On Truth And Lie In An Extra-Moral Sense Analysis

In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche questions the purpose and existence of the human race. He points out that humans strive to be educated and are taught that knowledge is power. They believe that they are the superior life form on earth due the plethora of information they discover and believe is true. When stepping back and viewing these thoughts, as Nietzsche does, readers are forced to realize that these ways of thinking about humans versus other life forms, is nonsense and pointless.
Humans feel as if they are the all-knowing species on earth, even when the “truths” of the world change. Nietzsche claims that anything can be considered a truth if people believe it for long enough. A truth, however, ultimately means nothing and can be proven wrong even when everyone was taught that it was right. There is a “pure urge for truth” even when man is “deeply immersed in illusions and dream images” (Nietzsche, 43). These illusions drive thought, but “their feeling nowhere leads into truth” (Nietzsche, 43). Nietzsche argues that we will never have real truth, but rather, many hypotheses about how the world works. Humans will continuously develop new ways of interpreting worldly objects and past ideas to attempt to better understand what is going on around them, even when their thoughts lead to nothing but more
He strongly states that “A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull” (Sagan, 4). If humans could not discover new information and challenge theories, laws, and their own thoughts, what would they spend their days doing? Sagan reminds readers that it is okay to have questions about the universe. He supports discovery, but also the undiscovered that may never be known to