Universal truths and God Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Universal truths and God - Essay Example In the essay, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense Nietzsche expresses his views on the problem of universal truths and the belief of God as a universal truth. Nietzsche accepts that 'truth' means every idea or view. 'Truth' is exercised by people who have power and can spread it using this power. His various remarks in which terms like 'truth' and God figure can be rendered collectively coherent only if they are viewed as efforts on his part both to accept and analyze the ways in which such terms function in particular domains of discourse.Nietzsche says that something or other means truth of the world, with respect to human nature, or concerning what ordinarily passes for truth, it should not be assumed that his observations about the nature of what ordinarily passes for truth are meant to apply without qualification to these assertions. He considers the latter to have the same sort of warrant that commonplace or scientific 'truths' are suggested to have. (Leary 267). Nietzsche st ates: "every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each conceptual god be sought only within his own sphere" (Nietzsche n.d.). Nietzsche underlines the nature and scope of universal truth, the cognitive significance of perceptual experience and scientific and logical reasoning, and the conditions under which various kinds of knowledge may be considered true, means issues which cannot be settled prior to the consideration of all substantive questions. They can be dealt with properly only within the context of a general understanding of man's nature and his relation to the world, drawing upon their exploration from a variety of perspectives (Leary 270). In the sassy, Nietzsche speaks of 'truth' and 'knowledge", but these terms do not have a single sense and reference in all of their occurrences. In some cases they should be understood as they have traditionally been employed by philosophers with commitments to certain sorts of metaphysical positions of which he is highly critical (Neighbors 227). In other instances they should be understood as referring to what ordinarily passes for 'truth' or 'knowledge' among non-philosophers, and to the most that truth and knowledge can amount to in everyday or scientific affairs. "He [a man] is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined" (Nietzsche n.d.). The universal truth holds true of our 'spiritual' faculties - including our cognitive powers, no less than of our more basic functions. He does not present direct arguments for this position; but he would appear to consider at least something of the sort as a consequence of the supposition that there is no transcendent Deity. Once the existence of such a Deity is dismissed, he takes the ground cut out from under anyone who would give a non-naturalistic account of the origin and nature of any of man's faculties (Neighbors 227). There then can be no 'religious sanction and guarantee of our senses and rationality' of the sort to which Descartes and others appealed; and this renders the idea 'that thinking means a measure of actuality' a piece of 'moralistic trustfulness' which is quite without warrant. Thus he considers intellectual integrity to demand not that one refrain from presupposing anything along the lines indicated above (Neighbors 227), but rather that one make these presuppo sitions and not shrink from their consequences for various further philosophical questions, such as those arising in epistemology. "When a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods" (Nietzsche, n.d.). Any such understanding will