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What if some of the truths you treasure most are just fears wearing a costume? That is the unsettling question this lecture from Academy of Ideas takes up through Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche argued that the true and the good are not always allies — some truths heal, and some truths burn. So he proposed a bracing method: attack your own convictions, test every belief you hold, and never stop being your own harshest critic. The reward is the free spirit, a mind that belongs to itself — an asylum no tyrant can ever enter.
Full Video Transcript
Perhaps nobody yet has been truthful enough about what truthfulness is.
These words, penned by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, reflect his belief that in many cases,
what are considered established truths are instead errors, lies, and convictions that have grown out of fear, need, and cowardice.
I was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies, he wrote in Eke Omo.
In this video, we’ll investigate one variety of truth Nietzsche sought to expose as error,
explain his method for attaining the truth, and introduce his notion of the genuine philosopher,
the free spirit who has become master over his mind.
A commonly held view is that the good and the true are inextricably connected.
Adherents of this view tend to believe that the discovery of truth is a pleasurable process,
and that the more truths that are discovered, the better off humanity will be.
Nietzsche was skeptical of this view, suggesting that it was often adopted for psychological purposes,
specifically to protect people from the realization that the discovery of truth is not always pleasurable,
but can sometimes agitate and torture an individual.
While some truths can liberate the individual and result in the advancement of mankind,
other truths can stimulate despair and the degeneration of the human race.
Thus, the true and the good, in Nietzsche’s view, are often conflicting.
Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree, he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil.
Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish.
In Human All Too Human, he echoed this idea.
There is no pre-established harmony between the furthering of truth and the good of mankind,
As the realization of truths is not always beneficial, Nietzsche insisted that untruth and the will to ignorance has reigned over all cultures stretching back into the ancient past.
Many of man’s so-called truths, which have been discovered, are nothing but irrefutable errors, falsifications of the world without which the human species would have perished long ago.
Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error, Nietzsche wrote in The Gay Science.
In a note collected in the Will to Power, he reiterated this idea.
Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live.
The value for life is ultimately decisive.
While most people throughout history have held on to errors they believe to be truths,
there are always a select few individuals who are capable of seeking the truth at all costs.
These people possess a unique strength,
generated by the realization that the quest for truth is neither peaceful nor pleasurable,
but a battle requiring courage and vigor.
Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, Nietzsche wrote in the Antichrist,
and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to.
Greatness of soul is needed for this business.
The service of truth is the hardest of all services.
For the individual strong enough to seek the truth,
Nietzsche advocated a method of attaining knowledge called experimentalism,
based on his belief that convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
A lie is an outward expression of a falsehood one inwardly knows to be false,
meaning the liar can still know the truth.
A conviction, on the other hand, is an inward certainty one has attained the truth,
and thus, in many cases, gives way to an arrogance that enmeshes one in a web of delusion and falsehood,
and cuts one off from the possibility of moving towards knowledge.
The claim that truth is found and that ignorance and error are at an end
is one of the most potent seductions there is.
Supposing it is believed, then the will to examination, investigation, caution, experiment is paralyzed.
Truth is therefore more fateful than error and ignorance
because it cuts off the forces that work toward enlightenment and knowledge.
Employing the experimentalism advocated by Nietzsche involves becoming your own greatest
critic, subjecting your cherished convictions to constant assessment, and attacking every
so-called truth you believe, in order to determine how strong its foundations really are.
It involves actively seeking out and experimenting with new ideas, trying them on for size, so
to speak, and continually updating and improving your judgments about the world.
After all, the ability to change our beliefs is a unique and precious capacity of the human mind,
one of its defining features, but it must be continually exercised to prevent atrophy.
Nietzsche’s experimentalism trains this capacity,
and is thus a counterforce against the attraction people feel
towards conforming to narrow faiths and dogmatic visions of the world.
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die, Nietzsche wrote,
as well as the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions.
They cease to be mind.
In an aphorism titled,
To what extent the thinker loves his enemy from the dawn of day, Nietzsche advised,
Make it a rule never to withhold or conceal from yourself
anything that may be thought against your own thoughts.
Vow it.
This is the essential requirement of honest thinking.
You must undertake such a campaign against yourself every day.
Most people are unable to abide by this daily practice.
as their personal identity becomes tied up with certain beliefs they hold on faith.
Such people become fearful of new and challenging ideas,
seeing them as a threat to their character and worldview.
The skeptic, in contrast, adopts a more profitable approach by maintaining a proper distance from his beliefs.
He is therefore able to play with ideas, move in and out of them with grace and suppleness,
and use them as tools in the service of a heroic goal.
Nietzsche contrasted the skeptic and the man of faith. A mind that aspires to great things, he wrote, is
necessarily skeptical, while the need for faith for anything
unconditional in yes and no is a proof of weakness. The individual who is able to integrate Nietzsche’s
experimentalism into their life and live from the perspective of various viewpoints and experiment with ideas in the service of a grand passion,
Nietzsche called the free spirit.
While the vast majority of people are bound spirits, prisoners of beliefs that have been inculcated into them by their parents, governments, and religions, the free spirit is one who has liberated himself from these chains.
The term free spirit here is not to be understood in any other sense. It means a spirit that has become free, that has taken possession of itself.
In contrast to bound spirits, whose weakness motivates them to censor and label as dangerous ideas which challenge their worldview,
the free spirit, as a monster of courage and curiosity, a born adventurer and discoverer,
is driven to grasp even the treacherous truths which would destroy the weak.
But with the spirit of the search for truth on their side,
the free spirit also understands that in the search for truth, it is not only terribleness that one will find,
But truths that are liberating both to the individual and society and which, for various reasons, are often hidden away or deemed blasphemous by mainstream opinion.
In seeking these truths, the free spirit, the genuine and solitary philosopher, becomes an enemy of all those who attempt to promote ignorance for the sake of gaining power over others.
As master of his mind, the free spirit forms an internal vault untouchable by those who wish to
deceive, and thus, perhaps unknowingly, keeps alive the flame of truth, even in darker ages of
ignorance, censorship, and tyranny. As Nietzsche penned, where there have been powerful societies,
governments, religions, public opinions, in short, wherever there has been tyranny,
there the solitary philosopher has been hated. For philosophy offers an asylum to a man,
into which no tyranny can force its way.
The inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart, and that annoys the tyrants.
Source: Academy of Ideas