Daybreak and Grand inspiration 211had delved deeply into the basis of the drive for knowledge, that the will
to wholeness and to synthesis is not merely a quirk of the philosophical
will to construct
Nietzsche kept returning to the brilliant insights of his early essay
"On Truth and Falsehood in an Extramoral Sense." There, he had
shown the practical necessity of reduction and simplification in knowl-
edge. Knowledge that fully grasps itself discovers that it is above all cre-
ative and productive, and should not be taken to signify mere imitation.
Knowledge is more poiesis than mimesis. Nietzsche now followed up on
this idea with more determination and subdety than in the earlier essay.
He applied it not only to the phenomenality of the outer wodd but to
the inner world as well. He clung to this approach for the rest of his life.
Even in the winter of 1888, one year before his breakdown, he noted: "1
am affirming the phenomenality of the inner wodd as well: everything
that becomes conscious to us is first thoroughly organized, simplified,
schematized, interpreted" (13,53; WP § 477). "Phenomenality" means
that we do not "have" even the inner wodd in the sense of a unity of
consciousness and being. A phenomenon that enters our consciousness
is always a phenomenon of something. But this something is not iden-
tical with the phenomenon, even if it concerns the phenomena of
"inner" experiences. The self that appears on the interior stage of self-
perception is a character in the great drama of being oneself. It can
never appear, but it makes all appearance possible.
Nietzsche's reflections are directed at what philosophical tradition
calls individuum est ineffabile. The individual is ineffable not because indi-
viduals are profoundly mysterious or overflowing with inner riches that
should not be squandered. There are certainly mysteries and riches of
this sort, but at issue here is the structural problem that a consciousness
of one's own being remains mere consciousness and does not blend
with being. There is absolutely no point of convergence between being
and consciousness. Nonetheless, a consciousness of self that is aware of
itself comes so close to the point that this consciousness can picture and
potentially even aspire to a convergence of this sort Speculative expia-