Daybreak and Grand inspiration 207logical program, that is precisely what it was. Nietzsche was setting out
to render visible the jumble of the collaborative resonating stimuli and
ideas as if under a magnifying glass, by means of heightened attentive-
ness and the aid of nimble language. He was aiming not at clarifications
and constructions but at visualization and contemplation. The precon-
dition of his reflections was, of course, the assumption that the uncon-
scious is potentially capable of being rendered conscious.
For Nietzsche, physiology, perception, and consciousness form a
continuum. Focusing in on one particular thing functions like a mobile
beam of light that illuminates varying facets of life and moves through
the zone of what is visible and imaginable. The beam of light sweeps
back and forth and illuminates one thing while letting another sink into
the obscurity of the unconscious. Obscurity does not signify an absence,
but the presence of the matter that has receded once more into the
unnoticeable and unnoticed.
This program is phenomenological; its fundamental principle states
that the only things that can be known are those that are subject to
observation. It is therefore crucial for us to focus our attention as well
as our language to maximize what we can observe. Everything accessi-
ble to our consciousness is a "phenomenon," and the research of con-
sciousness scrutinizes the internal order of the phenomena of
consciousness in a process of exacting introspection. It neither inter-
prets nor explains, but attempts to describe what the phenomena are
and what they indicate of their own accord. Attentiveness to the activi-
ties of consciousness eliminates the dualism of being and appearance in
one fell swoop. To put it more precisely, we discover that one of the
operations of that consciousness is to make this very distinction.
Consciousness is oddly aware of what escapes it in perception. And
since everything that enters our consciousness is a phenomenon, this
invisibility is itself also a phenomenon of consciousness. Essence is not
something hidden behind a phenomenon, but is itself a phenomenon
to the extent that we think it or the extent that we think that it eludes us.