Friedrich Nietzsche – On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense

Language is a powerful force that allows weak humans to grasp the ungraspable, it is complete deception but utterly beautiful. Nietzsche begins is argument of language by speaking of the human weaknesses and failures of nature. He believes we are being deceived by our own intellect because of our human arrogance. Dissimulation becomes our greatest strength as we lack other defense mechanisms that are given to other creatures (horns, fangs etc…), this is where we are fooled. “They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the suface of things and see ‘forms’; nowhere does their perception lead into truth…human beings allow themselves to be lied to in dreams every night of their lives, without their moral sense ever seeking to prevent this from happening.” (Nietzsche, 765). He speaks about the weakness of humans as they are completely living in limbo, a place where they are content and are completely arrogant, they believe what nature solely strives to deceive us. This is the power of language and the human mind.
The human mind, being what it is, attempts to understand the unknowing. “…the liar uses the valid tokens of designation—words–to makethe unreal appear to be real…”Nietzsche, 766) We attempt to grasp the ungraspable by naming things, proving our dominion as intellectuals in my opinion. We as humans have this natural drive for the truth, to grasp what we see and turn them into sounds and words. We are completely disillusioned by our own language. Nietzsche uses the example of a leaf to show the weakness of humans in using language, we call all leaves a ‘leaf’ to generalize what it is. We transform the picture into a sound and then into a word, the word ‘leaf’ categorizes all leaves but we do not fathom that each leaf differs from one another. Just because they all come from the same origin does not mean that they are all the same.
Nietzsche attempts to define what the truth is by saying “truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost alll sensuous vigour…” (Nietzsche, 768). His argument shifts from complete scrutiny of the weakness of humans and language and embraces reasons as to why humans and language are completely amazing. Our ability to dream about anything and make anything possible at anytime is completely astounding. He could make himself happy regardless of whether he is poor or not. But this ability to dream might also be a mark of servitude because we may fall victim to our constant fantasies and over look the reality of things.
This is where Nietzsche makes his final points: the man of reason and the man of intuition. They both desire rule over life but the man of reason is fearful of intuition and unartistic while the man of intuition is filled with scorn for abstraction and unreasonable. Each lacking of one another, the man of reason prepares for calamities by preparing for the future while the other disguises the reality of the calamities by covering it up in beauty. The man of reason suffers more because he does not learn from experience and falls into the same trap every time of seeking truth and honesty is illusions. The man of intuition embraces the fact that we do not and cannot grasp the truth.
So far, Nietzsche has my favorite argument in terms of language as he really breaks down and mindbends our idea of the truth. It makes you begin to question language and the world around you as to whether we are living a lie or making the world what we believe it to be. Are we powerful beings that we can bend the world with our minds and make it as we choose it to be, or are we simply living in a world that controls us and all we can do is perceive things in a way and become deluded in this world we create.

One major question: Am I citing Nietzsche in this ‘essay’ the right way?