralist]] with his [[categorical imperative]], the [[dialectical]] grounding of which is a mere smokescreen (§5). His "faculty" to explain the possibility of synthetic ''a priori'' judgements is likened to the explanation of the [[narcotic]] quality of [[opium]] in terms of a "sleepy faculty" in [[Molière|Molière's]] comedy ''[[Le Malade imaginaire]]''. [[Schopenhauer]] is mistaken in thinking that the nature of the will is self-evident (§19), which is in fact a highly complex instrument of control over those who must obey, not transparent to those who command. | ||
| - | |||
| - | "Free spirits", by contrast to the philosophers of the past, are "investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth and stomach for the most indigestible" (§44). Nietzsche warns against those who would suffer for the sake of truth, and exhorts his readers to shun these indignant sufferers for truth and lend their ears instead to "cynics" — those who "speak 'badly' of man — but do not speak ill of him" (§26). | ||
| - | |||
| - | There are kinds of fearless scholars who are truly independent of prejudice (§6), but these "philosophical labourers and men of science in general" should not be confused with philosophers, who are "commanders and law-givers" (§211). | ||
| - | |||
| - | Nietzsche also subjects [[physics]] to critique. "Nature's conformity to law" is merely one interpretation of the phenomena which natural science observes; Nietzsche suggests that the same phenomena could equally be interpreted as demonstrating "the tyrannically ruthless and inexorable enforcement of power-demands" (§22). Nietzsche appears to espouse a strong brand of scientific [[anti-realism]] when he asserts that "It is ''we'' alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, motive, purpose" (§21). | ||
| - | |||
| - | ==On morality and religion== | ||
| - | |||
| - | In the "''pre-moral'' period of mankind", actions were judged by their consequences. Over the past 10,000 years, however, a morality has developed where actions are judged by their origins (their motivations) not their consequences. This morality of intentions is, according to Nietzsche, a "prejudice" and "something provisional [...] that must be overcome" (§32). | ||
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| - | Nietzsche criticizes "unegoistic morality" and demands that "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before ''[[Command hierarchy|order of rank]]''" (§221). Every "[[high culture]]" begins by recognizing "the ''[[pathos]] of distance''" (§257). | ||
| - | |||
| - | Nietzsche contrasts southern ([[Catholic]]) and northern ([[Protestant]]) [[Christianity]]; [[Northern Europe|northern Europeans]] have much less "talent for religion" (§48) and lack "southern ''delicatezza''" (§50). As elsewhere, Nietzsche praises the [[Old Testament]] while disparaging the [[New Testament|New]] (§52). | ||
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| - | Religion has always been connected to "three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, [[fasting]] and [[sexual abstinence]]" (§47), and has exerted cruelty through demanding sacrifice according to a "ladder" with different rungs of cruelty, which has ultimately caused God Himself to be sacrificed (§55). Christianity, "the most fatal kind of self-presumption ever", has beaten everything joyful, assertive and [[autocracy|autocratic]] out of man and turned him into a "sublime abortion" (§62). If, unlike past philosophers such as [[Schopenhauer]], we really want to tackle the problems of morality, we must "compare ''many'' moralities" and "prepare a ''typology'' of morals" (§186). In a discussion that anticipates ''[[On the Genealogy of Morality]]'', Nietzsche claims that "Morality is in Europe today herd-animal morality" (§202)—i.e., it emanates from the ''ressentiment'' of the slave for the master (see also §260, which leads into the discussion in ''Genealogy'', I). | ||
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| - | Nietzsche argues that noble and base are distinguished by more than what they value as "good." Even where there is agreement over what is good, what men consider a sufficient sign of possessing what is good differs (§194). Nietzsche describes [[love]] as the desire to possess a woman. The most unrefined form of the desire is also the most readily identifiable as a desire to possess another: control over the woman's body. A subtler desire to possess her wants her soul, as well, and thus wants her to be willing to sacrifice herself for her lover. Nietzsche describes this as a more complete possession. A still more refined desire to possess her prompts a concern that she might be willing to sacrifice what she desires for a mistaken image of her lover. This leads some lovers to want their women to know them deep down so that their sacrifice really is a sacrifice for ''them''. A similar rank-ordering applies to [[statesmen]], the less refined not caring whether they attain power by fraud, the more refined not taking pleasure in the people's love unless they love the statesman for who he really is. In both cases, the more spiritualized form of the desire to possess also demands one possess what is good more completely. | ||
