1.6—
The Revaluation of Truth II:
Truth and the "Intellectual Conscience"

What, then, remains of "the will to truth," and what sort of "truth" does it "will"? The answer lies in Nietzsche's conception of "honesty" and "intellectual conscience." These terms, however, are easily misunderstood, and their Nietzschean significance eludes a casual reading. Before offering an account of how these terms ought to be understood, then, I first want to indicate how they ought not to be understood.

1.6.1—
Utility, Correspondence, and the "Intellectual Conscience"

In several of the passages in which Nietzsche speaks of "intellectual conscience," "intellectual integrity," and "honesty," he tells us that these philological virtues are characterized by "the demand for certainty " (GS 2.) and the demand that everything be surrendered in the service of truth (A 50). This has led prominent commentators such as Walter Kaufmann to argue that Nietzsche's consistent calls for "intellectual integrity" and the like manifest his rejection of the notion of truth as utility and his unwillingness to give up reason's desire for truth as correspondence, despite the recognition that this desire is destructive of life.^[42] On the other side, Arthur Danto has taken issue with Kaufmann's

[40] See WP 481: "Against positivism, which halts at phenomena—'There are only facts'—I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations."

[41] Through analyses of the "Preface" to Beyond Good and Evil, both Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, in "On Associating with Nietzsche," trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 4–5 (1992–93): 28ff., and Derrida, in Spurs, make this point. Derrida more explicitly argues that truth, for Nietzsche, must take its place within the world of semblance.

[42] Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 359–61. Admittedly, Kaufmann makes no explicit reference to "the correspondence theory of truth." Yet something like it is clearly what he has in mind. For, according to Kaufmann, Nietzsche conceives of truth as a heroic resistance to every illusion and all considerations of utility or pleasure so as to be able to state simply what is the case. This is corroborated by Mary Warnock ("Nietzsche's Conception ofTruth," 57–58 and passim ), who both expresses agreement with Kaufmann's interpretation of Nietzsche's view of truth and argues that the conception of truth ultimately presupposed by Nietzsche is a correspondence theory. Also see n. 47, below.

view. Without offering an alternative account of the notions of "honesty" and "intellectual conscience," Danto argues that Nietzsche's discussions of the life-negating results of "the will to truth" provide sufficient evidence that Nietzsche does indeed relinquish the desire for truth as correspondence and instead sanctions useful fictions insofar as they are life-promoting.^[43]

This debate has become a centerpiece in the literature on Nietzsche, and each side has attracted a number of advocates.^[44] Indeed, it has been suggested that, with regard to Nietzsche, "the distinction between correspondence truth and pragmatic truth. [ . . . ] deserves to be called The Official Distinction."^[45] Yet, again, I think the debate is improperly framed and that, contrary to both sides, Nietzsche identifies truth neither with utility nor with correspondence. A reconsideration of the passages concerning "honesty" and "intellectual conscience" bears this out.

Kaufmann is certainly right to point out that, in these and other passages, Nietzsche argues against the notion that truth is equivalent to utility of belief. Indeed, Nietzsche seems to argue that "intellectual integrity" consists precisely in a constant "doubt," "mistrust," and "skepticism" with regard to convictions, faiths, and beliefs, especially those one holds dearest (see BGE 34, 39; GM I: 1, III:24; A P, 12–13, 54). Yet Nietzsche does not reject pragmatic criteria altogether. He simply claims that utility of belief is insufficient for the determination of truth and that, unchecked by other criteria, the pragmatic criterion of truth quickly becomes dogmatic and deceptive (see GS 113; GM III: 24; A 50; WP 456). We have seen that, taken as the sole criterion of truth, the pragmatic conception can support even the wildest metaphysical beliefs. By establishing a domain that in principle excludes every other criterion, metaphysics and morality come to sanction beliefs solely because of the strength that accrues to them due to their benefit for the believer.

[43] Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher, 72, 99, 191ff.

[44] See n. 16 above. An interesting variant of this debate can be seen in the exchange between Jean Granier, Le problème de la vérité dans la philosophie de Nietzsche (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), 303–36, and Sarah Kofman, "Appendix: Genealogy, Interpretation, Text," in Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), discussed by David C. Hoy in "Philosophy as Rigorous Philology? Nietzsche and Poststructuralism," New York Literary Forum 8–9 (1981): 178–80, and Schrift in Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, 166–68.

[45] John T. Wilcox, "Nietzsche's Epistemology: Recent American Discussions," International Studies in Philosophy 15 (1983): 67–77, 72.

Thus, in several passages that take up this issue, Nietzsche inveighs against Christianity and Kantianism, both of which maintain that, ultimately, reason must yield to faith (see D P:3; GS 335; GM III:12; TI "World" 2–3; A 10, 12, 50, 54). It is this that the "intellectual conscience" finds contemptible:

All these great enthusiasts and prodigies behave like our little females: they consider "beautiful sentiments" adequate arguments, regard a heaving bosom as the bellows of the deity, and conviction a criterion of truth. In the end, Kant tried, with "German" innocence, to give this corruption, this lack of any intellectual conscience, scientific status with his notion of "practical reason": he invented a special kind of reason for cases in which one need not bother with reason—that is, when morality, when the sublime command "thou shalt," raises its voice. (A 12)

What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart, that one despises "beautiful sentiments," that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience. Faith makes blessed: consequently it lies. (A 50)

