In his essay “On Truth & Lying In a Non-Moral Sense, ” Frederich Nietzsche challenges traditional thoughts of truth, language, perception, and human existence. 

He started by questioning conventional ideas of truth, claiming that truth is not an absolute and objective concept but is a human creation shaped by language and society’s influences. Neitzche states, “the rule of art over life can become established; all the expressions of a life lived thus are accompanied by pretense, by the denial of neediness, by the radiance of metaphorical visions, and indeed generally by the immediacy of deception”(761) which argues that language is metaphorical and that words are symbolic representations and not factually reality. Nietzsche suggests that language development is a creative act, creating metaphors that eventually become the basis for our understanding of truth.

Going into his next claims that truth is subjective and varies from individual to individual, which is supported in the article when he states, “If they will not content themselves with truth in the form of tautology, i.e. with empty husks, they will for ever exchange illusions for truth” (754) This concept challenges the idea of a single, universal truth. Nietzsche explores the role of deception in human existence and suggests that lies and illusions are not deviations from truth but essential aspects of our existence. In Nietzsche’s view, deception is a crucial force contributing to life’s richness and complexity and language system.

He draws connections between truth, deception, and art and claims that artistic creations, including literature and music, offer a unique form of reality that is more accurate. Aesthetic illusion, according to Nietzsche, can reveal truths that go beyond the limitations of literal representation.

On a side note, one thing that stood out in this essay, besides the mind-blowing epiphanies it brought forth, was his writing style. In this article, I’ve spoken about how he argues that language is a metaphorical and symbolic system that distorts reality and that the truth is a product of human invention rather than an objective reality. Yet, the way he writes in his essay is bold and unconventional, which I analyze as his rejection of conventional moral values and his desire to provoke readers into questioning their assumptions about truth and morality.

To conclude, Nietzsche’s “On Truth & Lying In a Non-Moral Sense” challenges readers to reconsider their preconceived notions about truth, language, and the nature of human existence. By exploring the creative aspects of language and acknowledging the role of deception, Nietzsche invites us to view truth as a multifaceted and dynamic concept. 

    In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense ”, Friedrich Nietzche focuses on a provocative exploration of the relationship between the truth and language ,meaning how our perspective and interpretation are guided by our own interests. He states that there is a difference between the actual truth and a lie, if we’re lying that show how we’re trying to find some validity and forcing what we want reality to be rather than just letting it be. 

   The language being used can be subjective since reality is distorted rather than being accurately represented. Nietzhe states that “the liar uses the valid tokens of designation-words—to make the unreal appear to be real; he says, for example, ‘I am rich’, whereas the correct designation for his condition would be, precisely, ‘poor. “ on page 754. Us individuals use language as a medium for the truth. Like the word “liar” in this context is defining someone who distorts language to serve their own purposes disregarding the reality of what happens. Providing the “I am rich” phrase shows an example of how a liar uses language to create a false impression of reality, even though their financial situation says otherwise, using the word “rich” helps deceive others about reality.

   Nietzsche believes that society reacts strongly to deception due to people feared being harmed by deception, like if a person misuse their language for their “reasonable” explanation, society can lose trust in them which can exclude them from its rank. Nietzsche states , “Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist, i.e. the obligation to use the customary metaphors, or, to put it in moral terms”, on page 756. He’s explaining how society imposes an obligation to be truthful in order to maintain itself, or how digging deep in the truth can be seen in moral terms due to being sincere. The truth has it relationship to society, language, and morality, the author emphasizes his skepticism towards moral frameworks and his idea of truth as a complex concept by what society expects and our own interest.

  Overall, Nietzsche’s argument is to have us people reconsider our assumptions about language, truth , and morality, urging us to confront the complexities and ambiguities of human perception. 

Nietzsche’s essay, “On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense,” breaks down human’s truths and how these truths only deceive. The language of humanity and its search for truth has essentially separated us from reality although language was meant to bring us closer to it. He finds many problems stem from the concept of “truth”. Truth can hardly be considered objective – a man goes about life believing everything to be based around him, yet Nietzsche believes that something as lowly as a midge would feel the same way. “The arrogance inherent in cognition and feeling casts a blinding fog over the eyes and the senses… it deceives them about the value of existence” (752-3) is how he describes the pervasive effect of truth on humanity. 

