On Truth and Lies in a sense extramoral 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, On Truth and Lies in extramoral sense. 1
In some remote corner of the universe sparkling, scattered in numerous solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. He was arrogant and deceitful minute of "world history": but, ultimately, just a minute. After a brief breath of nature, the sun froze and intelligent animals had to die. Someone could invent such a fable, but even so, there would have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and decrepit, how sterile and arbitrary is the state in which the human intellect appears in nature. There were eternities in which did not exist back when it was over for him not to have happened at all, since for that intellect no mission subsequent lead beyond human life. It is only human, and only its owner and operator take it as pathetically as if he girasen the hinges of the world. But, if we could communicate with the fly, we would also know that she sails through the air, possessed of the same pathos, and feels the flying center of this world. Nothing in nature, despicable and insignificant, that the smallest puff of this power of knowledge, not to inflate immediately as a skin, and like any porter wants an admirer, the proudest men, the philosopher, is fully convinced that, from all sides, the eyes of telescopically universe have their eye on their works and thoughts.
is worthy of note is the intellect and who BOUT, which, however, has only just been added as a resource for those unhappy beings, delicate and ephemeral, to keep a minute of existence, which, On the contrary, without that attachment would every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. That pride, linked to knowledge and sensation, blinding fog placed over the eyes and senses of men, makes misrepresenting the value of existence, since it provides the most flattering assessment of knowledge itself. Its general effect is deception - but also special effects carry over some of the same character -.
The intellect, as a means of preservation of the individual, has its main forces pretending because this is the means, through which individuals survive weak and not robust, as those who served have been denied in the struggle for existence, horns, or the sharp teeth of the predator. In men reaches its climax this art of pretending, here deception, flattery, lying and fraud, gossip, farce, living outside brightness, masking, the masking convention, staging to others and to oneself, in a word, the constant fluttering around the flame of vanity is so much regulation and law, just as there is nothing so inconceivable that have arisen between us a sincere inclination and pure to the truth. Are deeply immersed in illusions and dreams, their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and sees "forms", the feeling does not in any way the truth, but is content to receive stimuli, like playing a test the back of things. In addition, over a lifetime, the man is fooled by the night sleep, without moral sense has ever tried to stop, while seems to have been men who, by dint of will, have managed to eliminate snoring. In reality, what does the man himself? Would it be able to perceive itself, if only once, as if lying on an illuminated? Do not hide the nature of most things, including your own body, so that, apart from the convolutions of his bowels, the rapid flow of blood circulation, the complex vibrations of its fibers, is banished and entangled in pride and deluded consciousness? She has thrown away the key, and "woe to the fatal curiosity that could look out through a recess of the fourth of consciousness and then glimpsed the men take on the cruelty, greed, insatiable, murder, in their ignorance and indifference, as it were, pending in his dreams the back of a tiger! Where does the world, in this constellation, the push for the truth?
In a natural state of things, the individual, to the extent you want to keep in front of other individuals, use the intellect and most of the time just to pretend, but, since man, both the necessity and boredom, wants to exist in society and gregarious, needs a peace treaty and, in accordance with this, try to at least disappear from your world the largest> bellum omnium> contra omnes. This peace treaty brings something that promises to be the first step towards achieving that mysterious impulse toward truth. At this very moment which is fixed from then on must be "true", ie, has invented a description of things uniformly valid and binding, and the legislative language also provides the first laws of truth, since here originates first contrast between truth and falsehood. The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real, say, for example, "I am rich" when the correct designation for your state would just "poor." Abuses Consolidated conventions making discretionary changes, if not reversing the names. If you do this so interested and also cause harm, and society does not trust him anymore and for this reason, we expel from their midst. Why men do not flee from being deceived as well be harmed by deception, at this stage not in fact hate the lie, but the harmful consequences, hostile to certain kinds of lies. The man wants nothing but the truth in a similarly limited way: eager to welcome consequences of the truth, those that sustain life, is indifferent to pure knowledge and inconsequential and even hostile to the truths susceptible to harmful or destructive. And besides, what happens to these conventions of language? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, the sense of truth? Do you agree the appointments and things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