The strength and utility of a belief, then, cannot be the only criterion of its truth. "Making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments," Nietzsche writes. "Something might be true, while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree" (BGE 39). Those who accept the pragmatic criterion of truth, he concludes, show themselves to be "unaware of the most basic requirements of intellectual honesty" (A 12).^[46]

But this is not to argue for a notion of truth as "correspondence with the way the world really is." In fact, Nietzsche argues that the correspondence conception of truth bears a fundamental affinity with the pragmatic conception—that, like the latter, the former achieves its force by a "proof of strength." In §347 of The Gay Science, having ridiculed the pragmatic "proof of strength," Nietzsche goes on to argue that—no less than pragmatist "believers," who deem their dearest beliefs "true"—the "scientific-positivistic" "demand for certainty" is simply the strong belief "that something should be firm [ . . . ] the demand for a support, a prop [ . . . ] the need for a faith, a support, a backbone, something to fall back on," which is then deemed "actual," "real," and "true." That is, for Nietzsche, the conviction that there is some absolute foundation—that there are indisputable "facts," or

[46] Cf. WP 172: "That it does not matter whether a thing is true, but only what effect it produces—absolute lack of intellectual integrity . Everything is justified, lies, slander, the most shameless forgery."

some final "way that the world really is"—is nothing but a need that has been transformed into a belief or faith, which, because of its necessity and strength, comes to be considered truth itself:

Here, the sudden feeling of power that an idea arouses in its originator is everywhere counted proof of its value: —and since one knows no way of honoring an idea other than by calling it true, the first predicate with which it is honored is the predicate true . . . . How otherwise could it be so effective? [ . . . ] [I]f it were not real it could not be effective. [ . . . ] An idea that such a decadent is unable to resist, to which he completely succumbs, is thus "proved" to be true !!! (WP 171)

Of course, nowhere in these or any other passages does Nietzsche directly mention the correspondence theory of truth.^[47] Yet this realist con-

[47] In a number of articles, John Wilcox ("Note on Correspondence and Pragmatism in Nietzsche"; "Nietzsche's Epistemology," 72–74; "Nietzsche Scholarship and 'the Correspondence Theory of Truth'") takes issue with the notion of the "correspondence theory of truth" in general and in Nietzsche. Wilcox argues, first, that there does not seem to be any such thing as "the correspondence theory of truth." "Too many philosophers have used the word 'correspondence,'" he writes ("Nietzsche's Epistemology," 73 ), and each of them has "construed that relation in different ways—indeed, to some extent they had to, since the relata were so different" ("Nietzsche Scholarship and 'the Correspondence Theory of Truth,'" 340). Second, he argues that "there is not much in Nietzsche's writings that might plausibly be translated as 'correspond' or 'correspondence'" ("Nietzsche Scholarship and 'the Correspondence Theory of Truth,'" 339). With regard to the first issue, I grant that there is no single, canonical, and unequivocal formulation of "the correspondence theory of truth." Nevertheless, I think the phrase is still a useful label for realist theories that hold that a statement or belief is true if and only if it matches up with some antecedent, extralinguistic, extraconceptual reality or a piece thereof. While I believe that such a view is incoherent, one can still find philosophers who hold it; and so the phrase allows one to distinguish such philosophers from those who hold other theories of truth, e.g., those according to which the criterion of truth lies in the consistency or coherence of beliefs or statements with one another or in the utility of beliefs. (Of course, such theories can themselves be realist and thus, in the final analysis, "correspondence," theories if they argue that coherence or utility is ultimately only an index of a belief's correspondence with a pregiven world.) With regard to the second issue, I note that Nietzsche does, at times, refer disparagingly to a canonical form of the "correspondence" theory of truth, namely the Scholastic notion of truth as an "adequation" between things and thought: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus (see A. N. Prior, "Correspondence Theory of Truth," in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Paul Edwards [New York: Macmillan, 1967], 224). So, for instance, in "On Truth and Lies," Nietzsche asks: "Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of reality? [decken sich die Bezeichnungen und die Dinge? Ist die Sprache der adäquate Ausdruck aller Realitäten?]" (p. 81, cf. p. 82) and concludes that "what would be called the adequate expression of the object in the subject [ . . . ] is a contradictory absurdity [das würde heissen der adäquate Ausdruck eines Objekts im Subjekt [ . . . ] ein widerspruchsvolles Unding]" (p. 86). Similarly, in a note from 1887–88, he writes: "That a sort of adequate relationship subsists between subject and object [ . . . ] is a well-meant invention which, I think, has had its day [Daß zwischen Subjekt und Objekt eine Art adäquater Relation stattfinde [ . . . ] ist eine gutmüthige Erfindung, die, wie ich denke, ihre Zeit gehabt hat]" (WP 474). This notion is somewhat more obliquely criticized in The Gay Science (373), where Nietzsche ridicules the scientific realist's "faith in a world that is supposed to have its equiv-alent and measure [Äquivalent und Maass ] in human thought and human valuations—a 'world of truth' that can be mastered completely and forever with the aid of our square little reason." See also WP 4, 625. Of course, Nietzsche never explicitly speaks of "the correspondence theory of truth" or, for that matter, of "the pragmatic theory," "the coherence theory," or any other theory of truth. But that does not mean that such theories cannot be attributed to him. Nietzsche characterizes truth in many different ways and on many different levels; and the attempt to sort out those ways and levels in terms of presentday terminology is, I think, of real value.

