Nietzsche on the Value of Truth

okay so this lecture is on nature on the value value of truth this is not so much nature scholarship it is mainly Sunita scholarship but it's also on this larger philosophical question the value of truth which i think is a question that nietzsche raises more than any other philosophers in fact most a lot of us just say truth is a fundamental value and it cannot be questioned and the interesting thing about nature is he gives us conceptual resources that allow us to question the value of truth but first I need to distinguish two different questions there's a causal genetic question if you like that is why do we value truth all right and that is separate from the other question which is a normative evaluative question why should we value truth Nietzsche has things to say on both question why we do value truth and the question of whether we should value truth it's important to get those those two apart and just to begin with some nice quotations from Nietzsche this from Beyond Good and Evil One the will to truth which still tempts us to many adventure that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far spoken with respect what in us really wants truth there's still more basic question we asked about the value of this will suppose we want suppose we want truth why not rather untruth and from beyond from genealogy of morals essay 3 section 24 the wilted truth is in need of a critique okay so more preliminary points I don't think that Nietzsche has any theory of truth you know you've got these classical philosophical theories like a correspondence theory of truth the truth is when claim correspond with reality or coherence the claim is true that coheres with every other claim you believe etc I don't think Nietzsche's interested in those kind of philosophical questions as I said before he's not really interested in metaphysics he's not really interested in Paestum ology we could equally say is not interested in semantics semantics being the part of philosophy that investigates what the property of truth is or if it is a property rather Nietzsche is interested in these genealogical psychological questions what has led us to value true so highly and what is the motivation for our wilted truth and should we value truth okay so that's the first point I don't think neech has any theory of truth I usually make the joke you know my mum who lives in Australia she thinks it's true that I'm in London but she doesn't have any theory of truth well I think niche is not quite as unsophisticated as my mother on this point but he's not far different from them he doesn't really have any cook worked out theory of truth he didn't really care for that kind of philosophy finding out exactly what the property of truth it is okay the second thing I need to point out is I'm going to say very briefly is there are some interpreters again a post modernist who often interpret nature as is rejecting all notions of truth right there's a very famous essay he wrote called he wrote you're not published during his lifetime on truth and lie in the extra moral sense which is quoted over and over again where he says truth is just an army of metaphors that have become common coin and some of those passages from that work and from some of his other works sound extremely skeptical about truth but in evidence of the claim that Nietzsche believes there are truths and we need to skeptical about truth it's usually a promotion of metaphysical truth he's always skeptical about the notion of metaphysical truth but I believe in truth and I'm skeptical of metaphysical truth too but in evidence of the crime that he believes there is such a thing as truth I take the first section of the first essay of the genealogy of morals where he talks about English psychologist and he admires English psychologists because he says look they're trying to get to the psychology behind our moral values whether they make it as self-interest or whatever and he thinks at least they're trying to do the psychology he says all power to them but then he criticized them for being very very bad psychologists but at the end of it he does say he does say he he praises them for their attempts to get the real psychological mechanisms behind our moral values but then criticizes them for their perceived values of their actual account and he concludes simply there are such truths meaning psychological truth in others I'm not one of those interpreters who take nature is denying that there are truth he's skeptical about metaphysical truth but I think he actually thinks he's psychological by and large true and it's important for him that they be true though ultimately cares about the normative aspect that is he kiss ultimate value is enhancing culture and civilization and enhancing possibility of great individuals but still he thinks he can do that by getting at certain psychological truths okay um now I want to give you an each in perspective that'll make you wonder about the value of truth because it's very very hard for us moderns to do that if I say most modern philosophers people like Bernard Williams will just say truth is just a fundamental we don't seem to have a perspective from which we could see that there might be some disutility to truth okay and actually going back to am a non Nietzschean evaluation of those questions remember we have two questions the questions why do we value truth and then the question why should we or shouldn't we value truth there are other people who have versions of answers to this for instance my colleague at the New College of the humanity Dawkins will give a proto evolutionary account Darwinian account of why we should value truths and you can see what story is pretty obvious that in the way of belief it's useful to have by and large true beliefs like if you believe arsenic is going to nourish you're going to exhibit what late 20th century philosopher Quine called somewhat right-wing this next point a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency of dying before you reproduce your kind well I'm not saying I prove the sentiment at all I don't see the praiseworthy part but anyway you get the drift that a evolutionist can give the following account of why we do value truth that we value truth because if you have false belief like if you think it's a bread the poison and the arsenic not nourishes you're going to probably not get to reproduce your kind so that would be an evolutionary account of why we do value truth it doesn't give an answer of why we should value truth unless you enshrine the idea that what is ultimately valuable is survival but that's a question and it's not clear the evolutionary person giving your evolutionist account can back that you certainly can back this claim of why we do value truths I'm not saying it's a right account but he doesn't have account and that's it but I wonder if you can give an account of we should value truth okay we'll each has a different story about why we value truth which I'll come to later but what I want to get across now is Nietzsche's perspective which shows us a way of seeing that there might be some altar other value according to which truth might not be an ultimate value okay so what Nietzsche believes is Nietzsche things as I said before that the ultimate point for humans is not to avoid suffering not even to be happy but to find meaning and what Nietzsche wants to claim is a will to truth and I mentioned this in the last lecture wilted truth is a part of what destroys God and leads to nini ilysm so you can already see the trajectory Nietzsche says a wilted truth destroys our ability to believe in mythologies right religion being one of those mythologies and he says look those those those those mythologies are really really important for giving meaning to our lives I'm missing a page here that I wanted to read from quotations from um yeah so this is from beyond time this is from the birth of tragedy he says without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity only horizon defined by miss completes and unifies a whole cultural movement okay this again is something as I mentioned in last lecture that he got from the Romantics head look what gave the center Greek culture was that they had these they had these gods that they worshipped and these gods gave them ideals norms of appropriateness of behavior and gave them a sense of what life is about what their actions should be cetera so neat you see it's easy to think again of Nietzsche's anti all religion but as I said before it's never is the will to truth good is the aesthetic ideal good is a religion good is it bad it's not like that it what is the function of this religion for these people he's perfectly happy with the ancient Greeks having their religion because their religion through their gods they affirmed life they gave themselves positive role models see the Christian God he said there's a repudiation of life because the Christian God is nothing like us you know he's omniscient omnipotent on the benevolent allegedly nothing like us and a natural drives are often an affront to him something to be controlled or repressed so we use our God the judeo-christian morality religion users their God to berate themselves where he thinks of the Greeks is actually affirming themselves through their God like when if Achilles worships Ares he's worshiping himself because I care Ares is just like Achilles Ani more so he's just as temperamental he's just as vicious he's just as brilliant a fighter or should I say more brilliant fighter so the Greeks in their gods worshipped themselves so Nietzsche is perfectly happy with that but the point I want to make is whether it's a whether it's a god that you used to berate yourself or a god that you used to affirm yourself Nietzsche says these myths myths of religion give meaning to our life okay as he says this is a get this from the untimely