Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Section 1 The Classical Greeks
- Section 2 Pre-Socratics and Pythagoreans, Cynics, and Stoics
- Section 3 Nietzsche and the Platonic Tradition
- Section 4 Contestations
- Dionysus versus Dionysus
- Rhetoric, Judgment, and the Art of Surprise in Nietzsche's Genealogy
- How Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals Depicts Psychological Distance between Ancients and Moderns
- Nietzsche's Aesthetic Solution to the Problem of Epigonism in the Nineteenth Century
- From Tragedy to Philosophical Novel
- Nietzsche, Interpretation, and Truth
- Nietzsche's Remarks on the Classical Tradition: A Prognosis for Western Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
- Section 5 German Classicism
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Nietzsche, Interpretation, and Truth
from Section 4 - Contestations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Section 1 The Classical Greeks
- Section 2 Pre-Socratics and Pythagoreans, Cynics, and Stoics
- Section 3 Nietzsche and the Platonic Tradition
- Section 4 Contestations
- Dionysus versus Dionysus
- Rhetoric, Judgment, and the Art of Surprise in Nietzsche's Genealogy
- How Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals Depicts Psychological Distance between Ancients and Moderns
- Nietzsche's Aesthetic Solution to the Problem of Epigonism in the Nineteenth Century
- From Tragedy to Philosophical Novel
- Nietzsche, Interpretation, and Truth
- Nietzsche's Remarks on the Classical Tradition: A Prognosis for Western Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
- Section 5 German Classicism
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Nietzsche has rightly been singled out recently for his discussion of “truth,” but, given that talk of “truth” depends on his view of interpretation, this article considers whether he is finally interested instead in practice. Nietzsche writes epigrams and the like to deter others from representing his thinking as an organized true-or-false statement and, wary of transcendentalism, he offers the “perspectivist” alternative that we interpret what matters to us in terms of things, their properties and in general “truth” and “reality.” In this context I shall look both as his account of linguistic meaning and, against an Aristotelian background, at his relation to the notion of “truth” in art. If interpretative practice is his ultimate term, not merely a means to understanding “truth,” talk of what it is for a self to be, and to excel, similarly derives from self-interpretation. Nietzsche does not often use terms such as “interpretation” and “self-interpretation,” but they are current and seem to fit. I take for granted to some extent a Heideggerian reading of Nietzsche. I go on to consider in these terms his discussion of religion and morality. Perhaps “will to power” as a desire for control explains perspectival “mythmaking” better than what it is to be a human being and, in religion, a human soul, yet his notion of “excellence” compares in some ways with Aristotle's. I refer particularly to The Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals, and I do not simply interpret Nietzsche but try to develop his argument, consistent with what he says, and to show that his salient interests are to some degree unified (GM Preface §2)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nietzsche and AntiquityHis Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, pp. 343 - 360Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004