A poignant example of this devastating effect is Nietzsche’s discussion on leaves. No two leaves, no matter their similarities or differences, are alike, but humans have conceptualized the leaf to a form that removes all the differences, discards all the real, tangible leaves for the conceptual leaf, thus: “…the leaf is the cause of the leaves” (755) since we have alienated ourselves from the reality of leaves for the idea of the leaf. Not only are we alienated by nature because of this, we also become alienated from ourselves and reason. Just as we have turned the leaves into a ouroboros so we can perceive them relative to ourselves, we have done the same to qualities. “We call a man honest; we ask, ‘Why did he act so honestly today?’ Our answer is usually: ‘Because of his honesty’” (755). What is honesty but a quality that cannot be put in tangible terms? All we know of honesty consists of  individual examples, not a concrete quality. Human truth eats what it creates. 

Reality has been distilled by humanity for millions of years to usher in a significance that is “universal” to the point that it is a castle with absolutely no foundation. Nietzsche refers to an eternal dream as being interpreted as reality, yet it is nothing more than an illusion. A similar illusion is that of the illusion of natural law. Only known to us by what it is not, and whatever nature is not is equally only known by not being nature. Nietzsche’s logic fascinates me, and many further strides will be made by me to understand him completely, yet I will end with what I feel to be the basis for my observations:

“Thus, all these relations refer only to one another, and they are utterly incomprehensible to us in their essential nature” (759).

The following is in response to Nietzsche’s essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

I gotta admit, I’ve never read Nietzsche before.

That’s sort of embarrassing in certain circles. I’m between two heads on this:

Something in me finds it deeply compelling when somebody can actually wield these sorts of thoughts in a learned way–when a conversation on some culture thing starts to eat itself and people begin to interrogate those more elemental aspects of the collective show we all watch–I’m usually the one smiling and nodding and trying to scrounge up the scraps of k-punk I read once, a few years ago, at the recommendation of this girl I liked.*

Then another part of me remembers smiling when I heard somebody say “the next time I meet somebody and they mention Deleuze I’m calling the police.”

I guess I might be a bit jilted. 

Bitter?

***

truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions
the sum of human relations…embellished…fixed, canonical, and binding...

It’s a pretty radical act to upheave something thought so basic. Here’s my attempt to follow his train of thought:

• Intellect is designed to deceive us.
• Cooperation is utility, not altruism.
• Language is a tool and truth begins as useful convention. (As opposed to the structures of thought stemming from structures of language…but I’m choosing to write my blog post on Nietzsche, not de Saussure)
• That thing we prize? Truth? Practical advantage rather than moral entity. At least in “truth”, there is no extant good to be accessed. 

the peace pact banishes "the war of all against all"

I buy it. we accept as true what is useful and safe.

Our need to know the truth brings us further from reality, as it causes us to seek that which we cannot access, necessarily demanding a substitute (i.e., lies)

If illusion is beneficial glue to society—shared fiction—the drive to truth would then be counterproductive. If we want to account for its existence, one might suggest it is the drive to truth which fuels our creation of illusion; it therefore feeds and maintains itself. 

Fact chasing, navel-gazing ouroboros. 

Is it effort that’s actually lazy?

(Probably not, but I’m not sure and that’s a lot of fun.)

Signifying tendencies —our grasping at what is—could be truly primal. Something we refuse to advance beyond in a sort of rusty, obsolete obstinance. 

Figure 1: the only picture of a “fat cartoon snake” on page one of google images that wasn’t furry artwork.

***

One possible counterpoint:

Relations to the supposed truth, appreciated and analyzed, practical, render the existence of a certain or understood real truth irrelevant. It’s our most functional possible approach to further analysis, and so through some sort of confirmation of downstream effects, we could ultimately say “truth might as well be real”…

Unless we want to go off the deep end, and maybe we do. 

***

We consider an accurate representation of reality as somehow moral, while our state denies us ever achieving it.

We cast ourselves into an illusory thirst. 

My favorite possible takeaway question from this sort of thinking is “how then do we attempt access to reality, ceasing our attachment to knowing and naming”?

This schema allows us to break down an obsession with objectivity on its own terms, accepting that we can never really reach it—within the rules set by a presumed objectivity, said objectivity can never be recorded. 

We could then proceed without “truth” entirely on our own terms.

The gate is opened for mysticism. Dreams. 

One thing that I’ll remark on is a provocative streak here that comes without a lot of analysis of what exactly “truth” would be. He takes for granted we cannot access reality. Fine, there’s a great precedent for that sort of thinking, a chasm between us and the phenomenal.

His scans to me more as a theory of “everything but truth” rather than an operational conception of reality itself.

