~On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense

In The Gay Science, when the Madman decrees, "All of us are his murderers...God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him," he is not simply speaking of the Judeo-Christian God. The Madman is announcing the revaluation of the Western Metaphysical tradition. In one aphorism, Nietzsche undermines the entire Enlightenment premise of progress and pure knowledge. Truth, for Nietzsche, is interpretation. To extrapolate, the basis for all morality is shaken--the columbarium has fallen. This act of revealing posits an opportunity for human beings to break from their slave morality, which is perpetuated, underscored by the illusion of Objectivity. Artists, musicians, and visionaries can peel back and pick at the comfortable consistency of empiricism. Nonetheless, human beings need dialectics to operate in the world. Language is at the foundation of this project. By translating sensation into a vernacular, statements can be made and understood about the world. For Nietzsche, language is the fundamentally an act of creation. Signs are metaphors for sensation. Although, in language, we understand signs to correspond with noumena, that is a misunderstanding. The human intellect is particular lens, rather than a universal one. Therefore, when we speak about things in the world, implicit in each statement is the caveat that whatever is being said is limited to and dependent upon the human perspective. The barrier between subject and object is removed, despite this opposition being necessary to understanding. A concern for Nietzsche is the historical forgetfulness that led to the displacement of dissimulation by truth, by repetition. In "On Truth and Lie In an Extramoral Sense," Nietzsche discusses the genealogy of the idea of truth as necessary and universal. The essay is rich with metaphor. This stylistic move echoes the confluence of "truth" creation and metaphor that he elucidates in the paper itself. As literary artist, he is performing the act of unveiling that art is uniquely equipped to do. Similarly to Levinas, art is necessary to point towards other epistemological, ontological, and ethical possibilities, while pointing out their essential provisionality. Although Nietzsche, in the title, suggests that his interpretation is extramoral, I do not think this is the case. Without pointing to a specific moral code, Nietzsche nonetheless places a value on a certain outlook on the world--the master morality. This perspective or mood is grounded in intuition and harkens to Nietzche's Will To Power. These are the individuals, like Nietzsche, who deny themselves the comforts of The Herd, and act in accordance with their own beliefs, not those provided by others. This is the honest way to live.