Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight Of The Idols

The Four Great Errors

5 Psychological Explanation for This. – Tracing something unknown back to something known gives relief, soothes, satisfies, and furthermore gives a feeling of power. The unknown brings with it danger, disquiet, worry – one’s first instinct is to get rid of these awkward conditions. First principle: any explanation is better than none. Because it is basically just a question of wanting to get rid of oppressive ideas, we are not exactly strict with the means we employ to get rid of them: the first idea which can explain the unknown as known feels so good that it is ‘held to be true’. Proof of pleasure (‘strength’) as criterion of truth. – The causal drive is therefore determined and stimulated by the feeling of fear. The ‘why?’ is intended, if at all possible, not so much to yield the cause in its own right as rather a kind of cause-a soothing, liberating, relief-giving cause. The fact that something already known, experienced, inscribed in the memory is established as a cause, is the first consequence of this need. The new, the unexperienced, the alien is ruled out as a cause. So it is not just a kind of explanation which is sought as cause, but a select and privileged kind of explanation, the kind which has allowed the feeling of the alien, new, unexperienced to be dispelled most quickly and most often – the most usual explanations.-Result: one way of positing causes becomes increasingly prevalent, is concentrated into a system and ultimately emerges as dominant, i.e. simply ruling out other causes and explanations.-The banker’s first thoughts are of ‘business’, the Christian’s of ‘sin’, the girl’s of her love.