meditation essay - that's called on the use and abuse of history for life which is important to our theme this is in section 7 he says all living things require an atmosphere around them a mysterious misty vapor if they're deprived of this envelope if a religion and art a genius is condemned to revolve as a star without any atmosphere we should no longer be surprised if they quickly wither and grow unfruitful it is the same with all great things which never succeed without illusion as hard sucks says success in the Meistersinger that's a opera by vogner which I'll come to later but so there's this important theme that Nietzsche has is that life needs illusion right we might need illusion of a kind of religious mythology that gives us a sense of who we are he often seems to think that even our everyday concepts involve illusions and there's a lot of debate in Nietzsche scholarship about whether he thinks even using a concept like Cup involves some kind of illusion I find that thought very non congenial the idea is that Nietzsche thinks whenever you use a cup you falsify because you're tossing this cup with every other cup but they're all individually different I'm not sympathetic to that at all but there is a strain of nature which scholars argue about how much he thinks even everyday concepts falsified but that is not germane to the point I want to make because those everyday concepts like cup and not the things that give meaning to our lives it's a great religious conviction to our great moral conviction that man's duty is to pursue the salon bonham if you want a secular version of it that for nature is just another mythology and these it's these mythologies that give meaning to life and since and that is a particular problem he sees with modernity modernity with its wilted truth demands that we sacrifice every mythology but in sacrificing mythology we evacuate life of meaning and that is why I need you can provide us with a perspective to think how far should we pursue the will of truth isn't it more important to find life meaningful is it doesn't light has to be fundamentally meaningful to us and if I wilted truth evacuates life of all meaning then maybe I will to truth deserves to be questioned and here I'll I reference this passage and tried to do it from memory but here I'll quote it directly from the genealogy of morals 3 section 28 again he's really addressing Schopenhauer to a certain extent he did man did not know how to justify explain affirm himself he suffered from the problem of his meaning he suffered otherwise as ill he was to the most part of diseased animal but the suffering itself was not his problem rather that the answer was missed to the scream of his question to what end suffering man the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering does not negate suffering he wants it even seeks it out provided one shows him a meaning for it it's at this end of suffering the meaninglessness of suffering not suffering itself was the curse thus far stretched over humanity ok well Nietzsche thinks that is a particular problem for us moderns because we modern destroy all mythologies and destroy all the basis for providing meaning and in particular one version of neat that Nietzsche seemed to ascribe to is um it's possible that need to think the scientific view pursued to it to end evacuate the world of poedel meaning not just by destroying mythologies but by destroying morality in a certain sense because if you think of it if you think of it of the ultimate religious view again that philosopher I mentioned before Quine just looking for the relevant quotations I just can't seem to find them yeah someone like coin would say that science leaves no room for values the science is a purely descriptive enterprise and so it can't give us values and each actually echoes this up he says in genealogy of morals or prerequisites he's writing before Quine genealogy of morals essay to section 25 science is far from standing on its own it first needs a value ideal it itself is never value creating and think about part of the impetus of science is that we should value the truth but consider that very claim we should value truth is that a scientific claim it's not a scientific claim it's not a descriptive claim at all it's a normative claim so it's what some it's also from his notebooks science probes at the processes of nature but it can never command man man must evaluate what he experiences religions gain their power by being standard the value another this religion that gave us the value of truth an event appears in a different life when looked at from the point of view of myth okay so Nietzsche kind of get lost in my notes here I wanted to get some other quotations but I don't know roughly where I want to go it's quite possible to read Nietzsche as someone who thinks that values are not out there in the world there's a modern term for it I'm a bit reluctant to ascribe a meta ethics to Nietzsche because I don't think he was that fine-grained it's using our terms a bit an act it's being a banana a chronicity but there are a lot of passages which I can't drum up in my notes here um when nature sounds like he's a projective about values that is he seeks values are not there in the world this is a property of being a being a cup of coffees or the property of being negatively charged which an electron can have but there's no property of being good or bad those are just projections or plenty of passages where Nietzsche says values are merely projected in the world a lot of people like Klein who are very scientistic philosophers take exactly that line they say look in the scientific view there is no truth to the fact that the truth is good or that murder is bad that those are just projections of our values onto the world and the world itself to use a metaphor that Nietzsche uses in the quotation I can't find the world is itself in some sense colorless we color it that is we're the ones who protect our values so niches view science can't give us values but it's values that give meaning to the world so an under his view science taken literally at face value can't provide values and can't provide meaning so where does science get its implicit value the value of truth okay well neech has a story to tell and and that is the most interesting that is what was really wonderful in the genealogy of morals for me the key passage of the genealogy of morals is section 3 of the third essay because there he's talked about religious aesthetic ideals he's been very negative about judeo-christian values he said they're basically values based on repression of one's drives and self-hatred and he says surely there has been a counter ideal shirley's is and this is what his audience who are strangers to themselves as I mentioned last lecture that he's been talking about these people in the past and that's a distancing operation that's not us but in section 23 these audiences meant to be revealed to themselves I think that's a structure of the rhetorical structure of the air of the essays what he says surely there's been a counter ideal to the religious aesthetic I deal with it all it's superstitions another worldliness surely it's the ideal of truth and objectivity and science and then he says most remarkably said no that is not a counter ideal to the aesthetic ideal it is actually its most sublime and highest manifestation so he wants to say the religious ID so the scientific ideal the modern ideal of objectivity and truth is really basically a religious ideal and he wants to see its genesis actually because he as he says science itself can't create values science is not involved in the game of what should be it's in the game of what is its ethic merely at a descriptive value not normative evaluative level so what nietzsche claims is actually the scientific will to truth is nothing but a successor of the religious will to truth remember in last lecture we talked about the death of God and we said look there are a lot of people secularists juveniles who have given up on the metaphysics of Christianity but kept those values well one of those is the value of truth because a religious worldview tells us we should value the truth because it's God's Word the religious third world's you answers both the descriptive question a why do we value truth we value truth because God told us to because truth is God's Word and it gives the same answer to why we should value truth we should value truth because God commands us to value truth so Christianity and various religion can answer both the descriptive question of why we value truth and the normative question of why we should value truth but now we moderns stripped of that Christianity with secular cannot really answer the question of why we should value truth right we don't accept it because God tells us to right and the evolutionary story just tells us the story about why we do value truth if we think of yes survival is the ultimate value then possibly it tells us a story about why we should value truth but I've more to say about that in a moment but at the moment what nature is saying is you saying the the modern value and think of us nearly all of us here will put a high value on truth he says that's just another hanging of that's again us not appreciating the death of God because the value or valued the value that we have in valuing truth is something we inherited from our judeo-christian tradition but now nature says who really appreciate the death of God is to question that tradition and so now we can raise the question why should we value truth and Nietzsche has given us a very big perspective in which to raise this question that is to give a negative answer saying maybe we overvalued truth that is to say ultimately what is important for us is to find life meaningful and the will to truth Nietzsche says destroys the lie mythology and it might even destroy all