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| - | ==On nations, peoples and cultures== | ||
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| - | Nietzsche discusses the complexities of the German soul (§244), praises the [[Jews]] and heavily criticizes the trend of German [[anti-Semitism]] (§251). He praises [[France]] as "the seat of Europe's most spiritual and refined culture and the leading school of taste" (§254). He finds the [[English people|English]] coarse, gloomy, more brutal than the Germans, and declares that "they are no philosophical race", singling out [[Francis Bacon (philosopher)|Bacon]], [[Hobbes]], [[David Hume|Hume]] and [[John Locke|Locke]] as representing a "debasement and devaluation of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century" (§252). Nietzsche also touches on problems of translation and the leaden quality of the German language (§28). | ||
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| - | In a prophetic statement, Nietzsche proclaims that "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth" (§208). | ||
| - | |||
| - | ==Aphorisms and poetry== | ||
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| - | Between §62 and §186 Nietzsche inserts a collection of mostly single-sentence aphorisms, modelled on [[French people|French]] aphorists such as [[François de La Rochefoucauld (writer)|La Rochefoucauld]]. Twelve of these (§§ 84, 85, 86, 114, 115, 127, 131, 139, 144, 145, 147, 148) concern women or the distinction between men and women. Other subjects touched on include his doctrine of the [[eternal recurrence]] (§70), music (§106) and utilitarianism (§174), among more general attempts at trenchant observations about human nature. | ||
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| - | The work concludes with a short ode to friendship in verse form (continuing Nietzsche's use of poetry in ''[[The Gay Science]]'' and ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]''). | ||
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| - | ==Editions== | ||
| - | *''Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Zur Genealogie der Moral'', edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002 (study edition of the standard German Nietzsche edition) | ||
| - | *''Beyond Good and Evil'', translated by [[Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)|Walter Kaufmann]], New York: Random House, 1966; reprinted in Vintage Books, and as part of ''Basic Writings of Nietzsche'', New York: Modern Library, 2000 | ||
| - | *''Beyond Good and Evil'', translated by [[R. J. Hollingdale]], Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973; revised reprint 1990 with introduction by Michael Tanner | ||
| - | *''Beyond Good and Evil'', translated by [[Helen Zimmern]], 1906, reprinted in Courier Dover Publications, New York, 1997, ISBN 0-486-29868-X | ||
| - | *''Beyond Good and Evil'', translated by Marion Faber, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1998 | ||
| - | *''Beyond Good and Evil'', translated by Judith Norman and edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 2002 | ||
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| - | ==Citations== | ||
| - | *[[I hope you will forgive me for the discovery that all moral philosophy until now has been boring and belongs among the sedatives]] | ||
| - | *[[One ought to learn anew about cruelty]] | ||
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In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or ps) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:
- Do you want to do it again?
- Presupposition: that you have done it already, at least once.
- Jane no longer writes fiction.
- Presupposition: that Jane once wrote fiction.
A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
Crucially, negation of an expression does not change its presuppositions: I want to do it again and I don't want to do it again both presuppose that the subject has done it already one or more times; My wife is pregnant and My wife is not pregnant both presuppose that the subject has a wife. In this respect, presupposition is distinguished from entailment and implicature. For example, The president was assassinated entails that The president is dead, but if the expression is negated, the entailment is not necessarily true.
[edit]
See also
- Fallacy of many questions
- Loaded question
- Exception that proves the rule
- Assumption/Presumption (similar words)
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