Abstract

Nietzsche says he is the great psychologist. His perceptiveness enjoys the further exultation of being perceptive about its own limitations. With pride and self-mockery, Nietzsche discerns better than others what is happening in human beings; and adds, in a flourish of power, that he is also better than others at seeing the precariousness and philosophical naivete of unqualified claims to perceive and know. The surety of the psychologist who senses the recesses of the soul coexists in Nietzsche with the unsurety of the philosopher who knows that the surface of the simplest object may evade knowing. Psychological audacity is smoothly coordinated with epistemological modesty. ;Intuition is not a favored term in Nietzsche's vocabulary, since it is called on by "harmless self-observers who believe that there are 'immediate certainties,' thinspace" people who suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely." But the spate of perceptions Nietzsche offers without analytic pleading, his exploration and embrace of polarities as a way to overthrow oppositions, and his promiscuous enjoyment of perspective and counterpoint, all move toward a kind of intuition that knows that it does not know things entirely. Nietzsche's prophetic ambition, and the triumphant manner in which he delivers his perceptions, make him an unlikely exemplar of the humility of intuition, at least if humility about knowing can only be recognized in the expressions common befuddled rationality. The countenance of Nietzsche's writing is a tentativeness composed of multiple sureties. ;Intuition tends toward a false sense of revelatory finality; the more real the intuition, the more susceptible it is to this kind of distortion. Nietzsche attempts to avoid the distortion, without sacrificing intuitive precision, revelry and power. ;The intuition practiced by Nietzsche will be approached through an exegesis of the phrase "smelling the entrails of the human soul."