1.5—
The Revaluation of Truth I:
Being, Becoming, and Appearing

Nietzsche's genealogy of Western thought culminates in a "critique" of the "will to truth," a demand that "the value of truth [ . . . ] for once be experimentally called into question " (GM III:24). What does this critique entail? And what, for Nietzsche, remains of truth?

Nietzsche clearly considers the issue of truth to be of central philosophical and cultural importance. From the early essays through the final

notes, he constantly returns to this topic, offering remarks that are as bold as they are elusive. These texts have recently attracted much attention, and the quantity of commentary on Nietzsche's discussions of truth has grown rapidly over the past few decades.^[16] For the most part, these discussions have attempted to extract from Nietzsche's elusive comments a "theory of truth." Yet no consensus has been reached. Indeed, every major theory of truth (correspondence, pragmatic, coherence, semantic) has been attributed to Nietzsche by one commentator or another,^[17]

[16] See, e.g., Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), passim; Jean Granier, "Perspectivism and Interpretation," in The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, ed. David B. Allison (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977); Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Nietzsche: Seine Philosophie der Gegensätze und die Gegensätze seiner Philosophie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), chap. 5; John T. Wilcox, Truth and Value in Nietzsche: A Study of His Metaethics and Epistemology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), and "A Note on Correspondence and Pragmatism in Nietzsche," International Studies in Philosophy 12 (1980): 77–80, and "Nietzsche's Epistemology: Recent American Discussions," International Studies in Philosophy 15 (1983): 67–77, and "Nietzsche Scholarship and 'the Correspondence Theory of Truth': The Danto Case," Nietzsche-Studien 15 (1986): 337–57; Mary Warnock, "Nietzsche's Conception of Truth," in Nietzsche's Imagery and Thought: A Collection of Essays, ed. Malcolm Pasley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Daniel Breazeale, "Introduction," in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979); Bernd Magnus, "Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism," Nietzsche-Studien 9 (1980): 260–67; Lawrence M. Hinman, "Nietzsche, Metaphor, and Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 43 (1982): 179–99; Schacht, Nietzsche, chap. 2: Nancy, "'Our Probity!' "; Willard Mittelman, "Perspectivism, Becoming, and Truth in Nietzsche," International Studies in Philosophy 16 (1984): 3–22; Kenneth R. Westphal, "Nietzsche's Sting and the Possibility of Good Philology," International Studies in Philosophy 16 (1984): 71–89; Alexander Nehamas, "Immanent and Transcendent Perspectivism in Nietzsche," Nietzsche-Studien 12 (1983): 473–94, and Nietzsche: Life as Literature, chap. 2, and "Will to Knowledge, Will to Ignorance and Will to Power in Beyond Good and Evil, " in Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986); Steven G. Crowell, "Nietzsche's View of Truth," International Studies in Philosophy 19 (1987): 3–18; Robert Nola, "Nietzsche's Theory of Truth and Belief," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1987): 525–62; Rüdiger Bittner, "Nietzsche's Begriff der Wahrheit," Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987): 70–90; Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, chap. 6; Ken Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (1992): 47–65; Steven D. Hales and Robert C. Welshon, "Truth, Paradox, and Nietzschean Perspectivism," History of Philosophy Quarterly 11 (1994): 101–19.

[17] The correspondence theory of truth holds that a statement or belief is true if and only if it accurately represents "reality," "the world," "states of affairs," or "the facts." Versions of the correspondence theory of truth are explicitly attributed to Nietzsche by Westphal, "Nietzsche's Sting"; Nola, "Nietzsche's Theory of Truth and Belief"; and Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, chaps. 2, 4, and passim . A "metaphysical" version of the correspondence theory of truth is implicitly attributed to Nietzsche by many writerswho argue that Nietzsche conceives of the ultimate nature of reality as "becoming," "chaos," or "will to power," whether or not we can adequately think or communicate the character of the world as such. See, e.g., Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, 80, 96–97; Granier, "Perspectivism and Interpretation"; Wilcox, Truth and Value in Nietzsche, 132–33; Rüdiger Grimm, Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977), 30 and passim; and Mittelman, "Perspectivism, Becoming, and Truth." A version of the correspondence theory also seems implicit in many writers' emphasis upon Nietzsche's language of "honesty," "aptness," and "justice." See, e.g., Jaspers, Nietzsche, 201–11; Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 354–61; Schacht, Nietzsche, 63, 66, 95–117; and Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, 155, 188ff. The pragmatic theory of truth holds that a statement or belief is true if and only if it is, in some respect, useful. This theory is attributed to Nietzsche by Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, chap. 3; Grimm, Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge, chap. 2 and passim, and "Circularity and Self-Reference in Nietzsche," Metaphilosophy 10 (1979): 289–305; and George Stack, "Kant, Lange, and Nietzsche: Critique of Knowledge," in Nietzsche and Modern German Thought, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (London: Routledge, 1991), 36, and "Nietzsche's Evolutionary Epistemology," Dialogos 59 (1992): 77. Other commentators argue that Nietzsche affirms the pragmatic theory of truth on at least one level within a multileveled theory of truth. See Granier, "Perspectivism and Interpretation," 198–99; Warnock, "Nietzsche's Conception of Truth," 49, 51ff.; Schacht, Nietzsche, 71ff.; and Nola, "Nietzsche's Theory of Truth and Belief." The coherence theory of truth holds that a statement or belief is true if and only if it coheres or fits within the system of connected statements and beliefs that constitutes our knowledge. Schacht (Nietzsche, 63, 66ff.) and Magnus (Nietzsche's Existential Imperative [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978], 29, 201, and "Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism," 265) argue that Nietzsche's theory of truth is, at least in part, a coherence theory. The semantic theory of truth, formulated by Alfred Tarski decades after Nietzsche's death, holds that a sentence is true, in a given language, if it satisfies the rules by which sentences in the language and objects are picked out and correlated with one another. (It is of some debate, among Nietzsche scholars and philosophers generally, to what degree this theory is a correspondence theory). This conception of truth is attributed to Nietzsche by Nola, "Nietzsche's Theory of Truth and Belief," 538ff.; and Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, 32, 38–40, 61, 135. It should be noted that many commentators attribute to Nietzsche a hybrid or multileveled theory of truth that combines several of the theories described above.

