Nietzsche On Truth

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Recommended: Introduction to A Critique of Friedrich Nietzsche's Concept of Morality

Nietzsche’s contradictory remarks about the nature of truth raised many controversial debates in the scientific and philosophical world. At first sight, the rejection of the theory seems quite paradoxical. The denial of the existence of truth causes the problem of self-reference. In asserting: ‘Is it true that there is no truth?’, the claim turns out to be true in either affirmative or negative sense. Nietzsche analyses the notion of truth mostly in the unpublished essay Truth and Lie in which he raises various arguments. It is important to distinguish between the causal and normative evaluative sense concerning the question of truth: ‘why do we value truth?’ and ‘why should we value truth?’ The causal and genetic account of truth consists in the essential utility to know the truth of certain beliefs as a tool for survival. For example, the Darwinian evolutionary account describes the likelihood of an offspring to adapt and survive in a given environment. On this proposal, truth is valuable as a way to further human reproduction in the generations to come. On the other hand, there is the normative evaluative theory that analyses the ultimate meaning of truth. On this view, Nietzsche is mostly not concerned about metaphysical truth but, rather, analyses the reason why humans care about truth as the most overriding value. The former theory fails to provide an answer to this question, unless we consider survival as the ultimate motivating force of life. According to Nietzsche, truth is not the only ultimate value that there is in life, but also other important aspects of life such as the promotion of high culture and genius. These two values will be analyzed In greater detail later in this essay.
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...p support their natural drives. On Nietzsche’s view, then, the commitment to objective truth is inimical to the affirming force of life, because it denies the character of human passions.
On the contrary, the ultimate purpose embedded in Christian morality consists in the blind faith in truth. The will to the belief in an unconditional and the overvaluation of truth both lead to an age of cynicism where people become more skeptical about the value of illusion as opposed to the Greeks. Nietzsche also emphasizes in his texts that people need to emancipate themselves from the Christian moral tradition to project onto the world certain values of their own making that give rise to a new mythology. In conclusion, the passive acceptance of the Jude-Christian worldview destroys the motivating force behind all human actions, thereby devouring life of myth and beauty.

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