Monica’s post on Nietzsche
In his essay “On Truth and Lying in a non-moral sense” Nietzsche delves into the complicated web of “truth”. He sets the basis for the essay by explaining that our fundamental understanding of reality is a fallacy. This fallacy occurs because how we experience reality is through our language and cognition. He posits that language does not equate to reality. Language is a human construct that we developed to make palatable the unreal or that which we are cognizant of. Say, for example, I was to give you a green pear for breakfast. You are cognizant that it is a green pear. But how do you know this object is green? or a pear? Nietzsche suggests that there is no point of creation for anything we know to be a fact. Rather the things we considered facts are watered-down versions of themselves or what he calls “metaphors”. In which an object exists and to understand said object we have to associate it with one of our senses and so the object goes through many transformations because no one sensory experience outweighs another. Thus, the “green pear” essentially stems off into three categories—our visual image of the green pear, the words “green pear” and the actual green pear. Though all three categories are of the same object, not one of them correlates to one another. The way we view the green pear matches our cognition; the words “green pear” is our attempt to encage the object in the construct of language, and the green pear itself is “theoretically” a green pear because we know it to be a green pear—a green pear is a green pear because it is a green pear. Challenging this statement would lead us to the realization that we have no basis on which to call a green pear a green pear because we have no knowledge of its “essential quality”. Consequently, does any single one of these categories outweigh another? Or does any single category make another less true? No, because they all form parts of the truth, yet still parts of the truth do not equate to the “truth”. This, Nietzsche explains, is the ultimate fallacy. We are so far gone into our intrinsic belief of the truth that we have forgotten that the basis of what forms our truths (the former 3 categories) are deceptions. A paradox of sorts, because then that would make us “architects” of our truth, and would that then not make us the point of creation if our induvial realities are subject to our discretion? If I give you a green pear for breakfast and you say, “no this is not a green pear this is a purple raspberry”, does it much matter who is being honest and who is being deceitful? There is room enough for more than one truth because no one reality is a shared experience.

