(A) Philosopher's Lineage
Going backwards, through documents, in proper genealogical style…:
In Foucault’s essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” at the bottom of page 143 of the collection language, counter-memory, practice (ed. Brouchard), Foucault quotes Nietzsche as he writes, “It is now impossible to believe that ‘in the rending of the veil, truth remains truthful; we have lived long enough not to be taken in.’” This quote from Nietzsche is take from Nietzsche contra Wagner, and can be found on page 682 of Kaufmann’s The Portable Nietzsche (his alternate translation is: “We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn—we have lived enough not to believe this”). Nietzsche was making a veiled (har har) reference to Hegel and his Phenomenology of Spirit; on page 103 of the Miller translation, at the very end of the “Force and Understanding” section of the text, Hegel writes, “This curtain [of appearance] hanging before the inner world is therefore drawn away, and we have the inner being [the ‘I’] gazing into the inner world.” Hegel is here referencing Novalis’ novel, Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, which is translated as either The Apprentices of Sais or The Novices of Sais. In this text, Novalis writes (again, there are multiple differing translations of the quote), “One person succeeded. He lifted the veil of the goddess of Sais. And what did he find? Himself.” Hegel, in the quote from “Force and Understanding,” is making an argument against Kant’s epistemology and his phenomenal/noumenal distinction. Novalis is responding to a poem of Schiller’s called The Veiled Image of Sais, which also concerns the question of, and search for, knowledge and truth.
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