Only through forgetfulness can man ever come to imagine herself in possession of a "truth" to the extent that just noted. If not satisfied with the truth in the form of tautology, ie, empty shells, then continuously Trocará illusions for truths. What is a word? The sound reproduction of a nerve impulse. But also infer nerve impulse from the existence of a cause outside us, is already the result of a false and unjustified use of the principle of reason. How can legitimately say, if the truth were all instrumental in the genesis of language, if the point of view it was also confident about the appointments, how, however, we could legitimately say: the stone is hard, as if in addition captásemos how "hard" in another way and not just as a completely subjective excitement! Gender divide things, we characterize the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine, what such an arbitrary extrapolation! How high we fly above the canon of certainty! We speak of a "snake": the designation covers only the fact twisting, could therefore also be attributed to the worm. What arbitrary demarcations! What bias in preferences, sometimes a property of a thing, sometimes another! Different languages, compared with one another, make it clear that the words never reach the truth or to an appropriate expression for, otherwise, there would be many languages. The "thing itself" (that would be just the pure truth, without consequences) is totally unattainable and it is not desirable at all for the creator of language. It merely describe the relations of things about men and appeals to metaphors express bolder. "First, a nerve impulse extrapolated into an image! First metaphor. Does the transformed image back into a sound! Second metaphor. And in each case, a total jump from one area to another completely different. One might think of a man who was completely deaf and had never had any sensation of sound or music, the same way that a man of these features is stunned to acoustic Chladni figures in the sand, discovers his cause vibrations rope and then swear that henceforth, you can not ignore what men call "Sound" and it happens to all of us with language. We know some of the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow and flowers, and do not possess, however, more than metaphors for things that do not correspond at all to the primitive essence. Just as the sound set in the sand, the mysterious X of the thing does occur in nerve impulse principle and then as a figure, finally as sound. Therefore, in any case, the origin of language does not follow a logical process, and all the material on which, and from which, works and builds the man of truth, the investigator, the philosopher, as appropriate, if not clouds, in any case the essence of things.
But think especially in the formation of concepts. Every word becomes immediately by way while not serve just for the experience unique and completely individualized to that owes its origin, such as memory, but must fit at the same time with many experiences, so say, more or less similar, never identical, strictly speaking, in short, with different pure cases. Every concept is formed by matching cases equals. Just as it is true that a leaf is not the same as another, it is also true that the term sheet has been formed to arbitrarily abandon these individual differences, to forget the distinctive, which is raised then the representation, as if nature had separate from the leaves might be the "road", a sort of primal archetype from which all leaves have been woven, designed, calibrated , colored, curled, painted, but by hands so clumsy that no copy turned out to be correct and reliable as a true copy of the archetype. We say that a man is "honest." Why have you done today so honestly, I ask. Our answer is usually this: because of his honesty. Is honesty! This means in turn: the leaf is the cause of the leaves. Certainly we know nothing at all about an essential quality called "honesty" but a large number of individual actions, so unlike that equate forgetting the dissimilarities, and then call them honest actions, at the end we formulate from them a qualitas occulta with the name "honesty."
The omission of the individual and reality gives us the concept the same way that also gives us the way, as nature knows no forms or concepts, nor any kind of genres, but only one is to x We inaccessible and undefinable. We also opposition between individual and species is anthropomorphic and not of the essence of things, even if we venture to say no it does not belong: in effect, be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, as demonstrable as its opposite.
What is the truth? A host of metaphors, metonymy, anthropomorphic, in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, extrapolated and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which, after prolonged use, a town considered firm, canonical and binding, the truths are illusions of which have been forgotten that they are, metaphors that have become worn and no significant force, coins which have lost their cutting and are now considered as coins, but as metal. We do not yet
whence comes the impulse to truth, because we have only paid attention to the commitment that the company prepares to exist: to be truthful, that is, using common metaphors, so we only paid attention, that in moral terms, the commitment to lie according to a sign convention, lie Borreguiles, according to a binding style for everyone. Certainly, man forgets that his situation is this, therefore, lies in the manner described unconsciously and under secular habits - and precisely because of this unconscious, precisely because of this oversight, it acquires the sense of true -.
