In my opinion, in Nietzsche’s piece “On Truth and Lying In A Nonmoral Sense ” Nietzsche’s world describes two types of humanity in a way which can be compared to a double sided coin. Despite his vision of humanity having pieces of greed and self deception, it stems from humanity desiring the truth. This greed for something is, in Nietzches claim, sparked by the motivation to seek the truth. In return, this distorts the perception of reality to humans, as humans themselves desire a form of expression to understand. Nietzsche believes that humans, in their despicable consciousness and arrogance, deceive themselves with the understanding of information that they seek, as truth, distorting their own perception of what they believe to be as true to fit their own design. It’s a system of beliefs that humanity creates for themselves that Nietzsche believes to be a negative aspect to humanity, caused by something that in of itself is not actually terrible. The desire for knowledge is not inherently bad, but it is in humanity’s arrogance and self centeredness that Nietzsche describes to be the root cause of malice. A two sided coin, that Nietzsche interprets, one truth and one evil, both in reaction to the other. Nietzsche defines the two types of humanity as two types of the same thing. It could be said that humanity craves knowledge but in return it could manifest as something bad as a negative aspect like deception onto themselves (753).  Those within said humanity are not only taking in for themselves but they are in turn destroying their own perception of reality and/or humanity. Nietzsche describes truth as something purely subjective rather than what it definitely is, something directly opposite, something that should be purely objective (756). Nietzsche claims that humans lie and propagate this lie in the form of “truth”, because really, all “truth” is in Nietzsche’s view, and to an extent, to all humans, is an observation based on perception in regard to humanity. Truth is an illusion, Nietzsche claims, and he believes that this illusion is further encouraged by society and humanity’s already formed foundation of truth. What humanity knows already becomes propagated, and this lie continues until one forgets or finds a new truth to override the old. In my interpretation, rather than breaking the illusion, Nietzsche believes that this illusion has simply just changed form. The truth that humanity sought, or rather, the lie, can be defined as a construct of feeling and observation, something to create meaning from the abstract. With this, Nietzsche sees truth as a flawed understanding of what certain sensations and feelings mean to humans. Building from understanding, the truth becomes a truth only to humans, and thus a lie to all others, perpetuated or overridden. Going back to previous points, this is the arrogance of humanity, the greed and narcissism that humanity has to formulate a truth unconsciously for themselves.

In “What, then, is truth”? Nietzsche focuses on this word as a mysterious drive that humans do to preserve themself in relation to other individuals because human beings cannot be alone by nature, thus creating consciousness through the formation of arbitrarily repetitive concepts from subjective norms to fit in societies and to interact with others. Thereby, Nietzsche argues that truth has its basis not in absolute reality but in human language which was needed for expression and dissimulation of the sudden forms of thinking.

That is why he argues that the ideal concept of truth is a lie in the sense that it arises from various numbers of interests, historical context, and rules to which the eventual concept of truth does not properly apply because there is no distinction between what is factual and what is made up. Truth is the blindness of reality.

The kind of truth which in turn gives the first step towards something that must count as truth by designating something desired by human beings like peace and love; making those kinds of feelings common in a society in which the opposite is harmful and destructive and as a result are feelings of deception. Here is how the word “lying” was born to release our thoughts to make life more tolerable.

Nietzsche goes further suggesting that “truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions”, Nietzsche’s argument is that the truth was formed when our beliefs, our words, and our concepts were based on our illusions instead of the way things really are in on themselves. An example is when you can see a constellation whose concept is “a group of stars that were imagined—at least by those who named them—to form conspicuous configurations of objects or creatures in the sky”. It relates in the same way that you do not know how and when humans started to imagine in their own perceptions created by their own minds which are based on individual experiences and perspectives.

He answers himself by saying that truth is just an interpretation based on our own perspective, all the things we think are real, are not really real. In a concept that is based on the idea that there is a single, absolute reality that exists independently of any individual’s beliefs or perspectives, which is seen as a universal, abstract concept that is not affected by individual opinion or interpretation. Truth is an elusive concept, as it is subjective and based on the individual’s perception of reality or simply facts.