ception of truth is clearly one of his targets. For he is arguing against the very notion that truth could be found, that the "true world" is there somewhere awaiting adequate representation by thought or language. It is this belief that motivates both the metaphysician and the positivistic scientist. But this belief betrays an "instinct of weakness, " a "disease of the will "(GS 347), because, for Nietzsche, truth is not something given that might be found but something that must be perpetually constructed and reconstructed .^[48]

Will to truth is a making -firm, a making -true and -durable [ . . . ]. Truth is therefore not something there, that might be found or discovered—but something that is to be created and that gives a name to a process, or rather to a will to overcome that has no end—introducing truth, as a processus in infinitum, an active determining—not a becoming-conscious of something that is "in itself" firm and determined. (WP 552)

Those who hold that truth is "already there" waiting to be discovered simply prove to be not up for this creative task. Instead of undertaking the difficult and endless job of constructing interpretations and campaigning for their truth, such realists put their faith in an established construction, which they take to be given in the nature of things:

Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. [ . . . ] Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." (GS 347)

The affect of laziness now takes the side of "truth" [ . . . ] it is more comfortable to obey than to examine  . . . it is more flattering to think "I possess the truth" than to see darkness all around one—above all: it is reassuring, it gives confidence, it alleviates life—it improves the character, to the extent that it lessens mistrust . "Peace of soul," "a quiet conscience": all inventions made possible by the presupposition that truth has been found [or: that

[48] See GS 58 and the discussion of it above. See also BGE 210. This notion is discussed further below.

truth is there (daß die Wahrheit da ist )].—[ . . . ] This is the proof of strength. (WP 452; cf. WP 279)

The scientific realist, then, is just as much a "believer" as the pragmatist: both elevate their most strongly held beliefs and desires to the status of "truth." Indeed, lacking the self-consciousness of a more enlightened pragmatism, scientific realism shows itself to be the mirror image of metaphysics and theology. It, too, is inspired by a need for foundations, for what is ultimately real; and it, too, claims to have found this true world. In a section entitled "'Science' as Prejudice," Nietzsche writes:

It is no different with the faith with which so many materialistic investigators of nature rest content nowadays, the faith in a world that is supposed to have its equivalent and its measure in human thought and human valuations—a "world of truth" that can be mastered completely and forever with the aid of our square little reason. [ . . . ] That the only justifiable interpretation of the world should be one in which you are justified because one can continue to work and do research scientifically in your sense [ . . . ]—an interpretation that permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, and touching, and nothing more—that is a crudity and a naiveté, assuming that it is not a mental illness, an idiocy. (GS 373)

Here, we see that what is objectionable about scientific realism, for Nietzsche, is precisely what is objectionable about unchecked pragmatism, metaphysics, and theology: namely, its dogmatism .^[49] And what is objectionable about dogmatism, Nietzsche argues, is that it "castrates the intellect" (GM III:12).

The claim that truth is found [or: that truth is there (daß die Wahrheit da sei)] and that ignorance and error are at an end is one of the most potent seductions there is. Supposing it is believed, then the will to examination, investigation, caution, experiment [der Wille zur Prüfung, Forschung, Vorsicht, Versuchung] is paralyzed: it can even count as sinful, namely as doubt concerning truth. . . . "Truth" is therefore more fateful than error and ignorance, because it cuts off the forces that work toward enlightenment and knowledge [Aufklärung und Erkenntnis ]. (WP 452)^[50]

[49] On the dogmatism of metaphysics and morality, see, e.g., A 9, 54.

[50] Cf. WP 457: "The words 'conviction, ' 'faith, ' the pride of martyrdom—these are the least favorable states for the advancement of knowledge." On the "sinfulness," "wickedness," and "evil" of doubt, see also GS 4; BGE 212, 229–30; A 52; WP 459. Cf. also HH 630: "Conviction is the belief that on some particular point of knowledge one is in possession of the absolute [unbedingten ] truth. This belief presupposes that absolute truths exist; likewise that perfect methods of attaining to them have been discovered; finally, that everyone who possesses convictions avails himself of these perfect methods. Allthree assertions demonstrate at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thought"; and HH 483: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Dogmatism cuts off all further inquiry and questioning—and this the "intellectual conscience" cannot tolerate:

[T]o stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and interpretive multiplicity of existence [der ganzen wundervollen Ungewissheit und Vieldeutigkeit des Daseins]^[51]and not question, not tremble with the craving and the rapture of such questioning [ . . . ]—that is what I feel to be contemptible . (GS 2)

Here Nietzsche hints at the most important reason why dogmatism is intolerable and why further inquiry must always be promoted: that "the interpretive multiplicity of existence" cannot be successfully captured within a single interpretive framework. Dogmatism is reductionist; and this reductionism, according to Nietzsche, is ascetic and antinatural, because it denies the multiplicity, struggle, and change that are constantly manifested in the world of our experience (see WP 470, 600, 655, 881, 933). ("Everything simple [einfach ] is merely imaginary, is not 'true,'" Nietzsche writes. "But whatever is real, whatever is true, is neither one [Eins ] nor even reducible to one [Eins ]" [WP 536]).^[52] One ceases to be a genuine inquirer when one becomes a "fanatic," whose inquiry is limited by "a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view" (GS 347).^[53] Again referring to the dogmatism of the natural scientists, Nietzsche writes:

What? Do we really want to permit existence to be degraded for us like this—reduced to a mere exercise for a calculator and an indoor diversion for mathematicians? Above all, one should not wish to divest existence of its

[51] Here Nietzsche uses the term Vieldeutigkeit and, in GS 373, the term vieldeutigen, both of which Kaufmann renders as "rich ambiguity" and which I render, respectively, as "interpretive multiplicity" and "multiply interpretable." Whereas, in both English and German, "ambiguity" often means "unclear" or "having a double meaning" (zweideutig, doppeldeutig ), my translations serve to emphasize that Nietzsche speaks not of two (zwei -, doppel -) but of many (viel -), that, unlike "ambiguity," this sort of multiplicity does not seem to call for a resolution or clarification, and that this "multiplicity" has to do with interpretation: deuten . The point, then, is that existence, for Nietzsche, is not unclear or equivocal but rather capable of supporting many different interpretations.

