Nietzsche on Truth

           In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche sets out to define the concept “truth,” and all that it implies, in terms of how man perceives his understanding of it, and how his understanding really functions. Nietzsche’s explanation for the nature of things does not follow a direct linear causal chain, but instead resembles a complex and interrelated web of reasons, causes, and effects. For this reason, coupled with his eccentricity, Nietzsche’s writing sometimes seems erratic and unorganized, though a complete reading allows the reader to glean a description of how the concept of truth first arose in human consciousness, how its meaning has evolved in the designated collective perception, and the effects of those changes.
           Nietzsche notes that humans are by nature social creatures that gather in communities. The essence of living in a community lies in the act of relying on another person and thereby deriving some benefit, so to facilitate the communication of concepts men adopt a “regularly valid and obligatory designation of things,” or a commonly understood definition of nature. This constitutes the origin of man’s first impulse toward the concept of truth. The designation of things takes the form of words that come to represent concepts. Here Nietzsche makes a distinction: “between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object… there is at most an aesthetic relation… for which there is required a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force” (Truth and Lie, 7). In other words, there is no necessary relation between man and a thing, only a relation in which man must have a partly creative role. This emphasizes the difference between a word and the thing it represents. Man takes the nerve stimuli as the first metaphor for a thing, and creates a word as a metaphor that can be commonly understood for the conception of the thing. Man simplifies things even further: he uses a single word to represent not just one particular thing, but many things on the basis of their similar qualities. To take Nietzsche’s own example, man gives the designation “leaf” to an entire class of objects, actively forgetting that each leaf is particular and unequal. In this way, each word is also a concept into which all individual “leaves” are assimilated. Nietzsche does not regard this process as wholly a negative one, even stating, “precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth” (On Truth and Lie, 5). In fact, Nietzsche describes this drive for metaphors as indispensable to man in any social environment. Though he doesn’t realize it, man in society is not concerned by deception itself, but only the harmful consequences of deception. So, even though man is taking a lie for a truth, once the community’s impression of a metaphor takes on a common form, “it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one,” that is, derived from the essence of the thing, and man thereby derives the benefit of clearer communication. Ultimately, Nietzsche views man’s customary understanding of truth as in no way directly connected to the actual essence of things, yet a useful simplification that facilitates communication.
           At this point, Nietzsche points out that man’s view of truth is an anthropomorphic one, which “contains not a single point which would be ‘true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man” (On Truth and Lie, 6). As previously stated, he is not concerned with the actual truth, but only life-preserving truths, avoiding potentially damaging truths. Thus, man only seeks to understand nature in its relation to man, and consequently he acquaints himself only with the effects of nature and how he is affected by them. To elucidate Nietzsche’s own example, consider the concept “mammal”; this concept does not exist divorced from mankind, only particular individual organisms with similar genetic structures exist, yet man applies this concept to a variety of organisms and calls it truth. Though man can perceive nature in a way such that, “only its owner and producer gives it such importance,” he assumes that his way of viewing nature, though a totally separate way than, say, a mosquito, or any other creature views nature, is the perception against which all others should be valuated.
           Nietzsche elaborates on this subject in his third essay in On the Genealogy of Morals. He refutes the notion of an all-seeing, God’s eye form of objectivity, which transcends all perspectivism; “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be” (Genealogy of Morals, 119). In other words, one perspective can’t be said to have more “truth,” because that would presuppose the existence such a transcendent, timeless God’s eye, but by suspending judgment of perspectives and utilizing a multitude of interpretations we can achieve a fuller and richer understanding of nature.
           Nietzsche’s own definition of truth necessitates that we apply his reasoning to the definition itself in order to assess its validity. Naturally one must make the observation that he uses words themselves to construct a criticism of language. While this seems to be a contradiction of terms, so to speak, Nietzsche himself admits, and one must agree, that such an inconsistency is unavoidable. Although he uses metaphors (words) to state that all words are metaphors and not the things they represent, and despite the fact that, by his own definition, each word he uses is merely a commonly understood designation that does not account for inequalities of particulars, language remains the most efficient way to communicate.
           After bearing this issue of language in mind, one must also recognize the inherent anthropomorphism of human perception, which every human fundamentally cannot avoid. Thus, even Nietzsche’s explanation of the anthropomorphism of human thought, is a thought that is itself anthropomorphic in nature. While Nietzsche himself certainly recognizes this as well, he is right in pointing out the benefit of acknowledging this fatalism. After regarding this as true, man can view his own thoughts with the insight that they inevitably assess nature only in its relation to man.
           Finally, Nietzsche himself would acknowledge that his definition of truth, even while attempting to show that each perspective is just that, a perspective and not the actual essence of nature, is itself just another such perspective. Although this is the case, however, it does not detract from the value of recognizing the limitations of perspectivism. While doing so does not change the essential qualities of our way of perceiving, it retracts the veil of ignorance that covers man’s understanding of his own view of truth, and thus brings forth a kind of truth that is previously ignored.
           Ultimately, Nietzsche outlines a definition of truth for man which inherently contains all-too-human limitations that is naturally bound by the separation between a perceiving organism and the object of its perception. With these limitations regarding the achievability of “truth” in mind, one can still say, and Nietzsche would say so himself, that hiss interpretation holds significant value in that it elucidates many ambiguities points of human ignorance in relation to the actual functioning of our perceptions.

Works Cited:
“On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.” Friedrich Nietzsche. Nachlass, 1873. Tr. Walter            Kaufmann, Daniel Breazele.
On the Genealogy of Morals. Friedrich Nietzsche. Random House, Inc. New York, 1967.
           Tr. Walter Kaufmann, R. J. Hollingdale.