Roman Sanchez
Intro to Philosophy
Professor. Connolly
12.10.14
The Four Great Errors Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who played a major role in contemporary intellectual development. In his work “Twilight of Idols”, Nietzche points out the four great errors which we constantly use to misinterpret reality and create false reasons that we believe show us the world in a more clearer light. The four great errors consist of mistaking cause and effect, false causality, imaginary causes, and the error of free will. Here I will go more into depth on Nietzsche’s four great errors. The first error is mistaking the cause and effect, or in other words mistaking the effect as the cause. An error that is the most recent and yet the most ancient habit of humankind, as Nietzsche says. Nietzsche goes as far as calling it the most dangerous of the four errors and refers to it as “the real corruption of reason.” (Nietzsche qtd. in Classics of Philosophy 1060) (Religion and morality actually use this error in its teachings. Religion and morality follow a similar formula that proceeds as follows: “Do this and that, refrain from this and that – and then you will be happy! And if you don’t…” (Nietzsche qtd. in Classics of Philosophy 1060) It goes on to imply that straying from this ideal would lead to negative consequences. An example of how cause and effect are misconstrued is that man is destroyed by vices such as adultery or alcoholism. If a man who has lost everything but continues his dependence on alcohol it is easy to assume that his addiction is the cause of his downfall. Nietzsche claims otherwise. Alcoholism was not the cause of the mans downfall, rather it was an effect caused by the psychological deterioration of the man. The man did not lose everything because he chooses to drink; he turned to drinking as a way to cope with his loss because he was not mentally strong enough to overcome the hardships that he had encountered. The inability to cope with life’s struggles is the cause of his state of mind, which leads to his dependence on vices. In other words, the vices once confused as the cause are in reality the effect of his weak mind state. The second error is that of false causality. Another way to put this is that we will make up false causes to justify our actions. Nietzsche says that there are “three inner facts” that we mistake as causes, which include the will, the ego, and the spirit. Humans are quick to assume that they know the cause for something but how is this knowledge acquired? This false knowledge comes from the “inner facts” which are now known to be false and are nothing more than illusions. It begins with people believing that we are a cause of our own will. The causality of will is what led to the idea of causality of spirit, and eventually causality of ego. Nietzsche argued that there are no mental causes and opposes the human tendency of viewing the world through these causes. The will does not cause anything it simply accompanies events, and in some cases might be completely absent. Viewing the world through these “inner facts” is the equivalent of interpreting everything that happened in the world as an effect of our will. This leads to people viewing the ego as the concept of being, and the spirit as the cause, instead of reality. And the measure for this reality is called “God”, which leads us to our third error of imaginary causes. The third error, imaginary causes, is caused by a common fear of man, the fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown forces man to create scenarios and make up causes to help explain what is happening. We do this so that we can feel in control and calm our mind. Imagine a young man riding his bike through the woods and he hears a gun shot in the distance. Following this event the mind goes to work fabricating several different explanations to explain why he might have heard someone firing a gun. He comes to the conclusion that he must have heard someone in the middle of a hunting trip and this helps settle his mind. So through his imagination he has found a false cause, which he believes to be true. If he were to hear the same sound a week later his memory will bring up his earlier made up cause and he will again accept this to be true. We immediately draw from our memory to help explain what is happening so that we feel more familiar with the situation. Through this repetition it becomes a habit and stands in the way of our search for the real cause. We do this because it is not in our nature to state we feel a certain way without providing some sort of causation for it. Nietzsche explains this as our psychological need to push away the unknown because it will force us to doubt our current mindset. We would much rather stay in our comfort zone than look at things from a different perspective in search of an unknown truth. There are several reasons why we choose to do this. The first is because we believe that any explanation is better than none. The first explanation that can describe an unknown situation in terms familiar to us gives us pleasure and we make the decision that this explanation must be true. This feeling of pleasure, or strength, is our standard for the truth. A consequence of this is that when we are fabricating a cause we choose to decide on one that is familiar to us. So while we are racking our brains for possible causes we have filtered it down to the quickest, most familiar one that comes to mind. The more often that this occurs it begins to become a habit and eventually emerges as the dominant cause. Imaginary causes are often used in religion. Religion uses imaginary causes as an explanation for unpleasant feelings. These unpleasant feeling are produced by evil spirits; that have been attracted to us by the feeling of “sin”. By contrast, good feelings are produced by our faith in God, and our “good conscience.” They are produced by the Christian virtues of charity, faith, and hope. However, these causes are actually the effects. Nietzsche concludes that religion confuses cause and effect. The fourth error is the error of free will. Nietzsche and likeminded philosophers oppose the idea of free will and claim that it is “the foulest of all theological fictions.” (Nietzsche qtd. in Classics of Philosophy 1062) It intends to make people feel responsible in a religious sense and dependent upon priests. Responsibility, when unfulfilled, leads to punishment and judgment. Nietzsche argues that free will is an illusion that was created for the purpose of imposing guilt on somebody. This guilt is rationalized as an excuse for punishment. Again, religion uses this method to control the masses by instilling fear into them creating them into loyal followers. Men are considered “free” when in reality they have been given the freedom to be considered guilty and held accountable for their actions. A real life example of this is expressed in this situation between a child and his father. If a young man were caught with cigarettes he would most likely assume that he is to be punished. However, instead of punishing him the father buys his son a pack of cigarettes and instructs him to finish the whole pack. The young man assumes that he has been given freedom to do as he pleases but at the end of smoking all of the cigarettes at once he realizes that this was actually his punishment. The idea of free will is in actuality a way to control someone while making them believe that their actions are truly their own and not affected by an outside influence. In conclusion, Nietzsche believes that man should stop looking for the cause of his existence, his situations, and his state of being. To truly find understanding you must see things for what they truly are and not take the easy way out by falling on imaginary or habitual causes. I agree with Nietzsche to a certain extent. It is important to search for the true causality of things rather than accept what is easiest for us. Avoid Nietzsche’s four great errors and grasp a clearer understanding of reality.