[52] This text appears in the Nachlaß within a series of aphorisms titled "Maxims of a Hyperborean." It is immediately preceded by an aphorism that also appears in the "Maxims and Arrows" section that begins Twilight of the Idols: "'All truth is simple [einfach ].'—Is that not doubly [zwiefach ] a lie?" (TI "Maxims" 4; cf. KSA 13: 15 [118]).

[53] For more on this dogmatic reduction to a single perspective, see BGE P; A 9, 54. See also the discussion of "inverse cripples" in Z: 2 "On Redemption."

multiply interpretable character [seines vieldeutigen Charakters ]: that is a dictate of good taste, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon. (GS 373)

He then continues, offering a simple case in point: "Assuming that one estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas: how absurd would such a 'scientific' estimation of music be! What would one have comprehended, understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really nothing of what is 'music' in it!" (GS 373).

That the "exact sciences" are plainly irrelevant for an understanding of the aesthetic, historical, cultural, and social aspects of music, Nietzsche suggests, should make it clear that the world of our experience cannot be suitably explained through a single interpretive framework. Indeed, a consideration of such examples, Nietzsche feels, should even tempt us in the opposite direction: toward a recognition of the endless variety of interpretive possibilities: "I should think that today we are at least far from the ridiculous immodesty that would be involved in decreeing from our corner that perspectives are permitted only from this corner. Rather has the world become 'infinite' for us all over again, inasmuch as we cannot reject the possibility that it may include infinite interpretations" (GS 374).^[54]

Nietzsche thus pledges "to take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty" (GS 347), to have done with "a will to truth [ . . . ] that ultimately prefer[s] even a handful of 'certainty' to a whole carload of beautiful possibilities" (BGE 10). Leaving the land behind, he sets out

[54] Nehamas, "Immanent and Transcendent Perspectivism," 475ff., and David Hoy, "Nietzsche, Hume, and the Genealogical Method," in Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 24ff., have raised legitimate concerns about the claims of this section of The Gay Science . Nehamas focuses on the ways in which this section seems to sanction a sort of "species solipsism," insofar as "our corner" is meant to refer to "the human intellect" and the possibility of "infinite interpretations" to the possibility of "other kinds of intellects and perspectives" to which "the world" would appear fundamentally different. Hoy focuses on the ways in which this section seems to commit Nietzsche to a problematic metaphysical ontology about which Nietzsche claims knowledge while at the same time arguing that it is unavailable to us. These readings are persuasive and point to real problems in Nietzsche's language, if not his conception. However, as both Nehamas and Hoy go on to argue, Nietzsche elsewhere sanctions a different view of perspectivism, according to which there exist multiple, equally legitimate interpretive frameworks, to each of which we have access in principle and none of which is reducible to another. While acknowledging the aforementioned problems with the language of this section, I cite a portion of it above in support of this latter version of perspectivism.

onto the dangerous, open seas of interpretation in search of a new kind of knowledge (see GS 124, 283, 289, 343; BGE 23).

1.6.2—
Dogmatism, Pluralism, Certainty, and "Intellectual Conscience"

The "intellectual conscience" thus consists neither in the will to truth as utility nor in the will to truth as correspondence. How, then, are we to characterize this elusive kernel of Nietzschean inquiry? We have already gone some way toward answering this question. We have discovered, for instance, that the "intellectual conscience" is relentlessly antidogmatic, antireductionist, antifoundationalist, and ever in search of new interpretations. Given such a characterization, however, the "intellectual conscience" appears to endorse a relativism that bears little resemblance to what we would usually consider "intellectual integrity" or concern for "truth." Yet Nietzsche aims to show that the actual conditions of our existence and the actual process of our inquiry necessitate such a view and that such inquiry results in "truths" that, though never absolute or ultimate, deliver all that we actually need from truth and, in any case, all we can ever have of it.

In the famous preface to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche likens truth to a woman who will not allow herself to be won by any dogmatic suitor. This assessment of the dogmatist is reiterated in The Antichrist, where Nietzsche writes: "Not to see many things, to be impartial at no point, to be party through and through, to have a strict and necessary perspective in all questions of value—this alone makes it possible for this kind of being to exist at all. But with this they are the opposite, the antagonists, of truthfulness—of truth" (A 54).^[55]

Thus, it is precisely a concern for "truth" that inspires the vigilant antidogmatism and antireductionism of the "intellectual conscience." An examination of these negative traits will perhaps give us a clearer sense of both the "intellectual conscience" and its "truth."