From feeling of being committed to designate a thing as "red," another as "cold" and a third as "mute," a moral movement awakens to the truth from the contrast of the liar, whom no one trusts and who all excludes world, man proves himself as honest, reliable and helpful to the truth. At that moment, the man puts his actions as being rational in the domain of abstractions, no longer tolerates being swept away by sudden impressions, by intuitions first generalize all these concepts faded prints, cooler uncirlos the car for its life and action. All that raises man above the animal depends of that ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in the scheme, in short, the ability to dissolve a figure in one concept. In the area of \u200b\u200bthese schemes is possible something that could never be achieved under the primitive intuitive impressions: build a pyramid of caste order and degree, establish a new world of laws, privileges, subordination and constraints, which are now opposed to the other world of primitive intuitive impressions as stronger, more generally, the best known and most human and therefore as a regulatory and mandatory. While all intuitive metaphor is individual and has no identical and, therefore, always know to protect themselves from any classification, the great edifice of concepts held by the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and breathes in the logical rigor and mathematical peculiar coldness. One who wraps the breath of that cold, it also refuses to believe that the concept, and octagonal bone as a given and as such, versatile, no more than the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion of artistic extrapolation of a nerve stimulus into images is, if the mother does, however, the grandmother of every concept. However, within that given game concepts is called "truth" to the use of each die according to their designation, have exactly your points, form the correct classifications and not in any way violate the order of caste hierarchy and succession. Just as the Romans and the Etruscans divided the sky with rigid mathematical lines and conjured in the space thus defined as a templum, a god, each village has about it a sky divided mathematically similar conceptual and in these circumstances means for the sake of truth, the whole conceptual god be sought only in its own sphere. It
admire in this case as a powerful man genie builder, who manages to build on unstable foundations, so to speak, on a cathedral moving water infinitely complex concepts: indeed, to find support in such foundations of a building should be done as cobwebs, light enough to be carried by the waves, strong enough to not disintegrate before any breath of wind. As architectural genius man rises far above the bee: this builds with wax collected from the nature that, with much more delicate matter of the concepts from the outset, it must make itself . Here he is deserving of deep admiration - but certainly not because of his penchant for the truth, the pure knowledge of things -. If someone hides something behind a bush, then look it up in the same place and also found, not much be proud of in the search and the discovery, but this is what happens with search and discovery of "truth" within the grounds of reason. If I give the definition of mammal and then after examining a camel, declare: "Here is a mammal", there is no doubt that this has brought to light a new truth, but is of limited value, I mean it is anthropomorphic end to end and contains a single point that is "true in itself," real and universal, irrespective of men. He who seeks such truths in the background just search the metamorphosis of the world in men and aspires to an understanding of the world as a humane thing and get in the best case, the feeling of assimilation. Just as the astrologer sees the stars at the service of men and in connection with its happiness and misfortune, so a researcher sees the world as a whole is linked to men as infinitely repeated echo original sound, the man as an archetypal image multiplied, man. His procedure is to take man as the measure of all things, but then part of the mistake of thinking that has these things before it immediately, as pure objects. So, forget that the original perceptual metaphors are only metaphors and takes them by the things themselves.
Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphors, only by tightening and petrification of a spirited primary stream comprising a mass of images that arise from the original capacity of the human imagination, only by the invincible belief that the sun , this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short: thanks only to the fact that man forgets himself as subject and, indeed, as the subject artistically creative, living with a certain calm, security and consequence, if could go, if only for a moment, outside the walls of that belief that has a prisoner in the act would end its "self-awareness." Struggling to admit to himself that the insect or bird perceive another world completely different from the man and the question of which of the two perceptions of the world is correct totally meaningless because it would have to decide which measure with the measurement of the correct perception, ie a measure which is not available. But otherwise, the "correct perception" - that is, the adequate expression of an object on the subject - it seems to me absurd full of contradictions, as between two absolutely different spheres, such as subject and object, there is no causality, no accuracy, no expression, but, at most, an aesthetic behavior, I mean an allusion to extrapolate, a stammering translation into a language completely foreign to what, if anything, you need an intermediate sphere and mediating force, freeing both to make poetry and inventing. The word "phenomenon" contains many temptations, so, if possible, try to avoid it, since it is not true that the essence of things is revealed in the empirical world. A painter who lacked hands and would like to express through song the table has conceived, always disclosed in this passage from one area to another, much more about the essence of things in the empirical world. The same relationship of a nerve impulse to the generated image is not, in itself, necessary, but when the same image has produced millions of times and transmitted by inheritance through many generations of men, eventually appearing in all humanity because every time the same reason, just come to have to man the same meaning as if the only image required, as if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal relationship, the same way that an eternally repeated dream would be perceived and judged as absolutely real. But the hardening and the petrification of a metaphor does not guarantee anything at all to the necessity and exclusive legitimacy of this metaphor.
