Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Opens 91-92
In some remote corner of the universe, . . . there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.
That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history.”
After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die
Question: what is Nietzsche saying here about the human race?
Human self-importance:
We think we are the center of the universe, but if we could communicate with mosquitos we’d find they think the same thing about themselves.
Universal deception: we think too highly of knowledge
Question: do we humans think too highly of ourselves?
What is knowledge? ➔ stripped of human vanity
92 The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation.
Humans: simulate because we don’t have any horns or fangs.
simulation = “knowledge”
Idea here: we represent things, we have a “picture” of what is true, as a kind of survival mechanism.
Question: how could truth be a survival mechanism?
Where do we get the concept of truth?
Argues against Plato 92
They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees “forms”; their feeling nowhere leads into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman’s bluff on the backs of things.
Against Descartes
What do we even know about ourselves–just our consciousness, what about our intestines and blood stream?
Question: why would we think our minds are more important than our bodies?
Where does truth come from?:
1) Environmental need to simulate: to have a separate understanding of the world
2) Social need to end the bellum omnium contra omnes: the war of all against all.
“Peace pact” creating truth–basis of truth and morality
What is truth really?
Nietzsche says truth is something invented, a lie we tell ourselves
With the invention of truth comes the invention of the lie.
e.g. “I am rich” when “poor” would be the better word.
Two kinds of lie: ones that hurt others–these are punished
ones that help everyone–these are accepted as “truths”
Question: what kind of lies would help everyone?
Truth is a convention of language–we like things that are agreeable.
93: We have this illusion of truth because we are able to forget.
Buying illusions for truth.
Nietzsche’s claim here is linguistic
Linguistics: what are words?
93 The image of a nerve stimulus in sounds.
Berkeley:
But to infer from a nerve stimulus, a cause outside us, that is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of reason.
Look at different languages: what matters isn’t truth but “adequate expression”
Question: what is adequate expression–a “functional” account of truth?
No such thing as a “thing in itself”
93 One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors.
Truth:
A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image–first metaphor
The image, in turn, imitated by sound–second metaphor
The Concept:
Question: what is a concept?
Not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth.
Has to fit innumerable more or less similar cases: unequal cases
Remember Lame Deer: no leaf is the same
Nietzsche: something besides the leaves which would be leaf.
Some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled and painted ... so that no copy turned out to be a correct reliable and faithful image of the original form.
Nietzsche’s example: honesty–some occult quality called honesty
Question: how could honesty differ from case to case?
Nietzsche Closes:
What then is truth? 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.
Truth: a herd-like lie obligatory for all.
Question: what is Nietzsche saying here?
