"On The Prejudices Of The Philosophers"
What if truth is overrated? A guide to Part I of Beyond Good And Evil
We live in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what’s true.
At the same time, truth is something that everybody seems to care deeply about.
No one likes being lied to, and no one wants to live their life based on what’s false.
The result is that we become obsessed with questions like “how do we know what’s true?”, or “how do we regulate information to prevent the spread of falsehoods?”
But what if everybody is asking the wrong questions?
In his masterpiece Beyond Good & Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche begins by asking a question so uncomfortable that no one, in his opinion, has even been willing to ask it:
What if untruth is more valuable than truth?
The entire history of Western philosophy is firmly built upon a commitment to the pursuit and value of truth above all. To take a famous example, whenAristotle offered a famous criticism of Plato’s Theory of the Forms, he defended himself by saying the following about truth:
“Still perhaps it would appear desirable, and indeed it would seem to be obligatory, especially for a philosopher, to sacrifice even one's closest personal ties in defense of the truth. Both are dear to us, yet it’s our duty to prefer the truth”.
-Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
The foundational commitment to truth has influenced nearly every aspect of Western civilization and culture. There are few things that the vast majority people hold in higher regard than concepts like beauty, goodness, morality, and rationality.
Truth, beauty, and goodness, are commonly referred to today as the transcendentals, or the ultimate properties of being that exist beyond the material world and are embodied by God.
These master concepts provide the foundations for millions of lives.
And yet, Nietzsche argues that because dozens of philosophers have failed to question these very assumptions they have fallen into deep and harmful prejudices.
But Nietzsche isn’t just another philosopher criticizing philosophers.
He goes even further — beyond.
Nietzsche believes that because the entirety of Western civilization and culture is built upon the prejudices of the philosophers (and more recently scientists), it is threatening to destroy everything that makes human life worth living for by collapsing into an age of “nihilism”.
At the time Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good & Evil, which was in 1886, he already viewed Europe teetering on the precipice of Nihilism — an phenomenon in which human beings would face a prolonged crisis of meaning and value.
If even half of what Nietzsche had to say about nihilism is correct, then things have only gotten worse since he first tried to warn humanity of the impending crisis.
We now live in a world suffering through the absurd effects of “late-stage capitalism” on ordinary human life. A world in which meaning and purpose seem more elusive than ever, and truth is a distant memory.
When Nietzsche urges us to go “beyond” the traditional binary of “good” and “evil”, he is not telling us to act immorally.
He is urging us to transcend the inevitable limitations placed on the human spirit by traditional belief systems and create a new future for humanity in which we can live freely once again.
This may require calling into question the very foundations that the world as we know it was built upon.
It may require taking seriously the idea that untruth is more valuable than truth.
Although this may seem like an abstract philosophical question, philosophy for Nietzsche is not something that people do at a university and leave behind when they go home.
Philosophy is a way of life.
This gives Nietzsche’s work a relevance and weight that most philosophy is lacking.
Almost everything he says is meant to force you to question the assumptions by which you are living and whether they are promoting or devaluing your life (and life itself).
The “prejudices of the philosophers” are also our own.
That is why we must understand and go beyond them.
This article is part of an ongoing live course for my paid subscribers on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil that started last week.
Every Saturday, I personally meet with students enrolled in the course to discuss Nietzsche’s text and answer any questions they have. Additionally, students receive a weekly guide like this, class recordings, as well as other helpful guides and resources with book/article recommendations for further study of Nietzsche’s philosophy.
If you would still like to hop on board before our next meeting, it’s not too late. All live classes will be recorded if you need to miss any, and we haven’t started reading the actual text just yet, since the first week was just introductory.
I am also offering a special one-time bonus for late joiners. If you join the course before Saturday, you will get the book for free (I will reimburse you the cost).
You can upgrade to a paid subscription below to join.
Suggested Reading
For this week, we will cover the first half of Part I, since it is incredibly important for making sense of the book, and Nietzsche approach to philosophy as a whole.
It is suggested that you read the following:
Nietzsche’s untitled preface
Part I, sections 1-13 (pages 9-21 in the Kaufmann)
If you want to understand Part I more deeply, and are feeling more ambitious, I recommend reading the entirety of Part I for our upcoming meeting this Saturday, and then re-reading it again the following week.
Since Nietzsche packs many layers of meaning into the smallest of spaces, and many of his ideas acquire deeper meaning when understood as existing within a complex web of relations to other ideas and themes, his books reward being revisited multiple times.
This is what makes him a great author and thinker.
