Universal truths and God - Essay Example

15 November 2007 Universal truths and God/Nietzsche In the essay, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense Nietzsche expresses his views on the problem of universal truths and the belief of God as a universal truth. Nietzsche accepts that 'truth' means every idea or view. 'Truth' is exercised by people who have power and can spread it using this power. His various remarks in which terms like 'truth' and God figure can be rendered collectively coherent only if they are viewed as efforts on his part both to accept and analyze the ways in which such terms function in particular domains of discourse. Nietzsche says that something or other means truth of the world, with respect to human nature, or concerning what ordinarily passes for truth, it should not be assumed that his observations about the nature of what ordinarily passes for truth are meant to apply without qualification to these assertions. He considers the latter to have the same sort of warrant that commonplace or scientific 'truths' are suggested to have. (Leary 267). Nietzsche states: "every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each conceptual god be sought only within his own sphere" (Nietzsche n.d.). Nietzsche underlines the nature and scope of universal truth, the cognitive significance of perceptual experience and scientific and logical reasoning, and the conditions under which various kinds of knowledge may be considered true, means issues which cannot be settled prior to the consideration of all substantive questions. They can be dealt with properly only within the context of a general understanding of man's nature and his relation to the world, drawing upon their exploration from a variety of perspectives (Leary 270). In the sassy, Nietzsche speaks of 'truth' and 'knowledge", but these terms do not have a single sense and reference in all of their occurrences. In some cases they should be understood as they have traditionally been employed by philosophers with commitments to certain sorts of metaphysical positions of which he is highly critical (Neighbors 227). In other instances they should be understood as referring to what ordinarily passes for 'truth' or 'knowledge' among non-philosophers, and to the most that truth and knowledge can amount to in everyday or scientific affairs. "He [a man] is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined" (Nietzsche n.d.). The universal truth holds true of our 'spiritual' faculties - including our cognitive powers, no less than of our more basic functions. He does not present direct arguments for this position; but he would appear to consider at least something of the sort as a consequence of the supposition that there is no transcendent Deity. Once the existence of such a Deity is dismissed, he takes the ground cut out from under anyone who would give a non-naturalistic account of the origin and nature of any of man's faculties (Neighbors 227). There then can be no 'religious sanction and guarantee of our senses and rationality' of the sort to which Descartes and others appealed; and this renders the idea 'that thinking means a measure of actuality' a piece of 'moralistic trustfulness' which is quite without warrant. Thus he considers intellectual integrity to demand not that one refrain from presupposing anything along the lines indicated above (Neighbors 227), but rather that one make these presuppositions and not shrink from their consequences for various further philosophical questions, such as those arising in epistemology. "When a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods" (Nietzsche, n.d.). Any such understanding will only be provisional, and may turn out to require to be revised or even fundamentally modified (Van Laan 255). Nietzsche considers it incontrovertible that in dealing with epistemological issues one deals with certain sorts of human affairs, and that therefore one's conclusions concerning them means either superficial or erroneous, if they are not interpreted accordingly (Van Laan 255). "The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for" (Nietzsche n.d.). If the universal truth of a proposition means a matter of a certain sort of justification of its affirmation, as Nietzsche takes it, and if the justification required for a belief to count as knowledge is not different in nature from that in virtue of which the belief may be true, as he also maintains, then the connection between truth and 'knowledge' is quite close. In relation to God, Nietzsche states that: "creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors" (Nietzscher n.d.). Indeed, one might say that he proposes something approaching an assimilation of the former to the latter, in that the operative notion in both cases usually is associated more closely with the latter than with the former (Van Laan 255). Nietzscher suggests that his concern with the question of the existence of God actually went no further than this, with the consequences of the decline of belief in a transcendent deity; that whether or not there really is a God was an issue of little or no importance to him; and that this is the sort of metaphysical question of which no meaningful discussion takes place, except in terms of the practical consequences of believing one thing or another. He states that whatever these consequences might be, and however unprepared most people deals with the fact, the supposition of the existence of a transcendent deity is philosophically unconscionable. Nietzsche was very much concerned with the latter issue, however, such a concern obviously does not preclude one's taking the question of the existence of God is of great moment. "Human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency" (Nietzsche n.d.). It should be observed that taking the position he does with respect to this morality and scale of values presupposes that one is prepared to answer this question, in the negative (Van Laan 255), Much of what Nietzsche has to say about the notion of God consists precisely in discussion of 'how the belief in a God. He explores a number of possible explanations of both the origination and the development and 'weight and importance' of the belief. With regard to the former, he tends to oscillate between two rather different theories, which might be called his 'error' and 'projection' theories, appearing ultimately to favor the second over the first. This tendency, on his view, characterizes ordinary people alone (Neighbors 227). He also sees it at work in the thought of philosophers like Kant, who go to great lengths in an attempt to defend the legitimacy and preserve the cogency of the God (Neighbors 227). "And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems" (Nietzsche n.d.). He takes it as an indication of how strongly pronounced it can be among them that even their intelligence and commitment to intellectual integrity do not suffice to counter it. And behind this tendency he discerns a fundamental lack of self-confidence and of the strength to accept and affirm life in this world. The world may be a meaningless chaos in relation to those ideals or standards of value and order associated with the sort of traditional world-interpretation he has in mind and considers to have been discredited; and from time to time he adopts this manner of speaking in order to make clear that he does indeed wish to repudiate the idea that the world constitutes the kind of meaningful cosmos it has long been purported by those who misguidedly accept this interpretation. But this should not be supposed his final word concerning it. Nietzsche states: "That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth" (Nietzsche n.d.). The very meaningfulness as well as the warrant of any assertion about any one of them depends not only upon its ties with the other or others which are explicitly mentioned, but moreover upon innumerable background ties with other linguistic practices which constitute the web of language (Van Laan 255). Nietzsche undertakes the analysis of truth and knowledge, and the kinds of considerations he brings to bear in doing so, must lead one to have second thoughts about the adequacy of the kind of treatment they are usually accorded. The necessity of subjecting scientific accounts of life and the world to further interpretation in order to do justice to them is a suggestion one recognizes one must at least entertain. Truth is referred to people who have power and can enforce their point of view. Works Cited 1. Leary, D.E. Naming and Knowing: Giving Forms to Things Unknown. Social Research 62 (1995): 267-302. 2. Neighbors, J. Plunging (outside of) History: Naming and Self-Possession in Invisible Man. African American Review 36 (2002); 227. 3. Nietzsche, F. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. N.d. 2007. 4. Van Laan, T.F. Ibsen and Nietzsche. Scandinavian Studies 78 (2006): 255. Read More