while still others have argued that Nietzsche does not provide a theory of truth and is not interested in doing so.^[18]

Oddly enough, I think each of these views is, in some respect, right; and later I will give some indication of why I think this is so (see §1.6.3). However, the debate over which theory of truth to attribute to Nietzsche seems to me improperly framed, so I will not enter into it directly here. Rather, I want to suggest that we arrive at a better sense of Nietzsche's conception of truth by examining what he himself takes to be the crucial consideration: the question of "the value of truth," or rather, how truth is to be revalued in light of his genealogy of European thought.

[18] See Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, 54–55; and Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," 48.

1.5.1—
Truth, Being, and Becoming

This revaluation obviously presupposes some preliminary characterization of truth. For Nietzsche, such characterization is provided by the history of metaphysics, which, he argues, retains essentially the same conception of truth from Plato through positivism: truth considered as the absolute priority of determining "what is" apart from "what becomes" and "what merely seems or appears to be."

With regard to this conception of truth, as we have seen, the advent of modern experimental science represents, for Nietzsche, a decisive step in the history of metaphysics. Science turns its attention away from the Platonic-Christian "world of being" toward the "world of becoming"—the spatiotemporal, physical, natural, and empirical world. Moreover, as it develops, science casts off its residual ties with theology, gradually rejecting the deism to which it was initially wedded.^[19] The scientific revolution, then, brings us closer to an affirmation of what Nietzsche calls "a pure, newly discovered, newly redeemed nature" (GS 109) and a restoration of what he terms the "innocence of becoming" (TI "Errors" 8).

Yet Nietzsche argues that the dominant scientific theories and methods of the nineteenth century—mechanism, evolutionism, and positivism—still harbor a residual theology that corrupts the "innocence of becoming": they still attempt to discover a "world of being" as the ground and essence of the "world of becoming." The "necessity," "law," "atomism," and "equilibrium" central to mechanistic physics, the "struggle for preservation" and inherent teleology of evolutionary theory, and the "facts" and "disinterested observation" desired by positivism—all of these, according to Nietzsche, are but further attempts to place becoming in the service of being, to claim that becoming and change are always governed by, tend toward, or are reducible to some static, enduring, and isolable thing or state.

Nietzsche's arguments against these various scientific theories are manifold and complex; and a discussion of his philosophy of science and nature would take us too far afield.^[20] But his general point is fairly simple. Nietzsche does not object to these or any other scientific theo-

[19] See GS 357, quoted above on pp. 17–18. Cf. BGE 209: "science has most happily rid itself of theology, whose 'handmaid' it was too long."

[20] I discuss these theories further below (§§1.5.2, 2.3.2, 5.2.1, and 5.2.3). On mechanism, see GS 109, 373; BGE 21, 22, 36, 213; GM II:12; WP 618–19, 634–35, 689, 708, 712, 1066. On evolutionary theory, see TL; HL; GS 349; GM II:12–13; WP 647-50, 684–85, 709, 881. On positivism, see GS 347, 373; BGE 10, 204, 210; GM III:24; WP 1, 120, 481.

ries on the basis of their pragmatic aims—their desire to select, simplify, quantify, and map relative tendencies and to hierarchize appearances for the purposes of increasing our ability to cope with our environment. What he objects to is the scientific propensity to forget that these are indeed pragmatic constructions and the consequent claim simply to have sketched from reality itself this picture of a simple and stable world. Nietzsche writes:

One should not understand this compulsion to construct species, forms, purposes, laws—"a world of identical cases "—as if they enabled us to fix the true world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible—we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us. (WP 521; cf. BGE 14)

What is objectionable and ultimately indemonstrable, for Nietzsche, is the idea that the world follows some grand plan that involves a resolution of becoming into being, into some terminal state or thing. Once we give up faith in the "true world" of the Platonists and Christians, we should come to see our world in a new light: as a becoming without beginning, end, origin, purpose, goal, or privileged aspect (see GS 109; BGE 22; TI "Errors" 8; WP 708, 711, 1062–67). While, within this becoming, we may be able to isolate some tendencies, regularities, and solidities, we should remember that, in doing so, we are only marking relative movements, regularities, durabilities, and phenomena that, considered within a different perspective or framework (e.g., from different points in the universe, over much larger or smaller time spans, with keener faculties of perception) would appear otherwise (i.e., as having other modes of individuation, as ongoing processes rather than stable states, as moving in contrary directions, etc.).^[21] Nietzsche writes in a note from 1887:

Duration, identity with itself, being are inherent neither in that which is called subject nor in that which is called object; they are complexes of events apparently durable in comparison with other complexes—e.g., through the difference in tempo of the event (rest-movement, firm-loose: oppositions that

[21] See, e.g., D 117: "If our eyes were a hundredfold sharper, man would appear to us tremendously tall; it is possible, indeed, to imagine organs by virtue of which he would be felt as immeasurable. On the other hand, organs could be so constituted that whole solar systems were viewed contracted and packed together like a single cell: and to beings of an opposite constitution a cell of the human body could present itself, in motion, construction and harmony, as a solar system." See also GS 228, 301–2.

do not exist in themselves and that actually express only variations in degree that from a certain perspective appear to be oppositions. There are no opposites: only from those of logic do we derive the concept of opposites—and falsely transfer it to things). (WP 552; cf. GS 110–12; WP 521, 523)

In short, Nietzsche maintains that, contrary to metaphysics, being and becoming are not opposed to one another. Rather, being is a mode of becoming—becoming conceived under a particular description, which, however, will always conflict with others and can claim no ultimate priority.

This re-orientation of the relationship between being and becoming also changes the character of truth. If, for metaphysics, truth consisted in the separation of being from all becoming, the result of Nietzsche's argument is that truth must now take its place within the world of becoming—within a world that is in constant movement and alteration, and which appears differently from every point (see WP 568). In this new guise, truth is concerned not with the determination of absolute and ultimate being, but with a specification of the perspectives and interpretations relative to which the world appears as being such and such.

1.5.2—
Truth, Being, and Appearing

This reorientation of truth points toward what can be considered the central concern in Nietzsche's discussions of truth and knowledge: the attempt to reconcile truth with its traditional arch enemy—semblance (der Schein ) or appearance (die Erscheinung ). Indeed, for Nietzsche, this reconciliation is already implied in the reconciliation of truth and being with becoming. For, following Heraclitus, Nietzsche conceives of the "world of becoming" not simply as a world of "constant change" but also as a world of "changing aspects," a world that takes on different appearances when considered within different frameworks.^[22] To

[22] According to Terence Irwin ("Plato's Heracleiteanism," Philosophical Quarterly 27 [1977]: 4–5), the notion of "becoming" or "flux," for Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, involves not only "local movement" and "qualitative alteration"—what Irwin calls "selfchange"—but also "aspect change," "things with compresent opposite properties [ . . . ] resulting from dependence on different situations." John Richardson has argued that "becoming" holds this sense for Nietzsche as well, helping to account for the doctrine of perspectivism. Thus, on Richardson's reading of Nietzsche, "to say that things become is to say that they 'come to be' one way from one point of view, and another way from another, and that some at least of these opposing perspectives are equally legitimate" ("Reply to Professor Robin Small," International Studies in Philosophy 21 [1989]: 136). These two conceptions of "becoming" are discussed more fully in chapter 4.

situate truth within the world of becoming, then, is also to situate it within the world of seeming and appearance; it is to say that "the 'apparent' [»scheinbare «] world is the only one" (TI "Reason" 2; cf. BGE 34; TI "Reason" 6; WP 566–68) and that, if there is to be truth, it must take its place within this "apparent" world.

Again, Nietzsche conceives of his task as a continuation and radicalization of the project of modern science, which turned the intellect's attention away from the otherworldly claims of Platonism and Christianity toward the earthly domain of nature and becoming. Following the lead of science, and having rejected the otherworldly conception of truth and knowledge as the attempt to achieve absolute certainty and to grasp unconditional, necessary, and eternal entities, Nietzsche attempts to resituate truth and knowledge within what he calls "the world of life, nature, and history" (GS 344). Yet in this same passage, he tells us that "life aim[s] at semblance, meaning error, deception, simulation, delusion, self-delusion [Anschein, . . . Irrthum, Betrug, Verstellung, Blendung, Selbstverblendung]" (GS 344), or, as he puts it in the 1886 preface to The Birth of Tragedy, "all of life is based on semblance, art, deception, points of view, and the necessity of perspectives and error [Schein, Kunst, Täuschung, Optik, Nothwendigkeit des Perspektivischen und des Irrthums]" (BT SC: 5).^[23] If so, it seems unlikely that anything akin to truth will be discovered within the realm of "life."

This certainly was Plato's conclusion, and that of metaphysics ever since. Yet Nietzsche thinks otherwise. It is his contention that, when we investigate the actual conditions and processes of human knowledge and inquiry, we find that, as with truth and becoming, truth and semblance (i.e., "art, deception, points of view, and the necessity of perspectives and error") are not at all opposed but rather are constantly and necessarily intermingled with one another (see, e.g., BGE 2, 24, 34). The impulse to reject this supposition, he argues, merely betrays a "hostility to life," a metaphysical desire to negate "the world of life, nature, and history" in favor of "another world," which, however, remains "indemonstrable" (see BT SC: 5; GS 344; TI "Reason" 6; GM III: 28; EH "Destiny" 8).