Indeed, Nietzsche primarily characterizes the "intellectual conscience" in such oppositional terms. Wherever the notion appears, we

[55] Cf. BGE 43: "Are these coming philosophers new friends of truth? That is probable enough, for all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they will certainly not be dogmatists." See also BT SC: 1, SC: 5, for an argument to the effect that the dogmatism of science and morality is contrary to "truth" and "life."

are told that it involves "mistrust," "skepticism," "suspicion," "severity," "hardness," "evil," "scrutiny," "caution," and "questioning" with regard to all "faiths," "convictions," and "presuppositions" (see HH 631, 633, 635; GS 2, 4, 113, 293, 319, 344, 346, 357; Z: 3 "On Old and New Tablets"; BGE 25, 34, 39, 209–10, 212, 230; GM III:24; A 12–13, 47, 50, 54; WP 452). Yet we should be clear that this is not a call for "presuppositionless" inquiry; because, as we have seen, Nietzsche denies that any such thing is possible. "There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as science 'without presuppositions,'" he writes; "the thought of such a thing is unthinkable"; because "a philosophy, a 'faith,' must always first be there to give science a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist" (GM III: 24; cf. GS 344). Elsewhere he writes that "'contemplation without interest'" is "a nonsensical absurdity," because it demands "that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking" (GM III: 12). He then concludes, "There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more affects we allow to speak about a thing [eine Sache ], the more eyes, different eyes we can use to observe a thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity,' be" (GM III: 12).

Here we witness an interesting transformation. Instead of the skeptical relativism that might seem to result from such a perspectival thesis, Nietzsche tells us that "knowledge" and "objectivity" are still possible, provided that we understand them differently. Rather than conceiving of "knowledge" and "objectivity" as "contemplation without interest," Nietzsche proposes that we understand them as "the ability to have one's For and Against under control and to engage and disengage them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge" (GM III:12).

With this, we begin to see the cognitive value of Nietzsche's interpretive pluralism.^[56] It is the role of the "intellectual conscience" relentlessly to question the "faiths," "convictions," and "presuppositions" of any particular evaluative or interpretive framework. Such questioning of presuppositions surely presupposes something against which to measure individual interpretations. Having rejected the notion of a presup-

[56] See also Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, 181–94, for a valuable discussion of Nietzsche's "interpretive pluralism."

positionless standpoint, Nietzsche maintains that interpretations can only be measured against other interpretations and perspectives.^[57] A proliferation of such interpretations, he suggests, will not only provide us with many different ways to construe the world but will also give us multiple criteria against which to measure any given interpretation. In Nietzsche's usage, then, "honesty," "intellectual conscience," and "intellectual integrity" are not only compatible with the necessarily perspectival character of all knowledge; they even require such a condition.^[58] For they involve relationships among perspectives, namely the constant weighing and measuring of interpretations against one another—of existing interpretations against other existing interpretations, of new interpretations against old interpretations, and old interpretations against new interpretations. Refusing unquestioningly to endorse the dominant interpretations, no matter how "useful" or "necessary" they appear to be, the "intellectual conscience" constantly affirms the "evil" instincts that question existing frameworks and experiment with new or forgotten ones:

The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: again and again they have rekindled the passions that were going to sleep—all ordered society puts the passions to sleep—and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled man to pit opinion against opinion, model against model . (GS 4, my emphasis; cf. GS 34)

This weighing and measuring of interpretations against one another serves a number of critical and heuristic purposes. First, it demonstrates the partiality of any one interpretation or perspective. It thus prevents

[57] A similar sort of epistemological relativism has more recently been articulated by W. V. Quine ("Ontological Relativity," in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], 50), who writes, "The relativistic thesis to which we have come is this, to repeat: it makes no sense to say what the objects of a theory are, beyond saying how to interpret or reinterpret that theory in another."This position has also been developed by Nelson Goodman, e.g., "The Way the World Is," in Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), and Ways of Worldmaking; Hilary Putnam, e.g., "Realism and Reason," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 50 (1977): 483–98, and Reason, Truth, and History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. 3; and Rorty, e.g., "Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-Dualist Account of Interpretation," in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), differences between these philosophers notwithstanding.

[58] Thus, the "antinomy" Jean Granier sees in Nietzsche's commitment to both perspectivism and philological probity turns out to be no antinomy at all. See Granier, "Perspectivism and Interpretation," 197–99.

any interpretation from taking itself to be uniquely correct and opens it up to critique and scrutiny from without. Second, this procedure calls attention to the rules of formation of interpretations and the different sets of these that govern different interpretations, thus highlighting the decisions in favor of one or more of the many criteria that compete for satisfaction in the composition of any interpretation. Thus, entrenchment is weighed against innovation; habit against novelty; simplicity, coherence, utility, and explanatory power against comprehensiveness and precise description, and so on. Third—and highly important for Nietzsche—a consideration of the dominant interpretations of an individual or group produces a whole symptomatology and genealogy of the dispositions and values that motivate these choices, revealing the affirmative or negative, healthy or sickly, active or reactive, noble or base states of being that underlie decisions in favor of a particular interpretation or set of interpretations.^[59] Last, such recognition of the plurality of interpretations and their irreducibility to a single base reveals what Nietzsche calls "the whole marvelous uncertainty and interpretive multiplicity of existence" (GS 2) and thus affirms the world of becoming, change, and semblance (see GS 373; WP 600).

