Human, All Too Human 163objects, substances, or characteristics that are affixed to "a something."
All of those categories are fictions of grammar. The statement "I think"
is also an inducement on the part of grammar. The predicate "think"
demands a subject, as does every predicate. We therefore declare the "I"
to be the subject and suddenly render it the agent. In reality, however, it
is the act of thinking that gives rise to the awareness of an "I." In the
process of thought, the act comes first, and only then does the actor fol-
low. We have been so thoroughly deluded by language and grammar that
we take this delusion to be our reality.
Nietzsche undertook his experiment with nontragic thought in the
first book of Human, All Too Human. He adopted the view that it is "for-
tunately" too late "to revoke the development of reason, which is based
on that belief [in language]" (2,31; HH I § 11). Why "fortunately"?
Because these errors constitute all that we have; they weave the wodd in
which we exist as well as the veil that humanely shields us from them.
'"Whoever revealed to us the essence of the world would disappoint us
all most unpleasandy. It is not the world as a thing in itself, but the world
as idea (as error) that is so rich in meaning, profound, marvelous, preg-
nant with happiness and unhappiness" (2,50; HHI § 29). What are the
consequences of this idea? Should we surrender to the will to truth to
its logical limit, which would spell crushing "disappointment"? Should
we propel knowledge to the point that our whole familiar world
explodes into thin air and the certainties and orientations are lost in the
unforeseeable?
For Nietzsche, there was no doubt that the radical will to truth leads
to a "logical denial of the wodd" (2,50; HHI § 29). Nietzsche did not
mean a Schopenhauerian denial of the world that renounces the will, but
rather insight gained through the self-reflection of knowledge, which
reveals that the wodd as we know it is not the real one, but only a world
pieced together by us. Logical denial of the world denies the truth value
of the world as it is commonly known to us. This "logical denial of the
wodd," in contrast to the Dionysian wodd, which is experienced with
horror and delight, has nothing dramatic or tragic about it