B. Motivations For Seeking Knowledge and Asserting TruthThe so-called “seekers of truth” who “suffer for truth’s sake,” such as Spinoza, are really society’s outcasts seeking vengeance. (Beyond Good and Evil, 25). Nietzsche writes:
“In other cases, it is personal rancor that drives them (“martyrs to truth”) into the domain of problems—they combat problems in order to be right against particular people. But it is revenge above all that science has been able to employ—the revenge of the oppressed by the prevailing truth. . . . Truth, that is to say, the scientific method, was grasped and promoted by those who divined it in a weapon of war—an instrument of destruction—To make their opposition honorable, they needed, moreover, an apparatus similar in kind to that used by those they were attacking: -- they adopted the concept of ‘truth’ just as ostentatiously and unconditionally as their opponents—they became fanatics, at least they posed as such, because no other pose was taken seriously” (Will to Power, 457)
For Nietzsche, where there is genuinely disinterested scholarship this is a sign that the knowledge acquired is really of little importance to the scholar or it may be the sign of a despairing, mortally weary soul (Beyond Good and Evil, 6, 10) Truth is a way of appealing to and controlling the herd. Nietzsche proposes, “The demand for truthfulness presupposes the knowability and stability of the person. In fact, however it is the object of education to create in the herd member a definite faith concerning the nature of man. It first invents this faith and then demands “truthfulness.” (Will to Power, 277) By promoting and cultivating “truthfulness” among “equals”, the fear of deception by and the mistrust of others is circumvented. “What is true” constitutes a question where an explanation is given which causes the minimum of spiritual effort. (Will to Power, 278, 279) Nietzsche argues that metaphysicians create a “real world” in order to express hatred for a world that makes them suffer (Will to Power, 579).
