Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption

Abstract

Truth is the first and most basic part of virtue. It must be loved for itsown sake.Montaigne, On PresumptionBut the depressive and self-wounding ego... rebuts: ... ‘illusion of thesenses and of the mind holds us prisoner always’.Calvino, Mr. PalomarAs Bernard Williams lately observed (2002: 1–19), the reception of Nietzsche’sthought has prompted sharp controversy about truth. Some readers highlightNietzsche’s widespread and provocative remarks dismissing the value or eventhe possibility of truth and science. Against these ‘deniers’, Williams identifies a‘party of common sense’ (2002: 5–7), whose adherents stress the ubiquity ofordinary truths in our practical and scientific projects. As they note, Nietzschehimself adduces such truths in his withering attacks against traditionalmetaphysical and religious pieties, and even the debunking claims of the verydeniers are motivated by a spirit of critique—a devotion to truthfulnessexempting nothing from the purview of its suspicion. The puzzle about thiscontroversy is that both ‘deniers’ and ‘common-sensers’ have gotten importantthings right about Nietzsche. This paper aims to explain how that could be. I offera reading of Nietzsche on truth and illusion which saves the insights on bothsides, reconciles the tensions among the texts, and accounts for the importance ofboth truth and illusion in his thought overall.It is worth noting, first, the broad array of positions available to either side.Quite different theses may be denied or affirmed about truth. ‘Deniers’ haveranged from Hans Vaihinger (1905, 1986 [1927]), who took Nietzsche as aforerunner of his own fictionalist strategy for saving science and other practices,to an essentially skeptical ‘post-modernist’ reception that tends to dismiss sciencein favor of art, in which ‘precisely the lie sanctifies itself’ (GM III, 25).