Nietzsche's Critique of Past Philosophers

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Nietzsche's Critique of Past Philosophers

The desire of most philosophers, Nietzsche says, is to find truth.

Nietzsche doesn't see why this is. In the second aphorism, he asks why

don't we look for untruth? He believes that beliefs are more important

than finding truth because, for him, there is no real truth.

Philosophers state a truth or known fact as if it were the ultimate

knowledge, but Nietzsche says that really they are giving their

opinions about things. Philosophers don't have knowledge - just

beliefs. He says that philosophers' prejudices about the world

influence the things they say and what they think they know and so we

shouldn't pay too much attention to the actual things they're saying.

He believes that we shouldn't focus on what the philosophers are

saying, because it is probably wrong, but we should focus on why they

are saying it. Although, this could appear to be more to do with

Psychology than Philosophy, and so maybe Nietzsche shouldn't be

worrying about it.

Nietzsche believes that philosophers are wrong when they say that

truth is the most important thing - for Nietzsche, life is most

important. And therefore, if we hold a false belief, that is OK

because as long as our lives are better for having this belief, then

it is better that we remain ignorant of the truth and stay happy. Too

much emphasis has been made of truth.

However, there must be some truths in the world, even if it is very

basic without our perceptions. For example, if I see a can on a table,

I know that there is one object on top of another object, even if it

is only my perception telling me what the objects are?

Plato is a philosopher that Nietzsche heavily disagrees with. Plato

said that this life isn't the real one and that when we die, we will

go on to a real world that is better than this one. Nietzsche says

this is not true. There is not another world or life apart from the

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