more from this thinker     |     more from this text

Single Idea 20379

[filed under theme 2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 7. Status of Reason ]

Full Idea

Reason is a support organ that slowly develops itself, ...and emancipates itself slowly to equal rights with the organic drives - so that reason (belief and knowledge) fights with the drives, as itself a new drive, very late come to preponderance.

Gist of Idea

Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality

Source

Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9/11[243]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 4.3.2 n55

Book Ref

Richardson,John: 'Nietzsche's System' [OUP 2002], p.243

A Reaction

A very powerful and fascinating idea. There is a silly post-modern tendency to think that Nietzsche denegrates and trivialises reason because of remarks like this, but he takes ranking the drives to be the supreme activity. I rank reason high.

The 17 ideas with the same theme [importance of reason in human life]:

7989 Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)]
362 The greatest misfortune for a person is to develop a dislike for argument [Plato]
623 It is readily agreed that thinking is the most godlike of things in our experience [Aristotle]
2801 Intelligence which looks ahead is a natural master, while bodily strength is a natural slave [Aristotle]
501 Reason is a more powerful persuader than gold [Democritus (attr)]
23248 Early empiricists said reason was just a useless concept introduced by philosophers [Galen, by Frede,M]
2857 Since Plato all philosophers have followed the herd, except Descartes, stuck in superficial reason [Nietzsche on Descartes]
6222 If a decision is in accord with right reason, everyone can agree with it [Cumberland]
12526 Opposition to reason is mad [Locke]
12963 Opposing reason is opposing truth, since reason is a chain of truths [Leibniz]
3807 Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions [Hume]
6912 For Fichte there is no God outside the ego, and 'our religion is reason' [Fichte, by Feuerbach]
2896 I want to understand the Socratic idea that 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' [Nietzsche]
4530 Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal [Nietzsche]
20379 Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality [Nietzsche]
21945 Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination [Foucault, by Gutting]
18543 Do aesthetic reasons count as reasons, if they are rejectable without contradiction? [Scruton]