“On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873)
Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche begins this short text with a blunt attack on cognition. He argues that cognition (or thought) places far too much value on thought itself, leading to a situation where humans massively overestimate their own importance. On a universal scale, Nietzsche reminds us, humans are of no importance whatsoever. The primary characteristic of cognition for Nietzsche and its most problematic feature is its ability to deceive – to dissimulate. In fact, Nietzsche argues that dissimulation is built into the very structure of cognition and language.

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The text then moves to focus on language which Nietzsche takes to be structured by illusion and chance. He demonstrates that language divides the world up into specific objects in an arbitrary manner and in a way which focuses on just one randomly selected property of a thing. He gives the example of a snake: “We speak of a snake; and the designation captures only its twisting movements and thus could equally well apply to a worm.” What he means is that the word “snake” applies to a large range of different creatures, from a 10-meter python to a 10 cm threadsnake encompassing snakes of a variety of colors and patterning, some venomous, some not, living in a range of habitats on various diets with all sorts of different abilities. The word “snake” erases these differences apart from one – the one which they all have in common – that they are long animals which propel themselves by means of twisting movements. In other words, language selects a random property of a thing and groups it with other things sharing the property. But the arbitrary nature of language does not stop there since other things which also share this property are excluded. For the example above, Nietzsche points out that if snakes are long twisty creatures, then why are worms not also designated as snakes?

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Next, Nietzsche demonstrates how language relates to the world only through a series of metaphors, or translations. “The stimulation of a nerve is first translated into an image: first metaphor! The image is then imitated by a sound: second metaphor! And each time there is a complete leap from one sphere into the heart of another, new sphere.” Here, Nietzsche describes how perception turns into language. First the electrical signals arriving in the brain from the eyes are converted into an image in the brain. Then this image in the brain is translated into a sound; the word used to describe the thing that the eyes perceive. Nietzsche’s point is that we never have access to the thing it itself, but only receive a translation of it.

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To exemplify this, he refers to Chladnian sound-figures. These are sand patterns made by sound waves. The sound-figures are a translation of the sound in exactly the same way that what people hear in their heads is a translation of a sound. In both cases, the vibration of air has been translated into a different sphere. With the sound-figure, the sounds has been translated into an arrangement of sand, and in someone’s head, the sound has been translated into electrical signals which are read by the brain. In both cases, there is no unmediated access to the sound waves in themselves. Nietzsche points out neither the sound-figure nor the sound that someone hears in their head can be thought of as the “true” sound.

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Having examined the mechanisms of language, Nietzsche returns to the idea of concepts:

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Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists, in nature, something which would be “leaf,” a primal form, say, from which all leaves were woven, drawn, delineated, dyed, curled, painted-but by a clumsy pair of hands, so that no single example turned out to be a faithful, correct; and reliable copy of the primal form.

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As with the “snake” example above, Nietzsche’s complaint is that the word “leaf” cannot adequately describe an individual leaf. Instead, it erases the differences between one leaf and another, grouping them together under the single term “leaf.” Referring to Plato’s theory of forms, Nietzsche notes that this implies that there must be some kind of ideal, perfect leaf of which all real leaves are just imperfect copies. The suggestion here is that there is no such ideal leaf and that language operates by arbitrarily grouping things together in a way overlooks “what is individual and real.” The consequence of this is that the reality of the world in front of us remains inaccessible and indefinable. We simply do not have the words of adequately describe or talk about reality.

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In one of his best-known passages, Nietzsche proceeds to describe truth as “a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies [and] anthropomorphisms.” Language is metaphorical since it understands things as though they were other things; the leaf in front of us is understood only as a version of the ideal leaf. Metonymy is where a thing is understood just through one of its aspects or features; the snake in front of us is understood primarily through its long and twisty nature.

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Nietzsche explains what he means by anthropomorphic thought by way of an example: “If I create the definition of a mammal and then, having inspected a camel, declare, ‘Behold, a mammal,’ then a truth has certainly been brought to light, but it is of limited value, by which I mean that it is anthropomorphic through and through and contains not a single point which could be said to be ‘true in itself,’ really and in a generally valid sense.” The concept “mammal,” according to Nietzsche, is man-made and artificial. Inventing a concept and then finding examples of it does not therefore uncover the truth, rather it just reveals prefabricated human ideas.

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Expanding on the idea of anthropomorphism, Nietzsche, referencing Protagoras, claims that all concepts are measured against man. In this sense, humans understand the world as something which is “similar in kind to humanity.” In an attempt to move beyond this, Nietzsche points out that insects or birds have a completely different perception of reality and that it is not possible to say whose perception – human, insect, bird etc. – is more correct. He invites the reader to imagine what it is like to sense the world as a plant or a worm does. He argues that the same stimulus would be experienced differently by different entities. If each human had a different set of sense organs, we would not see the universe as something conforming to universal laws, rather, each person would take it to be something different.

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Ultimately, Nietzsche believes that language does not permit us access to the essence of things and that reason is a limited and human-centered way of trying to understand the world. His answer to this problem is what he calls the “man of intuition.” This man is a creative artist, a poet, with little respect for the concepts and abstractions of reason. In short, Nietzsche call for unreason – a jumbling of rational concepts, ironic reassembling, unlikely pairings – all guided not by reason but by intuition. When he suffers, the man of intuition he “know no solace,” but he strives for “a constant stream of brightness, a lightening of the spirit, redemption, and release.”

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