Language since the beginning has been about communication, communicating and sharing our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings. But through it come deception, dishonesty and lying? This is what Friedrich Nietzsche says in his work “On Truth and Lying”. Nietzsche points out that with language we form deception. That truth is “…a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification…” Nietzsche also points out that because language is so much in use after a while it loses its value, comparing it to a coin.

Nietzsche has a really good point. We use language on a daily basis without even thinking. Many times we speak without thinking, many times we don’t realize how heavy our words are, how much of an impact they have. Lying is very common, and it’s even more common to do without intention, without realizing it. With language comes perception, and through that comes honesty or dishonesty. Nietzsche questions the one thing that many people wouldn’t ask. language is a very powerful tool and it allows human to create so much more.

In his essay, Nietzsche describes how “deception” greatly relates to language and cognition. Nietzsche writes how humans, “are deeply immersed in illusions and dream-images; their eyes merely glide across the surface of things and see ‘forms’; nowhere does their perception lead to truth; instead it is content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to play with its fingers on the back of things,” (765). The argument here is essentially that human beings are exceptionally lazy, and only see or identify things to fit their own specific worldview. Given how people lie, cheat, and manipulate facts, “truth” becomes muddled. People see and hear only what makes them comfortable, in turn also distorting what other people witness for their own personal gain.

This is especially true with the way language is formed to deceive, “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,'” (Nietzsche 766). Such deception through language exemplifies how ideas can be twisted and morphed. The irony here is that language is a social construction devised to build and communicate new ideas and concepts, to inform people the truth —  yet language has also been provided as an outlet for lies and deceit. This analysis on language by Nietzsche is especially relevant today in our media-savvy society, where you can find out a wide range of news with a five-second Google search. Yet with all of this saturation of news and language, it is very easy for one to be swayed by a certain article that has clear bias — that uses language to construct its own fake “truth” to service an agenda. The same can be said for wartime propaganda (eg. Nazi films), using language to distort the truth in order to rally support for a country, or hatred against one.

The beginning of “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (“there was once a planet…”) reads like the first lines of a fable, and appropriately so: Nietzsche is telling us a story in which he questions the possibility and value of telling the truth (764). He points out the absurdity of humans valuing their intellect above all else when our existence registers but a blip on the timeline of the universe. N denounces human intellect as “pitiful,” “insubstantial,” “transitory,” “purposeless and arbitrary” (764). The arrogance of human intellect deceives even philosophers and scientists into thinking they are pursuing an objective truth when our actual condition is one of permanent deception. That is, “the intellect shows its greatest strengths in dissimulation”: Our idea of cognition is merely an illusion that we construct for the purpose of self-preservation and social cohesion. After all, what do human beings really know about themselves? Nature doesn’t tell us; “nature knows neither forms nor concepts…but only an ‘X’ which is inaccessible to us and indefinable by us” (767).

After degrading the significance of our intellect, N asks about the origin of our truth drive. He concludes that truth isn’t as important as the belief that we possess the truth, which is a mind-blowing revelation (for me, at least). Not only is objective truth impossible for us to grasp, but we don’t even want it if it isn’t pleasant and life-preserving. Sadly, I have to agree.

I also agree with Nietzsche’s critique of language, its futility in capturing and conveying an objective truth/reality. Our inherently subjective, linguistic mode of representation makes me skeptical about the value we place on truth, a “mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms…illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions” (768). What’s “meta” about this essay is that N consciously fulfills what he calls “the obligation to lie in accordance with firmly established convention” in order to illustrate his ideas. In this way, for the purpose of communication, illusion may be beneficial. On the other hand, each reader might extract from this essay a completely different understanding of what N’s trying to communicate due to the shaky foundation of metaphors.

At the end, N contrasts the life of a rational intellectual with the life of a liberated artist who is guided “not by concepts but by intuitions” (773). Unlike metaphor, art is honest about being an illusion. N suggests that art allows humans to detach themselves from their rigid views of truth and alter their constructed world for the better.

According to Nietzsche, at the heart of language and cognition is deception. To completely understand why he believes that to be so we would have to understand how he defines truth. Nietzsche defines truth as being a set of metaphors, similes, poetics, rhetorical  intensification and translations which have been in use for a long time, so much so that we have forgotten they are not firmly established (768). He believes that the truths that we now hold dear are forgotten illusions. We have come to a point when people have forgotten that we are the ones who have defined what something is or is not. We are the ones that have decide that a rock is hard while feathers are soft. In Genesis 1:18 of the KJV of the bible it is says, “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” This was the first example that came to my mind after reading Nietzsche’s writing, because even though this is a religious text and he is not religious, it exemplifies what he is trying to convey. We as people do not truly understand the thing we can only define it as we see fit. Thus making the fundamentals of our language and truths to be lies. Our language, as the professor said, does not mirror an object. I find instead that it simply just illustrates what we believe it to be. Describing and labeling a thing is as if you drew an object. No matter how much you may recreate the image the image will not truly reflect the object. It will in the end only help us understand what we think that object is or should be. It is through repetition and forced habits that we have developed the fundamentals of our language and cognition. And because of this repetition we have forgotten that it is also we who has created and defined what we call the truth.

On Truth and Lying In a Moral Sense

Nietzsche is a brilliant writer as we can see in his description of truth and deception. In his essay, Nietzsche states that words are just sounds that express metal images of stimulus we receive from the environment. Thus, language can be seen as a form of lying and deception and not a representation of the “thing-in-itself” (766-7). What Nietzsche is trying to say is that things that surround us are very different from how we perceive them. For instance, we use language to describe that a rock is heavy. But it is only how we notice it as human beings; it doesn’t describe the rock itself. In other words, language fails to represent the world as it is.