morality because it leads to a perspective where you see morality there's no factor the matter about morality mount morality is just a human projection onto the world okay also Nietzsche tells a psycho psychological story which you can take orally but I think it's really fascinating but about why a lot of us especially scholars value truth and it's a very very negative story when Nietzsche talks about religion in a genealogy of morals in particular the judeo-christian heritage he paints the following story he basically says these the original Christians were weak people who couldn't act on their drives so they tried to kind of obliterate this world they say this world doesn't matter yes I'm weak and pathetic in this world but that doesn't matter what really matters is the world to come and in the world to come my very weakness the fact that I always turn the other cheek the fact that I repress my hostile impulses that's what will allow me to enter the kingdom of heaven okay so it's like they stand above the world they look down on it and they said well that world doesn't matter it's not the real world the real world is the world to come and for Nietzsche tis kind of a revenge it's like the world has denied my desires so I'm hostile towards the world so I deny its importance and make do with a fantasy world of a world to come we'll each have the same story about the impetus to truth in scholars it has a lot of scholars the fundamental psychology behind them is they stand above the world and if they're secular atheist they don't look at a world to come and say oh that's the real world but they stand above the world and they say what's really important is not acting in the world it's reflecting upon the world so they enshrine reflection is man's highest activity his ultimate activity but in a way and it need to put it very nicely in the third essay the genealogy is what does the scholar demand he demands the passions cruel well that's the same psychology of repression of the drives the thing I talked about last lecture which was I said was a fundamental of fundamental aspect of what I called affective nihilism so Nietzsche says so again he makes the wilted truth he gives it a motivation that is very novel that is he says a lot of our modern scholars will to truth is another defense mechanism against the world that has not answer to their desires so they may respond to the world by saying no my desires my passions they don't really matter what really matters is to be merely reflective okay so he's question the wilted truth in two ways one he makes it look as if it's got a very negative orientation it's an orientation of a negative attitude towards the world and two he said look this wilted truth can be so destructive that it leaves us with a world that is not human anymore because ultimately for us humans what we need is is a meaningful world now I want to backtrack a bit and talk about the usefulness of the truth because remember when I met briefly mentioned the evolutionary account we said oh the other evolutionary can can give us some story about why we do value truth that if having the truth is conducive to survival and why possibly why we should value truth that is if we perceive sub Bible as an ultimate value but in fact in here I'm putting on my head as a philosopher assigned it's not really clear that we need a true theory for instance a lot of people have argued in science what we need in the science is not necessarily a true theory but a serie that makes the right predictions for observable and in fact other people for instance Nancy Cartwright I'm thinking there a bass fan phrasing bass fan president said all we want is not a true scientific theory you want a Serie that makes the right predictions about observable equals a constructive empiricism you're trying to get a view that constructs gives us theoretical construction that makes the right empirical predictions but another point to be made about here about the value of truth is what Nancy Cartwright says the philosopher of science who taught has a book why the laws of physics lie and she basically says look although science involves incredible simplifications that allow for what we might call a tractable theory a tractable theory is a theory that we can compute so it might be that the actual truth is so mathematically in another ways complex that if we had a total truth we had a theory that wouldn't generate any accurate predictions about the observables because it was too complex so I'm just here giving you a perspective to say that even if we care about information that is conducive to survival it's not clear that we have to worship the truth we can worship the truth maybe about the observable but maybe when it comes to the really detailed scientific inquiry we'd much rather of a theory if you gave me a choice between the total supposing God could come down and say here's a total truth but I got to tell you the you it's useless there's so damn complex you'll never be able to compute anything but they say okay here's a series of laws they're actually all of them are false but they lead to the right predictions about the observable but they're incredible simplification I'd go for the tractable theory if I was thinking merely of utility so we even have is a non Nietzsche's perspective but we have non each into perspective even if we're thinking merely of survival and usefulness to question the value of truth okay well a lot of what I've been saying sounds like nature does not value truth at all and now I'm gonna have to shuffle through these pages and find out pages I really need to I want to refer to sometimes it got totally out of order okay it sounds to the way I've been lecturing sounds of this nature does not value truth at all and that is not the story I want to tell rather as again it's a very nuanced story they need to want to say what does the value of truth means that this individuals leaving out of order these became I consider Magica perform to myself okay with regarding the wilted truth the question for nature is never is it good as about as what does the wilted truth mean for this kind of person remember I gave you this version when each a sense is regards to scholars their will to truth could be actually in a version of life right it's a way of stepping back from life in fact he wonderfully described and I don't have a quotation because I mixed up my pages I guess I do have it from genealogy of morals have just jumped at me stick essay 3 section 4 signed to the means of self anesthetize ation are you acquainted with that that sounds really weird to us but if you see the background I'm talking about you can see why Nietzsche might mean that if some people are so obsessed with science what he would call this in shock we have to return to which translated a science but he means scholarliness is the word could think of because science sounds like the hard sciences to us like physics of chemistry but by this and sharp he meant both the human science and so that could be history could be even be philosophy this is he meant by vision of human tall scholarliness so he thinks it's scholarliness at the form of self anesthetize ation are you acquainted with that what he means by that is what I refer to previously that some people use scholarship as a way of stepping back from the world as a way of not being engaged in the world so that all they want to do is reflect on upon it they don't want to be engaged in it so all of that sounds very negative about the wilter truth but that's the world that the truth in the form as presented by certain scholars but Nietzsche is actually often pro the wilter truth and here's a quotation from Antichrist to preface the conditions under which anyone understands me and necessarily understands me he must have an inclination born of strength the question that no one has a courage for the new conscience but truths that have hitherto remain unheard okay so here he's actually in favor of the will to truth right but what he wants to say what his considered view is is that look there are certain people for whom the wilted truth functions is a way of disengaging from the world that is a merely contemplative scholar but he wants to say there are people like himself and Goethe who used their wilted truth to engage the world and he begins his untimely meditation of the second of the untimely meditations on the use of and abuse of history for life history being one of the key vision sharply and sciences he begins by quoting Goethe he says is this quotation from Goethe I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing immediately enlivening my activity okay so his aversion versions of events well these notes are screwed up um his version of a Benza there are certain people in himself as there are certain people such as himself and Goethe who are involved in a pursuit of truth none of the way of stepping back in the world but it's very engaging with the world um there are other places where Nietzsche talks about scholarly conscience and he's actually very much in praise of that I don't have the pages in front of me the quotations in front of me but the general idea there are several passages when Nietzsche talks about having a good conscience towards the truth okay so what does he mean by that okay he thinks that what what what is really important is to face truths where you have something personally personally at stake and he admits that a scholar can have a good effort can have am have a certain kind of conscience but what he means by that is in their limited field of inquiry they're willing to pursue the truth but only in that limited field of inquiry what he thinks about himself and Goethe is that they pursued truth even when they put their most fundamental beliefs then beliefs it gave their lives meaning at risk and it's that kind of conscience that he really values so really thrown