On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
{{Short description|Essay by Friedrich Nietzsche}}
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On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense ({{langx|de|Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne}}, also called On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral SenseWalter Kaufmann's translation, appearing in The Portable Nietzsche, 1976 edition. Viking Press.) is a philosophical essay by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was written in 1873, one year after The Birth of Tragedy,Portable Nietzsche 42. but was published by his sister Elisabeth in 1896 when Nietzsche was already mentally ill.
Summary
Nietzsche's essay provides an account for (and thereby a critique of) the contemporary considerations of truth and concepts. These considerations, argues Nietzsche, arose from the very establishment of a language:{{cquote|Every word immediately becomes a concept, in as much as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal.Portable Nietzsche 46.
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According to Paul F. Glenn, Nietzsche is arguing that "concepts are metaphors which do not correspond to reality."{{cite journal |last=Glenn |first=Paul F. |date=December 2004 |title=The Politics of Truth: Power in Nietzsche's Epistemology |journal=Political Research Quarterly |doi=10.2307/3219819 |volume=57 |issue=4 |pages=576|jstor=3219819 }} Although all concepts are metaphors invented by humans (created by common agreement to facilitate ease of communication), writes Nietzsche, human beings forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe that they are "true" and do correspond to reality. Thus Nietzsche argues that "truth" is actually:
{{cquote|A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.Portable Nietzsche 46-47.
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These ideas about truth and its relation to human language have been particularly influential among postmodern theorists, and "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" is one of the works most responsible for Nietzsche's reputation (albeit a contentious one) as "the godfather of postmodernism."{{cite book |last=Cahoone |first=Lawrence E. |date=2003 |title=From modernism to postmodernism: an anthology |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |pages=109 |isbn=9780631232131 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S5CaF_otgZcC&q=On+Truth+and+Lies+in+a+Nonmoral+Sense+postmodern&pg=PT107}}
Raymond Geuss has compared Nietzsche's view of language, as expressed in this essay, to be similar to that of the later Wittgenstein's, in its de-emphasis of "the distinction between literal and metaphorical usage."{{cite book |last1=Geuss |first1=Raymond |title=Outside Ethics |date=2005 |publisher=Princeton |isbn=9780691123424 |page=98}} A few decades prior Erich Heller had similarly noted a comparison between Nietzsche's thoughts on language and Wittgenstein.{{cite journal |last1=Heller |first1=Erich |title=LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN UNPHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS |journal=CrossCurrents |date=Summer 1967 |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=317-32 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24457251}}
See also
Notes
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Further reading
- {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Ux_ZugeW4oC&pg=PP1|title=Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy|date=1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521348508|location=Cambridge|last1=Clark|first1=Maudemarie|access-date=19 April 2016}}
- {{Cite journal|url = http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3056/1/Nietzsche_religion_metaphor_for_repository.pdf|title = Metaphors in and for the Sociology of Religion: Towards a Theory after Nietzsche|last = McKinnon|first = AM|date = May 2012|journal = Journal of Contemporary Religion|doi = 10.1080/13537903.2012.675688|access-date = |volume = 27 |issue = 2|pages = 203–216|hdl = 2164/3056|s2cid = 143730044|hdl-access = free}}
- {{Cite web|url = http://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/friday-phil-friedrich-nietzsche-truth-genealogy/|title = Truth and Lies in a Genealogical Sense: Tracing Friedrich Nietzsche's Discussion of Truth through his Life (by Considering Two of his Texts)|date = January 2016|access-date = |website = The Gemsbok|last = Podgorski|first = Daniel}}
External links
- [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/3243/1 Original text in German]
- [http://pastehtml.com/view/crz4xb2u4.html On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense] (English)
- [https://jpcatholic.edu/NCUpdf/Nietzsche.pdf On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense] (English)
- Also: About Truth and lie in the extra-moral sense (pages 119-128). In Nietzsche’s seven notebooks from 1876. New translation (2020) by Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Free online.
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