This construal of the "intellectual conscience" as a reciprocal calibration of interpretations also allows us to account for Nietzsche's apparently contradictory remarks concerning "the demand for certainty." In Gay Science §2, Nietzsche writes that one who has intellectual integrity will "account the desire for certainty [Verlangen nach Gewissheit] as his inmost craving and deepest distress—as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower." Yet in §347 of the same text, he argues that "that impetuous desire for certainty [Verlangen nach Gewissheit] that today discharges itself in scientific-positivistic form" betrays an "instinct of weakness " and "disease of the will ." There are

[59] It should be noted that this procedure is not, for Nietzsche, a simple calculus but a complex symptomatology. Thus, for instance, while Plato is criticized for his hatred of becoming and semblance, he is praised for his "sharpened senses" and his "noble resistance to obvious sense evidence"; while Christianity is criticized for its repression of the active impulses, it is praised for its development of subtlety, depth, and cunning; while science is criticized for its residual metaphysics, it is praised for its development of skepticism, mistrust, and critical acumen; and while art and artists generally receive the highest praise from Nietzsche, he also argues that—in the case of Wagner, for instance—the artistic enterprise can be motivated by and can harbor the most objectionable metaphysical-moral dispositions and values. On this symptomatology, see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), chap. 2; Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, 127ff.; and Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, 171ff.

clearly two different conceptions of "certainty" at work here. The latter type, as we have seen, consists in the desire for an indubitable ground, for a final determination of "the way the world is." Such a desire is reprehensible to Nietzsche in that it wishes to deny the necessarily perspectival character of all knowledge and the "interpretive multiplicity of existence" in favor of some otherworldly standpoint and some simple, unchanging world. The "desire for certainty" affirmed in §2, however, is something else entirely. There Nietzsche makes clear that he has in mind simply the requirement that, in coming to rest on a particular interpretation, one has taken alternatives into account and has made explicit to oneself the reasons for, and the consequences of, one's decision. In this sense, the will to "certainty" is directed against those who tolerate "slack feelings in [their] faith and judgments," those who do not "consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the most certain reasons for and against" (GS 2; cf. BGE 5). Against the blind acceptance of one's judgments and values, it asks that one scrutinize them to determine precisely why one holds on to them (see GS 33 5; HH 630).^[60] And such scrutiny, as we have seen, can only come from serious consideration of counterinterpretations. Rather than sanctioning the desire for truth as correspondence, then, the "desire for certainty" that Nietzsche considers so central to the "intellectual conscience" achieves its force only within an interpretive pluralism that refuses to grant the ultimacy of any particular world-picture. It is not a demand that the world be rendered "the way it really is" but rather a demand for "honesty" regarding the presuppositions, inclusions, exclusions, aims, and goals that motivate any given perspective.^[61]

[60] In his note to GS 347, Walter Kaufmann makes a similar point.

[61] Both Hoy, "Philosophy as Rigorous Philology?" 180, and Schrift, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, 222, have rightly noted that Nietzsche's interpretive pluralism bears a certain resemblance to the "principle of proliferation" and "pluralistic methodology" more recently advocated by Paul Feyerabend in Against Method (London: Verso, 1978). Yet both Hoy and Schrift go on to criticize Feyerabend's slogan, "anything goes," as endorsing a problematic relativism. But I think Feyerabend is close to Nietzsche here, too. First, the relativism or pluralism advocated by both Nietzsche and Feyerabend is primarily methodological rather than substantive . (Feyerabend explicitly advocates the adoption of "a pluralistic methodology " [Against Method, 30].) That is, it does not claim that every individual interpretation is as good as any other but rather that no interpretation is final and that every interpretation must be rigorously tested from the point of view of other interpretations (p. 30). While both Nietzsche and Feyerabend grant that there will always be more than one valid interpretation (i.e., in different domains, given different interests and goals, etc.), neither argues that every interpretation is valid. (Both, for instance, reject theological interpretations; and, while Feyerabend rejects antidemo-cratic interpretations, Nietzsche rejects democratic ones). Second, neither Nietzsche nor Feyerabend advocates relativism or antidogmatism for its own sake. Rather, for both, relativism and pluralism is endorsed because of its heuristic and critical value. (Feyerabend, for instance, puts interpretive pluralism in the service of "progress" [23 and passim] and "objective knowledge" [46]). I have argued above (and continue to argue below) that Nietzsche advocates a perspectival pluralism "in the service of knowledge" and "objectivity" (GM III:12, my emphasis). Such too is the aim of Feyerabend's pluralism. "Knowledge so conceived," he writes, "is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to the truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation [my emphasis] and all of them contributing via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness [my emphasis] [ . . . ] Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge " (Against Method, 30, 46).

1.6.3—
"Intellectual Conscience," Truth, and Method

We now have a better sense of what the "intellectual conscience" is, for Nietzsche. One important issue, however, remains outstanding. We know that the "intellectual conscience" is concerned with truth; but we still do not know precisely what truth is, for Nietzsche. To answer this question, I want to return to a remark made above. At the outset of this discussion, I noted that every major theory of truth has been attributed to Nietzsche by one commentator or another, while some commentators have argued that Nietzsche neither provides nor is interested in providing any theory of truth at all. I went on to suggest that each of these views is, in some respect, correct. We are now in a position to see why this is so.

We have seen that Nietzsche rejects the notion that truth is simply utility of belief. Yet, clearly, he does not reject pragmatic criteria entirely. There is no such thing as "contemplation without interest," he claims; and "to eliminate the will altogether" would be "to castrate the intellect" (GM III:12). That is to say, truth is relative to our interests and goals—not, perhaps, to any particular interest, but certainly to the interests of inquiry in general. Truth is the answer to our questions; it is what fulfills our epistemological projects and satisfies our will to know. The truth matters to us; it makes a difference . At least in part, it is what allows us to predict or manage the world in which we find ourselves. That said, it is still not the case that every expedient belief must be counted as true. There remain truths that are useless, trivial, inexpedient, or even dangerous and beliefs that might be useful but are nevertheless false.

