A Note On Nietzsche And Truth [part 1]

Introduction

Nietzsche`s early essay On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense invites the reader to consider three basic questions: What, if anything, is the nature of truth? What, if anything, is the value of truth? Where did the drive for truth originate? On Truth and Lie is a genealogical account of truth; that is, it analyses where the idea of `truth` came from and why it has been one of the most dominant themes of Western philosophy since Socrates. It may appear a bizarre, and perhaps paradoxical, question to ask `where did truth come from?` Many would maintain that truth is simply just what is true, and of course, this has existed as long as time itself; infinitely even. However, Nietzsche wants to question this assumption, arguing that what appears `obviously true` to the majority of us is, in fact, a contingently arising phenomena. It is interesting that for the very same majority, these very things taken as true provide security to the cosmic meaningless that is reality. As such, this essay proceeds by first asking where the urge for truth came from, before attempting an account of the respective value and make-up that it consists of. The three questions are interrelated and, therefore, it is not possible to definitively separate them. As a result, in answering our genealogical question, hints to the answer of the other two questions will be detected by the reader. The second and third questions are two sides of the same coin; as such, in assessing the value of truth, the nature of truth will become apparent. With these considerations in mind, the majority of this essay will be dedicated to answering the first two questions.

`[W]hence in all the world comes the urge for truth?`

The development of language is the first step towards the urge for truth that characterises the human race. Some means is required to prevent the basic condition of bellum omni contra omnes that Hobbes famously remarked characterised the state of nature. Life without language, one may imagine, would also be rather boring; discourse is a social activity, it requires someone other than you with whom you are engaging. Language has arisen, then, out of a need for individuals to preserve themselves against a war of all against all, and also out of mere boredom: the desire to exist socially and not confine one`s thoughts to oneself. Nietzsche is not offering an exact scientific or empirical account of how language developed. Instead, he is offering a hypothetical account as to why the human race developed the capacity for language rather than being content to remain in a pre-verbal state. In other words, Nietzsche is forwarding a speculative anthropology, which is one side of his two-fold account of history.

From this basic stage of language formulation `truth` consists in using words to refer to things to which they have been designated to, and in conformity with everyone else who also use these designations. For example, if I point to what the normal-sighted and English-speaking individual would refer to as a tree and say to my friend `look a tree`, I have been truthful in my usage of the word `tree`. In contrast, the liar is the individual who uses words in contradiction to their designation. Linguistic convention, therefore, is where truth and lie first originate: [I]t is here that the contrast between truth and lie first originates. The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real: he say, for example, "I am rich," when the word "poor" would be the correct designation of his situation. He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even reversals of the names.

It is essential to recognise that the contrast here is between truth and lie, and not truth and falsity. Nietzsche distinguishes between these two oppositions. For Nietzsche, the most fundamental distinction is the former, with any other opposition to truth being only a consequence of it. This will be fully explained in the course of the essay but it is important that the reader takes note that of this distinction. If the consequences of the lying individual are harmful to others he will be expelled and distrusted by society. Nietzsche infers from this that humans desire the `agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth` at this stage, rather than truth itself.

Nietzsche claims that words are arbitrary designations or `metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.` Why are words metaphors? If this is correct why should this mean that words cannot correspond to their original entities? We find the answer in the second aspect of Nietzsche`s two-fold history: in the human ability to formulate concepts from mere metaphors. Words are metaphors because they express in sound a thought representation. Moving further back, this representation itself is only a metaphor for a nerve stimulus. It is claimed that a `metaphor is a translation from one dimension to another.` In both cases there is a movement from one medium to another, fundamentally different, medium: A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image - first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound - second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overlapping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.

Consequently, we can expand on our earlier definition of truth: for one `to be truthful means using the customary metaphors`. That is, the fixed conventions we use are metaphors that have been inferred from a distinct sphere. From this basic genesis of language humans begin to formulate concepts, classifying tokens as instances of a universal type. For example, I conceive of the particular tree present in my vision as belonging to the class of trees in general. However, no two trees - or indeed any two things belonging to the same class - are exactly alike. Nevertheless, humans still equate them, despite their differences. Nietzsche claims it is this conceptualising ability - the ability to `dissolve an image into a concept` - that distinguishes human beings from animals. Through his genealogical account of concept formation Nietzsche is arguing that regardless of whether the `thing-in-itself` exists or not, the words we use to describe things could never correspond to that reality because of the metaphorical character of language: No philosophical language could be adequate to (unstable, chaotic, formless) reality as it is in itself; language is a tissue of metaphors and linguistic tropes in no possible way adequate to the real; terms are always metaphors whose metaphorical character has been forgotten.

