Nasser Alshareef
Dr. Jason DePolo
ENGL 755.001
10 March 2016
Nietzsche Illogical Search for Truth
Human beings existed on this Earth for quite a long time and historians have been searching for a tangible evident of how those human being came into existence, but with no crystal clear proof. Due to the fact that there are no western notable historical records preceding 3500 BC, peoples of the world have different approaches of how they existed on this planet. On the basis of the aforementioned statement, Friedrich Nietzsche clearly came up with notion that all truths in the world are man-made illusions and there is no such thing as a fact.
Friedrich Nietzsche commences his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense by portraying how human
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beings, so called "clever beasts", lack the knowledge and understanding of how universe works by saying "One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist" (Nietzsche, On Truth n. pag). As if Nietzsche calls for mind reforming from those ill-equipped thoughts of human truths. However, his approach lacks logical reasoning in order for us readers to deny our very perceptible existence. Additionally, Nietzsche presents truth in language as superior to the human intellect in saying "Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation. […] That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time (Nietzsche, On Truth n. pag). He proceeds by giving an example of how society ceases trust in a person and excludes him due to not revealing the truth. However, Nietzsche abdicates the fact that the truth still resides in that person's intellect when he said "I am rich" in place of "I am poor". If language was superior to intellect, the liar would not have intentionally replaced his current economic status from being "poor' to "rich". Language is clearly used to translate and unveil some of the thoughts that occur in a person's intellect. As a result, it may lack the full truth for concealing some other thoughts intentionally by a person. In so doing, the intellect is evidently the very thing that controls what to hide and what to show for other people in the society. Logically speaking, we have absolutely no way to find out whether a person is a liar or not, but we cannot deny its existence in that person's intellect. This is a perfect implementation of Nietzsche's man-made illusion idea. Moreover, Nietzsche's example about the lying process embodies some type of contradiction against his view on man-made illusions.
Nietzsche says that person who's lying "misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names" (Nietzsche, On Truth n. pag). The words "misuses" and "substitutions" imply that the person saying being "rich" resided in his intellect along with his current real economic status, which is "poor". This would mean that both the truth and the lie existed in the intellect and the language initially replaced the real truth with the lie. This deduction is likely to be wrong; this is due to the fact that the person's real economic status is "poor' which makes it the first to be made in his intellect. Afterwards, the person's intellect chooses to make a fabrication of truth and to make a new economic status that does not exist in the reality. According to the language, we have two identical truths and the language cannot distinguish between them and makes any differences. That's why Nietzsche made a mistake in understanding that both truths, "rich" and "poor", simultaneously existed in the intellect and language unsystematically replaces one truth for other thoughts residing in the human …show more content…
intellect. Furthermore, Nietzsche's theory man-mad illusion reminds me of those self-development experts who say "start facing your fears" and "you just need to let go of these illusions" to whoever attend their lessons.
Afterwards, a fair number of those people still face fear and fail in certain social position. This logically means whatever they thought was just an illusion that can be removed with just a push of the button is a representation of reality that cannot be just a man-made illusion. If truth is just a man-made illusion, every group of people will have a deferent interpretation of tangible objects in the world.
Moreover, when we have the discussion of a "snake", all the people around the globe, except in Arctic and Antarctica regions, have almost the same approach that a "snake" crawls, not flies or swims. In addition, language can be arbitrary in terms of grammar and structure, but it is not arbitrary in its representation of human experience of tangible objects.
In brief, Nietzsche's theory of life as a mere hypothesis or an amusing anecdote is logically improbable. This is due to the fact that human being have similarity in identifying tangible objects in their environment and have almost the same meaning of every object. However, certain abstract thoughts such as, moral beliefs, that can adhere to Nietzsche's man-made illusion and do not need any logical reasoning to prove that they are made by the person'
intellect. Work Cited Nietzsche, Friedrich. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. n.p., n.d. Print.
