Nietzsche on the Metaphysical Problem of Truth
Nietzsche on the Metaphysical Problem of Truth

Summary/Abstract: Truth plays an essential part in traditional metaphysics; however, what is truth? Can this truth be found? These inquiries are the inner quests for Nietzsche to revaluate traditional values in which truth, as the highest value, is deserved to be searched for. Searching for truth and denying untruth in the transient world causes the prejudices of opposite values, which creates the dilemma between truth and untruth, thing-in-itself and phenomenon, I and thought. Nietzsche repudiates Kant’s thing-in-itself, immediate certainty in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum since there is no such truth in the stream of inner experience. This truth, according to Nietzsche, has nothing to do with life, which is the universal flux of transient experience. Life is more important than anything else and one has to struggle for the preservation and growth of life in any precarious condition. It is life that presupposes knowledge, and knowledge as such is kind of self-knowledge, “psychological observation”, “reflection on human all too human” to “alleviate the burden of living” (Nietzsche, 1878/2005, p. 31). This inner phenomenon is in universal flux, as the biological and internal process of becoming, in which the natural drive manifests itself as the battle of the wills incessantly overcoming one another. Nietzsche traces the cause of this metaphysical problem to the deception of an inner world and demonstrates that not only there is no found truth, but also that searching for truth will degenerate the growth of life. There is truth only in life, that is the overcoming of suffering and terror during the process of becoming, striving toward happiness and preservation of life.

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