Nietzsche and the Senses: A Philosophical Analysis

Topic 3: Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Neopositivism, and Nietzsche on Sensory Knowledge

Aristotle believed that sensory knowledge provides a starting point for knowledge. He also stated that true knowledge is of the essence of the object, captured through understanding. Here, he agrees with Plato but diverges from Nietzsche. Aristotle thought true knowledge always comes from the form within the substance. To grasp the form, one must first grasp the substance through the senses.

Thomas Aquinas places the foundation of all knowledge in sensory experience. This is the classic case of Aristotelian-Thomistic scholastic inspiration: there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses. Taking the senses as a starting point, he attempts to demonstrate the existence of God.

We must also mention modern empiricism, which denies the existence of innate ideas or principles. The most representative author of this current is Hume, who establishes a radical criterion of truth.

Neopositivism, a current of knowledge, argues that the only information the world gives us comes from the empirical sciences, whose language should be physicalist. Based on this postulate, it presents a radical critique of metaphysics, which it considers a pseudo-science that handles propositions that are not even false but without meaning. But Nietzsche is more radical than all previous positions, as all of them believe in the existence of a true reality beyond what the senses show us.

Fair Assessment of Nietzsche’s Current Affirmation

Nietzsche’s affirmation about the senses being a key element in knowledge is supported by the current philosophy of science and scientific thinking of our days. Neopositivism even states that a scientific proposition that cannot be verified by the senses is meaningless. But for Nietzsche, the starting point is always the subject and, therefore, their body. From there, he claims the proximity of the senses compared to the remoteness of concepts, and for the vindication of pleasure, Nietzsche is not only a sensationalist but a sensualist. On the contrary, modern science values the elimination of any undesirable interference of the subject in knowledge. This is only possible if one becomes a clear lens. In this sense, rationalism, empiricism, and modern science share the same intellectual vocation, so characteristic of the Western Tradition.

For Nietzsche, there is no external reality that can be assimilated passively without distortion, as external reality is nothing but a chaos of emerging forces, therefore, completely unintelligible. So Nietzsche accuses science of sterility to guide our life, and besides, that science serves a castaway as much as knowing the chemical composition of water in the middle of a storm can serve them. This defense of the senses obviously rules out any aspiration to a universal truth, a renunciation that is one of the most relevant aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. In this sense, there was partial agreement with Plato: the changing and sensitive world is convulsed, and one can only obtain *doxa*, not *episteme*. The difference is that for Nietzsche, this is the only world that exists. The Nietzschean claim of intuition against the concept remains in full force.