and facing of reality as a duty for all? On the contrary, he came to question such a duty. I say "came," since for a time he seems to have regarded knowledge as an absolute good. "We should rather have humanity go to ruin than that knowledge should go back, "he once wrote.[1] Indeed, he still honors the conscientiousness of scientific investigators—"Were scrupulousness in knowing gone, what would become of science?"[2] The same fine sense for objective truth is at the bottom of his criticism of morality; he even says that skepticism of morality is a self-contradiction, since if the skeptic does not feel the authoritative nature of truth, he has no longer any reason for doubting and investigating in this realm.[3] Nor does he question that reason, the intellectual nature, is the final arbiter of truth[4]—he knows of no short-cuts to truth like "intuition," "will to believe," the "needs of the soul," etc. That a belief "makes happy" proves nothing—a truth may be dangerous and harmful; the ground-character of existence may be such that knowledge of it would be ruinous to most; it might be the measure of a mind's strength, how far it could stand truth or had to have it attenuated, veiled, sweetened, falsified.[5] Nietzsche's critical questioning goes deeper than all this—it is as to the value of truth.[6] We have been bearing much discussion of late as to the meaning of truth, but philosophers have not often asked, What is it worth? Most appear to take for granted that the possession of it is desirable, and Nietzsche is the first—or among the first—to disturb this naïveté. Why, he asks, prefer truth to appearance? Why may not appearance be better? Why may not something we in part create be better than what is? Indeed, what reason is there for preferring, how can we speak of better at all in this connection, save as we have a standard of value—something which we do indisputably create?
I may give one or two illustrations, which will perhaps
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 429. The later attitude was, in part at least, a return to his earliest attitude (see ante, pp. 53-4, and the reference to fiat veritas pereat vita in "Use and Harm of History," sect. 4); the almost limitless magnifying of knowledge belongs to his middle period.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 115, § 256.
- ↑ Ibid., XIII, 115, § 256; cf. Werke, XII, 84; XIII, 121, §§ 268-9.
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 167.
- ↑ Genealogy etc.. III, § 24; Beyond Good and Evil, § 39. Cf. the tone of the reference to intuition in Dawn of Day, § 550.
- ↑ Genealogy etc.. III, § 24.
