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CS2x
from London (United Kingdom) on 2007-12-03 16:59 [#02150384]
Points: 5079 Status: Lurker
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“What is truth?: A mobile army of metaphors, metonymics, anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage, seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions."
Is Nietzsche saying here that truths aren't actually truths; what we call truth is in fact just a series over-used descriptive metaphors? I keep thinking I'm missing something, or that I've got it the wrong way round....
Sorry. I feel very stupid. It's from his essay "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral sense".
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epic chod
on 2007-12-03 17:03 [#02150385]
Points: 70 Status: Lurker
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hes attacking a straw man
easy mistake
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SlipDrinkMats
from Thanks (Bhutan) on 2007-12-03 17:06 [#02150386]
Points: 1744 Status: Regular
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He sounds like wMw, horrible, really. It gives you some idea that Nietzsche was the wMw of his age; unloved, unheard, a prick, and wrong.
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Spikee Dragon
from Newcastle (United Kingdom) on 2007-12-03 18:12 [#02150410]
Points: 4176 Status: Regular | Followup to CS2x: #02150384
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He's deconstructing truth in a very bold way, much to his style. It's a warning against being objective and to be critical of anything that is proclaimed ultimately true.
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CS2x
from London (United Kingdom) on 2007-12-03 18:25 [#02150412]
Points: 5079 Status: Lurker | Followup to Spikee Dragon: #02150410
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"a warning against being objective and to be critical of anything that is proclaimed ultimately true"
I agree with that, and I do get the overall sense of what he is doing in the essay. But that particular quote and what it is saying about metaphor (and how it is over-used), language, and truth is what I'm finding hard to pinpoint. I know that his general point involves a rejection of the idea of universal constants and the idea that “truth” is an invented human convention, but I think there's something to that particular statement I'm not getting.
Well, it's easier than Derrida, at least.
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epic chod
on 2007-12-03 18:26 [#02150413]
Points: 70 Status: Lurker | Followup to Spikee Dragon: #02150410
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including his claim
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Spikee Dragon
from Newcastle (United Kingdom) on 2007-12-03 18:52 [#02150421]
Points: 4176 Status: Regular | Followup to CS2x: #02150412
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Hmm, well metaphors are subject to rhetorical shifts; they can loose their original meaning. Ways of reading the stars have become anthropomorphised over the ages and taken as literal mythical interpretations in religion. I would have just read it as him being scathing though.
I think I saw a Derrida DVD for sale once...
I dunno. I need alcohol in my brain fast.
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staz
on 2007-12-03 19:01 [#02150422]
Points: 9844 Status: Regular
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animes
will forever be true~
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w M w
from London (United Kingdom) on 2007-12-03 19:26 [#02150424]
Points: 21443 Status: Regular
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Anything human related is perhaps too high level to be considered the truth. Wolfram's ideas in 'a new kind of science' are perhaps closest. I know you were just having trouble juggling multiple 3 syllable words rather than deliberately being hostile to me, dog blech. We are all very understanding and supportive of your condition.
You don't have to be handicapped to be different. Everyone is different!
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DeadEight
from vancouver (Canada) on 2007-12-04 01:08 [#02150459]
Points: 5437 Status: Regular
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metonymy, anthropomorphism, and metaphor are all forms of abstraction, particularly pertinent to language. It's been a while since i read that one, but the general crux seemed to be that very fundamental concepts to our understanding of things (becoming, growth, identity, etc.) are in fact metaphorical and thus baseless (in the very literal sense). You seem to get that part just fine. maybe you could also say, following his language here, that there is a tendency to efface that which is present and concrete, in favour of moving into a more transcendant realm where one can, for example simplify or mythologize...
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BoxBob-K23
from Finland on 2007-12-04 15:10 [#02150675]
Points: 2440 Status: Regular
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OK, here's another take on it.
He's saying that the concept of truth is itself born out of language games, and that all truth is HISTORICAL, i.e. Tradition. Most "truths" are accepted as such because they are results of social myth-making, of "nation" (a word he used) telling itself a good story. The very fact that we forget the origin of where we get our ideas, ironically enough, serves the purpose of making these "truths" seem all the more eternal and valid. After all, we must accept them as GIVEN if we don't know their origins.
In a word, Nietzsche is saying that all Thought has History - which leads into his genealogies of the West and so on...
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marlowe
from Antarctica on 2007-12-04 16:27 [#02150698]
Points: 24586 Status: Regular | Followup to w M w: #02150424
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ouch
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