On Truth

With Romer's definition of truth as That which makes meaning possible and is suggested by the possible meaning of a word, a link can be drawn with the philosopher Nietzsche.

(1) "There is no truth but truths."

This statement must be read in conjunction with that author's concept of the will-to-power. We posit truth-values in order to give meaning to what we do, ultimately to our lives. For Nietzsche such truth-values are conditons of life; because no truth-value ("truth") can subsume all life forms (but see Truthfulness and Money, above), that is, give meaning to all of them at once, at least not since we killed God, there are as many truth-values ("truths") as there are life forms that posit them. At once, however, a question arises: if there are only truths and no truth what is it that gives meaning to the truths in the first place? do the values derive meaning from and in themselves or are they preceded by a truth that makes their ability to confer meaning possible? The answer to this question was hinted at in the opening sentence: will-to-power precedes values, determines them and their force for the life forms that posit and/or acknowledge them. Will-to-power finds expression in the truth-values we posit, for, in Nietzsche's thinking, such values serve only the interests of will-to-power. Nietzsche's conception of will-to-power comes very close to Romer's definition of truth as That which makes meaning possible and is suggested by the possible meaning of a word. For Nietzsche will-to-power is the truth as just understood although (1) shows that Nietzsche himself did not acknowledge a single truth other than those many truths entailed by will-to-power. However this refusal to equate will-to-power with truth makes will-to-power suspicious; is it not just another truth-value disguised as the truth, as that which makes meaning possible? does will-to-power derive meaning from itself or is it grounded in a deeper source? For Nietzsche the latter alternative is out of the question—will-to-power is the source. But if will-to-power derives meaning from itself, and in turn is That which posits itself in as many values as there are positing life forms, is it not reduced to being a will-to-values, a will that cares not whether the values it wills are grounded in a meaning-conferring truth other than itself as will? If yes, will-to-power degrades itself into a will-to-will, a will that asserts itself as the truth, as the source of meaning, as Heidegger was to find out to his great shame in his embrace of National Socialism. The void left over by the will-to-will, in its forgetfulness of an original source which makes meaning, hence language, possible was perhaps recognized by Nietzsche himself, although he was unable in the course of his lifetime to bring himself to see beyond that void other than through his prophecy of the overman.

(2) "Truth is that kind of an error without which a certain category of being could not exist."

This statement shows that for Nietzsche truth in the singular is singularly the concern of the thinker. Truth is the truth-value posited by the thinker to give meaning to what he does, which is to seek the truth, therefore also to his lifetime. Without truth he would not exist. However this truth-value differs from the truth-values posited by non-thinkers in one important respect; the thinker—in this case Nietzsche himself—is aware that it is the characteristic of truth to make meaning possible—in his terminology, to serve life. This thinker's truth underpins all truth-values in so far as they too give meaning to the life forms that posit and/or acknowledge them. The thinker's truth, namely, his realization that truth, be it error, prejudice or folly, is That which makes meaning possible, and indeed is what meaning suggests, betrays another truth-value of the thinker, including Nietzsche, other than that there is a truth. That prejudice is the following; to tolerate meaninglessness, therefore the absence of truth, is to tolerate lifelessness. This neatly fits in with that author's view of art, namely:

(3) "We have art in order not to perish from the truth."

While truth is an error for Nietzsche, it is a necessary error as it makes life possible. However we die from truth if we dissociate it from its life conditionning function, i.e. if we dissociate it from meaning. This is the risk we face with scientific or objective truth when it becomes meaningless, or is no longer concerned with providing meaning to life. Art, in so far as it gave meaning to life in general and to our lives in particular, was a stronger, because more meaningful, type of truth for Nietzsche.

