Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Nietzsche and Truth

What is the importance of truth?

Find an answer in Nietzsche, Post-Truth, and the Value of Truthfulness:

Contrary to the received wisdom that Nietzsche denied the very idea of truth, Nietzsche thought that truth was often all too real. Much of Nietzsche’s philosophy struggles not against truth, but with the question of how we can live with the truth. Nietzsche’s radical version of this question struck at the very foundations of many concepts and values that we still hold dear.

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The point is not to do away with the very distinction between truth and falsehood, but to ask why this distinction is important, and who does and does not benefit from a culture that recognises it. With Nietzsche, we should recognise that the creation of a “post-truth” culture is driven by a lust for power among those who gain from the destruction of old sources of truth. But Nietzsche also gives us reason to be suspicious of those who claim simply to be led by the facts, especially in politics, where "there is no alternative" is too often used to hide political choices. Nietzsche is not an enemy of truth, but he is suspicious of those who claim to defer to it. Perhaps it is neither ignorant nor irrational for us to be similarly suspicious.

sch 4/5/22 

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