display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 ideas
| 20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
| A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
| 4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
| 4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |
| A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
| 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
| 21388 | The causes of future true events must exist now, so they will happen because of destiny [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: True future events cannot be such as do not possess causes on account of which they will happen; therefore that which is true must possess causes: and so, when the [true future events] happen they will have happened as a result of destiny. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 9.23-8 | |
| A reaction: [exact ref unclear] Presumably the current causes are the truthmakers for the future events, and so the past is the truthmaker of the future, if you are a determinist. |
| 20780 | Graspable presentations are criteria of facts, and are molded according to their objects [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Of presentations, some are graspable, some non-graspable. The graspable presentation, which they say is the criterion of facts [pragmata], is that which comes from an existing object and is stamped and molded in accordance wth the existing object itself. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.46 | |
| A reaction: [in lost Physics Bk 2] The big modern anguish over truth-as-correspondence is how you are supposed to verify the 'accordance'. This idea seems to blur the ideas of truth and justification (the 'criterion'), and you can't have both as accordance. |
| 20793 | How could you ever know that the presentation is similar to the object? [Sext.Empiricus on Chrysippus] |
| Full Idea: One cannot say that the soul grasps the externally existing objects by means of the states of the senses on the basis of the similarity of these states to the externally existing objects. For on what basis will it know the similarity? | |
| From: comment on Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.74 | |
| A reaction: This exactly the main modern reason for rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. You are welcome to affirm a robust view of truth, but supporting it by claiming a correspondence or resemblance is dubious. |
| 4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
| A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |