We are told that falseness is the state of being not true, which in itself does not necessarily constitute a lie, and that untruth is the gentleman’s euphemism for lie. A lie, on the other hand, is distinguished from other forms of falsehood by its deliberate effort to deceive. The last distinction would be perfectly convincing, if we had sufficient tools to establish whether such deliberate effort is present or not, which is, of course, not at all possible in the majority of situations that matter, especially a priori. For this reason, we shall refrain from such subjective and often judgmental calls and, to simplify things, call anything that does not rise to the level of truth by the name of a lie. And, most certainly, we shall confine ourselves to the discussion of the truths with a small “t,” as opposed to the transcendent theological Absolute Truth, the latter belonging to a different, very limited type of conversation, which we shall engage ourselves with only in appropriate for it places.
Now, what does Nietzsche mean by ‘untruth’? Is it the same thing that I call the truth of a created fiction? If so, we have a clash here, not of opposing values, but of opposing judgments. What he calls untruth can be the honest truth to me, as long as its domain (the set of contexts, in which Nietzsche’s untruth can function as a truth) is clearly delineated.
What does he mean by “constant falsification of the world by means of numbers”? Does it have something to do with what I call the created fiction of geometry (see it), where two mutually contradicting statements can coexist in harmony and non-aggression, and be both acceptable as truths, for as long as they are wholly confined to the respective worlds of their creators?!
On the other hand, his reference to the Kantian a prioris does not seem to go far enough. In my judgment, Kant is in his right to insist that the assertion that, say, everything has a cause, is a ‘synthetic judgment a priori’ (known to be true not by experience, and not by definition) can stand despite its seeming absurdity, as long as Kant can make us believe that his created fiction has value, and such absurdities are legitimate citizens in his created reality. By the way, that everything has a cause is not a truth, but a truism, because we can assume that wherever things appear totally random and causeless, chance is the name of the cause, ergo causelessness per se now becomes a cause, quod erat demonstrandum! But the biggest difficulty is, of course, Kant’s “and not by definition” caveat. ‘Fiat Lux,’ the Creation command, was a form of definition. Harry Potter’s ‘real life’ is not spawned by natural conception, but by the creative Fiat, or definition, of his author. The argument, then, can certainly be made that in a created world, where everything has come into existence by definition, that creative definition may be called primary, whereas secondary definitions may or may not exist inside that world, and, incidentally, Kant’s ‘not by definition’ has this secondary definition in mind. Having said that, the question of utility is in order. Who needs these synthetic judgments a priori anyway, and how can Kant turn them into an “alternative geometry,” or something aesthetic, or otherwise valuable? Remember that without an intrinsic value creation has no merit!
Incidentally, what is our world, if not an example of created fiction? The reality of God, by every religious and philosophical account, is so different from the nature of the Universe He has created, that, in relation to Him, our world is nothing but a work of fiction, and all the truths of our world are bound to it by time and place, and by other limiting properties, or attributes. That is why it is so difficult for us to comprehend the meaning of the Absolute: because it is out of this world, and where our truth does not hold and His truth is as accessible to us as Ms. Rowling’s to Harry Potter. (Of the many interesting questions raised by such an approach, one of the most exciting ones is the extent of freedom which a creator can be allowed within his own domain. Is his fiat ‘the truth,’ or are there exceptions? I am sure that some obvious cases of ‘creative’ inconsistency, such as the mixing up of the names of personages, need not even concern us, being nothing but signs of human imperfection, which must be corrected as soon as the author becomes aware of them. It must be said, however, that without such corrections of the inconsistencies, the latter will have to bear the indignity of being called “lies.”)
In concluding this entry, I have to admit that emotionally I am quite eager to wholeheartedly agree with Nietzsche’s pessimism of fiat veritas, pereat vita, which I subsequently tried to alleviate by the recourse to yet another Nietzschean aphorism about ‘hope’ being a life-sustaining lie. But a more optimistic view is also possible, my view that hope can be differently represented, not as a lie of this world, but as a truth of the microcosm of its creator, a blessed ‘fiction,’ to be more specific. Only a fool will argue that the pancake-shaped island floating in the air, as described in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, is a lie, because such islands do not exist in “the real world.” I further argue that Swift’s world is just as real, and even truer than ours (as long as we do not confuse them together). By the same token, hope is a truth of our personal world, our “created fiction,” so to speak. And it is in this sense that we may finally breathe a sigh of relief, and agree with this entry’s title’s premise of “in vita veritas,” as long as we make it clear that we are talking about a person’s creative life producing a created life, where everything, including hope, is true by definition.