(4) "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

In an age when convictions pass as judgments, and where these non-judgments in turn form the bases of actions, inevitably bringing havoc and confusion in their wake, it would be wise to consider this thought of Nietzsche's above all others. What does he mean by "convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies?" To answer this question we must distinguish convictions and lies from the point of view of truth, since this statement supposes that the two, convictions and lies, bear a relationship to truth which is left undefined. Let us take Romer's definition of truth as our basis: truth is That which makes meaning possible and is suggested by the possible meaning of a word. In what way are convictions enemies of truth? How is the convinced person an enemy of truth? Enemy of truth can be said of the person who is willing to offend truth, to attack it. Conversely, convictions are enemies 'of' truth in the sense that truth attempts to fight them too. In the midst of this battle between convictions and truth lies Nietzsche's thought—the convinced person attacks the truth, that which is the source of meaning, by appropriating it, by seeking to make his convictions the source of meaning. Thus both the free-market politician and his left-wing counterpart are enemies of truth in so far as they seek to enshrine their convictions—the goodness of free-market capitalism in the first case, the badness of it in the second—as the sources of all possible meaning. Their vocabulary in turn suggests that theirs is the truth, e.g. 'growth', 'freedom' in the one case, 'social justice,' 'education' in the other. Their temptation is to usurp the truth by confusing their own truth-values with truth, That which makes values, as purveyors of meaning, possible at all, and which I have accordingly baptized "truth-values." [The positivist is someone who posits values, be they of a scientific nature or otherwise, and takes this positing to be the source of meaning.] The liar by contrast is a lesser enemy of truth for he does not seek to appropriate it, to make it his own or to impose the meaning of his conviction on all beings. Rather the liar merely hides the truth—or distorts it—but in so doing recognizes the idea of truth. By obfuscating the truth the lie does not appropriate it like the conviction but to the contrary almost preserves it, at least the idea of it, by concealing it. In a fundamental sense the liar recognizes the truth by hiding or distorting it—for a truth, even distorted, remains—whereas the convinced person fails even to pay attention to the truth by seeking to enshrine his own truth-value as the truth. Indeed, as though to hammer the point home, Nietzshe noted in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that "He who cannot lie does not know what truth is." What happens if a conviction succeeds in becoming the original source of meaning, what Heidegger called that "disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds?" What happens is that meaning is lost, for truth that is appropriated is no longer truth in any sense of the word. The result is that the conviction or truth-value itself becomes meaningless, ungrounded as it is in truth, i.e. in That [disclosure] which makes meaning possible. The truth-value becomes a mere value; exchangeable, replaceable, beneath money. What happens if a lie parades as a conviction? Or to put the question differently, what if the conviction is a lie, and not merely a truth-value? A lie, as hider or distorter of truth, does not take root in it, or rather it does but only to hide or distort it. The truth-value does not conceal the truth per say; it is a manifestation of it by virtue of Its ability to confer meaning on the life form that posits and/or acknowledges it. The lie has no such a quality—the lie does not confer meaning on the life form that posits it precisely because it is a lie. When Stalin's collaborators were framed as "enemies of the people" the prosecutors knew this to be a lie, a lie to which the accused assented under torture or the threat of it. The sentence could only have had meaning for those who were not aware of its being a lie—which is precisely why the lie-convictions were fabricated in the first place. The lie that "parades" as a conviction (e.g. christiannity) is destined to be meaningful for those who do not know it to be a lie (the Lords), but not naturally for those who do, i.e. the liars themselves (the saints and priests). This finding relates to another aphorism, the penultimate in this presentation:

(5) "The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."

