On Nietzsche and Truth
This essay serves to discuss Nietzsche’s disposition on the construction of concepts and the attainment of knowledge. Nietzsche posits that human beings are unable to comprehend the truth; instead, we invent and construct knowledge that departs from the truth. On the other hand, one might argue that that claim itself is self-refuting; however, that argument would be flawed because it is based on the wrongful assumption that the world is rational.
Truth is the unity of (1) The thinking of an object, and (2) The subject itself. In other words, to obtain the truth, our understanding of the world must align with what the world really is. Therefore, to see if truth is acquirable by us, we must find out what (1) and (2) are, and if they can, or do, converge. The thinking of an object is what Nietzsche calls a “concept”; it is devised through a compilation of human experiences, and our perceptive faculties. The subject itself, on the other hand, exists independently from our interpretations; it refers to the individuality of the subject. Truth can only be acquired when (1) and (2) converge. In this case, not only do the two diverge, our perceptions bring us further from the reality of the world. Due to the discrepancy between humans’ understanding of the world and the actuality of it given our perceptive shortcomings, Nietzsche argues that truth is unattainable by humans.
If humans are incapable of acquiring the truth, what, then, do we make of what we consider to be knowledge? Nietzsche argues that what we consider to be knowledge is a set of ideas we construct. Due to our perceptive shortcomings, our perception transforms our attempt to capture individuality, into the exercise of equalising the unequal. Namely, we equalise the unequal by extracting from “countless individualized and consequently unequal actions” and finding a common denominator. As a result, the “individual differences and distinguishing aspects” of the subject itself are covered up. So, when we invent knowledge of what we observe, we do not invent the truth, but merely concepts that reflect how we understand the truth.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche recognises the inevitability of conceiving knowledge, given that it is impossible for humans to be anything today without some kind of human invention. What he found to be concerning, is not that we are inventing knowledge, but our failure to distinguish concepts from the truth. We do so by “overlooking what is individual and actual”, and acting as if we have obtained the truth. Ultimately, not only are we identifying the unidentifiable, we are treating the unidentifiable as if they are the identifiable.
To elaborate his notion that what we consider truth today is a façade and truth is unattainable by men, Nietzsche uses two examples. Today, when we evaluate a person’s honesty, we claim that a person is not lying because they are honest. However, honesty itself is a concept constructed by men, and we are simply evaluating something with our own standards. This is an example of our invention of knowledge. Another is Nietzsche’s example of the leaf, which also explains the process of inventing knowledge. When looking at a leaf, we are faced with a couple of perceptive limitations. Our senses restricts us from fully experiencing and appreciating the leaf. Also, there are only so many leaves we will observe; we are physically barred from observing every single leaf in the world. In reality, each leaf is an individual, and is different from each other. Therefore, we are inevitably left with a generalised definition of a leaf. This in effect strips away any distinguishing attributes of every leaf.
Nietzsche’s claim seems to be reasonably valid on hindsight. When we tell a child what an apple is, we would show her a picture of an apple. When she sees an apple, she would associate what she sees to images she has been exposed to. She would not doubt if this is what an actual apple looks like, because it satisfies all the generalised attributes of an apple. Thus, it seems irrefutable that there isn’t a point of knowledge that doesn’t require the invention of knowledge, and that truth is unattainable.
However, upon further inspection, this argument seems paradoxical. Suppose the previous claim asserts the following:
Everything we think we know is a human invention and truth is unattainable by men
Statement (a) is true.
If statement (a) is correct, then nothing we say can be true, because we are incapable of attaining and asserting the truth. This would mean that the statement itself, if it is true, would be just as unattainable as other sets of truth. If nothing we know is true, then statement (b) would not stand, because it implies that humans are capable of asserting the truth. Therefore, in the case where one were to say that both statements are true, he would be making an irrational claim, because the statements are self-refuting and contradictory. In the case where at least one of the statement is untrue, the initial argument would not exist at all.
This is undesirable as it is illogical and irrational. Today, a scientist would expect no contradictions from a valid hypothesis; at the same time, most people would find a theory that is inconsistent with human reasoning to be imperfect and incorrect.
Nevertheless, one might maintain that the previous argument is based on the wrongful presumption that the way we understand our world is rational. The original argument states that there is a lack of certainty in the way humans understand the world, and that everything we think we know is a metaphor invented by ourselves. Therefore, the world is irrational in a sense that everything is a human artefact, and can be anything as long as it satisfies the collective attitude. Take our legal system as an example. When a judge convicts a murderer, she imposes a sentence. This serves as a punishment because the murderer did something bad. The idea of murder, the degree of sentencing, and the base idea that murder is bad are all derived from our society’s collective attitude of morality. In a way, this is irrational, because our knowledge of the world around us is contingent; it is subject to change. During prehistoric cultural stages, killing someone for one’s own preservation would likely be less morally reprehensive than it would be in our comparatively modernised society. As we can see, even the moral code to which humans seem to hold so definitely today could be otherwise than it is. When persons in authority impose criminal liability towards those who kill others, they are inventing a set of laws that are open to further changes in the future. This human invention and the contingence of it illustrates the irrationality of our understanding of the world, and how it can change overtime. Therefore, in this case, it would be incorrect to presume that our world is rational.
In an irrational society where truth is unattainable, human reasoning would be one of the many unreliable human inventions, because we have uncertainty in corresponding to the way the world really is. Therefore, contradiction through human reasoning would not matter in this case, and would not pose as a valid critique against Nietzsche’s notion, given the mistaken assumption that human reasoning and rationality dictates reality. Ultimately, the argument that a notion is wrong because it is irrational would only be valid in a realm where reasoning and rationality are valid means of assessing the truth.
In fact, it seems like Nietzsche has addressed and recognised the “dogmatic assertion”1 about the paradoxical dilemma. He asserts that we construct universals by ignoring the differences and focusing on the common features. At the same time, he also questions the difference between the universal and individual, by claiming that even the distinction between our knowledge and the truth is “anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things.”2 However, despite his almost-dubious attitude towards his own ideas, he continues to claim what truth is, and how it departs from our invented knowledge. So, while he seems to recognise the vulnerability of this distinction between individual and universal, it remains that Nietzsche holds the unattainability of truth as his dominant response to the dynamic between us and the truth.
This seems like a devastating idea that greatly challenges everything humans have believed in, because it suggests that nothing we know holds value, and we know nothing. However, while we accept that our understanding of the world is as black as a canvas, it also means that we are free to paint it however we like. Since what we know is invented by us, we are free to construct anything. Once we recognise that what we understand as truth are really lies, what seems to be fragility would become the beauty of life.