The scientific rejection of metaphysics, according to Nietzsche, allows

[23] Compare the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human (1): "Enough, I am still living; and life is, after all, not a product of morality: it wants deception, it lives on deception . . . but there you are, I am already off again, am I not, and doing what I have always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher that I am—speaking unmorally, extramorally, 'beyond good and evil'?"

the emergence of a question that had thus far remained foreclosed: the question concerning the value of both truth and deception. Having repudiated morality as the ultimate tribunal, Nietzsche asserts that truth ought not to be determined in advance as unquestionably "good," nor ought deception to be determined in advance as unquestionably "evil." Rather, the respective values of truth and deception ought to be determined "experimentally" (see GM III:24) through investigations carried out "beyond good and evil" (BGE 4, 2). The new tribunal, according to Nietzsche, is that of "life," which concerns the actual conditions for the existence, preservation, and flourishing of natural beings, human beings included (see WP 495). This change of tribunal means that the "will to truth" is no longer to be considered a divine gift or command, and neither are the "will to semblance" or "will to deception"^[24] to be considered signs of immorality. Rather, both "wills" are to be viewed as natural, physico-psychological impulses developed within a particular species of life to help it to cope with its conditions of existence.

The results of Nietzsche's "experiments" concerning truth can be summarized as follows: (1) to the degree that it is satisfiable, the "will to truth"—the desire accurately to represent the world as it really is—is not necessarily what is most useful, beneficial, or of highest value for "life"; (2) the "will to deception"—the will consciously or unconsciously to select from, simplify, embellish, or ignore features of the world—^[25] is not necessarily pernicious but, indeed, can be of tremendous value; (3) the "will to truth" and the "will to deception" can both be seen to affirm and to negate the interests of "life"; and (4) the "will to truth" and the "will to deception" can be seen to require and to supplement one another in even the most rigorous intellectual inquiry.

Nietzsche consistently makes the point that, in the actual practice of our everyday and scientific inquiry, truth is not solely what we are after. For instance, we are selective with regard to what concerns us. We do not make it our task to provide an infinitely detailed description of the state of everything in the universe at every given moment. Were it pos-

[24] There is a close association between what Nietzsche calls "the will to semblance [der Wille zum Schein ]" (GS 107), "the will to deception [der Wille zur Täuschung ]" (BGE 2; GM III: 25), and "the will to ignorance [der Wille zum Nicht-wissen or Unwissen ]" (BGE 24). Nehamas discusses "the will to ignorance" in relation to "the will to knowledge [der Wille zum Wissen ]" in Nietzsche: Life as Literature, chap. 2.

[25] In the Genealogy (III: 24), Nietzsche names this "will to deception" "interpretation" (Interpretation ), which requires the "forcing, adjusting, abbreviating, omitting, padding, inventing, [and] falsifying" of particular features of the world in the service of "life."

sible, such a description would not only be too complex and full of trivia but would also be too fleeting, requiring infinitely many such descriptions every second. Therefore, we make do with vastly simplified representations of even the small portion of the universe with which we are, for the most part, concerned (see BGE 230). We describe this limited domain using a host of generalizations that smooth over myriad particularities, differences, irregularities, and anomalous cases to satisfy cognitive interests other than that of precise description (see TL 83). Weighing the demands of precision and scope against those of coherence, utility, clarity, and explanatory and predictive power, we try to achieve a balance that describes as much as possible about the world (or some part of it) with the greatest possible economy and systematicity.^[26] We see the world as composed of subsistent, self-identical "beings," even though, examined closely, the world is always in flux and beings are constantly becoming-other, either through spatial, temporal, physical, chemical, and biological changes, or through reconsideration within new perspectives, modes of inquiry, and linguistic and conceptual sortings (see GS 110, 112, 121).^[27] We subsume temporally diverse sensory experiences under a single name, identifying them as composing the "same" object or person (see TL 83; GS 335; WP 508ff.); and we view the world in terms of species and kinds that are sorted by classificatory schemes that determine features as "important" or "unimportant" relative to our particular purposes (see TL 83, WP 521).^[28] The more successful these simplifications, selections, and classifications prove to be for us, the more entrenched they become, and the more "real" and "true" they are taken to be. In other words, rather than simply describ-

[26] On economy of method, see BGE 13, 36. This point has been repeatedly made, within the context of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of science, by Nelson Goodman. See Goodman, Languages of Art, 2d ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 262–65, and Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 18, 120–21. See also Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), chap. 2, for an argument that the great explanatory power of the fundamental laws of physics is proportional to their falsehood.

[27] Note that Nietzsche joins company with more recent philosophers such as W. V. Quine, who maintains that such things as "physical objects," "forces," and "the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics" are simply "myths," "posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer," "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 44–45.