Nietzsche's attitude toward the criterion of coherence is similarly

equivocal. While the coherence theory of truth does not figure explicitly in his texts, the criterion of coherence is nevertheless at work in Nietzsche's discussions of epistemological issues. He notoriously rejects the notions of "facts in themselves" and "things in themselves," arguing that there are "facts" and "things" only within the context of an interpretation or from the point of view of a particular perspective (see GM II:12, III:12, III:24; WP 481, 553–69). That is to say, what is known is so only insofar as it is part of a system or epistemological framework; and what is true is so only insofar as it "coheres" with the other terms of that system or framework. Furthermore, Nietzsche often remarks that new discoveries necessarily take place against the background of our previous knowledge and that they are accorded a place within our system of beliefs only once they have accommodated themselves to that system or once that system has modified itself to accommodate them (see GS 57, 114, 355; BGE 230; TI "Errors" 5; WP 499–501). Nonetheless, Nietzsche argues that some interpretations (e.g., moral and metaphysical ones) are false regardless of their coherence or systematicity while other highly systematic interpretations (e.g., those of logic and mathematics) are too skeletal and abstract to be considered unequivocally true. Moreover, he argues that the previous knowledge that grounds our current system of beliefs is no final guarantor of truth, because systems of belief often include central tenets that are later shown to be false or founded on narrow prejudice.

Even with regard to the correspondence theory of truth Nietzsche's attitude is not unequivocal. He frequently rejects the notion that truth consists in the correspondence between thought or language and a pregiven world. There are no "bare facts" or "pre-given things," he argues; there are "facts" only within the context of some interpretation. Nevertheless, one might justly say that, within a given interpretation, or relative to a particular description, one speaks truly when one speaks of the things and facts countenanced by that interpretation or description and falsely when one speaks otherwise.^[62] Thus, from the viewpoint of everyday, practical discourse, we have no trouble judging the truth or falsity of statements like "it is raining" by observing whether or not it is, "in

[62] Thus Nietzsche writes, in "On Truth and Lies," (p. 81) that, within the context of a system of valid designations, "the liar" is one "who misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names." Schacht, Nietzsche . 60–71, discusses in further detail how Nietzsche seems to sanction this sort of internal, or "discourse-relative," correspondence conception of truth.

fact," raining.^[63] Nevertheless, on a broader and more theoretical level, Nietzsche follows many contemporary philosophers in rejecting the correspondence theory of truth.

Nietzsche's ambivalent relationship to each of these major theories of truth is just the reason why I think some commentators have been right to argue that "Nietzsche is not ultimately interested in (theories of) truth."^[64] In the end, neither utility, coherence, correspondence, nor any other single criterion serves, for Nietzsche, as the determinant of truth. Rather, the truth of a statement or belief is the more or less stable result of its having been relativized to a particular theory or interpretation that itself has been found viable according to at least some of the most rigorous criteria of justification available.^[65] There are many such criteria, and no interpretation will fulfill all of them. Different criteria will be considered appropriate to different domains of knowledge and inquiry; and competing interpretations within a particular domain will take different criteria as dominant. But neither these domains and interpretations nor these rules of inclusion and exclusion are fixed and final. Like everything else, for Nietzsche, interpretations and their "truths" become,^[66] and this becoming is a matter of struggle and power—not, as some have argued, a matter of what the strongest decree, or of what gives a particular individual the greatest feeling of power,^[67] but of what

[63] This conception of correspondence seems similar to that delineated within the semantic theory of truth and perhaps accounts for some commentators' attribution of that theory to Nietzsche. See n. 17, above.

[64] Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," 48. Cf. Nehamas: "Nietzsche . . . is not interested in providing a theory of truth" (Nietzsche: Life as Literature, 55).

[65] Here, Nietzsche is in agreement with Richard Rorty ("Solidarity or Objectivity?" in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 23), who writes that "there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society—ours —uses in one or another area of inquiry." Note that, while Rorty is perhaps the most prominent heir to the pragmatist tradition, he does not accept the pragmatic theory of truth. Rather, following Donald Davidson, he endorses a conception of truth that makes use of various aspects of the pragmatic, coherence, and correspondence theories, but that, ultimately, endorses none of these, preferring to consider truth the result of successful inquiry and interpretation rather than something that might be measured according to a single criterion. For a discussion of Rorty and Davidson on truth, see Donald Davidson, "Afterthoughts, 1987," in Reading Rorty, ed. Alan R. Malachowski (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). Cf. also Samuel C. Wheeler, "True Figures: Metaphor, Social Relations, and the Sorites," in The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture, ed. David R. Hiley et al. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

[66] See HH 2: "But everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths. Consequently what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty."

