On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense is a philosophical essay by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was written in 1873, one year after The Birth of Tragedy, but was published by his sister Elisabeth in 1896 when Nietzsche was already mentally ill.
Summary
Nietzsche's essay provides an account for the contemporary considerations of truth and concepts. These considerations, argues Nietzsche, arose from the very establishment of a language:According to Paul F. Glenn, Nietzsche is arguing that "concepts are metaphors which do not correspond to reality." Although all concepts are metaphors invented by humans, writes Nietzsche, human beings forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe that they are "true" and do correspond to reality. Thus Nietzsche argues that "truth" is actually:
These ideas about truth and its relation to human language have been particularly influential among postmodern theorists, and "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" is one of the works most responsible for Nietzsche's reputation as "the godfather of postmodernism."
Raymond Geuss has compared Nietzsche's view of language, as expressed in this essay, to be similar to that of the later Wittgenstein's, in its de-emphasis of "the distinction between literal and metaphorical usage." A few decades prior Erich Heller had similarly noted a comparison between Nietzsche's thoughts on language and Wittgenstein.