by my disordered my notes any I'm so so Nietzsche values the will to truth but he values the will to truth as a means of engaging and he values an intellectual conscience when it's not intellectual conscience of convenient or when it comes to this level of scholarly inquiry I will pursue the truth but in the rest of my life you know I'll just believe what's convenient to believe he likes the wilted truth that put something at risk right so it's actually very there's a lot of ambivalence here and a lot of different angles that he's coming from because if you put the wilted truth pressed too far can put everything at risk it can as I said before evacuate the world of meaning right and each is not in fact in favor of that so how far is nature in favor of truth well Nietzsche was in favor of truth to the extent pursuing the truth to the extent that it can enliven your activity and he does think stronger a person is the more truth they can take on and one of the things he prides himself on is that he's strong enough to have such a strong will to truth that allows him dismantled many myths mainly mists he seems as as currently harmful like dude some of judeo-christian myth right but does that mean he wants to pursue this wilted truth to its endpoint to the extreme I think Nietzsche's ultimate values you should pursue the will to truth till the point that it becomes harmful and that's going to be different for different people like Nietzsche is strong enough to face the evacuation of meaning from the world because he thinks he's strong enough to give meaning to the world he's strong enough to be an author for his own meanings but he thinks the vast majority of us for instance can't bear the idea of the world being evacuated of meaning as having a merely scientific descriptive view of the world and so he thinks for us that will terr truths can be very very harmful so Nietzsche says look wilter truth is it good is it bad it depends upon each individual and then he wants to say to the extent that wilted truth is harmful for an individual that individual needs illusion okay but there is a very big problem for us in modernity right that is the problem of can we consciously get ourselves to believe a leadership believe illusions that is our will tetris has become so strong that we moderns if you like do not permit ourselves any illusions and hence we evacuate life of meaning but then the question is what can we do - re re enchant the world to use a phrase of john McDowell's what is it can we do to give the world meaning if we're set in this mode of always insisting the truth at any price even at the price of every illusion of every mythology ok and this is actually a problem he inherited from the romantic so I mentioned in the previous lecture the romantic thought that what gave the Greeks what made life meaningful to them was that they could have their religion and the religion gave them values gave them a mythology and the idea of the romantics had with all the Greeks they were naive made a named Eve myth ology that is they literally believe these God's existed and that gave meaning to norms to their life it says we moderns we can't we can't naively believe in mythology in fact we're on a mode that insists on truthfulness orbitales over everything and it destroys every possible mythology okay and this becomes a huge huge problem both of the romantics people like nivalis and hölderlin and Schlegel and furniture and also super Bogner in fact I'm sure some of you know that Nietzsche very early on hitch to start the vogner to a certain extent and he was a big supporter of bargainer but actually if you read Wagner's writings which are very difficult to read and I don't advise you to do it the 12 volumes and he's all over the place in very contradictory but violet presents a central idea behind his most famous cycle of operas the Ring cycle and the basic idea is this that we Mons don't have a mythology and since we don't tense we don't have a genuine culture we don't have a sense of unity and the Ring cycle of operas that some twilight of the gods of the Valkyrie and zigfried they are meant to give us a new mythology but there's a huge problem here that is how can such a mythology work right that is if we don't allow ourselves any mythologies sure while you're in the Opera House you might kind of take it on but as soon as you're out of the Opera House you're going to say well that was just an interesting a bit of entertainment and that is not what nature and Varga wanted from ethology they took mythologies are meant to animate all of your life as a religion previously animated all of your life Magnus illusion I don't think it's very happy solution was that he thought that somehow he's me when you saw the four operas of the Ring cycle you went to see them over four consecutive nights and some of them are six hours long the idea was you were so immersed in that that it would work at you below the level of conscience and he said other musical themes that are instantiate certain values and these musical themes will infect you I think it's a pretty fanciful story as I say it turns out and this was Nietzsche's end objection to vogner then it turns out that this is not a reinvigorating mythology that's going to give us a new culture it's actually kind of just entertainment he also thought and bargain eight laps back into Christianity but I'm not going to talk about that now so how did Nietzsche want to solve this problem well as I mentioned in last lecture Nietzsche did not think he was going to provide a mythology for all of us okay he'd given up that aspiration in fact he thought most of us are just bound for what he would call Philistine culture in fact he often called him he talked about um I've got the gem now building still a star educated or I could say educated fools that the proper version of it is educated Philistines it is he thought there were these educated Philistines who have this wilted truth in one circumscribed area but it's not a wilted truth that is willing to daddies willing to risk great values and it's not a willing will to truth that is going to allow them to create a clearing which is what Nietzsche wanted to do to create new values they have a limited will to truth but what Nietzsche thought of with his wilted truth he could actually possibly invigorate others in a certain way but again there's a question is how does he do this how does he inspire them well part of his inspiration as I mentioned last lecture was to destroy previous values right but he also thought more than that he thought and Alexander now must captured this book on nature life of literature he says what Nietzsche does is he provides an inspiration of a figure Nietzsche who created his own values and he was hoping to inspire others to do and as I try to argue in the last lecture he thinks he did we can think of him look back of him retrospectively yes he did inspire many people to create their own values right but in the act of creating values if they've also got if they've got this this hyper extenuate adulter truth that is going to be inimical to creating values so Nietzsche win it when it comes to his own values what is the value of culture what is the value of great individuals in some sense it might be arguably a critical blind spot for Nietzsche Nietzsche doesn't press that question because if he presses that question in the modern sense and demands grounding for everything he might himself find a world evacuated of meaning so for us to Nietzsche it's a personal act again prefiguring the existentialist he gives things meaning and your will to truth has to be seen has to be seen from multiple angles that is it's got to be seen in a very local way see what is the function of the will to truth here the will to truth here can be used positively to destroy his values but to destroy values in order to leave a clearing for creating new values this allow me to make a point I didn't make in last lecture Nietzsche talks a lot I'm not a lot neater scholars talk a lot Nietzsche talks once in his whole text but I think it's self an eejit scholars to make a lot of an of passive and active nihilism Nietzsche sink that story one wants to tell and the scholars do tell based on this one passage but I think it's fair to extrapolate it is that Nietzsche sees himself as an active nihilism that it is someone who destroys previous values in order to create a clearing to create new values it's still an engagement with the world you create you you destroy values in order to have a regent with the world by projecting new values coloring the world in a different way to use that metaphor but the passive nihilist is someone who destroys values with no positive project involved just out of resentment towards the world and that is a kind of nihilism nature rejects so will the truth and even even nail them have both positive and negative aspects so whenever teacher is judging the wilter truth he's looking at particular individuals in his own case and versus case he sees their will to truth as not a mere destructiveness but as a way of engaging with the world a way of questioning values so that they then they could create their own values okay with us moderns he sees our will to truth ultimately as leading to to a discoloration of the world to an evacuation of meaning to a destruction of all myth and he sees that as a very negative force okay I want to talk a bit now about about how illusions can work okay this is again presenting this is not Nietzsche's point in particular but at the point that Jame to the way nature puts it in an everyday sense we can see illusions is very very important like like and I'm always amazed at my colleagues ability to think of their work is really really important I mean unfortunately I can't get involved in that illusions too much but you can see it's really really helpful right I mean part of my problem is