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[i]Cause and Effect. We say it is "explanation "; but it is only in “description” that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better, we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, “cause” and "effect,“as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of “causes” stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow - but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a "miracle,” the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has “explained” impulse. How could we ever explain? We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces - how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception? It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humanizing of things that is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality; in fact there is a continuum before us, from which we isolate a few portions - just as we always observe a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it, but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of processes in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken - would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.
The Gay Science[/i]
Perhaps one the most perplexing, and opaque of all philosophical questions is the nature of the “cause†and its relation to its “effectâ€. Nietzsche here evokes the thought of Leibniz’ seemingly unassailable truism “nature makes no leapsâ€. The breaking of the whole event into two “halvesâ€, the cause and its effect seems to me to mirror the ancient Greek concept/device of the “súmbolon†- originally a vertebrae bone broken in half by two who take each half as a sign of recognition and proof of their identities and their relationship - the word from which we get our English word “symbolâ€. The Greek is a compound of “súm†meaning “with, together†and “bólos†meaning “to throw, to castâ€, that is “cast together†or “cast withâ€. So under this metaphor the cast-together whole of an event is broken, as a sign of social contract, into its cause and its effect, which when coherently “re-joined†produce a rational and contractual universe, which can be shared. There is a strong arbitrary element in this metaphor, for instance the particular shape of the two halves of a broken bone marks out the uniqueness of that event, that no two bones could fit together as such, not to mention the propensity to use joint bones as dice in games of gambling. Also meaningful to a symbolon is the very fact of its material, the calcified residue of life, the most resilient, most telling (augury) remains of what has been lived. So in the marriage of the randomly affected yet most material of existence, a symbol is made and exchanged, that constructs the rational reality which then can be held in common, the “cause†and its “effectâ€. How much of our understanding of cause and effect is merely symbolic, and method and means for our economy of meanings, the establishment of identities, the mortar between “object†bricks, neither of which actually exist beyond our negotiation with and through them as such.
súmbolon:
A. tally, i.e. each of two halves or corresponding pieces of an astrágalos[joint bones] or other object, which two xénoi [friends], or any two contracting parties, broke between them, each party keeping one piece, in order to have proof of the identity of the presenter of the other
[astrágalos:
A. one of the vertebrae, esp. of the neck
II. ball of the ankle joint. well-turned, a complement
III. wrist
IV. knucklebones used as dice or a game played with dice]
[súmbolon cont.]
b. of other devices having the same purpose, e.g. a seal-impression on wax; an extant bronze hand is inscribed
2. any token serving as proof of identity
3. guarantee
4. token, esp. of goodwill,
5. identity-token given to Athenian dicasts on entering the courts, entitling them to vote, and on presenting which they received another w ., in exchange for which they received their fee to a donation of corn or money
II. of written documents,
- passport or the seal thereon
- passenger-list
- pl., treaty
- contract between individuals
- receipt
b. fee for making out a receipt - unilateral undertaking in writing, guarantee
- warrant entitling the holder to draw allowances over a period
- warrant or commission from the Emperor, by which officers held their posts,
III. more generally, token
2. omen, portent
3. Medic., symptom.
4. prearranged signal
5. secret code, allegory
6. religious creed
IV. pl., standard weights
V. a small coin
Dunamis
It is not tabula rasa because it is not arbitrary what physiologies can live and very well thrive upon that “blank slateâ€. Rather the presence and indeed persistence of a physiology of thinking testifies to the power, and therefore the knowledge –if only partial- of that slate. If the ubermensch makes his mark it is because his mark is more vital, more knowing/powerful than the untermensch. As painful as it may be to Nietzsche - and other self-styled would be superiors -, if the untermensch makes his mark instead, it is by plain consequence of his victory, that he is actually “uberâ€.