A presentation on Nietzsche and the relationship between truth, perspective, meaning and power.

1. The Truth about Truth:
A Nietzsche Feature

2. Human, all too human #1
All writers, all arguments, no matter how rational and
reasonable and logical, have an agenda - a gut instinct, a
value set, a lifestyle-choice perspective that they intend to
impress upon the reader. Do not be fooled by appearances of
objectivity. Do not be fooled by any attempts at a dry,
dispassionate tone. If you want to get under the skin of any
author that aims to convince, the first thing to ask is: “What
do they want the world to be like?” Never mind surface
argument for now – dare to be sleazy and underhand, look for
evidence of what the author blindly believes, presumes,
craves and aspires to – and when you lower the dress of that
surface argument again, it will all look a little less immaculate;
and it’s cut and shape will make a lot more sense.

3. (From Beyond Good and Evil notes ~ 1: On the Prejudices of Philosophers)

4. (From Beyond Good and Evil notes ~ 1: On the Prejudices of Philosophers)

5. Anti-dualism ~or~ Plato is a life-denying world-hater

7. How can this Nietzsche guy deny
‘truth’?
• Doesn’t deny that some kind of ‘actual’ ‘reality’ exists but:
• Skeptical that much of what we take to be ‘truth’ is ‘actually’
dry fact, free of any value judgements and interpretation
• That so-called ‘truths’ can be universalised
• That ‘truth’ can ever avoid being anthropocentric
• That objective truth comes before our subjective experience
• That ‘truly’ objective truth, without interpretation, is in any
way meaningful to us

8. • From Socrates and Plato, through Christianity and up to the
reigning scientific paradigm of today, convention has placed a
fixed realm of universal truth behind the ever-changing reality
that we actually engage with. For Nietzsche, though ‘Truth’ is a
human thing built upon our subjective, individual, changing
experiences:
• The so-called universal, the ideal, the definitive, the objective
are all human constructs built upon the actual, the situational,
the ever-changing world of ‘appearance’.

9. The revaluation of all values
Philosophers have tried for centuries to pin
down a hard, solid grounding for
knowledge, looking for absolute
certainties.
Nietzsche was cynical about this – he
suggested we largely accept and believe
what is valuable to us, our society, our
species.
Value comes before truth. Or rather ‘truth’ is
only valued if it is useful, and what is
useful will be taken as ‘truth’.
The pursuit of truth for truth’s sake may lead
us into nihilism – since the ultimate
nature of reality is irrational, unknowable
and meaningless without subjective
interpretation
NOT relativism, but perspectivism – not all
perspectives are of equal value.

10. Logical Fictions
• Rationalised myths that we cling to make
sense of life and help us live.
• Any structured belief system about what life is
about, how the world works, and how we fit
into that.
• Useful – probably necessary. Not necessarily
‘true’.
• We all have these.

11. What do we mean by “Truth”
“Only that which has no history is
definable.” (Genealogy of Morals, 2, 13).
Brand new words and concepts
may be coined to refer to just
one thing – but old, well-used
terms will have been used in a
variety slightly different of ways,
in slightly different contexts, and
will have shifted around over
time. “Truth” is no different.

12. Eg. Propositional truth: Where what is ‘real’
must match up to a concept or an assertion
Analytical truth: Where what you say must have
an internal logical consistency
Universal truth: Where what is ‘actual’ is
eternal, static and unchanging
Ontological truth: Fundamentally what ‘is’ and
‘is not’ the case, regardless of if anyone has
said anything about it.

13. “Every word is a prejudice.”
(The Wanderer and His Shadow, 55)
• Any expression in words will only highlight a limited aspect of the concept or situation
you are dealing with, a package of signs that gesture towards a wider reality it is trying
to pin down.
• There's a whole raft of decisions that need to be made before you float an utterance out
from your gob: What words are you going to use, what angle are you going to come at
it from, how will you start, what are you going to include, what are you going to leave
out, what are you going to highlight or prioritise as important? All of these serve to
present the information in a way you want it presented, designed to have a particular
impact. There are possibly infinite variations, all of which are 'true', in that the facts are
the same, despite very different trajectories.
• It’s not necessarily deliberately manipulative or disingenuous – often you will express
things the way you have picked up on them, the way you see or interpret them, and
prioritise what is genuinely most important to you at that moment. In fact you can’t do
anything else, but also, in fact, it’s very rare you will ever say anything that isn’t in some
way in your interests to say, and pretending this is the same as speaking the whole dry
truth is either naive or flat-out bogus.

14. “What, then, is truth? 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.” (On Truth
and Lie, 1)
“The map is not the territory” – Alfred Korzybski

15. Some More Quotes n That
“Truth - Against positivism, which halts at phenomena – ‘there
are only facts’ - I would say: No, facts is precisely what there
is not, only interpretations.” (The Will to Power, 481)
“The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘real’ world has only
been lyingly added. . .” (Twilight of the Idols, ‘‘Reason’ in
Philosophy’, 2)
“Here one may certainly admire man as a genius of construction,
who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of
concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on
running water.” (On Truth and Lie, 1)

16. The Godfather of Post-Structuralism
The Middlemarch example:
Thomas will now draw something.
OVER THERE.

17. Human, all too human #2
Our truths are always anthropocentic –
we define everything by how we
relate to it, and cannot take
ourselves out of the picture.
What we refer to as ‘truth’ is always
our truth, the ‘facts’ as they relate
to us, the meaning is always from
our perspective. So much for
objectivity.
How do we know what a tree is?
How ‘true’ would the statement “The
book is on the table” be to an inter-
dimensional intelligence that only
senses via magnetism?

18. Meaning

19. Nietzsche’s Final Thought
Alas, what are you after all, my written and painted thoughts! It
was not long ago that you were still so colourful, young, and
malicious, full of thorns and secret spices – you made me
sneeze and laugh – and now? You have already taken off your
novelty, and some of you are ready, I fear, to become truths:
they already look so immortal, so pathetically decent, so dull!
And has it ever been different?… We immortalise what
cannot live and fly much longer – only weary and mellow
things! (Beyond Good and Evil, 296)