At first glance, Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral
Sense” seems to have some obvious contradictions. The author begins his essay
with a description of the arbitrariness of the human intellect, yet he is
presenting us with an essay that delves deeply into that same topic with the
goal seemingly set on enlightening the reader. Tell me Friedrich, if my
intellect is merely deceiving me into thinking I am important, and the same
thing is happening to you, why are you worried about writing anything at all,
let alone something that will surely be used in learning institutions? Again,
if language is merely a set of arbitrary metaphors for things that we see
(“forms”), why bother devoting your life to writing?
While it never fully answered my initial questions, the rest
of the essay did flesh a few of Nietzsche’s more important points out.
Obviously the essay’s primary concern is truth, which is eventually determined
as something that exists, but that we are not able to grasp in full. Our truth
is not how we tend to perceive it, but rather a made up social connection
between humans for the sole purpose of allowing us to communicate with one
another. Simply put, we think we know more than we do, and in reality the man
who grasps the meaninglessness of things like truths and lies (as we see them
today) is the only type of person able to claim any truth at all.
Am I the only one seeing it, or are there two different
types of truths being discussed in the last sentence? Nietzsche seems to have
an idea of “truth” as the failed concept that humans throw about with a glaring
ignorance to its arbitrary origins, as well as an idea of “Truth” as something
that actually does exist, just beyond our language and understanding. But,
Nietzsche doesn’t define “Truth,” so is it
assumed to be similar to our original understanding of the word, i.e. an
affirmative connection between something that we have in our minds, and
something that exists in reality (credits to Tanner for the definition)?
The second part of the essay consists of an interesting
comparison between the rational and intuitive man. Nietzsche poses that what
the intuitive man lacks in rationality, he makes up for in his artistic
ability. I don’t completely buy the idea that the intuitive man is “artistic” merely
because he, in fearless battle, paves the way for a new society; it seems as
though those people in the society would then be the artistic ones. I would
agree just that that the intuitive man creates room for others (most likely
rational men) to be creative. Moving on, while the rational man is only
concerned with warding off pain, the intuitive man takes everything around him
to exist simply as it appears to him to exist. The rational man creates reasons
for the existence of forms, but the intuitive man is actually capable of
reaping true joy from his perceptions. That being said, he also has more
opportunities to be sad, with a more potent sadness as well, than his
counterpart because of his lack of defense against deception.
Nietzsche’s description of the intuitive man appears to show
a pity, rather than an admiration for the irrational being. Interestingly
enough, the description of the rational man involves a line about simply
seeking sincerity, something that the intuitive man brings in heaps and bounds.
Adding to that the grey description of the rational man as wearing an
unchanging and emotionless face makes it seem as though there are qualities
inherent in the intuitive man’s futility that the rational man, the one who is
most likely deceiving the simpler foil and causing him pain, desires! What a
contradiction… this was the most interesting part of the essay for me, and it
left me wondering which of the two men would make the most qualified aesthetic
judgment according to our philosophers. They both seem to have their
advantages: the intuitive man would likely have the purest aesthetic judgments,
for he lives in the moment, and Nietzsche’s rational seems very susceptible to
falling into an “interested” relationship with his art. I bet it would be a
closer battle than we would think…
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