The Huge Entity: Friedrich Nietzsche On the Nature of Truth

Friedrich Nietzsche On the Nature of Truth

Wednesday, October 11, 2006 → by Danieru

Here Lies the Value of Truth:

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

Here Lies the Value of Mankind:

Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself.

Extracts taken from Friedrich Nietzsche's 1873 essay 'On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense'

Categories: History, Quotes, People, Fiction, On the Nature of, Ideas, Human, Reality, Language

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posted by Danieru at 4:16 PM

Jay said...

That's pretty heavy following a long weekend!

October 11, 2006 6:13 PM

Danieru said...

Ha ha, you might be right there. Perhaps something lighter is to come...

October 11, 2006 11:55 PM

Daniel Poynter said...

"In early times, language and its referents climbed up from the concrete to the abstract on the steps of metaphors, even, we may say, created the abstract on the bases of metaphors. [...] It is not always obvious that metaphor has played this all-important function. But this is because the concrete metaphiers become hidden in phonemic change, leaving the words to exist on their own. Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb 'to be' was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit 'bhu', "to grow, or make grow," while the English forms 'am' and 'is' have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit 'asmi', "to breathe" [...] Of course we are not conscious that the concept of being is thus generated from a metaphor about growing and breathing. Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the busy give-and-take of talk have worn away with use." Jaynes in 'Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'

October 12, 2006 3:04 PM

Lean said...

Mr. Nietzsche was a Great Man.. It's interesting... what he would like to say, after having seen the today's world?..

October 13, 2006 1:59 AM

A modern Nietzsche.... Hmmmm.

I am currently reading a book by British Philosopher John Gray, whose fiercely critical analysis of modern secular, humanist belief bares a striking resemblance to some of Nietzsche's more 'rebellious' comments about religion.

Something tells me Nietzsche would see today's world and conclude little has changed since his heady days of cynicism.

Such is the cynic's prerogative

October 15, 2006 9:12 PM