What is Truth?
We walk around as if each of us was placed at the
center of the universe. Of course, if
the universe is infinitely large, then we are all at the center of the universe. The fly buzzes around with this same sense of
significance. But hasn’t knowledge
bloated our pride? The hubris that links
what we perceive and claim to know to our external world, how frail are these
illusions? What are words and feelings
but the result of sensory stimuli, a response to our nerve endings? Attaching a word to these stimuli is already
one metaphor. Using words to refer to a
group of similar things, another metaphor.
We see a tree and assign it a name.
Then we see all things that look like trees, like so many stimuli
circling through our senses, and we call them trees as well. But has not each tree lost its unique quality,
the differences among each one disappear as we assign them all under the
category of ‘tree.’
What holds our fragile species to
existence but the use of these categories?
We see patterns and then believe that these patterns are evidence of
truth and reason. But would we survive
on this planet for an instant without pattern recognition? Do we have a right to existence over the
animals because of how we evolved, and does that right translate into truth? Nietzsche (1873) writes,
What, then, is truth? A mobile army
of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human
relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and
rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to
a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what
they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which
have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. (p.3)
We rely on language and concepts,
abstractions and reason to guide us through this world, and are sure that the
regularities that we perceive correspond to what is without. This is a leap of causality upon which no
foundation lies, no connection other than the precarious tie that holds us to
existence – the concept. When we allow
chaos back into our worlds, and begin to trust our intuitions and sudden
fancies, we might begin to aspire towards attaining truth that goes beyond the
human realm. We might reach outside of
ourselves and connect to existence as being reveals itself to us under a new
light.
References
Nietzsche, F. (2014). On
truth and lie in an extra-moral sense. (W. Kaufmann & D. Breazeale, Trans.). (Original work published 1873)
Credits
1. Picture of universe http://iron.lmc.gatech.edu/~atahler3/center.html
2. Picture of Nietzsche http://www.lyrik123.de/wp-content/uploads/Friedrich-Nietzsche.jpg
Your blog looks great and I love that you included references at the end of your blog. I would be too lazy to do that. I once took a class where I studied the work and theories of Derrida. It's all a blur now, but reading your blog reminded me of him because (if I remember correctly) he challenged those assumptions of truth that you make reference to in your blog. What is truth? He specifically was challenging assumptions in Western thought that were considered "truths." He was pretty hard to read--a mind bender--but in a nerdy kind of way, I enjoyed it. :)
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