Without doubt, every man who has familiar with such considerations has felt a deep mistrust of all idealism of this kind, each time convinced with the necessary clarity of the result, ubiquity and infallibility of the laws of nature, and drew this conclusion: here, as we reach on the world stage telescoping into the depths of the microscopic world, everything is so safe, so elaborate, so infinite, so regular, so free of gaps, science ever successfully dig these wells, and all will find agree with each other and not contradict. How little it resembles a product of imagination, if it were, should be exposed somewhere appearance and unreality. On the contrary, we can say for now that if we each had a different perception, we could see at times like birds, others like worms, like other plants, or if any of us saw the same stimulus as red, another as blue and even a third see it as a sound, then no one would speak of such regularity of nature, but only conceive it as a highly subjective creation. So what is, in short, for us a law of nature? We are not known in themselves, only their effects, ie, in their relations with other laws of nature which, in turn, we only are known as sums of relations. Therefore, all these relationships are merely continually refer to each other and we are completely incomprehensible in its essence, we only know of them what we bring: time, space, therefore the relations of succession and the numbers . But all wonderful, surprise us precisely what the laws of nature, which demands our explanation and that could introduce us to distrust idealism lies solely on mathematical rigor and the inviolability of representations space and time. However, these concepts produce them in us and from us with same need as the spider spins its web, if we are required to design all things only under these forms, then it is no wonder that, in fact, only captures in all things just these forms, since they all must wear them the laws of number, and the number is just the most amazing things. All the regularity of the orbits of the stars and the chemical processes that both respect regularly gives us, coincide at the bottom with those properties that we introduce in things, so that, with this, we instill respect ourselves. In fact, here is that artistic production of which begins metaphors in us all perception, and assumed these forms and, therefore, be held in them, only for the strong persistence of these primitive forms is possible to explain that later may have been built on the metaphors same building concepts. This building is in fact an imitation, on the basis of the metaphors, the relationship of space, time and number.
2
As we have seen, the construction of the concepts originally the language works, and later science. Just as the bees build the cells and, simultaneously, filled with honey, the same way science works uncontrollably at that great columbarium of concepts, necropolis of intuition, builds constantly new and higher plants, props, cleanses and renews the old cells and, above all, seeks to fill this huge scaffold that has piled up enormously and order within it all the empirical world , ie, the anthropomorphic world. If now the man of action binds his life to reason and the concepts not to be dragged and not lose himself, the investigator builds his hut near the tower of science so that it can be of help and found the same protection under the existing stronghold. Actually needs protection, because there terrible forces that constantly threaten him and oppose scientific truth "Truths" of a completely different with many different labels.