[28] For a similar point, see Catherine Z. Elgin, "The Relativity of Fact and the Objectivity of Value," in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, ed. Michael Krausz (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). Cf. Stephen Jay Gould's critique of essentialist taxonomies in The Flamingos Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 160ff., and Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York: Harmony, 1996), 38–42.

ing the world as we find it, we as much fabricate it to suit our needs: we individuate, sort, select, classify, and weight features of the world so as to make it more comprehensible, calculable, predictable—in a word, more habitable for human beings (see BGE 14). "Science at its best," Nietzsche writes, "seeks most to keep us in this simplified, thoroughly artificial, suitably constructed and suitably falsified world—[ . . . ] it loves error, because, being alive, it loves life" (BGE 24).

Yet this is not to argue that truth is equivalent to utility or that Nietzsche supports a "pragmatist theory of truth." Nietzsche constantly reminds us that the demands for utility and for truth are quite often at odds with one another. He writes in The Gay Science: "We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live—by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument; the conditions of life might include error" (GS 121; cf. BGE 39; EH P:3; WP 493).

Even so, he is quick to add that this is no condemnation of the will to error and deception:

The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment; in this respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating. And we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments [ . . . ] are indispensable for us; [ . . . ] that renouncing the falsest judgments would mean renouncing life and a denial of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life—that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil. (BGE 4)

Each of these passages claims that, strictly speaking, the simplifications and categorizations taken for granted by our science and common sense are not "true," that, from some other perspective and by other criteria, they could be seen as "erroneous" or "false"; and yet these passages seem to point in opposite directions—one toward truth in spite of utility, the other toward utility in spite of truth. This is no inconsistency on Nietzsche's part. When these passages are read together, it becomes clear that Nietzsche does not want to condemn or celebrate either the "will to deception" or the "will to truth." While he aims to reveal the extent to which the "will to deception" is operative and highly useful in our everyday and scientific formulations of the world, he is also concerned to remind us that these formulations are artificial and relative to particular sets of interests and concerns.

We can see that, on both sides, Nietzsche's target is metaphysics and its kin, theology and morality, which claim that truth is of absolute value and that the will to truth leads to the disclosure of a "true world." On the one hand, Nietzsche argues that, contrary to demands of metaphysics, theology, and morality, our inquiry does not unconditionally strive for the truth—for the "plain facts"—but instead has constant recourse to useful fictions and artificial constructions. On the other hand—and this point is crucial—he argues that a recognition of this artificiality should tempt us away from the essentialist view that science (or any other discourse) discovers a "real" and "true" world. Indeed, for Nietzsche, the conviction that there exists such a "true world" is simply a metaphysical faith (see BGE 2, 3, 34; TI "Reason" 2, 6, "World"; WP 566–67). Hence, a recognition of the artificiality and contingency (what Nietzsche hyperbolically calls the "falsehood") of a particular construction of the world is simply a recognition that it could be constructed otherwise and that what resists such novel construction is not "the way the world really is" but the inertia of established conceptions of the world.^[29] Thus, in a telling passage, he writes:

[W ]hat things are called is incomparably more important than what they are. The reputation, name, and appearance [Anschein ], the usual measure and weight of a thing, what it counts for—originally almost always erroneous [ein Irrthum ] and arbitrary, thrown over things like a dress and altogether foreign to their essence [Wesen ] and even their skin—all this develops from generation to generation, merely because people believe in it, until it gradually grows onto and into the thing and becomes its very body. What at first was semblance [Schein ] becomes at last, almost invariably, the essence [Wesen ], and functions [wirkt ] as essence. How foolish it would be to suppose that one only needs to point out this origin and misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts for real, so-called "reality " [»Wirklichkeit«]. We can destroy only as creators!—But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things." (GS 58)

Initially, this passage seems to maintain an opposition between essence and appearance; yet as it proceeds, this distinction is undercut. Retrospectively, we come to see that even those "original essences" were once constructions or "semblances" that gradually established themselves and came to "count for real." Thus, Nietzsche regards the dis-

[29] See GS 110: "the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth, but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life."

tinction between "essence" and "appearance" as one of degree, not one of kind. "What is" has become so through its articulation within an interpretation that has managed to secure itself (see GM II:12). To see things otherwise is to have created a new interpretation that individuates things differently and ascribes to them different origins, ends, and purposes. And for this new, "wrong," interpretation to become "right," for this "semblance" to become "essence," one must campaign on its behalf until it comes to be taken for granted.^[30]

I will return to these issues below. For the present discussion, the important point is that we are never concerned with a world of "truth" and "being" (in the strict, metaphysical senses) but always with a world of "seeming" and "appearance": a world that seems or appears to be such and such for a particular perspective or interpretation.^[31] "Let at least this much be admitted," writes Nietzsche, "there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective estimates and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and clumsiness of some philosophers, one wanted to abolish the 'apparent world' altogether—well, supposing you could do that, at least nothing would be left of your 'truth' either" (BGE 34; cf. WP 567).