I weigh myself against nature you know that's a really losing proposition because that guy's a creative genius and I'm just a kind of a fairly good humdrum nature scholar right but it really helps to have the illusion that one's work is really important it invigorates you it gets you more involved in your projects okay so those kind of illusion in an obvious sense are really really helpful but also think about think about a sportsman it turns out that most really prime sportsmen have incredible overinflation of their abilities but that overinflation of abilities that illusion helps them perform better and to give a last case that it often given an epistemology classes allegedly there are statistical evidence for the claim that if you are trapped behind enemy lines let's say this was in the Second World War and the Vietnam War you had it let's say in and as 80% chance of being captured right but if you believe you know I think of and I'm an American citizen so I can say this without sounding anti-american if you're extremely American gung-ho you say I'm the guys going to survive that increases your chances of being that that means your chances of being captured before they were 80% now they go down to 65% let's say I'm pulling these numbers out of the air so on the basis of the evidence that if you're thinking merely epistemically that is being sensitive to the evidence you'd still think on the balance of probabilities I'm going to be captured but if you can get yourself over that bully through illusion until yourself oh no I'm not going to be captured it has a pragmatic effect of lessening your chance of being captured so you can see why it's in your best interest I'm just giving you these cases where in everyday life and in exceptional cases it helps to have illusion illusions are necessary often to animate our activity in fact Nietzsche thinks if we strip ourselves of illusion we strip ourselves of nearly every impetus towards genuine and creative activity so nature is giving us this perspective where as I say it's a mixed perspective you say the trouble is we have weave the religious aspect turns truth into an ultimate unviable value that is it's an extreme value that trumps everything everything has to be sacrificed towards the truth initially because it was true since God's Word at least the religious people had a normative underpinning of why they valued truth we moderns have given up on that underpinning but we still treat truth as an enviable overarching ultimate value okay the story I want to tell is Nietzsche see truths as a value but it's one of a competing set of values so the pathology that we've inherited from the judeo-christian tradition in the West is this an extreme overvaluation of truth Nietzsche says yes value truth but realize there are other values and that's why he can raise this question what is the value of truth he sees the truth exactly basically he sees it as having instrumental value he says look the truth can be useful because it can strip illusions right it can strip us of the illusion of Christianity which is what is objection to Christianity it's very easy to think oh his objection to Christianity is that it's illusion but he says in the Antichrist he said Christianity could be a thousand times falsi a thousand times Jupiter I'm kind of misquoting here and still we wouldn't raise a finger against it what I hold against Christianity is that it wants to the strong okay so it's very easy to think Nietzsche is against illusion but he asks somewhere else in the Antichrist he says it's not I think it's section 36 he said it's not that allies hold it is to what end a lie is told is this a lie is this a myth that is told in order to invigorate life or is this a mist that is told in order to slander life okay so Nietzsche is not against the will to truth but he's against the wilted truth in its pathological foundation pathological manifestations okay so in each himself thinks his own will to truth is he has value he values truth but he hasn't done this thing that we moderns have done that his fetishized truth in this pathological way and turned it into a value to which everything must be smashed be sacrificed including all mythologies Sony Nietzsche still has room for truth right and remember we started with those two questions why do we value truth we'll need you rather than telling the evolutionary story and I don't think he has to reject the evolutionary story the evolutionary story tells us why do we value truth we value truth because basically have survival utility believing falsehoods like arsenic nourishes and not conducive to survival I think need to come by that story but he also wants to tell a more nuanced historical story that we have certain religious values and they enshrined the value of truth so he supplements the evolutionary story with a historical story about the genesis of this value in in in our cultures but he also has an answer to why we should value truth we should value true and why we shouldn't value truth we should value truth in the way that often valuing truth is a way a means of destroying certain mythologies that are harmful to us like he thinks judeo-christian values have now become largely harmful at least harmful to the great creative individuals but he also tells us a story about why we should limit our value of truth we should limit our value of truth because the will to truth can be taken to such an extreme that it destroys everything that gives value and meaning to life ok so truth remains of values for nature and when he rejects or seems to reject truth he's asking two questions there are two aspects he says first of all I'm totally suspicious of truth as an absolutely overriding value that strikes me as a pathology and I'm also worried about the meaning of the will to truths in certain people in certain people this wilted truth is just a manifestation not of an engagement with life but as an attempt to step back of life and be purely reflective and that is also indicative of a certain kind of pathology since Nietzsche have a will to truth himself and a will to truth he values but because he sees it as an engagement of life with he wants to diagnose a lot of us as having a wilted truth that is in something fundamentally Amim in in amico to life okay at that point I'll finish okay I'll open the floor to questions you're crystal I wanted to ask you about this and was very interesting brave the world to truth that users and its relationship to his validation of science so I'm going to say the world of truth it it had some psychological structure to it right it sounds like a striving the truth that will stop at nothing until it gets to the absolute truth or something like that and so I wonder why it is and and and I can see that in the late work he he extolled for example Tara's just truthfulness simply says and truthfulness is another you describe to just the highest virtue in his case and so he had this positive the validation of truthfulness and he has a sort of as you just got this at a selective valorise ation of of truthfulness in the end they wonder why in the case of science he continues to sound so negative about the world to true given that so I mean endures with a free spirit period of human all too human and a break he has this this picture of science where he tries to sort of pare it down and say what science should be is this modest inquiry after just kind of smaller truths that we can get hold of rather than disking sense of theology conception of absolute tree they wonder it and I wonder why he doesn't in the late work like genealogy say something like the problem with science as it tries to get at this an inflated absolute ideological conception of truth whereas what science should see is an attempt to get at these more modest truths which as you know he wouldn't have to painted them in such a negative way and also science seems an arena where it seems it would seem strange to say we should be truthful but in a selective way given the sciences to thrive on the idea that pursuing you know that the pursuit of truth is itself something which will lead to further discovery other will need to I'm doing on the right track it's a difficult question remember the genealogy of morals in section 3 he talks about a counter ideal right and he says science does not provide a counter ideal we've seen one reason why because science deals with what's descriptive not what's prescriptive and the values about what should be not what is right but it's more than that it's not just that it doesn't provide a counter ideal and neat nature the people who need to really admire the people who can manufacture ideals like Socrates manufactured the ideal the idea that reason is everything that we should be pure reason it and suppress our effective emotive side but science can't create new values right and so he admires those even if they have negative values that he thinks in the end or ultimately negative he admires the ability to create values and that's what he aspires to me someone who creates new values science can't do that but it's also that signs what he seems to want to claim and I hope this is the answer to you is science tacitly assumes values which it's inherited right because he thinks science science excuse truth and part of the reason why we care about truth he says is because it is part of it is what he called as you know the Socratic lie the Socratic lie is that suffering to be ameliorated through knowledge right and your people are it's central to the Enlightenment its Descartes thought that if we pursue science to its end will actually solve all prolonged problems even the problem of death will overcome the problem of death turns out is not completely wrong about that if you know some of the science of genetics they've actually found out what the physical basis of aging is but I won't go into that now the philosophy