Nietzsche believes that the way intellect works is to deceive people. They naturally play that role in order to keep a secret or to restrict sharing information with another person. In other words he means people lie in order to not share the agreed upon lie. He says, “…individuals so far wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under
Nietzsche believed we create the self through our experiences and our actions, and in order to be a complete self, we must accept everything we have done. I agree with him in this sense. Although it is easy to learn from the mistakes of others, there is no greater lesson than learning from our own mistakes. He also believed there is much more to the self than we know about. This is another example about how we learn about ourselves through our experiences and actions.
When we talked about Nietzsche in class we discussed how a lot about the second essay, which is about Guilt and Punishment. Here are two quick overviews of what Nietzsche describes punishment and guilt as. Guilt is being accountable and responsible for the action you have done. You have guilt because you could have done something in the right direction instead. Nietzsche says that if free will is attached to accountability and responsibility then it cannot be connect with guilt. It is based off a debt that you have acquired and needs to be paid back. Punishment is dependent on the offender’s decision to act the way that they do. The reason this person deserves a punishment is because they have the ability to act differently off the start, they chose to act in the wrong and they have to take the punishment they get. Nietzsche says that if someone is not acting freely (accident, insanity, etc.) then they are seen as being exempt from punishment.
Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals can be assessed in regards to the three essays that it is broken up into. Each essay derives the significance of our moral concepts by observing
While critical of the attitude found in the ressentiment of slave morality, Nietzsche’s includes it as an important factor contributing to the bad conscience of man. Even though Nietzsche dislikes the negative results of bad conscience – man’s suppression of his instincts, hate for himself, and stagnation of his will -- Nietzsche does value it for the promise it holds. Nietzsche foresees a time coming when man conquers his inner battle and regains his “instinct of freedom.” In anticipation of that day’s eventual arrival, Nietzsche views the development of bad conscience as a necessary step in man’s transformation into the “sovereign individual.”
We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.
Leiter, Brian. “Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University, 26 August 2004.
...d as well? Even if everything is an illusion, it still achieves the same ultimate goal. After all, if people did happen to come to know absolutes truths, they would likely be unable to understand it or even realize what it is. Perhaps then, it is possible that the search for truth is the wrong way to go about achieving happiness and goodness – if those terms have absolute qualities at all. The case may simply be that acting in accordance with the nature of humanity is the way to true contentment, and that the only truth is that humanity lives in a world build solely on a subjective reality, and rhetoric and language are just part of that nature.
Nietzsche's style of writing was a deliberate stylistic choice meant to hide the meaning of his work and philosophy from those who would not be able to understand it, and through there misunderstanding would abuse it. This writing style was also meant to help support and give meaning to Nietzsche's arguments on the nature of language and how language is, at its root a metaphor describing an object that is disconnected from us. Nietzsche's work broke down language to its metaphorical roots and explored the nature of how our language is disconnected from the objective reality around us. Nietzsche uses the metaphorical roots of our language to show that words and language our fundamentally disconnected because of the subjective nature of language. Nietzsche shows these metaphorical roots by showing how simple words and phrases that we use in our everyday life are really disconnected or at least removed by the barrier of language. Language is a serious of metaphor's all describing how an object subjectively appears to the individual. No language can describe what it is like to "be" that object, nor properly describe what it is that makes the object what it is. All language can do is provide a vehicle through which man can communicate what he is subjectively experiencing and relate it via a metaphor to another individual who will only get a idea of what is being described rather than an actual concrete description.
Friedrich Nietzsche opposed common values, which he believed distracted man from life. During Nietzsche’s period, imperialist nationalism or an increasingly questionable religion provided the only meaning to life. Nietzsche opposed both. He thought the idea of nationalism ridiculous, saying “only there, where the state ceases, does the man who is not superfluous begin….” Nietzsche held “disdain for the average mind, arguing that all ignorance, but especially Christian ignorance, does not result from deprivation as much as mankind's wilful aversion to genuine knowledge.” The religious values which prevented man from living life disgusted Nietzsche: ‘Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind… faith in "another" or "better" life.’ He stated that the Church “has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul." Nietzsche thought the values of nationalism and Christianity defiled everything that could potentially be strong and beautiful, and wanted to free the European culture from its tantalizing grip. Nietzsche further expressed his thoughts towards religion in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
“There are no truths,” states one. “Well, if so, then is your statement true?” asks another. This statement and following question go a long way in demonstrating the crucial problem that any investigator of Nietzsche’s conceptions of perspectivism and truth encounters. How can one who believes that one’s conception of truth depends on the perspective from which one writes (as Nietzsche seems to believe) also posit anything resembling a universal truth (as Nietzsche seems to present the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the Übermensch)? Given this idea that there is no truth outside of a perspective, a transcendent truth, how can a philosopher make any claims at all which are valid outside his personal perspective? This is the question that Maudemarie Clark declares Nietzsche commentators from Heidegger and Kaufmann to Derrida and even herself have been trying to answer. The sheer amount of material that has been written and continues to be written on this conundrum demonstrates that this question will not be satisfactorily resolved here, but I will try to show that a resolution can be found. And this resolution need not sacrifice Nietzsche’s idea of perspectivism for finding some “truth” in his philosophy, or vice versa. One, however, ought to look at Nietzsche’s philosophical “truths” not in a metaphysical manner but as, when taken collectively, the best way to live one’s life in the absence of an absolute truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense represents a deconstruction of the modern epistemological project. Instead of seeking for truth, he suggests that the ultimate truth is that we have to live without such truth, and without a sense of longing for that truth. This revolutionary work of his is divided into two main sections. The first part deals with the question on what is truth? Here he discusses the implication of language to our acquisition of knowledge. The second part deals with the dual nature of man, i.e. the rational and the intuitive. He establishes that neither rational nor intuitive man is ever successful in their pursuit of knowledge due to our illusion of truth. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes that all we can claim to know are interpretations of truth and not truth itself.
Everyone thinks they know the truth, actually is. The real question is, do we really know what the truth is. There are many ideas on what the truth is. Descartes and Nietzsche have an idea on what in the world truth is. Nietzsche argues that the whole idea of truth is just an illusion. He says it is fake and we really tight. On the other hand, Descartes proposes that the truth is there in some cases, but not in other ways. The way, the truth is there, is Math and Science. Nevertheless, by taking a closer look at their arguments about what truth actually is, I will argue that Nietzsche position is a better account for what truth actually is because it shows the reader how fixed on the truth, we really are. Also, Nietzsche thinks we never question why we think the truth is what it is. The last reason, Nietzsche is on the right track is, he favors art of science.
In 1873, a German philosopher named Frederich Nietzsche wrote an essay entitled “On Truth and Lying in a Non- moral sense”, which deals with a large epistemological question of truth and language, including the formation of concepts. In this essay, Nietzsche attempts to explain the origin of people’s understanding of truth and lies. Nietzsche highlights that the brain forms categorizes everything it comes across into groups of systematically similar objects which are called concepts. He uses the formation of concepts and the usage of metaphors to demonstrate that although many metaphors do not correspond to reality, they lead to the argument of whether their “truth” actually exists. Nietzsche stated that “we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things- metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities” (118). He is suggesting that although one may understand the language used to describe certain concepts such as trees, colors and snow, these are just generalizations and no real knowledge on the topic exists within the metaphors. Language and metaphors are something every human uses and Nietzsche’s argues that humans forget that after creating these metaphoric words and/or phrases, humans jump to conclusion that they are true because they sound acceptable and they forget to need to link actual reality to the language being used (Glenn 2004). This exegetical paper will reflect upon the last couple of lines on page 144 and the first couple of lines on 145 of the text. This section occurs during the middle of the text when Nietzsche explains that language does not completely explain meaning.