It’s a very human piece of work and it uncovers a lot of painfully compulsory mechanisms that have us grappled. I find myself feeling this, for better or worse.

So truth isn’t. 

And I guess that’s ok now. It’s hard to wash oneself of the answer addiction, but maybe that’s coming to pass in a very real way—we’re fully in a world where on an active level we acknowledge the fickleness of truth. 

I enjoy my lies! I am fueled by something inside me that against judgment has me convinced that there’s some way I can be a “good” person. I spend each day with this latent, forgotten assumption that I and my contributions to the space and happenings around me matter. I’ll admit, though: maintaining that takes work in the face of ideas like this.

*It didn’t work out.

In his book, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche discusses the topic of truth. Truth, as he describes it, is an ideal, a standard created by society and constantly sustained by those who desire power. Despite the seeming objectiveness that truth pertains to, it is actually impossible to reach a definitive truth. Instead, society has agreed upon and cherry picked what deserves to be upheld as a truth for stability and social order. These agreements are directly tied to linguistics and communication. Nietzsche argues that humans need to use language to convey thoughts or ideas, yet the way the external world is relayed is in fact not the true objective reality. It is not possible for humans to fully grasp the essence of the external world or even themselves, therefore the diction attributed to what becomes known as truth is inherently deceptive. Philosophers during the modern period such as René Descartes were obsessed with the concept of a priori knowledge, or knowledge that humans are born with that is factual and independent from any experience or evidence. In a sense, Nietzsche is taking that concept and stating that there cannot be the existence of a priori knowledge thus what becomes coined is merely based on interpretations. One way Nietzsche draws a connection between language and truth is via a leaf analogy. There are no two leaves that are exactly the same, so what is accepted as a leaf is “formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another” (755). Nietzsche continues by saying this concept, “then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature, something which would be ‘leaf’, a primal form.” By illustrating this, he is able to highlight a few important aspects of his argument. Despite the infinite possible differences between leaves, the concept of a leaf is formed via oversimplification and only observing its common features. The existence of leaves imply that there must be a primal or true form of what leaves are, however this by virtue of leaves being a construct in the first place cannot be the case. Rather, language is used for convenience and nobody is opposed to the truth. 

Upon reading Nietzsche’s argument, I found myself widely agreeing with his stance on the subject. That being said, Nietzsche’s points are ironically as idealized as the very thing he is critiquing. Can there truly be a harm in deception when everyone is in on it? One point of attack Nietzsche claims is, “Anyone who researches for truths of that kind is basically only seeking the metamorphosis of the world in human beings; he strives for an understanding of the world as something which is similar in kind to humanity” (757). While yes, language can be inherently deceptive and selfish because of the lack of an origin, it still allows for us to connect between each other which in itself serves as a vital pragmatic function. Without linguistics we would be unable to share complex ideas or emotions.

In Nietzche’s work “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” he explores what he perceives to be failures in language’s ability to describe reality, and asserts that language itself is built on deceit. He explains that we as humans do not have the cognitive ability to learn the “primal form” or name of objects and so “we possess only metaphors of things which in no way correspond to the original entities.” (755)  He goes on further to describe “truth” as a simple “peace treaty” between men, and we only seek these pacts out because of, “necessity and boredom.” ((753) Nietzche transforms the truth into the beliefs we maintain and abide by to maintain order. In his perspective, there is no universal objective truth.  

While his essay does at first imply that a man who does not throw off these false truths is doomed for an “illusory consciousness” that leaves humanity “rest[ing] on the pitiless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous- clinging to dreams, as it were, to the back of a tiger,” he does not believe that our delusions do not come without their benefits. He compares the lives of two kinds of men: the intuitive man and the rational man. Built upon his perspective of life in Ancient Greece, a time when “anything [was] possible” -as they believed in a world intertwined with Gods and invested in myth- he describes an intuitive man. An artist who is creative and joyful, while also heavily deluded about the objective truths of the world. This man while able to experience greater highs of joy also loses himself to intense confusion and sadness when hardship comes. He suffers not just more intensely but more often as well as he cannot learn from his experiences. Opposite to this is the rational man who seeks out truth and complete freedom from man’s deception. He detaches himself from emotion and lives a careful life. When this man suffers he learns from it, avoiding much hardship and he maintains a consistent emotional state. The cost of this though is that while he does not show his suffering on his face, wearing a “mask” he has lost his ability to connect with others, neglecting his emotional state. As Nietzche describes it then, It is not necessarily a happier life ahead for those who refute humans ‘inherent’ delusion. 