Suggested Assignment
It is suggested that you complete the following two tasks prior to our next meeting in order to maximize learning:
Choose one section to read 3x very carefully
Bring one specific question about the text to our next live meeting
Part I Overview
Beyond Good And Evil is divided into nine parts (chapters), each of which contains multiple small sections.
The first section to each of the nine parts of the book is generally a statement about methodology, or about the difficulties of pursuing a certain set of questions. Likewise, the last few sections of each part often comprise a summary statement, draw conclusions, or move into another, deeper level of questioning.
They provide a sense of climax and transition.
In Part I, Nietzsche sets the tone for the entire work and introduces several key concepts.
The overarching aim of Part I is to provide a devastating critique of the history of philosophy and the philosophers who have made it into what it is. Nietzsche begins this critique by calling into question the “will to truth” that has served as the fundamental force driving the history of western philosophy. Nietzsche also introduces the idea of “life” as being what ultimately matters. This is connected to his famous concept of the “will to power”, which is really a “will to life”. The analysis of philosophers and people in terms of their “wills” brings in Nietzsche’s famous “psychology”, according to which the self is a collection of competing “drives”.
In what follows, I will provide a detailed commentary of a handful of key sections from this week’s reading.
Section 1
In this first section of BGE, Nietzsche takes a radical new approach to philosophy that forces readers to question the fundamental assumptions about how they live.
Nietzsche puts his inquiry onto what he considers to be a dangerous path (and embraces this fact).
He writes:
“it finally almost seems to us as if the problem had never even been put so far — as if we were the first to see it, fit it with our eyes, and risk it. For it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater”
Nietzsche, BGE, Part I, section 1
What problem is Nietzsche referring to as risky?
It is the problem of “the value of truth”.
Nietzsche’s main aim in the opening section of BGE is to introduce a completely new line of questioning and set of problems that most people simply ignore.
This is a classic Nietzschean move — to approach a familiar set of questions and assumptions from an entirely new and previously unrecognized angle.
How is Nietzsche able to do this?
Because he takes himself to be willing to attack and question the deep background assumptions that we all take for granted, either because we aren’t aware that there is a legitimate alternative, or because we are too afraid to ask.
Truth, which was the opening theme of the book in the preface (“Suppose truth is a woman — what then?), is something that philosophers have esteemed as their highest value and ultimate aim for the entire history of philosophy.
Truth is also something that everyone, yourself included, seems to care deeply about.
This is what makes Nietzsche’s opening section so provocative.
Nietzsche is not merely addressing a philosopher’s problem that is stuck inside some abstract academic debate — he is attacking something that everyone cares about.
Nietzsche begins the book by asking a strange question about what he calls the “will to truth” — he asks what questions the will to truth obscures or prevents us from asking.
“What strange, wicked, questionable questions!”
Nietzsche is aware that most people would find the questions he is interested in asking to be “strange” and “wicked”, perhaps even “evil” or “immoral”.
This is one reason why he takes these questions to be risky.
“For it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater”
But there is also a great risk in not questioning the will to truth if, as Nietzsche suggests, the will to truth itself prevents us from asking all sorts of important questions, such as:
What is the value of the will to truth?
What’s fascinating about Nietzsche’s opening section is that it completely subverts our philosophical expectations and common ways of thinking.
Typically, philosophers treat truth as a kind of unquestionable ideal worth pursuing and treat falsity with disdain and contempt. Those who question the value of truth are viewed as agents of chaos, immoral, and irrational.
To return to Nietzsche’s preface, he begins BGE with the provocative question:
Suppose truth is a woman — what then?
When read in conjunction with section 1, Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that if truth is a woman whose heart we are trying to win, then we may need to be willing to challenge her, rather than put her on a pedestal.
If truth is a woman, would she choose the man who pursues her endlessly and worships her unquestionably? Or would she choose the man who is willing to think and live differently, to take risks, and to ask difficult questions?
In this section, Nietzsche prepares the ground for asking questions that most people, let alone philosophers, would never even consider:
What if untruth is more valuable than truth? What if truth (as a woman) can only be won through lies?
Nietzsche is a philosopher willing to explore uncomfortable questions at length in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of what’s taken for granted in our ordinary thinking.
While most philosophers aim at developing theories and giving answers that justify what we already believe or wish to be true, Nietzsche constantly seeks to challenge his readers to think for themselves and question what everyone else takes for granted.
Nietzsche’s reflection on the will to truth and the value of untruth raises a deeply personal and discomforting question for his readers to consider:
Is it possible to live a truthful life without taking any risks?