> That impulse toward the construction of metaphors, the fundamental impulse of the man who can not do without for even a moment, as if they observe this warning would dispense with the man himself is not really subject and barely tamed by the fact that with their evanescent products, concepts, it built a regular and rigid new world that serves as a fortress. Looking for a new field for their activity and one channel and in the myth and, above all, art. Constantly confused headings and cells of the concepts thus introducing new extrapolations, metaphor and metonymy; continuously shows the desire to set the existing world of the waking man, making it as colorfully irregular, so inconsequential, so disjointed, so charming and ever new, like the world of dreams. In itself, indeed the only waking man comes to realize that you are awake through the rigid and regular web of concepts and rightly so, on occasion, a web of concepts is torn by art suddenly comes to believe that dreams. Pascal was right when he said that if every night the same dream came to us, we deal with both him and the things we see every day: "If an artisan were sure to dream every night, for twelve full hours, which is king, I think - Pascal said - that would be as happy as a king who lies and dreams every night for twelve hours is a craftsman. "The day vigil of a mythical people excited, as of the ancient Greeks, is, in fact, thanks to the miracle that is operated continuously as the myth is more similar to the waking dream of the scientific thinker disappointed. If each tree can speak as a nymph, or if a god, disguised as a bull, you can kidnap maidens, if suddenly the goddess Athena can be seen in the company of Pisistratus walking the streets of Athens on a beautiful shot - and that the honest Athenian believed - then , at all times, as in dreams, anything is possible and the whole nature of man flits around as if only it were a masquerade of the gods, who would not be a joke to deceive men in all the figures.
But the man himself has an invincible inclination to be deceived and is as enchanted with happiness when he tells the bard epic tales as if they were truths, or when a comic play, playing the role of king, acts more regally than a king in reality. The intellect, that master of pretending, and relieved to be free from slavery as long as normal without causing damage can be deceiving, and this time celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never so lush, so rich, so arrogant, so agile and so bold, possessed of leisure operator, gives the metaphors in no particular order and remove the stones of abstractions so that, for example, designates the river and the way in movement leading to the man where he usually goes. Now he has cast away the sign of servitude, while he struggled with sad before application to show the way and tools to a poor guy who craves the existence and released as a servant in search of prey and booty for Sir, it has now become Mr and may remove from his face the expression of indigence. Everything he does now leads, compared with his previous actions, feigning, the same as shall result in distortion. Copy the life of man, but taken as a good thing and seems to be satisfied with it. This huge network of concepts and scaffolding that holds a lifetime to save the homeless man, is only a framework for the liberated intellect and a toy for his most audacious works of art and, when destroyed, mix and disorderly ironically, back together, uniting the most diverse and separated as related, shows that you do not need those resources now destitute and not guided by concepts but by intuitions. There is no way regularly leads from these intuitions into the region of spectral patterns, abstractions, the word is not for them, the dumb man to see or speak in metaphors or strictly prohibited by conceptual linkages ever heard, to correspond in a creator, if only by the destruction and the scorn of the old conceptual boundaries, the powerful impression of the current intuition.
There are periods in which the rational man and the intuitive man walk together, the one afflicted with the intuition, the other making fun of abstraction, is as irrational as inartistic last first. Both are eager to dominate life: knowing it address the most pressing needs through foresight, prudence and regularity, without seeing it as a "hero overflowing with joy", as those needs and taking real life only disguised appearance and beauty. Where the intuitive man, as in ancient Greece, manage your weapons more powerful and successful than his opponent, may, if circumstances are favorable, shape a culture and set the domain of art over life, that pretend, that rejection of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and in addition, this immediacy of deception throughout all manifestations of life of that species. Neither the house nor the passage, or clothing, or earthenware jar has been discovered that the need which has been designed: it seems as if all were to express an exalted happiness and serenity Olympic and somehow, a game with seriousness. While the man guided by concepts and abstractions only plot the misfortune through them, without removing the abstractions themselves some kind of happiness, while aspiring to be free of pain as possible, the intuitive man, lodged in the midst of a culture gets longer, thanks to his insights, in addition to exorcise evil, a steady stream of clarity, entertainment and liberation. It is true that suffers more strongly when he suffers, suffers even more often because he can not learn from experience and stumbles over and over again in the same stone that has already encountered above. It's so irrational in suffering and happiness, is hoarse and is inconsolable. How a man behaves differently to the same misfortunes stoic, learned by experience and self-controlled through the concepts! He usually seeks only sincerity, truth, emancipation of deception and to protect against incursions seductive, is now in disgrace, like this, in happiness, the masterpiece of hypocrisy, does not present a human face, breathing and expressive but a kind of mask and provide decent features; do not cry or even alter his voice, when all a cloudy discharge on it, wrapped in his cloak and walked slowly up the storm.
Nietzsche:> On Truth and Lies in extramoral sense.