I believe his work is put to its most pragmatic use when we engage with it in its context, as he wrote in a largely Christian society, and his work challenged many of the traditional beliefs that upheld their way of life. In a patriarchal religion-dominated society, his work which is obviously atheistic was a much-needed perspective. To grasp Nietzche’s work fully you are asked to see the world within deep time, as he highlights that the universe, and nature itself, are both objects that act in a much greater scheme than we do, on a much grander scale. It is necessary then to understand the apathy that the natural world has for us, unimpacted or defined by our attempts to label and describe it. He puts into words a very objective view of what man is to the world and can relay our inability then to see ourselves for what we are – insignificant. This much has been an even more hated perspective when the religious implications are taken to the forefront. 

I do feel that his argument fails in its obvious antihumanism. Believing that humans have little to no desire to connect for the sake of it assumes a man is apathetic to his neighbor beyond need and boredom. He also does not acknowledge the other possible roots of language and its reasons for coming into being. Language not only functions as a tool for labeling and naming, a perspective he seems inclined to take as an academic man, but is a tool for human connection. ( Sign language comes to mind ) Many languages are founded on the human desire to be closer to and understand his neighbor, and if the language did only exist in the mode that Nietzche defines it we’d probably have a much thinner dictionary today. As Saussure describes it language is not just a physical mode of communication but a psychological one- an empathetic one. We use language to share and relay concepts to each other, a process that occurs internally, as we decipher the sound-images we hear into the concepts we come to understand them to be. In comparison to Nietzche’s dead language Sassure leaves the room for language to grow and evolve- changing with the individual as it does not assume a “fixed type” but roots language in the human desire for communication.  (865)

In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” Friedrich Nietzsche states the perspective regarding life and truth. Nietzsche states ” What , then is truth ?  A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphism, in short a sum human relation which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration. (756) This quote explained how he used metaphors and different terms on how human perception is very insane through the use of language and different forms of communication.  Basically Nietzsche is arguing that humans avoid telling the truth and like telling a lie. But by not telling the truth it can cause consequences and some people try to lie to prove a point. The quote that tries to argue this is ” The first laws of truth, for the contrast between truth and lying comes into existence here for the first time,” (754)

Nietzsche states that there is a difference between truth and lying and by lying you are trying to find some validity and force everything you are trying to state. Truth is also only desired by human beings in a similarly limited sense. The author also states the illusion of the truth.” If truth alone had been decisive in the genesis of language, if the viewpoint of certainty had been decisive in creating designation, how could we possibly be permit to say, ” The stone is hard as if hard were something known to us in some other way and not merely as an entirely subjective stimulus”. (754) Nietzsche further tries to explain if in today’s world if the truth was based solely on real talk then certain expression would be unnecessary. This quote is trying to highlight the type of language use to convey the truth. The example of describing the “stone” is try to interpreter and communicate the try of experiences through the languages.

There are two different types of humanity that Nietzsche describes at the end of the essay in many ways. The first type of humanity Nietzsche states ” As the astrologer studies the stars in the service of human beings and in relation to humanity’s happiness and suffering, this type  of researcher regards the whole world as linked to human kind”. (757) Nietzsche states that humanity can be shown in a positive way such as bringing happiness in the world and being kind to each other. Nietzsche states that by linking together as one we can bring the best out of each other.

The second type of humanity that Nietzsche’s states is ” Neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothing, nor the pitcher of clay gives any hint that these things were invented by neediness it seems as if all of them were intended to express sublime happiness.” (761) Nietzsche tries to argue that there is also a negative side to humanity. The people that try to help humanity can also have a negative impact. Some of the negative impacts would be based on certain challenges and how a human being is working towards the community as a positive change or a negative change.

