Nietzsche: Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense

By: Patrick Schenk

Truth and Lies in an extra moral sense is Nietzsches commentary on how humans seek
to define the world around them, and in doing so develop a sense of truth and lie. Nietzsche first
describes how we have come to create language. According to Nietzsche the process of
developing a language begins by introducing stimuli and then applying an image metaphor for it,
after that comes a sound metaphor, which then results in a the creation of language. The human
brain categorizes these stimuli that determine concepts. These represent the total of unequal
individualized objects. Everything that doesnt fit into a category is a lie. The big point Nietzsche
tries to make is that humans have created their own ideas that are labeled as truth yet we shun
lies despite the fact the things we know to be true are manmade and could be a lie itself.
Nietzsche argues that truth is a sum of human relations. What he means by this is that we
as humans have created a reality for ourselves that might be entirely wrong. These truths were
the result of a language we made up out of necessity. Humans have been on planet earth for a
very short period of the Earths history. Countless numbers of species have come before us, yet
for some unknown reason humans believe its their right to claim all of the Earths resources and
use them carelessly. Thanks to evolution humankind developed the ability to think, remember
and doubt the world around us. With that power came the ability to deceive and manipulate our
way to the top of the evolutionary pyramid. With this intelligence weve overcome great beasts,
and created many solutions that make up for our size and stature. The point Nietzsche is trying to
make is that though we are intelligent creatures we have little to know knowledge of the
intricacies of the natural world around us let alone how the universe works. That example is

used to help illustrate how small and far removed we are in reality despite our natural sense of
self importance and entitlement.
To Nietzsche truth is the ultimate illusion. He feels this way because to him humans not
only have little to know knowledge of how the universe let alone their own bodies work that how
could we possibly grasp what truth really is, and on top of that, the way we communicate is a
system of metaphors we made up in the first place. There is so little to base our preconceived
notions on that nothing is certain and that is at the root of what Nietzsche is getting at. Nietzsche
describes humans as artistically creating subjects. What he is trying to say is that humans can
pick up on many kinds of stimuli and gather information from it, whether it be a sight, smell,
texture. The problem is that all of this information we gather is subjective. You could raise a
child teaching that a yellow ball is a purple. If you reinforce with repetition the word purple, over
time the child would accept the ball to be purple when in reality it is actually yellow. Nietzsche
explains about how we group similar objects. Every object is different but as humans we look for
similar characteristics and then categorize them. Because we categorize them and derive truth
from these categories; we dont look at each individual thing, therefore we are missing out.
Nietzsches argues that in nature there are no categories because everything is unique. Nietzsche
sought to prove that because we as humans have created a manmade language none of these
truths or lies is guaranteed to truly exist in nature. Instead we use the language as a way to
categorize our surroundings and interact with each other.
Bibliography
Cheong, Liz. " Nietzsche's On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense." Digication E-Portfolio.
Digication E-Portfolio, n.d. Web. 23 May 2014.

Weiss, Dennis M. "Some Themes of On Truth and Lies." Some of the Themes: (n.d.): n. pag.
Web.
"Nietzsche's On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense: Summary." Timlshorts Blog. N.p., n.d.
Web. 23 May 2014.