About truth and lies in a non-moral sense
About truth and lies in the non-moral sense is a philosophical essay by Friedrich Nietzsche from 1873. The work was published in 1896 by Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche .
content
Nietzsche's work consists of an explanation and, at the same time, a criticism of contemporary treatises on truth and concepts . According to Nietzsche's account, these considerations are closely related to the origin of language:
“So it is not logical in any case with the origin of language, and all the material in which and with what later the man of truth, the researcher, the philosopher works and builds, if not from Cloud Cuckoo Land, at least not from that Essence of things. [...] Every word immediately becomes conceptual because it should not serve as a memory for the unique, completely individualized original experience to which it owes its origin, but at the same time for countless, more or less similar, that is, strict never taken the same, so must match all unequal cases. Every concept arises from equating what is not the same. "
A few lines further Nietzsche describes the truth:
“So what is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations, which, poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, adorned and which after long use seem solid, canonical and binding to a people: the truths are illusions of which one can has forgotten that they are some, metaphors that have worn out and become sensually powerless, coins that have lost their image and are now considered as metal, no longer as coins. "
reception
About Truth and Lies is the only work in which Nietzsche deals with the origin of language and its relevance for human self and world knowledge. The Austrian philosopher of language Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923) was the first to recognize the importance of Nietzsche's criticism of language .
The philosopher Michael Pfister (* 1967) points out that this text does not make the term “truth” obsolete. On the other hand, mistrust is always appropriate when the factuality and inevitability of scientific knowledge is emphasized or a certain policy is presented as having no alternative or as the only alternative . In this context Pfister refers to Nietzsche's genealogy of morals and sees the author as a forerunner of Michel Foucault , the founder of discourse analysis .
Individual evidence
Nietzsche's works are cited according to the Critical Study Edition (KSA).
- ↑ KSA 3, p. 310.
- ↑ KSA 3, p. 311.
- ↑ Michael Pfister on Friedrich Nietzsche in: theoriekritik.ch
expenditure
- Friedrich Nietzsche: About truth and lies in a non-moral sense . Reclam Paperback, 2018. ISBN 978-3-15-019308-2 .
literature
- Stefan Kaiser: About truth and clarity. Aspects of the rhetorical in about truth and lies in the extra-moral sense . Nietzsche Studies No. 23, pp. 65-78, 1994.
- Hans Gerald Hödl : Nietzsche's early language criticism: Readings on about truth and lies in the extra-moral sense . WUV-Universitätsverlag, 1997. ISBN 978-3-85-114312-6 .
- Sören Reuter: At the burial place of intuition. Nietzsche's theory of images and perception in about truth and lies in the extra-moral sense . In: Contributions to Friedrich Nietzsche, Volume 12. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2009.
- Sarah Scheibenberger: Commentary on Nietzsche's Ueber Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense . In: Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works. De Gruyter, 2016.
- Margo Kaiser: Friedrich Nietzsche's On Truth and Lies in the Extra-Moral Sense . An illustration of his concept of truth. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2019. ISBN 978-3-668-93637-9 .
