Ayuda para cumplir los objetivos organizacionales

THE INCORPORATION OF TRUTH AND THE SYMBIOSIS

OF TRUTH AND LIFE.

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In Chapter I, I have shown that tangentiality is an essential feature of the will to power: the will to power tends indefinitely towards an object and towards a subject without reaching them. I have also argued that determination, in the form of conceptualisation, is an essential feature of truth. This presents us with a paradox: the very nature of conceptual knowledge is in contradiction with the nature of reality. In this chapter, I wish to examine how Nietzsche addresses this discrepancy through an enigmatic recourse to the ‘incorporation’ [Einverleibung] of truth. Nietzsche’s invitation for us to incorporate truth is an effort to save us from the path that leads towards the last human. It is also a passionate attempt to salvage truth from its own undercutting. The young Nietzsche posited the opposition of truth and life, and he questioned the utility of knowledge for life. If faced with the alternative of life or truth, we were to choose life and delusion over truth. This is a view still expressed in the last aphorism of book II of GS

entitled “Our Ultimate [letzte] Gratitude to Art”:

“If we had not welcomed the arts and invented this kind of cult of the untrue, then the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness that now comes to us through science—the

realization that delusion and error are conditions of human knowledge—would be utterly unbearable.”181

This aphorism is often read as a confirmation of Nietzsche’s earlier rejection of truth in favour of art182; however, as the German “letzte” expresses it better than the English “ultimate”, this aphorism is Nietzsche’s farewell to the preference for art over and above truth.183 This move is made in preparation for the opening of Book III, which affirms a renewed commitment to truth by appealing to its incorporation: “To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question, that is the experiment.”184 In this aphorism, the subject of the experiment is truth itself, and incorporation is a test for truth. This test is designed to operate a division within truth. There is a dimension (an “extent”) of truth which will not endure incorporation and another which will pass the test of incorporation. This dimension, it is assumed, will have to be salvaged. Retrieving it will be the task of a “Gay Scientist," a knower who does not suffer from her knowledge, who “endures” it.

In later texts, Nietzsche mentions the incorporation of truth in a different sense. In EH, he writes: “how much truth can a spirit endure, how much truth

181_{GS, 107}

182 _{One significant example is Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, op. Cit.}

102, ff.

183 _{This is asserted, I think, by the implicit references to BT in GS, 107 as well as from this note}

from the Nachlass of the same period which refers to BT in these terms: “in my first period appears the mask of Jesuitism, I mean the conscious adherence to illusion” GWK, XII, 212 (1881-1883)

184_{GS, 110. I will discuss below the role of aphorisms 108 and 109 in preparing the thought of}

can a spirit dare? This has become for me more and more the real measure of value,”185 and in the notebooks of the period of GM: “My new path to a ‘Yes’ [...] ‘How much ‘truth’ can a spirit endure and dare?’- a question of its strength.”186 In the same year, Nietzsche clarifies what he means by ‘truth’ in his additions to GS by replacing it with the word ‘faith’: “how much one needs faith […] that is the measure of one’s strength (of to put the point more correctly, of one’s weakness).”187 In these mentions, the incorporation of truth is still a test, but that which is being tested is not truth any longer, but the incorporator of truth, i. e. the individual. Nietzsche presents the incorporation of truth as a test of “strength” and consequently, we can read it as addressing the challenge I mentioned at the end of chapter I: the incorporation of truth is a device for us to take the path of human flourishing, and not of the “last human”. This is important because it indicates clearly that the re-integration of a concern for truth in Nietzsche’s mature period is not a departure from his project of human flourishing and strength. It does not indicate, for example, some ascetic commitment to truth for the sake of it.188 It is not the preference of truth over

185_{EH Foreword, 3} 186 _{X, [3] Autumn 1887.} 187_{GS, 347}

188 _{“‘Beauty for beauty’s sake,' ‘Truth for truth’s sake,' ‘Good for good’s sake’-for the real, these}

are three forms of the evil eye” X, [194] Autumn 1887. I agree on this point with Maudemarie Clark (1990; 198) who claims: “given my interpretation of Nietzsche’s analysis of the will to truth, it follows that he cannot advocate pursuing truth out of commitment to the ascetic ideal.” See also Clark (1990; 180 ff). On her part, Barbara Stiegler (2005) sees the shift in Nietzsche’s position but calls it an ascetic “critique of the flesh." In so doing, she overlooks the ability of the

strength. Rather—and more interestingly—Nietzsche’s insight is that the path to the superior form of humanity cannot dispense with truth.189 This discloses a curious internal motif in Nietzsche’s thought: Nietzsche is the philosopher by which truth undercuts itself by discovering its own untruthfulness. However, he is also the philosopher who attempts to salvage truth from the excesses of this undercutting. Through the appeal to the incorporation of truth, Nietzsche’s political-ethical program of breeding the strong humans of the future and his epistemological concern regarding truth become intrinsically linked.

In this chapter, I shall examine the relations between the two roles played by the “incorporation of truth.” How are we supposed to understand the transformation occasioned by the incorporation of truth, so that it would prove to transform both truth and ourselves? I will argue firstly that the truth we have to incorporate is the the knowldge of the untruth of objective truth. I shall mean ‘objective truth’ in the sense of conceptual judgment. Secondly, I will argue that this incorporation is necessary for human flourishing.

healthy organism to restrict itself without appeal to any external constraint. Consider WP, 122 (January-Fall 1888): “What I warn against: the instincts of decadence should not be confused with humaneness;the means of civilization, which lead to disintegration and necessarily to decadence, should not be confused with culture; the libertinage, the principle of 'laisser aller,' should not be confused with the will to power (—which is the counterprinciple)."