On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Abstract

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. _One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world's axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.

Historical Small Events and the Eclipse ofUtopia: Perspectives on Path Dependence in Human Thought

“…The theory of path dependence maintains that we live with, in Nietzsche's words, 'illusions which we have forgotten are illusions … metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, [and] coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal no longer as coins' (Nietzsche 2005). Path dependence offers a richer and 'gayer' scientific conversation, à la Nietzsche, about our dissatisfaction with many social institutions and such metaphors.…”

Between Concept and Metaphor: Reviewing Nietzsche′s Doctrine of Truth

“…In the domain of language, we move from one analogy-bundle to another and, interestingly, this leap from concept to concept is made via analogical connection. 10 The role of imagination plays a key role in the formation of knowledge-concepts where, Nietzsche maintains in a tone mimicking Schopenhauer's aesthetics, philosophy takes the lead over poetry. Given the nature of this initial state of human experience, the poetic-mythic feeling is to be "understood as a complex of unconscious representations and states of will."…”

Systems, Network, and Culture

“…Friedrich Nietzsche urged us to keep clear of causality and to adopt aesthetic terms to account for the differentiation of the organic, the mental, and the social just to understand the dance each one sphere is staging and all of them are staging together (Nietzsche 2006). As systems enact closure to oscillate and memorize, and as the network synthesizes by drawing on both ambage and ambiguity, culture is the way to invest the ensuing dances with identities, which last as long as they succeed in control among each other.…”