Sections 4 & 6
While Nietzsche asked us to question the value of truth in section 1, in this section he considers the idea that the value of truth may have little or nothing to do with whether a judgment is in fact true or not.
Consider this in your own life.
Does the value of what you take to be true actually consist in it’s being true? Or is what we believe to be true valuable for some other reason — perhaps because it makes us feel good, or is useful?
Nietzsche argues that the value comes from whether truth is “life-promoting, life-preserving”. He writes:
“The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment; int his respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating”
BGE, I, 4
What does Nietzsche mean by “life-promoting”? Is he saying that things are valuable if they lead us to procreate? Not at all.
Although the topic of “life” and “life-promotion” for Nietzsche is complex, the basic idea is simply.
The ultimate value for Nietzsche is life.
Beliefs, actions, and the like, promote life if they increase our creative activities and lead human beings to affirm their life rather than wish it were to be different.
One of Nietzsche’s most famous criticisms of traditional moralities (like Greek and Christian ethics) is that they implicitly train us to hate ourselves and deny the value of our life here on Earth.
Nietzsche idea above, then, is that a false judgment might have a kind of life-promoting value that far outstrips its disvalue from the perspective of truth. Later in that section Nietzsche writes:
“To recognize untruth as a condition of life — that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil”
BGE, I, 4
Nietzsche provides an example to support this claim — the example of mathematics.
Nietzsche writes:
“without a constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live — that renouncing false judgments would mean renouncing life and a denial of life”
BGE, I, 4
The radical implication of Nietzsche’s idea is that we can’t help but view the world through falsehoods because we need them to live.
While most philosophers and scientists are constantly willing and striving to see the world objectively, Nietzsche is calling into question the very value of this aim and presenting it as dangerous or harmful for life.
This completely inverts the standard view of things like science as leveraging objective truth and technology to promote and improve life.
Another way in which life is connected to philosophy for Nietzsche is spelled out in section 6.
In this section, which is one of my favorites, Nietzsche argues that all of philosophy is an involuntary “confession” or “memoir” of its author. He writes:
“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir”
BGE, I, 6
The idea that a philosophy is really a representation or outgrowth of its creator is something that makes a lot of sense to most people, but has been strongly resisted by many academic philosophers.
According to some conceptions of philosophy, the aim of philosophy is like that of the sciences — to provide an objective description or explanation of the way things are generally speaking.
The philosopher Wilfrid Sellars famously said that:
“The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”
If what philosophers produce is necessarily an expression or byproduct of their personal biases and prejudices, then this would undercut the aims of this entire project.
Whatever “understanding” or “explanation” philosophy could provide about how things hang together would, if Nietzsche is right, merely be an expression of how things seem to hang together for someone like me.
Nietzsche does, in fact, end up developing a famous position called “perspectivism”, according to which it is not possible to know anything outside of a particular perspective. He writes:
Let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject’’ let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason’, ‘absolute spirituality’, ‘knowledge in itself’: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’ be”
On The Genealogy Of Morals, III, 12
Nietzsche also considers a radical twist to this very idea in section 6, suggesting that what ultimately shapes our perspective is our moral beliefs.
Typically philosophers separate one’s moral beliefs and values from their “theoretical” beliefs about knowledge or reality.
But Nietzsche understands beliefs as inseparable from psychological and bodily drives. He writes:
“Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim? Accordingly, I do not believe that a ‘drive to knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but rather another drive has, here as elsewhere, employed understanding (and misunderstanding) as a mere instrument”
BGE, I, 6
If Nietzsche is right about this, then in order for someone to understand why they view certain things as true, they must radically rethink the relationship between their worldview and moral beliefs.
What if the reason why we perceive things to be true is not because of how we are neutrally seeing the world, but because our personal morality is causing us to see it that way?
Looking Ahead: Week 3 Preview
In Week 3, we will study the second half of Part I.
In the second half of Part I, Nietzsche continues his attack on the fundamental philosophical prejudices that have upheld the edifice of Western thought and culture.
In sections 14-23, Nietzsche develops several fascinating critiques of famous ideas in the history of philosophy such as Descartes conception of the self and cogito argument, freedom of the will, and self-causation.
Nietzsche also engages in unique and thought-provoking discussions of various sciences, such as Psychology and Physics, arguing for the bold claim that Physics is “only an interpretation and exegesis of the world … and not a world-explanation” (BGE, I, 14).
Lastly, Nietzsche introduces one of his most famous concepts — the will to power.
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If you found this guide helpful, or have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading.
-Paul