Though Fredrick Nietzsche’s work, On Truth and Lying in Extra-Moral Sense, utilizes numerous binary oppositions I think the most noteworthy is the opposition between importance and insignificance within the introductory paragraph:
In some remote corner of the universe that is poured out in countless
flickering solar systems, there once was a star on which clever
animals invented knowledge. That was the most arrogant and the
most untrulhful moment in "world history"-yet indeed only a
moment. After nature had taken a few breaths, the star froze over
and the clever animals had to die.
The common belief is that the man is important, because he or she is given the privilege of higher thought and perception. Additionally, in some circles people adopt the ideology of a heliocentric universe in which everyone thing revolves around earth, which then also attributes importance to man. Yet, Nietzsche directly contrasts this indicating that mankind is insignificant, indicating that man is “arrogant,” regarding their perception, and that earth is “in some remote corner of the universe,” not in the center. With this Nietzsche incites the reader to reevaluate their system of thoughts: the introductory paragraph contrasts the common belief that man is important, and thus requires the reader to rethink their belief system, which is what I believe Nietzsche intended. Personally, I think this is the most important binary comparison in the work, because it sums Nietzsche’s thoughts that truth is only perceived. This comparison embodies this because the reader is forced to view Nietzsche’s contrasting perspective, which leaves doubt in the reader’s ideology.
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Human weighed against animal
ReplyDeleteIn the first part of his paper Nietzsche use the binary of animal versus human with relation to knowledge and life. Nietzsche states, “In some remote corner of the universe that is poured out in countless flickering solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the most arrogant and the most untrulhful moment in "world history"-yet indeed only a moment. After nature had taken a few breaths, the star froze over and the clever animals had to die. Someone could invent such a fable and still not have illustrated adequately how pitiful, how shadowy and fleeting, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect appears within nature. There were eternities when it did not exist; and someday when it no longer is there, not much will have changed. For that intellect has no further mission leading beyond human life.” Though Nietzsche is using animal and human the context of how he uses them work to closely relate the two binaries, while also making a distinct separation between the two. An animal and human are the same before knowledge and it is only after this knowledge is developed that Nietzsche allows there to be a distinction between the two. He continues this idea of knowledge being what separates humans from the other mere animals of this world, while also shows that is it the knowledge that ultimately leads to the destruction of the animal and human.
Rational and Intuitive Man
ReplyDeleteIn Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense”, there are a number of binary oppositions present, but the one that stood out the most to me was the one presented at the end between the rational and the intuitive man. “One in fear of intuition, the other with mockery for abstraction; the latter being just as unreasonable as the former is unartistic,” he writes. Throughout the text, Nietzsche has shown a very pessimistic view towards what humanity calls “truth”, considering it to be a pack of metaphors that after extended use became canonical and taken to be reality. Yet in the end, Nietzsche gives us the opposition between the rational and intuitive man, although not giving any clear view on which is the better of the two. The rational man uses the “truths” in order to ward off other negative things in life, while the intuitive man is constantly achieving his own understanding of things, but as a result suffers frequently for lack of learning from the experience. On the one hand, we have someone who believes he understands everything and is unfazed by the world, but at the cost of truly experiencing things. On the other, we have someone who experiences everything as something new, but is unable to reason and learn. Nietzsche had painted our views of “truth” as a deception, yet here he presents flaws in both the rational and intuitive, the two extremes of concepts and forgetfulness.
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ReplyDeleteNietsche: Truth and Deception
In his essay, Nietsche explains how man’s existence in the world hinges greatly on man’s approach to truth and deception, and how this approach has set them in opposition to one another. He says that in order to define what is truth, you must implicitly define deceit. According to Nietsche, man has taken true, first-hand accounts illustrated by sensory reactions within the natural world and manipulated them into sets of allusive metaphors, which, able to be contorted at will, have diluted and formed a rickety structure of man-made knowledge. In this, Nietsche claims that man has not only found purpose and supposed superiority over nature, but deceived himself in believing that this abstract, concocted perception of reality is actually superior to the purity of first-hand experience. Alarmingly, man clings to his own fabrications as if they provide truth, for the acknowledgment of the weakness of the structure could send it toppling over. Ironically, Nietsche says that this very preference for ignorance has given nature the upper hand, so that “everything marvelous that we admire in the laws of nature and that promotes our explanation and could mislead us into distrusting idealism, consists exclusively of the mathematical stringency and inviolability of time and space –perceptions. But we produce these perceptions within ourselves and out of ourselves with the same necessity as a spider spins its web” (Nietsche, 253). Although we have an idealized and tampered view of reality, part of man’s arrogance is that we believe that without our structure human life would topple. So, instead of experiencing the world around us in its purist form, as Nietsche describes with sensory, we seize ignorance because we believe that our own faith in our system ensures self-preservation. So we continue on in this pattern, believing that it is our own nature, even though it imprisons us in falsity. Although Nietsche creates a binary between truth and deception using the perception of man, he argues that finding truth may not lie completely in abandoning our idealism, but in adopting a balance between the world of the particular and conception. I believe that by striking this balance, he is trying to communicate to his audience that our tendency to create abstract from the particular isn’t completely detrimental to our interaction with the world around us, but should be used to complement the sensory experiences that nature provides us.