The Indeterminacy of Interpretation, La Volonté de puissance, Livre III, 467

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Nietzsche Entry Directory]
[Nietzsche La Volonté de puissance, Entry Directory]

[The following is summary and not translation. Please check my interpretation against the original text reproduced below.]

The Indeterminacy of Interpretation

Friedrich Nietzsche

La Volonté de puissance

II

Livre III:

Le nihilisme vaincu par lui-même

3. L'innocence du Devenir

(The Innocence of Becoming)

467

Everything that happens necessarily had to and in that exact way. But this does not mean our actions are constrained determinately. To know and feel this fact is to posses the highest degree of knowledge.

When writing we might go back and delete a bad sentence we previously wrote. But we do so recognizing that we wrote it necessarily, on account of some distraction for example. Yet, we see what happened previously as the result of a distraction only from our changed perspective now. We speak of an all knowing God who understands things as though from no particular perspective. But to delete all perspectival knowledge would be to eliminate all knowledge altogether. For, all things are known from some specific viewpoint.

Thus all phenomena are interpreted. There is no fact in itself. All phenomena are selected, organized, and interpreted by a being with a limited, unique, and changing perspective. Hence even though all events are necessary, what we take them to be is thoroughly variant among people and over time.

From the Bianquis translation:

La nécessité absolue de tous les phénomènes n’implique aucune contrainte. L’homme qui a compris et senti cela profondément est parvenu à un haut degré de connaissance. Il ne résulte de sa croyance ni pardon ni excuse ; je biffe une phrase mal venue tout en jugeant très bien de la nécessité qui a causé ma bévue ; car le bruit d’un camion m’a troublé. Ainsi nous biffons des actes, et parfois des hommes, qui nous semblent mal venus. « Tout comprendre », ce serait supprimer tous les rapports de perspective ; ce serait ne rien comprendre, méconnaître l’essence du connaître.

Le caractère interprétatif de tous les phénomènes. Il n’y a pas de fait en soi. Ce qui arrive est un groupe de phénomènes, choisis et groupés par un être qui les interprète.

IX 1885 – VI 1886 (XIII, § 158).

Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, II. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.