Nietzsche recognizes and affirms that it is a constitutive feature of natural creatures that they construe the world from a particular perspective and cannot avoid doing so. Such creatures are always situated

[30] My reading of this passage thus differs significantly from the skeptical reading offered by Stephen Houlgate, who argues that the passage's apparent collapse of the opposition between essence and appearance actually presupposes that very opposition. Houlgate reads Nietzsche as beginning from the presupposition that there was once a legitimate distinction between essence and appearance but that this distinction is now impossible to discern, because alien appearances have veiled and, by now, fused with essences to such a degree that the latter are no longer distinguishable or knowable ("Kant, Nietzsche, and the 'Thing in itself,'" Nietzsche-Studien 22 [1993]: 118, 141–42, 145–46). I maintain, on the contrary, that Nietzsche rejects the very notion that the distinction between essence and appearance is one of kind, arguing instead that it is simply one of degree—that essences are simply established appearances. Several other passages support my antiskeptical reading, e.g., HL (3, P. 77), where Nietzsche notes that every "first nature was once a second nature and [ . . . ] every victorious second nature will become a first," and GS 290, which offers a similar conception of the interpretive construction of "first natures" out of "second natures." (See also the account of "things" and their role in "interpretations" given in GM II:12, which is discussed at length in chapter 3.) Note that the scenario in GS 58 also recalls the famous passage from "On Truth and Lies," where Nietzsche describes truth as an ever-shifting system in which the strange and new has become the familiar and taken for granted, and those passages in Nietzsche's later work where he argues that "knowledge" consists simply in the reduction of the strange to the familiar (see, e.g., GS 355; TI "Errors" 5; WP 499, 501, 551).

[31] Here, I treat these notions as more or less equivalent. The relation between these two notions in Nietzsche's work is discussed more fully in chapter 3.

at a particular time and place and relate to their environment in ways shaped by their prior development and their current capacities, habits, and skills. This is no less the case for human beings. Each of us sees from a particular point of view, defined as much by what it excludes as by what it includes. Theorists of film and photography note that the camera image is defined by a host of exclusions: by what lies outside the four sides of the frame, beyond its depth of field, and behind the position of the camera; by what has gone into the composition of the image before the shot was taken; and by one's previous training in the various semiotic codes that allow one to see the image as representing such and such.^[32] The same is true of human vision itself, which not only has a spatially limited purview but also functions as part of an organism with a range of biological, cultural, and individual needs and desires that determine in advance horizons of significance.^[33]

This analysis can be further extended to "perspectives" in the broader sense that Nietzsche has in mind: that is, to "disciplines," "methodologies," "styles," "worldviews," and "ideologies." Each such "perspective" marks out a field of concern on the basis of particular presuppositions, needs, desires, goals, aims, and objects of inquiry. And, while it may be relatively easy to take up different visual perspectives, it is considerably more difficult to master different "disciplines," "methodologies," and "styles" and notoriously more difficult still to take up different "worldviews" and "ideologies." Moreover, simply combining all these different perspectives will not yield a total view, because each will be in conflict with many others with regard to prominent presuppositions, methods, aims, and conclusions.^[34]

"Truth" and "knowledge," then, always take their place within the world of "perspective" and "interpretation"—that is, within the world of "appearance" and "semblance." We should note that this is not a mere reversal of the metaphysical view, according to which the "will to

[32] See, e.g., Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 201–22, and Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), chap. 2 and passim .

[33] Cf. Marx's poignant comment that "[t]he development of the five senses is a labor of the whole previous history of the world" (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in Marx: Selections, ed. Allen W. Wood [New York: Macmillan, 1988], 59). Also cf. Goodman, Languages of Art, 3–19.

[34] Nehamas (Nietzsche: Life as Literature, 51) points out the impossibility of such conjunction through a poignant aesthetic example: "the understanding of everything would be like a painting that incorporates all styles or that is painted in no style at all—a true chimera, both impossible and monstrous."

truth" and the "will to deception" are, respectively, good and evil. That is, Nietzsche is not arguing for a rejection of every notion of truth in favor of semblance, error, and deception. Among other difficulties, such a move would maintain the "faith in opposite values" that Nietzsche deems "the fundamental faith of the metaphysicians" (BGE 2). On the contrary, Nietzsche's "experimental" antimetaphysical investigation, which situates itself "beyond good and evil," must renounce this faith and instead recognize that nature, life, and history countenance no "opposites" but "only degrees and many subtleties of gradation" (BGE 24; cf. HH 1; WS 67; GS 1, 375; BGE 2, 3; WP 37, 552). Thus, Nietzsche comes to reject the supposition "that there is an essential opposition of the 'true' and 'false'" and discovers instead that there are only "degrees of apparentness [Scheinbarkeit ] and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance—different valeurs [values], to use the language of painters" (BGE 34). Rather than seeing them in opposition, then, Nietzsche comes to see that, at their best, the "will to truth" and the "will to deception" supplement one another, that they are not opposites but "refinement[s]" of one another (BGE 34).

Accordingly, Nietzsche does not argue for an unqualified indulgence in the "will to deception." Rather, he contends that, on the chromatic spectrum of "truth" and "deception," both extremes are to be avoided. Having noted the dangers of "the unconditional will to truth," and having reinstated "semblance," "appearance," "error," "deception," and "perspective" to their rightful place within "the general economy of life" (BGE 23), Nietzsche is also concerned to show that the "will to deception" can be put to use against the interests of "life."

