VII. Nietzsche on Knowledge and TruthA. What Truth is Not
Nietzsche asserts that truth is not the objectively realm as determined by reason. Reason is just a form of rationalization to justify our instincts and inspirations. He writes that most of the consciousness thinking of a philosophy is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts (Beyond Good and Evil, 3). He contends that philosophers are childish and dishonest insofar as they attribute to “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic” what is really based upon inspiration (Beyond Good and Evil, 5). Philosophers make the mistake of distrusting the evidence of their own bodies, their securest possessions in favor of reason (Beyond Good and Evil, 10). “The more abstract t the truth is that you would teach the more you have to seduce the senses to it” (Beyond Good and Evil, 128). “All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses” (Beyond Good and Evil, 134). He writes,
“All that philosophers have handled for thousands of years have been concept-mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp-alive. When these honorable idolaters of concepts worship something, they kill it and stuff it; they threaten the life of everything they worship. Death changes old age, and here must be mere appearance, there must be some deception, which prevents us from perceiving that which has being where is the deceiver? We have found him, ‘they cry ecstatically; ‘it is the senses’. These senses, which are so immoral in other ways, too, deceive us concerning the true world. Moral let us free ourselves from the deception of the senses, from becomings from history, from lies; history is nothing but faith in the senses, faith in lies. Moral: let us say No to all who have faith in the senses, to all the rest of mankind they are all ‘mob.’ Let us be philosophers! Let us be mummies.” (The Twilight of Idols)
Truth cannot be founding what is common and universal, as logic and reason demand. (Will to Power, 512 and Beyond Good and Evil, 43). Logic, reason, and knowledge produce convictions (Will to Power, 521-52). Logic and the categories of reason produce “expedient falsification” (Will to Power, 584). Nietzsche records, “There would be nothing that could be called knowledge if thought did not first re-form the world in this way into ‘things,’ into what is self-identical. Only because there is thought is there untruth” (Will to Power, 574). Truth is created, not discovered. He contends, “One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws (a world of identical cases) as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world or ourselves in which existence is made possible: we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensive, etc., for us” (Will to Power, 521). Truth is therefore not something there that might be found or discovered but something that must be created and that gives a name to a process Will to Power, 552). He writes,
“Life is ought to inspire confidence: the task thus imposed is tremendous. To solve it, man must be a liar by natural; he must be above all an artist. And he is one: metaphysics, religion, morality, science—al of them only products of his will to art, to lie, to flight from ‘truth’, to negation of ‘truth.’” (Will to Power, 583).
Logic and knowledge produce being whereas becoming is the actual state of things according to Nietzsche (Will to Power, 517). Truth does not consist of beliefs certified by faith or conviction. You can talk about the right to conviction and the courage to attack your convictions, but the presence of conviction is no mark of truth (Kaufman’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 354-54).