(By the way, as the reader may already have long surmised, the title of this entry is a play on the Greek/Latin dictum ‘in vino veritas,’ originating with the ancient Greek poet Alcaeus, and translated into its familiar Latin form by Pliny the Elder.)
Now, what does Nietzsche mean by ‘untruth’? Is it the same thing that I call the truth of a created fiction? If so, we have a clash here, not of opposing values, but of opposing judgments. What he calls untruth can be the honest truth to me, as long as its domain (the set of contexts, in which Nietzsche’s untruth can function as a truth) is clearly delineated.
What does he mean by “constant falsification of the world by means of numbers”? Does it have something to do with what I call the created fiction of geometry (see it), where two mutually contradicting statements can coexist in harmony and non-aggression, and be both acceptable as truths, for as long as they are wholly confined to the respective worlds of their creators?!
On the other hand, his reference to the Kantian a prioris does not seem to go far enough. In my judgment, Kant is in his right to insist that the assertion that, say, everything has a cause, is a ‘synthetic judgment a priori’ (known to be true not by experience, and not by definition) can stand despite its seeming absurdity, as long as Kant can make us believe that his created fiction has value, and such absurdities are legitimate citizens in his created reality. By the way, that everything has a cause is not a truth, but a truism, because we can assume that wherever things appear totally random and causeless, chance is the name of the cause, ergo causelessness per se now becomes a cause, quod erat demonstrandum! But the biggest difficulty is, of course, Kant’s “and not by definition” caveat. ‘Fiat Lux,’ the Creation command, was a form of definition. Harry Potter’s ‘real life’ is not spawned by natural conception, but by the creative Fiat, or definition, of his author. The argument, then, can certainly be made that in a created world, where everything has come into existence by definition, that creative definition may be called primary, whereas secondary definitions may or may not exist inside that world, and, incidentally, Kant’s ‘not by definition’ has this secondary definition in mind. Having said that, the question of utility is in order. Who needs these synthetic judgments a priori anyway, and how can Kant turn them into an “alternative geometry,” or something aesthetic, or otherwise valuable? Remember that without an intrinsic value creation has no merit!
Incidentally, what is our world, if not an example of created fiction? The reality of God, by every religious and philosophical account, is so different from the nature of the Universe He has created, that, in relation to Him, our world is nothing but a work of fiction, and all the truths of our world are bound to it by time and place, and by other limiting properties, or attributes. That is why it is so difficult for us to comprehend the meaning of the Absolute: because it is out of this world, and where our truth does not hold and His truth is as accessible to us as Ms. Rowling’s to Harry Potter. (Of the many interesting questions raised by such an approach, one of the most exciting ones is the extent of freedom which a creator can be allowed within his own domain. Is his fiat ‘the truth,’ or are there exceptions? I am sure that some obvious cases of ‘creative’ inconsistency, such as the mixing up of the names of personages, need not even concern us, being nothing but signs of human imperfection, which must be corrected as soon as the author becomes aware of them. It must be said, however, that without such corrections of the inconsistencies, the latter will have to bear the indignity of being called “lies.”)
In concluding this entry, I have to admit that emotionally I am quite eager to wholeheartedly agree with Nietzsche’s pessimism of fiat veritas, pereat vita, which I subsequently tried to alleviate by the recourse to yet another Nietzschean aphorism about ‘hope’ being a life-sustaining lie. But a more optimistic view is also possible, my view that hope can be differently represented, not as a lie of this world, but as a truth of the microcosm of its creator, a blessed ‘fiction,’ to be more specific. Only a fool will argue that the pancake-shaped island floating in the air, as described in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, is a lie, because such islands do not exist in “the real world.” I further argue that Swift’s world is just as real, and even truer than ours (as long as we do not confuse them together). By the same token, hope is a truth of our personal world, our “created fiction,” so to speak. And it is in this sense that we may finally breathe a sigh of relief, and agree with this entry’s title’s premise of “in vita veritas,” as long as we make it clear that we are talking about a person’s creative life producing a created life, where everything, including hope, is true by definition.
(By the way, as the reader may already have long surmised, the title of this entry is a play on the Greek/Latin dictum ‘in vino veritas,’ originating with the ancient Greek poet Alcaeus, and translated into its familiar Latin form by Pliny the Elder.)
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