Peter Bornedal > Quotes

“[For Nietzsche] The “relative a priori” of our self-preservation, not the ‘absolute a priori’ of ‘universal truth,’ is our ‘deepest motive’ in the production of knowledge.”
― Peter Bornedal

“We necessarily perceive and situate a world of objects in space and time. As a unity, these two parameters provide the single form for perception. We could not in the concrete perceive according only to time, and neither according only to space. If time were the only form, we would not know coexistence, and could not experience permanence; if space were the only form we could only know co-existence, but could not experience change; therefore, as Schopenhauer says, the “intimate union of the two is the condition of reality.”
― Peter Bornedal, The Surface and the Abyss: Nietzsche as Philosopher of Mind and Knowledge

“As Habermas says, we exist under the meta-logical force of our natural history, our contingent evolution into a species that not only perceives in a certain manner but also has a particular capacity to symbolize. In Nietzsche, Kantian categories are subsumed under the meta-logical principle of natural selection, as stated in later Nachlaß material (quoted here from Habermas): “We would not have the intellect we have if we did not need to have it (Nietzsche, WM 498523).” […] “In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was need that was authoritative (Nietzsche, WM 515524).” Thus, Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are not true in the sense that a concept corresponds to reality itself, they are ‘true’ in the sense that they have proven themselves useful in the service of preserving life. If truth is a fiction, and if the thing-in-itself as truth is a fiction, the correspondence theory of truth also becomes impossible to uphold. It all comes down to the preservation of man and, as Nietzsche says, “the preservation of man is not a proof of truth (Nietzsche, WM 497525).” Also noted by Habermas, Nietzsche always presupposes the classical metaphysical-ontological concept of truth, when he criticizes the ‘transcendental a priori’ or the ‘thing-in-itself.’ Against this exacting ideal of truth, truth-claims have to fail, and they seem to dwindle into the insignificant and random.”
― Peter Bornedal, Nietzsche's Naturalist Deconstruction of Truth: A World Fragmented in Late Nineteenth-Century Epistemology

“We necessarily perceive and situate a world of objects in space and time. As a unity, these two parameters provide the single form for perception. We could not in the concrete perceive according only to time, and neither according only to space. If time were the only form, we would not know coexistence, and could not experience permanence; if space were the only form we could only know co-existence, but could not experience change; therefore, as Schopenhauer says, the “intimate union of the two is the condition of reality.”18 It is to Schopenhauer and the neo-Kantians impossible to imagine a world beyond this unity. We might with a little effort imagine a world from where we had subtracted time – a world of things in absolute rest (something like a picture).”
― Peter Bornedal, The Surface and the Abyss: Nietzsche as Philosopher of Mind and Knowledge