On Truth And Lying In A Nonmoral Sense Summary
Frankie Younger
PHIL 121Q
Clark
1.31.17
On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense
In this essay I intend to tease apart a passage from Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense” pertaining to concept formation. I will break down his argument into its core constituents and entertain several readings of his claims, establishing one of them as closest to Nietzsche’s original intentions. Then, I will analyze how this argument fits into the rest of the essay, and of which specific interpretation that this upholds out of the several different main arguments he makes. Finally, I will find whether or not this is a valid argument, and address possible counter arguments.
“Let us consider in particular how concepts are formed; each word …show more content…
He argues that language, as a virtue, should distinguish the individual leaves, instead of equivocating these different cases into one generalization that we can never come across in reality. He then continues to say that we extend this process to abstract concepts as well, such as honesty. If we cannot find the essence of “leaf” in our world, then how should we expect to find “honesty”? It seems he finds this process tautological. Nietzsche then gives his definition of honesty: we take each other’s experiences and perceptions of the world, find some sort of commonality between them, eliminate differences, and then we end up with the “truth”.
Even though other parts of “On Truth and Lying” have different arguments, this passage seems to support an argument that there no truths, and does not even mention things in themselves, their supposed existence being a premise in every other part of this essay. To me, this almost flirts with the idea that perhaps there are no things in themselves, but this viewpoint doesn’t seem to occur in any other portion of the work. Instead, we have misused language by settling for general concepts that we have created through cancelling out the uniqueness of things, and deeming them
PHIL 121Q
Clark
1.31.17
On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense
In this essay I intend to tease apart a passage from Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense” pertaining to concept formation. I will break down his argument into its core constituents and entertain several readings of his claims, establishing one of them as closest to Nietzsche’s original intentions. Then, I will analyze how this argument fits into the rest of the essay, and of which specific interpretation that this upholds out of the several different main arguments he makes. Finally, I will find whether or not this is a valid argument, and address possible counter arguments.
“Let us consider in particular how concepts are formed; each word …show more content…
He argues that language, as a virtue, should distinguish the individual leaves, instead of equivocating these different cases into one generalization that we can never come across in reality. He then continues to say that we extend this process to abstract concepts as well, such as honesty. If we cannot find the essence of “leaf” in our world, then how should we expect to find “honesty”? It seems he finds this process tautological. Nietzsche then gives his definition of honesty: we take each other’s experiences and perceptions of the world, find some sort of commonality between them, eliminate differences, and then we end up with the “truth”.
Even though other parts of “On Truth and Lying” have different arguments, this passage seems to support an argument that there no truths, and does not even mention things in themselves, their supposed existence being a premise in every other part of this essay. To me, this almost flirts with the idea that perhaps there are no things in themselves, but this viewpoint doesn’t seem to occur in any other portion of the work. Instead, we have misused language by settling for general concepts that we have created through cancelling out the uniqueness of things, and deeming them