Nietzsche: “To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself, by that act alone, beyond good and evil.”
Nietzsche’s suspicion that all we have is the finite life we are living now and the perspective it provides on the mystery of existence, is both unsettling and liberating. Unsettling because it takes away our certainties, and with them the security that comes with the sense that we’ve got things figured out. But liberating, too, for it helps us let go of our mental lock-boxes of belief and let reality be – whatever it is or is doing in this moment. As we step out of the living stream in order to catch a portion of it in our belief-bucket, what do we have? No longer the living stream. Not the mystery of being, but instead only meaning.
Meaning is about perspective – what it (all) means from our vantage point, as it concerns our individual needs and desires. Meaning is constructed out of smaller packages called beliefs, which are assembled together like scaffolding against the mystery. Beliefs are nothing more than judgments, the particular ways we carve up reality or, to change the metaphor, scoop up the river of life into buckets we can carry away. And what are judgments, besides the blades or buckets we use to make reality meaningful? They are untruths, according to Nietzsche.
It is helpful to know that Nietzsche’s training was as a philologist, one who studies words, language, and the meaning that a language system makes possible. For him, reality IS; it is Truth-itself. In the language system of ancient Greek, truth refers to what is “unhidden” – what stands behind or beneath all the judgments, beliefs, and meanings we layer over the transcendent and fluid mystery of being. By definition, then, this mechanism of language hides reality by casting a veil of words, judgments, beliefs and meanings over it. Untruth.
The fate of being caught in our own limited web was transcended for the longest time by the inclusion in our language system of the mythological God, whose view on reality was absolute and universal. By special revelation, this God gave us information of reality behind the veil. Like a space probe far and above our cloud-covered gravity station, God helped resolve the insecurity of our limitations.
Interestingly enough, Nietzsche – the reputed nihilist – doesn’t reject the usefulness of untruth. Perspective requires it. By letting go of the mythological God, we are left with our perspectives, our veils of meaning, our untruths. “The question,” says Nietzsche, “is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving.” Do our beliefs inspire us to act responsibly? Are our judgments thoughtful and held lightly enough to stay relevant to the changing times and emergent challenges of life today? Can we be brave (and humble) enough to tip out our meager portion of stale water and cast our bucket into the living stream once again?
Tracts of Revolution 