Since language fails to describe the real word, Nietzsche attempts to explain what truth is and why we thrive for it. Hence he gives us an astonishing definition of truth: “truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors, which have become worn by frequent use…” (Nietzsche 768). That is to say, what we consider truth are just concepts that we forget that we have created ourselves from how we perceive the world; they are not absolute ideals. It is like when we call a dog a mammal; science tells us dogs are mammals due to his physical characteristic, and we consider it a truth. But a dog doesn’t perceive itself as a mammal. It is just a classification system we made up ourselves and we tend to forget that as it had become so common.

Furthermore, Nietzsche explains that this happens because the so called truths linger and become stronger and solid over time. In other words, we tend to forget how concepts come to exist. Consequently, we render unconscious liars who defend the “feeling of truth” developed over centuries (Nietzsche 678).Using Nietzsche ideology, we can understand how language, more specifically English literature, can be seen as a medium that expresses endless truth. But this truths only exists in the anthropomorphic world within the human mind. I say this in reference to Terry Eagleton’s “The Rise of English.”

Nietzsche has always been one of my favorites to read, mostly because he’s brilliant and mostly because he sounds absurd until you think about his theories for too long. In this particular text, he once again forces readers to realize that the language(s) we use are incapable of grasping the world around us. He proposes that the language(s) we use is nothing more than a misleading “deception” that we take for communicating. At first, this is a little confusing but as he goes on, it gets real way too fast.

Nietzsche backs up this deep analysis of human communication by explaining that the world around us cannot be properly grasped by just simple words, and it definitely cannot be explained through one individuals’ words. The problem is is that we all as individuals see, interact and live in our own worlds. No one person’s world is like anyone else’s. We live completely different, even if we live in the same households, neighborhoods, families, etc. We may share one language, but our meanings and use of the language we know vary.

It’s kind of like this, I see a cat, but you may see the most majestical little creature that’s ever stolen your heart. This is a loose interpretation, but nonetheless, it shows two different experiences over the same subject. Not only that, but you see a cat, but what does the cat see you as? The cat doesn’t know it’s a ‘cat’.

Our inability to describe the world around us comes from our inability to understand that our words are merely metaphors for the world around us. The metaphors are our loose interpretations that are overused time and time again, until they’ve lost their meaning and substance. Especially since these words are coming from one or multiple people, all who are talking from their individual experiences. It comes from our heads, from the mental images we make up. Everything we say is based off of our own idea/perception of the world around us. What’s amazing about this concept is that Nietzsche is emphasizing our individuality and our ability to perceive our world. It opens up the mind to understanding why some people see the world one way, and why others see it the other way.

Now, since we all see the world and everything within it differently from every other person in this world, how can we find ‘truth’? Nietzsche says we can’t. There is no obtainable truth because of language. Within one specific language, there are thousands because each person sees the images we’re conveying. This also includes how we understand or explain ourselves. Nietzsche asks us to question our own consciousness, can we trust it? It effects how we see and how we explain our worlds. This is a bit of a frightening question because this can be questioned on a small scale or a very large scale. From what we’re physically able to do to how we justify our own actions, can we be trusted to properly grasp ourselves? Nietzsche says we can’t even obtain the world, much less ourselves.

After reading this theory, the only thing I would want to ask Nietzsche is if he thought he could trust his own language.

The deception of language to Nietzche is based on the elements we use to define an object. He believes and conveys metaphors, and other linguistic behavior as an illusion towards the real object of interest For one thing we use images to understand the object then we use human condition to express what the meaning and view of the object entails. We as humans believe in something and as we know the terms we believe to become experts at the subject or object. A great term he used in the writing anthropomorphic.

For Nietzsche, everything is an illusion  including truth because it is wrapped up in human intellect and the human perspective. Our understanding of the world is limited because we can only see through our human understanding. This is something I’ve come to understand; its very difficult to garner a complete view of the world since we are only human and there exists the perspectives of other living animals. Humans have coded the whole world, using language, with these illusions and created a sort of deception. I assumed that Nietzsche would recommend for us as humans to look at the world from a less anthropomorphic view and actually try to see how in what metaphors animals understand the world. This could enable us to see the world in a fuller and realer way. However, he said that would be pointless. Whatever metaphors, that eventually become truth, we or any other animal imposes on the world around us don’t and can’t represent the original essence of these things.

Nietzsche describes the rational and the intuitive man. The rational man is shackled by “an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived.” He preerives the world around him and his place in it through a network of concepts which have been handed down through generations of human history and which are canonized as “truth.”  Thw intuitive man Prforms “audacious feats” of smashing the framework through which the rational man deals with the world.

Nietzsche answers his own question, “What then, is truth?” with the following: “Truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions (768).” The meaning of this phrase requires some unpacking. First of all, Nietzsche is not referring to a single lifetime of forgetting but rather the forgetting of multiple generations. Generation after generation have deemed an illusion to be a universal truth based on similar but not identical experiences, therefore, on non-identical experiences, which is the fundamental issue Nietzsche has with the idea of truly coming to a universal truth (767). Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious is fitting to consider in light of this idea of generational forgetfulness. The idea of the collective unconscious is that all humans or, I might add, each species is born with a memory bank of his or her species’ past, which supplies the individual with a universal knowledge; however, what Jung refers to as a memory is a forgetting for Nietzsche. Nietzsche and Jung must have had different concepts of truth. For Nietzsche, we can only ever grasp a feeling, (or illusion,) of truth, which we ourselves have manifested; therefore, our truth can only ever be subjective.