The most egregious case is that of the "believers," the metaphysicians and theologians who "lie" in an objectionable, moral sense. According to Nietzsche, these "believers" have not yet made the scientific turn and are thus out of step with the "intellectual conscience" of the age. They do not adequately scrutinize their convictions and beliefs but instead claim them to be exempt from consideration by the mistrustful gaze of science, which demands a restraint of the "will to deception" and an attention to both reason and sense-evidence.^[35] Thus, Nietzsche writes:

[35] Note that, while Nietzsche often criticizes the ability of sense-evidence to deliver unqualified "facts" about the world (see, e.g., GS 114; BGE 14; WP 516), he nonetheless considers its testimony an important criterion (see, e.g., BGE 134; TI "Reason" 3); and while Nietzsche often criticizes reason for its opposition to the natural world of becoming (see, e.g., TI "Reason"), he nonetheless often praises reason as that which demands "hon-esty" and "intellectual conscience" (see GS 319, cited immediately below; A 12). The notions of "honesty" and "intellectual conscience" are discussed below.

One sort of honesty [Redlichkeit ] has been alien to all founders of religions and their kind:—they have never made their experiences a matter of conscience for knowledge. "What have I actually experienced? What happened in me and around me at that time? Was my reason bright enough? Was my will opposed to all deceits [Betrügereien ] of the senses and bold in resisting the fantastic?"—none of them has asked such questions, nor do any of our dear religious people ask them even now: rather, they thirst after things that are contrary to reason, and they do not wish to make it too hard for themselves to satisfy it,—so they experience "miracles" and "rebirths" and hear the voices of little angels! But we, we others who thirst after reason, are determined to scrutinize our experiences as severely as a scientific experiment, hour after hour, day after day. We ourselves wish to be our own experiments and guinea pigs. (GS 319)

In a number of passages that resonate with this one, Nietzsche argues against taking as the only criterion of truth what he calls "the proof of strength": the notion that beliefs are to be held true solely on the basis of the strength of our belief in them or the beneficial effects of such belief (see HH 120; GS 347; BGE 210; GM III:24; TI "Errors" 5; A 12, 50; WP 171–72, 452). Nietzsche suggests that this crude pragmatist conception of truth has biblical origins^[36] and easily accommodates the otherworldly agendas of metaphysics and theology. He writes:

We "knowers" [Erkennenden ] have gradually come to mistrust believers [Gläubige ] of all kinds; our mistrust has gradually brought us to make inferences the reverse of those of former days: wherever the strength of a faith [Glaubens ] is very prominently displayed, we infer a certain weakness of demonstrability [Beweisbarkeit ], even the improbability of what is believed [Geglaubten ]. We, too, do not deny that faith [Glaube ] "makes blessed": that is precisely why we deny that faith proves [beweist ] anything,—a strong faith that makes blessed raises suspicion against that which is believed; it does not establish "truth," it establishes a certain probability—of deception . (GM III:24; cf. HH 484; BGE 210; WP 456, 459)

In these and other passages, Nietzsche argues against the "deceptions" of the "believers" in favor of the "honesty" of the "intellectual con-

[36] In his note to GS 347, Walter Kaufmann writes: "the reference is to I Corinthians 2:4, where the King James Bible has 'in demonstration of the Spirit and of power' and Luther 'in Beweisung des Geistes und der Kraft .' In theological and homiletical quotations the old-fashioned Beweisung gave way to Beweis (proof—the word Nietzsche uses) during the nineteenth-century. Since Schleiermacher this passage became very popular, and the parallelism of Geist and Kraft was replaced by either Geist or, as in Nietzsche's case, Kraft ."

science." The latter refuses to accept the former, which seeks to exempt itself from rigorous scrutiny and refuses to enter the space of questions and reasons, demonstration and proofs. It is precisely this that Nietzsche finds "contemptible" and that leads him to reject all claims regarding transcendent entities.

Yet, having endorsed the "will to deception," how is Nietzsche to challenge this ignoble form of it? What differentiates this "bad" deception from the other "good" deception? If Nietzsche wants to accept the latter, must he not accept the former as well? Two related criteria distinguish these varieties of deception and justify Nietzsche's attitude toward them. Whereas moral-metaphysical deceptions are both unconditional and otherworldly, practical-vital deceptions are conditional and this-worldly. The former claim for themselves an absolute and ultimate status. As such, they plead exemption from scientific inquiry and affirm the existence of a prior science (a meta-physics) and a super-natural realm. Yet Nietzsche argues not only that the supposedly unconditional and otherworldly posits of metaphysics and morality are explicable in naturalistic terms but also that such explanation reveals these posits to be pernicious and contemptible. He diagnoses these deceptions as products of an irrational self-hatred: a hatred of "the world of nature, life, and history" (in all its sensuousness, physicality, conditionality, and contingency) on the part of a natural, living being—"fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life" (BT SC:5). Posits such as "God," the "Forms," and the "thing in itself," he insists, are simply ideal projections that betray a human desire to be other-than-human, a desire for self-negation or annihilation.^[37] Seen in this light, moral-metaphysical deceptions turn out to be not only superfluous, because they can be given an "internal" account, but also deplorable, because they deny the most palpable features of natural life in favor of indemonstrable claims and because they rest upon psychological motives that are, by all accounts, odious.

