Apparent vs. true worlds.
See this from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a quote that I consider the philosophical core of the book:
Hark ye yet again—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines.
So, what is Melville, speaking through Ahab, saying here? Everything that we can perceive through our senses, the material world – “visible objects”- is just surface veneer, a façade, “pasteboard masks,” which conceals the true, hidden reality beneath it. This hidden reality is manifested in, or simply is, some “unknown but still reasoning thing” (God?). Events, acts, and deeds can sometimes reveal the presence of this hidden, unknown thing – it “puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.” So, if one wants to strike out at this hidden force, this manipulator of events, one has to “strike through the mask!” After all, if the mask is hiding the true driving force behind events, and if some events reveal the presence of that hidden force, then one can access the hidden force, attack it, harm it, by striking through the mask behind which it hides. Or, our perceived reality is akin to a prison, and to reach out beyond it to strike out against that which imprisons us - our jailor - we need to thrust “through the wall” of that prison. To Ahab, the event which revealed the presence of the “unknown but still reasoning thing” was the loss of his leg, and Moby Dick is the wall that forms part of Ahab’s prison.
Ahab is unsure if Moby Dick is just the agent of the unknown force - thus, the whale is a “pasteboard mask” - or if the whale is actually the principal, the hidden force itself (e.g., “Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond"). It seems to me that, according to Ahab’s epistemology of reality, it makes more sense for the whale to be the agent of something else. Besides the absurdity of a whale being the principal of which Ahab speaks, the animal is hardly an “unknown thing." How could Moby Dick be both the wall and the jailor, the pasteboard mask and that behind it? It makes more sense for the whale to be the agent of another force that Ahab opposes and that he strikes at that “unknown but still reasoning thing” by hunting and killing Moby Dick (thus, striking through the mask). But in the end, it doesn’t matter to Ahab; either way, he hates and must kill the whale and what it represents: “But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate…”
Ahab then further displays his Faustian nature by: “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me” and that he has no master and that he represents truth: “But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines.” For moralpathy and Ahab as moralpath, see here.
Ahab’s discourse, in which he contrasts the visible world of our perception and the unknown thins lurking behind it, reminds one of the distinction between the apparent and true world paradigms analyzed by Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols. For Ahab (and Melville), the world of our perception is the apparent world, but there is underlying this a true (or more true) world of the “unknown but still reasoning thing.” Let’s see what Nietzsche has to say about this.
The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one
It will be appreciated if I condense so essential and so new an insight into four theses. In that way I facilitate comprehension; in that way I provoke contradiction.
First proposition. The reasons for which "this" world has been characterized as "apparent" are the very reasons which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable.
A very positivist, materialist, empiricist, scientific view. I say that as praise, not condemnation.
Second proposition. The criteria which have been bestowed on the "true being" of things are the criteria of not-being, of nothingness, the "true world" has been constructed out of contradiction to the actual world: indeed an apparent world, insofar as it is merely a moral-optical illusion.
Third proposition. To invent fables about a world "other" than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, detraction, and suspicion against life has gained the upper hand in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of "another," a "better" life.
Christianity in a nutshell. Also, much of the nonsense about a superior Golden Age of the “traditionalists” (Nietzsche denounced this view, recognizing that the past was an age lower than that of the present).
Fourth proposition. Any distinction between a "true" and an "apparent" world -- whether in the Christian manner or in the manner of Kant (in the end, an underhanded Christian) -- is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life. That the artist esteems appearance higher than reality is no objection to this proposition. For "appearance" in this case means reality once more, only by way of selection, reinforcement, and correction. The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible -- he is Dionysian.
The full reasoning:
How the “True World” Finally Became An Fable:
The History of an Error
1. The true world -- attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.
(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")
The Classical Civilization.
2. The true world -- unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible -- it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)
Christianity = feminine, subtle, insidious, incomprehensible.
3. The true world -- unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it -- a consolation, an obligation, an imperative.
(At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian [i.e., Kantian].)
The characterization of “Nordic” is amusing here given certain connotations in the “movement.” Gregor associated Nordicism with an ideology of despair, as Guntherite Nordicism harkened back to a better past of pure Nordics that have become mongrelized and degraded; somewhat differently, but with a similar tone, modern Nordicists aver that pure Nordics still exist but are always endangered by mixture with inferior peoples. Nordicism is also associated with Traditionalism and its obsession with a past Golden Age. So, in a sense, Nordicist narratives are “a consolation, an obligation, an imperative” but, on the other hand, modern Nordicists would object to the characterization of their ideology as “unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable” since they will argue that Nordic, or “Nordish,” preservationism is attainable, demonstrable, and promisable.
4. The true world -- unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us?
(Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)
5. The "true" world -- an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating -- an idea which has become useless and superfluous -- consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens [“good sense”] and cheerfulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)
6. The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.
(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA. [“Zarathustra begins”])
So, the argument is, there is no “true world” and no “apparent world” but only the world, the reality that we inhabit (and realization of this is the first step toward the Overman).
This would seem to be incompatible with the Melville/Ahab view.
An interpretation of Nietzsche’s views on this this subject:
Nietzsche’s How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth appears in Twilight of the Idols (1889). In this short, sequential, text he outlines what he subtitles as the “History of an Error”. The genealogy traces the notion of the division of the world into reality and appearance from its original mystic formulation (“I, Plato, am the Truth”), through the Platonic cave, the neo-platonist Christian interpretation, onto the Kantian noumenon and suprasensible ground of morality. From there, after it finds its most pure expression in the sterile Kantian thing-in-itself, the notion becomes increasingly suspect, culminating in its dismissal, and with it, the entire dichotomy of apparent/real, representation/thing-in-itself. Both the suprasensible “real world” and the apparent world of representation are overcome.
Nietzsche, with characteristic modesty, concludes that it is precisely at the moment when this millennia old metaphysical error has been completely eviscerated, with humanity now free from the specter of an all powerful beyond, that his text Thus Spoke Zarathustra truly begins.
Again, it would seem that Nietzsche is in opposition to Melville (I would have liked to see Nietzsche analyze Moby Dick).
As a STEM empiricist, I have an affinity for Nietzsche’s view. On the other hand, I still see value in Melville’s formulation. How to square the circle? Perhaps we need to review Melville’s description of the “unknown” as a “reasoning thing.” What if the known and unknown are both part of the same actuality? The known is part of reality that we currently are able to perceive and the unknown is that we are currently unable to perceive but is still a real part of that same reality, something that could in theory be perceived if we had the power to do so (whether or not it is realistically possible for humans to ever have this power is itself currently an unknown). What if this “unknown” is not so much a “reasoning thing” but some manifestation of nature and nature’s laws that we cannot yet perceive? But, then again, maybe there is some “reasoning thing” involved but something that is not supernatural or part of a hidden “true” world but, again, is a manifestation of a reality that is hidden from us simply because we currently do not have the power to perceive it. Modern scientific philosophy has some interesting ideas related to this approach to Melville's views. See this. And this.
Thus, is the “unknown but still reasoning” thing a part of our reality that has an inherent consciousness of which we have heretofore been unaware?
So, Nietzsche is, in my opinion, correct that there is a reality that is material and that could in theory be empirically determined, that there is no “true” vs “apparent” world, but as part of reality are things that we cannot (yet) perceive and that act (or seem to act) towards us in ways akin to Ahab’s complaint about hidden actors whose presence can make themselves known through certain events.