of science lecture I don't really think they cuts right there's something to what he says anyhow so the idea is that Nietzsche thinks look in our incredible estimation of truth that is enshrined in our sight in science it also comes with a certain kind of evaluative commitment at least tacit valued commitments that our society has and one of those commitments is to that knowledge is a way of ameliorating the human condition we have technological improvements through signs that can lessen if not limit suffering right but that shows an evaluative evaluative commitments that nature is deeply suspicious of because that is what I remember I talked about the morality of compassion last lecture that the morality of compassion treats the fundamental problem of society as the problem of suffering and then the idea dull as Socrates thought and as Descartes thought science through its knowledge will ameliorate suffering but that tacitly assumed this importance of suffering and Nietzsche's take on suffering is very very complicated it's not a dispro suffering but if you have this morality of compassion you're in this mindset where you say everything should be geared towards lessening suffering and one of the great not the only usefulness there is pure inquiry but you never know where pure inquiry is going to lead but one of the great things about science is it gives us technological innovation that help us ameliorate suffering but Nietzsche's view is as I said not that suffering is a good thing he says look the Biel and suffering shouldn't be the only vector of measurement of value another vector of measurement of value is culture and great individual and geniuses and then you see suffering in a different line because then you say look great individual great geniuses are people who aspire to some very difficult goals they're the ones who take on great risks and if you take on great risks you're going to have a life a lot of which involves failure and suffering so they say Nietzsche's interstate or suffering per se we have this fetishized extreme view that what he thinks is a pathology of the elimination of suffering but suffering he thinks is necessary for great project for great ambition and hence great individuals the individuals who move move along society little culture I should say not society it one more piece I am I want to put on the board because it's relevant who I'm science-y he sees the will to truth of science something to in in a negative aspect that is for Nietzsche nietzsche thinks he thinks more like aristotle about what happiness is happy there are two versions of happiness and we moderns are very confused about it one version of happiness is happiness is like Bentham thought it's a kind of a feeling in the stomach I guess if I didn't want to be so de riser II about other states contentment feeling good about oneself but there's another notion of happiness which was Aristotle he died Mamiya which is if you like happiness is realizing your talents and that's what Nietzsche thought right and he thinks science modern science is a manifestation of a sense of happiness of mere heard contentment the way he deriding li put it so he's got this counter notion of happiness where happiness is actually realizing all your talents but realizing your talents as I say take fun involve taking on challenges and that involves suffering so it's a long answer to your point but your point is not as a matter of necessary fact but as a matter of contingent fact he thinks the wilted truth inside is is also tied up with our modern obsession with amelioration of suffering also tiding also with democratic values and all of this he says is pointed towards heard happiness and it's really when he's despising the will of science he's despised the wilted truth of science he's it's part of his negative reaction to heard happiness but as you know in certain sections he says scholars are all very useful in their own right they are not ends in themselves and he often admires scholars will to truth but it's when it combined with a whole set of a value of commitments like these normative commitments to the ultimate aim of society is heard happiness that is what I think he's really reacting but I think as you're pointing out heap often over sells the case but it's because he doesn't think it's true it's not necessary it's not necessary part of the will to the truth of science but contingent is as deep as it gets and as a matter of fact these values come in clusters and the value that we give to truth and science and objectivity is often tied with these hood values of ordinary happiness sorry for the long answer now anyone will be scared to ask the question at the back I just asked MIT mythology and the truth in myth mythology and what might be that each would think about the truth in mythology being the metaphors not necessarily the actual stories themselves being a reflectional of truth but that there's metaphorical treatment I think that that's a really really big question and it's it's for this I'm yeah putting it in politely I think the way Nietzsche looks at religions is he says all that God's story that's just a story we tell the idiots basically but basically there's a set of normative valued of commitments we have and people some people need to be able to pin it on an authority figure so we dream up God but what's what's essential what's essential to religion is those evaluative commitments right um and the metaphysical story about the father figure in the sky is neither here nor there right but he still has to right base a question of how we modern can find our own normative commitments in when we've denied ourselves all such stories and it's even worse if we buy into that extra story that says actually moral statements if we're I'm super scientist Okello that philosopher Quine and we say oh all moral values are just a projection onto the world moralities and out there okay so nietzsche has this huge story to tell and then he says in some sense you have to have the strengths of will to project your own values without giving an underlying story about this is God's voice you have to say this is my voice right but for us moderns he thinks that that is extremely difficult that's why says let them as I mentioned last time let the ideas of the third rule in the hood most of us are not strong enough okay so yes to your point that um what he cares about an infamous ologies and not the metaphysics of it he cares about the evaluative structure behind these mythologies but what he does acknowledge is that most of us remember I was condescending he said he sees it most he sees the God story is a story you retail to idiot then something's rule those idiots because nearly all of us need some such stories we don't have the strength of will that Nietzsche heard Nietzsche says yes these are my values but that does not not me projecting them the rest of us mere mortals so to speak as soon as we tell ourselves these values are just merely a predict projection we have a lot of trouble keeping to those values so it's a big modern predicament that traces us that nature is exposed any further questions yeah and I remember kind of hard section with the research students at work that I was surprised about that many of them and confess that and they would like to be analyzed as if objective self-knowledge she would somehow make them be a happy person and I find this like and you also mention like in the beginning of the talk that's only true things that there are on psychological truths so this as if this somehow enhances this mode immense belief in knowledge or any seeking psychological truth and thinking that these shoes will make them have your person Nietzsche is actually again ambiguous on this question no not advocates in the Wrightwood Nietzsche says you have to answer individual to individual and Freud wonderfully said about Nietzsche no one was more honest about themselves I don't know if that's true but it's an interesting point that need to Freud famously basic interpretation of dreamin of self analysis obviously a lot of Nietzsche's work is and he says it's a lot of my work is frankly autobiographical I seem to be talking about Socrates in the way I'm talking about myself and so we can say that Nietzsche was someone who looked at a lot of truths about himself but I think it's attitude is exactly the attitude I mentioned before where is a psychological inquiry good a psychological a self psychological inquiry can be good to the point that it in live interactivity but to the point that it can can become destructive it's it's no good so Nietzsche thought he's a person who's strong enough to realize a certain set of facts psychological truths about himself and he does think for a lot of us psychological truths are helpful because as he say he says he's trying to get it there are such truth and he seems to want to expose them but that's because he thinks a lot of us have been crippled by Christianity right and to expose the psychological to expose the psychological mechanisms behind our subscription to Christian morality he hopes will at least free some of us right so the story is always going to be in an individual and individual level and there's a famous story about Nietzsche being I think it was again in SILS Maria and the anger Dean and Switzerland he was at some Pensione and two old ladies who were I think quite Catholic came up to him and said oh yeah you're the famous scholar Friedrich Nietzsche which of my can you give us some reading list can you give us some books we might read and Nietzsche recalls in horror and says no no you should keep away from my works you know I don't think you'd like them at all and way to extrapolate the thought is to say these people are not made for his books and he was always wondering does he have readers so the idea is maybe these two old ladies hearing him rayul against religion would