[67] See Grimm, Nietzsche's Theory of Knowledge, 17ff.

rules of formation and criteria of justification prevail or hold sway in a particular discourse at a specific cultural and historical moment.^[68]

Nietzsche is not interested in providing a theory of truth, then, because truth is not something that admits of final determination by a fixed set of criteria. Truth is the fleeting calm between battles within a war that has no preordained or final victor. What does interest Nietzsche, however, is ensuring that the struggle continue and that inquiry not come to an end with the enforced peace of dogmatism. Toward that end, he seeks to proliferate and sharpen the weapons to be used in this battle. Those weapons, Nietzsche tells us, are "methods."^[69] He writes:

Truth, that is to say, the scientific method, was grasped and promoted by those who divined in it a weapon of war—an instrument of destruction . (WP 457)^[70]

[W ]e ourselves, we free spirits, are nothing less than a "revaluation of all values," an incarnate declaration of war and triumph over all the old conceptions of "true" and "untrue." The most valuable insights are developed last; but the most valuable insights are the methods. All the methods, all the presuppositions of our current scientificity, were opposed for thousands of years with the most profound contempt. [ . . . ] We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us—their conception of what truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be: every "thou shalt" has hitherto been aimed against us. Our objectives, our practice, our quiet, cautious, mistrustful manner—all these were considered utterly unworthy and contemptible. (A 13; cf. WP 469)

All the presuppositions for a scholarly culture, all the scientific methods, were already there [in the ancient world]; the great, the incomparable art of reading well had already been established—that presupposition for the tradition of culture, for the unity of science. [ . . . ] Everything essential had been found, so that the work could be begun: the methods, one must say it ten times, are what is essential, also what is most difficult, also what is for the

[68] In BGE 211, Nietzsche speaks of "former positings of value, creations of value which have become dominant and are for a time called 'truths'." See also WP 552, cited above, and BGE 210.

[69] For more on this, see Jaspers, Nietzsche, 172ff.

[70] Cf. WP 455: "The methods of truth were not invented from motives of truth, but from motives of power, of wanting to be superior." It should be said that Nietzsche goes on to say, "But that is a prejudice: a sign that truth is not involved at all." He thus seems to endorse a pure will to truth against the notion of truth as motivated by considerations of power. Yet this contradicts so many of his texts on truth (from TL to GS 344 and GM III:23–28), which generally argue that the notion of "disinterested truth" is absurd and impossible. I suggest that what Nietzsche condemns is not the notion that the will to truth is a will to power but that the obsession with power can make one a "fanatic" and thus can "prolong [ . . . ] the dominion of antiscientific methods." See HH 629–38 for Nietzsche's affirmation of the "struggle" and "conflict" that drive the will to truth.

longest time opposed by habits and laziness. What we today have again conquered with immeasurable self-mastery [ . . . ]—the free eye before reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest matters, the whole integrity in knowledge—that had already been there once before! (A 59)

In these passages, Nietzsche lauds "scientific methods" and argues that they constitute a "declaration of war and triumph" against the faiths and convictions of metaphysics, theology, and morality (see also HH 629–38). This triumph, however, does not lie in securing some truth that was covered over by the adversaries of scientific method; rather, it lies in the latter's "integrity in knowledge," its attempt to satisfy all our cognitive demands. What is "essential" is not the result of scientific inquiry but its methods, which are praised for their "quiet, cautious, mistrustful manner," for their scrutiny of faiths and convictions in the service of knowledge. Indeed, in Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche writes: "[T]he pathos that one has the truth now counts for very little in comparison with that other, gentler and less noisy pathos of seeking truth that never wearies of learning and examining anew . . . for the scientific spirit rests upon an insight into method, and if every method were lost all the results of science together would not suffice to prevent a restoration of superstition and nonsense" (633, 635, my emphasis).

But this praise of "method," then, is nothing but a reiteration of Nietzsche's praise of the "intellectual conscience." Here as well as there, Nietzsche advocates the creation of a multiplicity of tests to determine the value of values and systems of belief.^[71] Against the "habits and laziness" manifested in the dogmatic notion that truth is simply to be found, Nietzsche argues that "the spirit of all severe, of all profoundly inclined, spirits teaches the reverse . At every step one has to wrestle for truth" (A 50, latter emphasis mine). Recalling his discussion of the Greek agon, which never allows or admits a final victor (HC ), Nietzsche encourages a notion of inquiry as perpetual struggle, in which truth exists only while the victor is uncontested.^[72] Thus, in a section from Daybreak entitled

[71] See HH 637: "Opinions grow out of passions; inertia of the spirit lets them stiffen into convictions .—He, however, whose spirit is free and restlessly alive can prevent this stiffening through continual change. [ . . . W]e advance from opinion to opinion, through one party after another, as noble traitors to all things that can in any way be betrayed—and yet we feel no sense of guilt." Cf. GS 295.

[72] Or, as another writer has recently put it: "truth is the momentary balance of power in a many-sided war among various guerrilla bands" (Wheeler, "True Figures," 217). This Nietzschean conception of truth and inquiry as a perpetual "agonistics" has been advocated by Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," trans. Colin Gordon, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 144 and passim; and Jean-François Lyotard, ThePostmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 10 and passim . Without reference to martial metaphors, Jean-Luc Nancy offers another characterization of the point I want to make here. He writes ("'Our Probity!'" 72) that Nietzsche "turns this Redlichkeit into a strange probity that would in some way precede the truth of which it ought to be the guarantor or the witness, and which would precede or defer indefinitely the reference of its truthfulness."

"To What Extent the Thinker Loves His Enemy," Nietzsche writes: "Never keep back or bury in silence that which can be thought against your thoughts! Give it praise! It is among the foremost requirements of honesty of thought. Every day you must conduct your campaign also against yourself. A victory and a conquered fortress are no longer your concern, your concern is truth—but your defeat is no longer your concern, either!" (370).^[73]

Finally, with this, we have perhaps also unraveled the aphorism that heads Nietzsche's examination of truth and the ascetic ideal in the Genealogy of Morals: "Unconcerned, mocking, violent—thus wisdom wants us: she is a woman and always loves only a warrior." Having spurned the dogmatist, truth and wisdom find their proper suitors in the warrior, who despises peace and settles for no final victory (see also Z:1 "On War and Warriors").