Practical-vital deceptions, on the other hand, are both conditional and worldly. Such deceptions always justify themselves with regard to particular aims and goals that, in the final analysis, serve to increase the ability of human beings to preserve or enhance themselves as individuals, as groups, or as a species. In relation to other ends, or for other

[37] Such arguments were, of course, a central feature of nineteenth-century German thought. Forms of this argument against religion had previously been asserted by Hegel and the Young Hegelians, particularly Feuerbach, Bauer, and Marx; and such a theory of projection was later elaborated by Freud and his followers.

individuals, groups, or species, such deceptions might certainly be inadequate or counterproductive. And while, in our hubris, we sometimes forget the relative, conditional, and pragmatic origins and aims of these useful fictions, recognition of their fictional status does nothing to destroy their value. This, then, is a primary difference between the two sorts of deceptions: recognition of the fictional nature of metaphysicalmoral deceptions destroys them, since absolute being and unconditional value is of their essence. The world in which we live, however, is contingent and conditional through and through. It countenances neither absolute entities nor absolute values. On the contrary, every entity in the natural world is enmeshed in a web of contingent relations and enjoys only a temporary existence. Such entities have limited, relative, and conditional horizons and posit for themselves limited, relative, and conditional goals. Such is "life"; and only those interpretations that affirm this conditionality, contingency, and relativity will affirm life. And it is precisely on this account that metaphysical-moral deceptions are found wanting, while practical-vital deceptions pass the test.

The "will to deception," then, is justified by Nietzsche only insofar as it places itself in the service of "life." This is also the case with the "will to truth." We have seen that Nietzsche rejects the "unconditional will to truth," which desires the eradication of every form of semblance and deception and thus ends up willing the eradication of "life"—because "life rest[s] upon semblance, [ . . . ] error, deception, simulation," etc. (GS 344). Any search for "the true world" betrays this otherworldly, antiworldly desire, for it is nothing other than a desire for the absolute, the unconditional, and the genuinely certain, which are not to be found within "the world of life, nature, and history" (see GS 344, 373; GM III:23–28).

It is precisely this "unconditional will to truth" that Nietzsche still finds in science and that, despite his praise of scientific method, is the crux of his frequent criticisms of science. He argues that science has not yet broken from theology and metaphysics insofar as it retains "a metaphysical faith " (GS 344), namely, faith in the unconditional value of truth. Nietzsche's prime target here is positivism, the scientific and philosophical project that aims to discover simple, presuppositionless "facts" and to ground all knowledge on these primitives.^[38] According

[38] Though Nietzsche's target is positivism in its nineteenth-century incarnation—the tradition of Comte, Mill, and Spencer—I think this critique applies equally well to its major twentieth-century manifestation, logical positivism. Nietzsche's response to nineteenth-century positivism, i.e., his development of a holistic empiricism (see chap. 2), hasmuch in common with the responses to logical positivism offered by Heidegger and Gadamer, Quine and Davidson.

to Nietzsche, this remains a metaphysical desire; for, no less than Platonism or Christianity, positivism is motivated by the demand for ultimate foundations and for a knowledge that excludes every form of semblance and deception.^[39]

This attempt to eliminate all perspective and interpretation in order to get at "the facts" is, once again, not only impossible but deplorable; for, in essence, it is nothing but a rejection of nature and life, for which all knowledge is perspectival or interpretive and thus involves the kinds of "extramoral" deceptions discussed above. In a passage from the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche makes just this point. With philosophical and scientific positivism clearly in mind, he writes:

[T]hat desire to halt before the factual, the factum brutum, [ . . . ] through which French scholarship [Wissenschaft ] nowadays tries to establish a sort of moral superiority over German scholarship; that general renunciation of all interpretation (of forcing, adjusting, abbreviating, omitting, padding, inventing, falsifying, and whatever else is of the essence of interpreting)—all this expresses, broadly speaking, as much ascetic virtue as any denial of sensuality (it is at bottom only a particular mode of this denial). That which constrains these men, however, this unconditional will to truth, is faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even if as an unconscious imperative—don't be deceived about that—it is the faith in a metaphysical value, the value of truth in itself, sanctioned and guaranteed by this ideal alone (it stands or falls with this ideal). There is, strictly speaking, no such "presuppositionless" science, the thought of such a thing is unthinkable, paralogical: a philosophy, a "faith," must always first be there to give science a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist. (Whoever has the opposite notion, whoever tries, for example, to place philosophy "on a strictly scientific basis," first needs to stand not only philosophy but also truth on its head [ . . . ]). (GM III: 24)

In short, we must reject not only a priori but also empirical attempts to provide perspectiveless, ultimate foundations for our knowledge. Science, facts, and truth are possible only within the framework of one or another interpretation, each of which construes the world according to a set of presuppositions that receive only relative, conditional justifica-

[39] On positivism as the demand for ultimate foundations, see GS 347; on positivism as the demand for knowledge without distortion and deception, see GM III:24, cited below. For other critiques of positivism, see BGE 204, 210; WP 1 and 481.

tion.^[40] There is no such thing as absolute or unconditional truth.^[41] Thus, as with "the will to deception," Nietzsche sanctions "the will to truth" only insofar as it acknowledges its conditionality and contingency—only, that is, insofar as it takes its place within the actual conditions of existence and inquiry of living beings.