Nietzsche and Truth

The love of truth and the love of the world. I used to be disoriented by Nietzsche’s attack on truth:

 

Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment; in this respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating. (Beyond Good and Evil, Kaufmann trans.)

 

It doesn’t make sense on many levels. What is in truth life-promoting or species-cultivating? Well, Nietzsche apparently thinks he has the truth about that: the unfolding of power, which implies an unfolding of our highest capacities, which in turn makes culture, which in turn makes a world a man can affirm – or so I would paraphrase it. He is sure there is no reality but nature, as he understands it (a mix of Darwin and Schopenhauer as the matrix for his special addition – the will to power).  No God and no ‘other world’ exist – they are fantasies produced by the weak to make life bearable. They are laced with underlying fantasies of resentment and revenge against those able to master and so affirm life. Morality is an illusion that flows from the same source. Nature knows no morality. Nature is indifferent to human suffering. I could go on.

        At the deepest level, it seems, the hostility to truth is bound with a rather dim view of the world. If the world is horrible, then it is understandable that the truth would make life unbearable. We would need all kinds of illusions – comforting illusions as well as illusions that make us seem great in our own eyes. Whatever works! But what if Nietzsche is wrong about the world and wrong about us? His whole philosophy, his recommendations at least to the “strong” ones among us depend on its truth. If he is wrong, if his judgments are not true, then his philosophy, well, sucks.

       You will inevitably find that those who don’t care about truth are nihilists, openly or under the surface: that is, they believe in a meaningless, perhaps cruel interpretation of nature and human nature that places no inherent limits on the will. Like Nietzsche, they will just assume that nature and the world are amoral, indifferent bundles of matter and energy, and appeal to a kind of secret society to which their readers, if they desire to be cool, obviously want to belong – “we strong ones know the world sucks and the weak need their pitiful illusions.” It is yet another form of self-flattery. It is a bubble, a self-authenticating view of the world and their place in it.

            The love of truth, the practice of truthfulness as a virtue, as spiritual demeanor, is also not neutral. It makes sense only if the truth is good because the world and nature of which it is truth is good, is meaningful. The world and nature offer enough evidence for both views. The world is ambiguous, underdetermined. What is deeper? What is on the surface? We don’t understand our own lives and how to live without caring about the truth of such matters. In any case, the attitude to truth depends on the attitude toward the self, others, the world, and God. For me I can’t be a nihilist because I love my children – among other things – and have had occasion to be glad of life and the world. It is understandable to me that the people of Gaza or Sudan might have a different take on things. And that more than anything casts doubt on my view.