48 Nietzsche(History of Materialism, 1866) was an attempt to link materialist and
idealist thought. This book was extraordinarily influential at that time.
By reading Lange, Nietzsche learned about Kant's critique of knowl-
edge, ancient and modern materialism, Darwinism, and the basic out-
lines of the modern natural sciences. With a heightened sense of
attention, he now discovered several theoretical weaknesses in
Schopenhauer's system. Nietzsche concluded that one should not make
any assertions concerning the unknowable "thing in itself^" not even the
assertion that all labels we place on the world of appearances, such as
space, time, and causality, would have to be removed from this "thing in
itself." The unknowable must not be reinterpreted as a negative image of
the knowable, otherwise one runs the risk of using the logic of the
antipode to project determinations of the knowable world onto what is
indeterminable. It is essential not to interpret the "thing in itself" as will,
which accords far too much specificity to the indeterminate essence of
the world. Nietzsche acknowledged that the 'Svili" is an elemental, per-
haps even the primary life force, but criticized the notion that man allows
the "will" to occupy the categorical space Kant had reserved for the
"thing in itself."
This neo-Kantian critique of Schopenhauer, which Nietzsche devel-
oped in accordance with Lange, did nothing to alter his agreement with
two basic ideas of Schopenhauerian philosophy. One was the idea that
the inner nature of the world is based not on reason and intellect but on
impulses and dark urges, dynamic and senseless, measured by the scale
of our reason.
The second basic idea to which Nietzsche adhered is the possibility
of transcendent knowledge, described by Schopenhauer under the
rubric "negation of the will." At issue here is not transcendence in the
religious sense of visions of a God in heaven. Transcendence could be
achieved by assuming an attitude of composure that supersedes the
usual egoistic disposition. Liberation from the power of the will, a
process bordering on the miraculous, was also described by
Schopenhauer as a state of ecstasy. Nietzsche was fascinated not so