Basically Nietzsche in the essay tries to argue different things about how truth can have a positive impact and how lies can have serious consequences and how humanity have two sides.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” explores the nature of truth, language, and human perception. In this work, Nietzsche challenges the traditional norms of truth and morality, arguing that language distorts reality and that truth is a human creation. Nietzsche begins by questioning the accuracy of language in representing the external world. He asserts that words are arbitrary symbols, detached from any inherent connection to the objects they represent. In the article he states “‘The stone is hard’, as if ‘hard’ were something known to us in some other way, and not merely as an entirely subjective stimulus? We divide things up by gender, describing a tree as masculine and a plant as feminine—how arbitrary these translations are! How far they have flown beyond the canon of certainty! We speak of a snake; the designation captures only its twisting movements and thus could equally well apply to a worm. How arbitrarily these borders are drawn, how one-sided the preference for this or that property of a thing!” (Pg.754). According to Nietzsche, language is a tool shaped by human needs and instincts rather than a faithful reflection of objective reality. The article further delves into the concept of truth, arguing that it is a product of collective human agreement rather than an absolute, universal reality. Nietzsche contends that truth emerges as a result of social and linguistic conventions, and it serves pragmatic purposes rather than revealing objective facts. Nietzsche introduces the idea of the “will to truth,” suggesting that humans possess an innate drive to seek truth and impose order on their perceptions. However, he also questions the sincerity of this pursuit, suggesting that individuals may be motivated more by the desire for power and self-preservation than by a genuine quest for objective truth. An example that illustrates this is when he states “the liar uses the valid tokens of designation—words—to make the unreal appear to be real; he says, for example, ‘I am rich’, whereas the correct designation for his condition would be, precisely, ‘poor’. He misuses the established conventions by arbitrarily switching or even inverting the names for things. If he does this in a manner that is selfish and otherwise harmful, society will no longer trust him and therefore exclude him from its ranks. Human beings do not so much flee from being tricked as from being harmed by being tricked. Even on this level they do not hate deception but rather the damaging, inimical consequences of certain species of deception. ” (Pg.754). Overall, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” challenges conventional ideas about language, truth, and morality, presenting a provocative exploration of how human perception shapes our understanding of the world.

In Nietzsche’s philosophical essay, “On Truth and Lying,” he argues that the entirety of language is simply a lie. Nietzsche claims that language takes things and forces them into a mold of sameness. This also has to do entirely with how humans perceive things and categorize them rather than simply observing the details of everything individually. He states, “Every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature…” (p. 755) The entire world that we, as humans, project through our language has nothing to do with what actually is and exists in the world. We categorize things and look at the bigger picture rather than paying attention to the details. “…Something other than leaves exists in nature, something which would be ‘leaf’, a primal form, say, from which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, dyed, curled, painted—but by a clumsy pair of hands, so that no single example turned out to be a faithful, correct, and reliable copy of the primal form” (p. 755). This brief mentioning of the “primal form” is quite interesting; Nietzsche is emphasizing the immateriality of human concepts. The language that humans have has nothing to do with the real world. When we refer to certain objects, such as a desk, or a living being, as small and “irrelevant” as a midge, we don’t realize that there is no way that we can know for certain that what one calls a desk is what another calls a desk. The analysis that interested me was the point that we have no idea if something as small as a midge is at the center of its world in its own eyes. We have no idea if the midge has its own language and has a different name for itself or for everything around it. So essentially, there is no way that language is the truth because there are so many different ways that language could be interpreted and the words that we have assigned to everything in the world aren’t for certain. Therefore, because our language isn’t the truth, it must be a lie.

Saussure essay, “Course in General Linguistics” works on studying and argues how language works and further show its varies characteristics. One of the first things he mentions is how problematic it is that we associate language as just a naming process. A reasons he disagrees, is by explaining how doing this, we are assuming that ideas already exist prior to the word used to name it (826). Such as, when the word “horse” is seen, there is already an idea of what a horse is. But that’s not necessarily true because the idea of a horse is complicated because everyone has a different thought of a horse. Some may not even understand what that animal even is, making it hard to even come up with a exact idea, even more, a name for it. This point is actually related to one of Nietzsche argument in his essay, “Truth and Lying in a Moral Sense”, in which he too disagrees with the naming system because it is just a matter of labeling things, minimizing them, to the point that it is taking a way any other value and identity the thing itself holds (754).

Rather than this, Saussure describes language in which a concept and a sounds image work together. He represents this in a chart which shows how concepts and sound images function with one another and how each, “are intimately united… [recalling] the other,” (827). In this case, the sound “horse” doesn’t have to specifically relate or tied down to a certain idea of a horse, but, can be more opened to represent a broader subject of it. It also allows that words aren’t important but rather the sounds of it which help create the concept we are thinking of. This way, it helps to understand language as a more psychological thing rather than something physical (writing) or vocal (speech). Saussure shows us that language then, becomes a process that occurs more so within our mind, as we are trying to decipher and comprehend these sound-images in relation to the concept and vice versa. Reading Saussure’s essay shows how complex it really is to say something we want to say or just wanting to write it down. Basically, our train of thoughts and thoughts are working to find ways to be connect it with the sounds we make in order to allow us to effectively communicate how we want to. The argument is very interesting because language is a very important for humans not just as a means of communication but it is our way of expressing ourselves.