In his critical essay, “On Truth & Lying In a Non-Moral Sense”, philosopher Frederich Nietzsche critiques the contemporary agreements of what qualifies as truth. Nietzsche begins the essay by examining the evolution of humanity’s knowledge, ultimately establishing that it is pointless and that there is no equitable universal truth. He raises the question, “What then is truth?” (pg. 756). His answer is: “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” (pg. 756). According to Nietzsche, truth is just another metaphor invented by human activities, or “anthropomorphisms”, rather than something literal. Although humans have invented the concept of truth, they have forgotten that it is only an “illusion” that was created solely to help humans assign meaning to the world around them. These perceived truths have also undergone a series of changes as humans have developed intellectually throughout history, and have moved humans further away from the objective truth. They have been heavily extended, or “embellished poetically and rhetorically”, as humans have discovered more about the world around them, but Nietzsche claims that this does not make them any more viable, and instead turns them into “metaphors which are worn out”. To summarize, Nietzsche defines truth as simply a socially constructed illusion.

While Nietzsche does raise some strong points regarding the social construction and embellishing of truth, it can be argued that not all truth is inherently incorrect. This can be true in cases of conclusions that have been drawn through years of research and testing in fields such as science. Similar to an experiment, a truth had to start as a hypothesis, and then go through a series of tests to eventually be declared a truth. Truths have also been derived from pure trial and error of the human experience. Humanity has developed immensely since the nineteenth century, so it is easy to declare that Nietzsche’s reasoning is a bit outdated. However, despite his argument having its flaws, Nietzsche offers excellent insight into the never-ending question of how human beings search for meaning in the world.