not be effective for them I don't mean effective in that they wouldn't believe it but it could unroot them from their values in a merely negative way leave them nihilistic if you like okay so to what extent one should know the objective truth about oneself to the extent that it invigorates one activities to the extent that it can reorient one to one extent what would what would one want self ignorance because itself would that ignorant is necessary for one to genuinely engage in life this will allow me aside about is am a theory called depressive realism take this with a grain of salt because I've been reading the psychological principal psychology of not much of a science to begin with but also even the psychologists and usual disagree with themselves but the claim is um that there is a group of people a particular group of depressives and they tend to be more realistic than other people so the idea is you are a bunch of people non depressives about what others think about them and then non depressives give rather inaccurate opinions rather inflated opinions about how other sees them then you are a depressive people what others see about them what others view about them and they turn out to give really accurate views so you get the idea I don't I'm not sure whether it's a realism Crick is allegedly causing the depression or the depression causing the realism but you can see that there again having accurate views could be inimical to the other activities because since depressives are obviously not going to be very active people and maybe withdrawn from the world and it could be their realism is one of the things that gets them to be withdrawn from the world so yes psychological truths Nietzsche thinks he could face a lot of psychology truths but then he but it would have to be a case by case study for Nietzsche should you be facing these psychological truths well if you're strong enough to bear them and be invigorated in your activity yes if these psychological truths will destroy you and make you passive towards the world then their truths you shouldn't face yeah please shai yeah Satori is kind of the rationales in the last lecture but just in some places nature sounds very individualist lovely kind of existentialist wilderness is about me and my value sorry let me in my values and creating my own values then he says about forming a new culture and you Zuma bleah shared mythologies and just see a kind of tension there right and a shared mythology is a really interesting point the romantic thought what gave the culture unity and what gave an individual unity was that they have a shared mythology right and nature seems in favor of mythologies to a certain extent like he's got the mythology the cult of the genius and the great individual who moves culture and that's a certain kind of mythology and actually interestingly beyond sorry inverse of tragedy and there's a certain section where he actually admits that he himself is retailing a mythology the mythology of the genius because he says every every civilization if a culture needs a mythology but the question is is it going to be a shared mythology okay now the romantic thought you needed a shared mythology today thought the Greeks had it with their pantheon of Greek gods and hölderlin is one way to read Holland's most famous work is Hyperion and it's at a temple it can be read as an attempt to create a new mythology which is meant to be generally shared to a certain extent and you can read that same about Wagner's Ring cycle it was meant to be the engine of German renewal and possibly European your renewal possibly a shared mythology that hard to expect that everyone's really going to literally believe in Siegfried I mentioned this problem okay so one way to read the earth Lystra is oh a hölderlin didn't work a bog didn't work here is my work and it reads like a you know thus spake Zarathustra it's written in this mock biblical style mock religious style and it seems to be creating creating a new mythology and it's interesting as he was um as he was finishing um darreth Ostra he got news of bargainers death and he wrote into a letter to a friend after all to a great extent I have become Wagner there so it might be or what he's trying to do is get retail with Zarathustra whole mythology I don't think that's right about nature I think Nietzsche thought the idea of a shared mythology is highly unlikely unless it's at this very general myth level the mythology of culture but even that's not shared because he thought the rabble that is he thought the the herd is it going to share that mythology of culture right what he so what he does is all he does is he hopes that certain individuals will be inspired inspired to create their own values inspired to create their own mythology but the idea of a shared mythology I think Nietzsche thinks that boat of sail I think he thinks with modernism with with the modern mind and it's hypercritical mentality yeah possibility of us having genuinely shared values not just in the herd but even among the geniuses and that's why their authority said here is my way whereas yours is you have to find those values that can invigorate your life and that you can put all your your drives and energy towards but I think he's right largely become skeptical of the idea of a genuinely shared mythology personal mythologies are all that slow just an idea of the shed mythology what about sort of about the ecology movement until the Greenpeace and although that seems to be a sort of shared mythology I'm not saying I'm not doing it down but it's just sort of it's a faith because people believe in it it's not necessarily a world based not really about truth or science but because it could be but it could be like the face of of now right yeah well there are there the mythology of Mother Earth yeah there aren't there are new mythology um god ecology in nature very hard one again I think it's going to be a piecemeal story for nature nature would have to um um look at what he thinks is the psychology behind behind that mythology and but personally you're making two point one is what is the value of that mythology but also you making the point that some mythologies are still available to us right yeah and I've made a story whereby he sinks um he thinks mythologies are by and large not available to us so there is a point to be made there I guess Nietzsche's thought is that for hypercritical people like himself are mythologies are not available I think he'd allow that there are mythologies like the hood has a lot of mythologies the hood has the mythology of fraternity equality you know French Revolution alleged values that's still a mythology so when I say that you think Smith's ologies aren't available to us he wanted to say that mythologies there are a sizeable subgroup of us he often I think he thinks of the elite who make it because of their strong will to truth destroy all mythologies but he also wanted to say that even among the most intelligent they can have that not a completely clean intellectual conscience that is they question in one area and destroy mythologies in one area but leave it in another right and again Nietzsche's not against it you just have to have a look at the value of that particular mythology I think the ecology movement in as much as it still aligned with humanist values would be something Nietzsche question because Nietzsche sees those humanist values as largely democratic values he thinks those are really the enshrinement of the lowest common denominator but let me take from your point it's a very good point that it just shows you that there always are mythologies there and there always are values there so let me say need to tell the a complex story where he says we have a will to truth that wants to destroy all sorry its general its general trajectories to destroy our mythologies but then he says we don't always have a good intellectual conscience a good intellectual conscience is where the Wills truth probes everywhere right but most of us have blind spots okay so we can tell ourselves all there is no god but earth is ultimately valuable or whatever an ecologist might tell themselves and that will be their blind spots and what Nietzsche said about the interesting thing about Goethe and I is we we have the smallest blind spot possible that is we really do question every mythology's I think he's quite willing to concede your point that for most of people the intellectual conscience is quite limited it destroys some month apologies but it leaves others intact but he does think that the mythology's at a left impact are not very not generally powerful ones but those mythologies can be powerful with a small subgroup in which they operate you know by by saying that truth should kind of go all the way where it goes becomes destructive he seems to be giving like a normative view of truth I won't be the problem with a truth as descriptive that includes the illusions that we have and you know it would still be more marvellous than the illusion he's not giving a serie of truth um so he's not giving a normative theory of what truth is I mean I don't think he had a theory of what truth is I mean if I describe my mother a theory of truth I'd say you know that kind of trivial way she thinks it gets the world right when she says Kenny's in London in some sense it's a nascent implicit correspondence theory of truth I don't really think one other the correspondence theory of truth I don't think neech adds but it's a natural way to fill out their everyday occurrences about this utterances about this being true so and I think each of any theory of truth so it's not a normative theory of what truth is if you like Nietzsche's no serie of truth but it's it's a normative account of the value of truth right and of course how that normative account goes depends upon what your values are and it's because Nietzsche has certain