Analyzing Nietzche’s essay, “On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense, he captures an interesting theory pertaining towards humans and their motives in a society that is subjected to the inexplicable sense of illusions. Questioning the meaning of truth, Nietzsche has sculpted how human existence is built on the ladder that goes up yet halts due to the analogy that we’ve conformed our minds to believe we are living in reality, only to lift our heads and see a world of metaphorical illusions. We are stuck in our minds and are unable to explore the truth. Truth is a figment of one’s own imagination, unknown at the center of one’s own mind. By setting this inflicting tone, it brings forth this impression, that our morals of reactions mold the abstractions of truth. Nietzche speaks on how it is our knowledge of certain things that are full of what could be figments and don’t originate to the ideal of what is real. But what does Nietchez mean by real? Possibly something that hasn’t been taunted by the ushering of society or what we consume by others. With that being said, he incorporates the usage of words that portray what could be elaborated as ‘truth’. With the example in Nietzsche’s essay, he speaks about a one claiming to be wealthy with the words ‘I am rich’, yet it brings forth deception, allowing “to make the unreal appear to be real”. It’s what we initially want to believe that we are countered by the reality of morals. Humans are tricked, by deception, greed, dreams, and ultimately our internal desires, that we lie to ourselves and try to shy away from the ‘truth’. The illusions we are so blinded by, enhance every time we trick ourselves into deception. It’s captivating how Neitchez’s theory of truth constructs an abundance of questionable thoughts. With his intention to stimulate his readers mind, it’s quite conflicting, feeling as if we’ve obliged to the understanding of ‘truth’, more so his theory in it. We’re subjected to what society has deemed to be real, true, and a fact, that we’re lied to. We ignore the defaults of what was once and now is not. But yet again, that could be the social construct of ‘truth’. Possibly the truth is what we can think it means. With Neitchz’s theory on this, it has definitely confronted the abilities towards what we can make ourselves and others believe and its how we go about it. Humans are very interesting and our perceptions of what we dare to challenge, inflict how others maneuver around it and try to adopt that theory.

A central feature of this course will be the writing we do on this site.  In what follows, I will outline three things:

• a rationale for why I ask you to blog in the first place, rather than write traditional essays
• a quick primer on how to create your first post
• a simple rubric to guide your writing + an example of a good-looking post

First things first: why blog?

1. Blogging is sharable: rather than have a private circuit between you and me, we have a much more dynamic conversation across the entire class.  
2. Blogging is public, sort of: I like the idea that we are responsible for our ideas in front of broader audiences.  In practical terms, I doubt anyone is listening in most of the time, but I think it’s important that we roll up our sleeves and defend our arguments in an open and public forum as often as possible.  And of course, you can show your family/friends/pets what we’ve been up to in class.  For those who have reservations about privacy, note that a) you are free to create your own Commons name/avatar as you please, so you can use a pseudonym if you like; and b) you are free to delete your posts at the end of class.  If anyone has serious reservations despite all this, feel free to contact me.
3. Blogging is sturdy: rather than forget the piece of paper once it’s been handed back, we can link back to prior statements or observations, or to each others’. If you like, you can leave your posts up for future 306ers to see.
4. Blogging is responsive: rather than only getting comments from me, you’ll comment on and get comments on each other’s work.

What makes for an excellent post?  For this class, posts should:

• contain at least 400 words (use word count in WordPress or your word processor)
• explain a given text’s argument (or part of an argument), using quotations and paraphrases of the text with page numbers in parentheses
• engage that argument critically, noting its limitations, its links to other texts we’ve read, its unstated assumptions, etc.

Here’s a simple rubric, adapted from Mark Sample, that I will use to evaluate your work:

What do I write about? You are free to choose any focus you wish and to write about any of the texts we’re reading in any combination. A couple of suggestions:

• You may write about what we’re about to discuss our what we’ve just discussed. I prefer that you not write about something we’ve discussed long ago. So, for Friday, you may write about Nietzsche or about de Saussure. By the time Blog Post #2 rolls around, I don’t want to hear about Nietzsche, since we’ll have moved on.
• Be careful how much you bite off. It’s better to “do more with less” than the opposite here. So a close examination of de Saussure is probably a better idea than a breezy, loose comparison of Nietzsche, de Saussure, and Culler, in which each gets a sentence or two.
• The perfect is the enemy of the good. Getting zeroes in the gradebook for the posts is deadly. Better to dash of something that’s not your best work than to leave it blank. And it’s good discipline: no one feels like they “got it” after reading Lacan for the first time, so writing your way towards clarity, no matter how messily, is valuable.
• Use the study questions: it’s perfectly permissible–even suggested–to simply answer one of the study questions in your blog post, or to use it as a springboard for a more complex argument. They’re there, so use them!

Last but not least, here’s an example of a good-looking post.  I’ve annotated it using the hypothes.is tool, so you can see what makes it exemplary.  And remember: it’s not an exercise in cookie-cutting: your results may vary, and there are lots of ways to write an excellent post.

Hi 306/301 students:

Two quick things as we move towards Opening Day on Friday:

1. You are encouraged, but not obliged, to read Jonathan Culler’s introduction to “theory” here. I’ll digest some of its main ideas on Friday, but I think you’ll find it useful to orient yourselves before we dive in the deep water with Nietzsche for Tuesday.

2. You are also welcome (but not required) to introduce yourselves to me and to each other via Padlet, using the whimsical prompt I’ve created.

This is just to welcome you to English 306/COMPL 301 this semester. Take a look around: you can get a sense of the assignments and expectations via the syllabus and what we’re read and when via the schedule. Feel free to reach out via email with any questions, and I look forward to meeting you later this month.