So the concept is achieved `by overlooking what is individual and actual` , using words and images that are themselves merely metaphors. However, humans have forgotten the metaphorical origin of these concepts, instead believing that conceptualisation may acquaint them with reality. People believe that concepts are true, or at least will lead them to the truth. Of course, if they knew of their metaphorical origin they would immediately cease to believe this. Therefore, what people take to be true is in fact an illusion. We must now return to the aforementioned distinction between truth and lie on the one hand, and truth and falsity on the other. It has been demonstrated that truth first arose from the opposition to lying: the liar is the one who disobeys the linguistic conventions and the one who abides by these is called truthful. From this derives a distinct opposition between truth and falsity. Truth in this sense is reality, what something really is. What Kant would call `the thing-in-itself` found within the realm of `noumena`. When the majority of individuals claim something is `true` they believe they are referring to truth as opposed to falsity. They believe they `know something about the things themselves` when speaking of tree and colours etc. But, as demonstrated, they have forgotten the origin of these words and concepts, which have become sedimented over thousands of years and appear fixed and binding. The truth that they in fact possess is merely truth as opposed to lie - simply using the designated linguistic codes that society has imposed through necessity. We can now understand Nietzsche`s renowned quote on truth: 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.

In fact, the primary power of the intellect is its power to deceive. However, the illusions that it gives rise to are necessary for the majority of individuals to live. The intellect deceives as a means to preserve and protect them because they must be shielded - at least to some degree - from reality. We simply cannot do away with them. Consequently, `the desire to escape illusion is a desire to escape life.` Additionally, through dissimulation, the human intellect deceives us into thinking we are more important than we actually are. It tricks us into believing that there is meaning to our existence. The lies of the intellect `share a common feature in that the deception is flattering; these are lies of vanity.` We have evolved, therefore, to build concepts as a means to protect us from the truth of the reality that lies beneath it, and to give human existence a sense of significance. Our original question, from where did the urge for truth originate, seems all the more puzzling if the primary function of the intellect is deception; it is a means to shield us from meaningless reality, the truth of which, if known, would annihilate us!

Let us consider further the utility of concepts compared with intuitions or immediate perceptions. Reflection upon the distinction between the two will shed light on the origin of the drive for truth. Through concept construction we `have interpreted, simplified, and falsified our world so as to make life possible. We have buried the truth under the sediment of millennia.` Concepts make life possible as they can be understood, they provide us with assurance that the world is stable and uniform; concepts are in a state of unchanging being. Individuals believe that concepts provide meaning and truth as they have forgotten the origins of these concepts. However, the truth they provide is merely truth as opposed to lie. Not truth as opposed to falsity; truth that is reality. As Nietzsche makes clear, that `only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency.`

In contrast, intuitions are varied, unstable and lack determinate meaning. In short, they are in a state of flux or becoming. They do not provide meaning for the average human, who desires to escape their unsteady nature, which - if completely immersed in - would simply carry her away. Nevertheless, it is from a foundation of intuitions that concepts have been built. We do not desire truth but the life-preserving consequences it generates for us. However, we mistakenly believe that it is the truth (in the sense of truth and falsity) that we are pursuing. As a result, `the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself`. That is, clings to the concepts which she so desperately trusts in to deliver the truth. So called `rational beings` place their behaviour under the control of the abstractions that are concepts; that is, abstractions from immediate perceptions. Furthermore, `abstract concepts can be put in a pyramidal order of genus and species, with the unruly impressions at the bottom.` Thus, concepts are generally considered to be of higher value than immediate intuitions. The result of formulating concepts and of ranking them compared to intuitions is that a new world is created:

For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries-a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.

This new world downgrades the world of intuitions. Humans consider it a more valuable world because of its solidity; they come to feel they know and understand it. The creation of this `new world`, therefore, is the origin of being over becoming; the birth of considering the value of being to be higher than that of becoming. This world, although downgrading our immediate perceptions (category of becoming) is still anthropomorphic in character; that is, it is still a world of human character and creation. Through the course of this essay, it will be demonstrated how Nietzsche endorses a life that is balanced between concepts and intuitions; between the rational and the intuitive individual. However, Socrates has downgraded the world of intuitions one step further with his creation of the world of Forms. As a result, he has made the task of a balanced life even more difficult for the modern individual.

In summary, the origin of the human drive for truth is no drive for truth at all. Rather, it is a drive for the meaning and stability that those things we take to be true provide compared with varied and unstable intuitions. This is not recognised by the majority of individuals who believe they are chasing truth (as opposed to falsity) when in fact they are merely pursuing the life-sustaining consequences that truth (as opposed to lie) provides.