values himself which if you like his ultimate values of things like culture and great individuals that he can give a negative assessment of certain manifestations of the valuing of truth right so where the valuing of truth is inimical to these other values I'm suspicious and skeptical about that we'll two truths right but where the wilter truths enhances those other values and in favor of it so it's not a bit not a normative theory of what truth is it's a normative theory about the value of truth but it is structured from his normative standpoint and his normative standpoint when ever remember I said look Schopenhauer can't be and can't have disorientation because disorientation says there are no ultimate values but Schopenhauer says the world should not be to say the world should not be you've got having a valued of perspective the value of perspective is this extreme valorisation of pleasure over suffering right well when Nietzsche gives a negative account of the will to truth he must have it from his own valued of perspective right which is I think your point so he has normative commitments it's not a normative theory of what truth is but it's because of his normative commitments that he can have a negative value of truth because his ultimate commitment might be something like cultural great individuals and he sees a certain over overburdening will to truth as inimical to that he said to that extent we should limit the will to truth Chris at the back so does he think that these same Rochon commitments they have are they is true they are really bad Bible them well his major voice say he's got no definite meta ethics I think it's anachronistic to pin up on him some people said he's a fictionalised about values the values are just fiction we kind of convinced ourselves in while we're playing the game of valuing or his projective Asst I think his major voice is to say yo values are not out there in the world so um so your point is is it true that great individuals are valuable or is it true that culture is a highest value right um how would be to react to that it's very difficult to say but I presume the story is going to say is what dareth Auster says these are my values where are yours so he would say this is an act of my commitment this is what having those values invigorates my life now in fact it you'll notice that's an evasion of the question and I haven't answered your question is it true that culture is valuable right so I think nature would do exactly that I think he would want to evade the question what I think but I think he may have enough philosophical commitments out there to end up being fourth if you were to go with the math philosophical commitment is to say that is just another projection that is my projection which implies it's not true it's not descriptively true so if he was to follow his philosophical commitment I think he'd have to step back and say literally that we should value culture is not true but I don't think that would be his mode of operation because he thinks of psychologically he said no he would say exactly what their authority these are my values where are yours yeah what is culture oh my god thousand dollar question oh I can answer what is unity with my talk of sublimation and what is culture um okay um football doesn't count as culture um but okay so Nietzsche is coming from this very elitist perspective and it's what today we would call high culture and and really I think Nietzsche's not gonna give a definition of culture but it's really it's like Aristotle and ethics you can't educate people to see what is good to exact from you can't define what is good but those suitably educated know it when they see it that is exactly Nietzsche's view of culture there is those of us who are suitably educated it may be a very small elite it may be him good to Beethoven water and we know it when we see it yeah it's like a gurbles famous comment gurbles are Goering um I always make this joke but now I forgotten it oh yeah yeah when people mentioned when people mention culture I reach for my gun and it was Karl Kraus or someone and says when people mentioned guns I reach for my culture and Obama could say that today I guess any idea this is a vexing question but I don't think each against any semblance of a definition of what culture is but he gives us example he says the Greeks have a high culture we Germans now at the moment have a Philistine culture but one thing I will say okay he thinks you know the truly cultured recognize it when they see it but one thing he means about culture is the culture is meant to culture if you like is a new religion for these um for the is modernist like nature and also for the romantics but what they wanted of culture with culture was meant to give meaning to life see that is the objection to vogner in the end for nature yes it's all that vogner back sided into christianity but the real objection was he went to Beirut when the original sester wall came was it 1876 I'll take a guess and he saw what he called all these cultural Philistine that is these people indulge in culture merely for entertainment it's something we do on the weekend some such but he had an idea of culture very much as I say like a religion culture is something that's meant to animate all of you alive like religion not in its modern manifestations when there are Sunday Christians or whatever Saturday Christians or whatever but when religion actually involves a whole set of normative practices that involved all of all of one's life as it still does for a lot of people who are devout Muslims you can see that their religion isn't just something they do on the weekend it can infuse all of their life right here the idea of a culture somehow giving meaning to all of one's life is as enlivening all one's activity but he didn't give a definition of it that's just a subsequent point I want to make the culture is meant to be something deeply meaningful providing a meaning not merely an entertainment like liking Indian food is not a part of culture right risks deeply involved in the Indian food world in a way that gives meaning to all of your life but what actually culture is is he obviously men high culture and that was to be decided by the doyen the leaders of high culture no definition of it just started after outside so remembering the way he always talks about those people who can list that are true geniuses and the way who says that an interesting part of the slave mentality is the way they are complex would he would he be or edit out an opinion in your opinion would he be able to say that science it asks a search for knowledge it's something that makes the herd or the active community something interesting even though their search for truth may be yeah I'm not truly interested in no I think you're right and to say he does say scholars are all useful you know in their own way but they're not they are they're merely a means to an end they're not ends in themselves he does think the world of truth and he does think science has done a lot of good in a way like science has helped destroy certain mythologies that he thought were harmful like the Christian myth of judeo-christian mythology um it's it's just people he never mentions scientists no no that's true in his list of great people aren't scientists and it's because I think he thinks they don't he thinks most people who practice science don't have what he calls an intellectual conscience there's that is willing to face truth in any domain at any price right um he says what they've got is they bore away at one little area remember I said cultures meant to inform all of your life well that's what he thinks of scholars he thinks scholars do their little work they bore away at it and he kind of admires their incredible wilter truth in that area but he says but it doesn't inform the rest of their life and he wants he wants that us to have areas of commitment deep commitment that give meaning to all of our life not just to eight hours a day when I'm in my nine-to-five job or whatever one last question yeah yeah yeah so it's kind of push this point again it was like really passionate on on this thing about culture and how its taught I mean it seems to me that if culture and she's find it early it's gonna be something really radically individual and you said mythologies had to be kind of personal I don't really how it could be - well mythologies can't be taught we have to do personal mythology culture is not individual culture Nietzsche thinks of culture since there are these great geniuses and they know it and they see it he knew you know Goethe was a great move culture and people of the geniuses today the people that count but he often talks about the peaks and the valleys very condescendingly world in the valleys and he and his lot kinder in the peak they know that he's a mover of culture so culture is not individual mythologies I think mine buy from us models will be largely individual but he still thinks of culture is something that you know the cognoscente been recognizing it in each other and on that happy note let's call it a quick and thanks very much for coming appreciate it

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 105,754

Rating: 4.8215613 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, Continental Philosophy, Relativism, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Truth, Skepticism, Scepticism, Perspecivism, Ethics, Value Theory, Value of Truth, Aesthetics, Moral Psychology, Death of God, Atheism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Subconscious, Unconscious, Freud, Drives, Will to Truth, Will to Power, Postmodern, Absolute Truth, History of Philosophy, German Philosophy, Genealogy of Morality, Perspectivism, Envy, Nietzsche on Envy, Meaningless, Moral Relativism

Id: sWBIFavfCtM

Length: 81min 49sec (4909 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2015