The liar lies only to others because as liar he knows his lie to be a lie, that is, to be a hider or distorter of truth, of That [unconcealment] which makes meaning possible, and in the example above, of the fact that the prosecuted were not "enemies of the people" for want of evidence of genuine betrayal. The sentences that declared them so were lies, deriving meaning from the truth of the proposition "enemies of the people" whilst distorting the truth "enemies of the people" by having it applied to individuals who were not "enemies of the people" in the sense the sentence declared them to be, or in the sense the spectators who were not aware of the lie understood the sentence "enemies of the people" to mean—the perpetrators or would-be perpetrators of heinous crime—treason—against the State, therefore, by common extension, the people. (From this paragraph it is easy to see why common sense takes truth to mean correspondence between proposition and thing—in this case between "enemies of the people" and the fact that indeed the accused were "enemies of the people." The reason this definition is unsatisfactory is that it fails to consider how "enemies of the people" in proposition corresponds to "enemies of the people" in fact, since this "fact" is itself a proposition whose ultimate sanction remains hidden. It is as though common sense had forgotten about the primary meaning of truth as That which makes meaning possible and had reduced it to one of its consequences which is the possibility for meaning to be instrumentalized in such a way that it no longer bears on "facts." However these facts themselves need to correspond to what is true if they are not to be lies, and this regression shows the bankruptcy of this common definition of truth. Rather lies occur as soon as That [disclosure] which makes meaning possible is instrumentalized—hidden or distorted, that is to say, concealed—so as to make a proposition appear to be meaningful of itself or, worse, to be the source of meaning.) The statement that "the visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others" is doubly provocative. Firstly, it takes for granted the far from obvious finding that a person may lie to him or herself. It proceeds, secondly, by drawing a distinction between the visionary, who lies to himself, and the liar, who lies only to others. Could this mean that the visionary who, according to Nietzsche, does lie, not only to himself, but also, as can be inferred, to those who behold his vision—his disciples—is no liar? Again, a reference to Romer's aforementioned definition of truth is necessary to untangle the wisdom of this thought; truth is That which makes meaning possible and is suggested by the possible meaning of a word. If the visionary is someone who lies to himself—it is left open whether such lying to one's self is a condition of visionhood—then he is someone who hides or distorts the truth that gives meaning to the vision both for himself and for those who behold it, his disciples. On this understanding, the vision fulfils the same function Nietzsche assigned to the "value" or "truth" which I have so far called the truth-value, which is the value that confers meaning on a form of life by virtue of its grounding in truth as the original source of meaning, what Heidegger called "that disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds." That function is a life affirming function for, as we have seen, truth, even as error—as scientists are never at a loss to indicate—is a condition of life by virtue of its ability to confer meaning on it (although it has been conceded that this last assertion may simply be the thinker's own truth-value in (2), above.) Does our enquiry end here? It cannot for two reasons. The first is that despite its being revealed to be a mere truth-value among others, the vision remains a vision, which translates in Nietzsche's mind as the visionary remaining a visionary, distinct from the liar, who lies only to others. This invites us to consider the first point raised above, which constitutes our second reason why the enquiry into the truth of statement five should not be halted prematurely: the lie to one's self. With Romer's definition of truth such a lie becomes utterly conceivable, and belongs to the realm of daily experience; I lie to myself whenever I take or mistake my conviction, truth-value or "truth" (see (1), above) to be the source of meaning, that is, to be truth itself. I lie to myself when I mistake the one for the other because in so doing I hide from myself That which makes my conviction or "truth" meaningful, i.e. truthful, for me, and that "That" necessarily precedes my own truth-value by making it, and its ability to confer meaning on my life, possible. It would appear that, for Nietzsche at least, the visionary can be, and is only ever, a visionary when he hides from himself That which makes the meaning of his own vision possible and, by implication, its credibility for those to whom he addresses it—for one would be hard pressed to argue that a vision could be believed by those who deem it to be meaningless! To take an example; Adlolf Hitler had a vision of a German Reich that would rule the Western Hemisphere for a thousand years. Hitler himself believed in the truth, i.e. the meaning, of this vision, which truth was in turn adopted by his followers of the time. Hitler would count as a visionary according to our aphorism in so far as he lied to himself as well as to others in the establishing of his vision; he hid or distorted the truth that rendered the vision meaningful at all by seeking to enshrine this particular vision, which was also a truth-value, as the source of meaning, as the truth. Thus the vision soon became laughable, absurd, meaningless, for, having appropriated the truth, it was no longer grounded in it nor in anything capable of conferring meaning on the vision any longer. To take another example; the prophet Jesus of Nazareth. The man told his contemporaries that the end of the [Roman] world was nigh, that he was the son of God, that rewarded would be those who believed him and followed his instruction. Was Jesus guilty of lying to himself in enshrining his vision as the truth, as the source of meaning? Certainly a ruthless reading of Nietzsche's statement points to a positive answer—Jesus lied to himself in so far as he hid from himself and his disciples That which gave his vision meaning, namely his insight into the "disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds." Worse, Jesus distorted the truth in so far as his vision borrowed heavily from the disclosure—e.g. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise you have no reward of your Father which is in heaven" Matthew 6:1—but never acknowledged the disclosure as disclosure. Rather he referred to his Father, the maker of all things, to the primary necessity of Faith, to the Law as interpreted, i.e transformed, by him. Yet, unlike with Hitler, his vision held ground—somehow it remained grounded in truth so as to convey meaning to the generations who succeeded him—but at a heavy price, namely the dogmatic falsifications of his view by Saint Paul the apostle and the early members of the clergy. It is no stretch of the mind to conclude, at least provisionally, that with this aphorism Nietzsche was in fact telling us what he was doing as self-styled visionary in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and his other works; lying to himself—by concealing from himself What conferred meaning on his vision, What made it meaningful—and to us who believed in the vision as meaningful of itself! (wherefore perhaps the mysterious subtitle of that book "A book for everyone and no one," which subtitle both includes and excludes the author himself. That is to say, an author has no property over his thought because "we never come to thoughts. They come to us.")

(6) "Perhaps no one has ever been sufficiently truthful about what 'truthfulness' is."

See Truthfulness and Money. 30/4/0/2