Slipping from the tightrope

Supposing truth is a woman — what then? So begins Nietzsche’s exploration of truth in Beyond Good and Evil. I have always suspected that this line has more to do with Nietzsche’s disdain for women but reading it again, I wonder. Does it have more to do with his disdain for truth? Hear me out. The remainder of the preface to this work lambasts philosophers attempts at dogmatism. That philosophers have searched for truth in a way that is absolute, like Plato’s attempt to set reality “out there” in the world of the Forms. Nietzsche tells us in this very opening paragraph, “. . . all dogmatism is dying.” He later tells, somewhat dogmatically it might be worth noting, that dogmatic philosophy like the Vedanta doctrine or Platonic philosophy is a mask. 

I’ve thought about masks a lot over the last year. We’ve been wearing literal masks as a layer of protection against a mysterious and quite deadly virus. It’s stifled our freedom, at least that’s the argument. What exactly is that freedom? Suppose freedom, too, is a woman? Let’s see where this goes, using Nietzsche’s metaphor. We’ve sought freedom in a way that is absolute. It’s my way or nothing seems to be the general tendency. We’ve supplanted this notion of personal freedom over the very lives of our friends, neighbors, and family. We’ve strung a line across a mountainous divide and we are fitfully trying to walk across it. Imagine a tightrope walker between two large buildings - that is where we are in this argument. Strung precariously with only ourselves to hold onto. 

What does that mean for truth? For freedom? It sounds perilous, at the very least. Nietzsche offers us a way to look at this by turning it all on its head: denying perspective as he puts it in the preface. What in us really wants “truth?” Nietzsche asks this in the opening paragraph of the first chapter. Why do we want “truth” or “freedom?” Why not “untruth” or “uncertainty” or even ignorance? 

He tells us that the answers to these questions involve risk. Great risk. I take this to mean that the answers might not be what we want to hear. We are still perilously walking across that tightrope between truth and untruth, freedom and restraint. However, if we are to save ourselves, it seems that this is a risk worth taking. 

For all the value that the true, the truthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, and lust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things — maybe even one with them in essence. Maybe! (BGE 10)

As we perilously walk this path, we discover that what we think is freedom, what we believed to be truth is in fact the opposite. What is Nietzsche offering us in this way of viewing things? He’s turned perspective upside down - perhaps we are slipping from the tightrope in even entertaining these ideas? What if we explore this a little more, however, and give ourselves a chance to relearn the ideas we take for granted. 

A few years ago, we all learned the term, “fake news” and we were told that what we heard with our ears or saw with our eyes simply was not the case. Beyond the politics of this, let’s think more about it in terms of what Nietzsche has said. We are accustomed to truth as absolute. That’s the danger because that cannot be challenged. We have come to view freedom in a similar way. Not only is freedom absolute, it’s not to be challenged. Freedom is mine. Yet we might point out that this is deception, selfishness, and lust talking, right? What we believe to be tied to good and revered things is, in fact, just the opposite. 

For example, our instincts tell us to act to protect ourselves. Yet during the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen so many folks doing what seems to be the very opposite of protection, even of their own lives, in the name of freedom. Freedom has become a deception based in our own selfishness and desire to live without fear. What does this even mean — why are people even offering that they are not afraid of a deadly virus? That, to me, seems like quite the opposite of rational thought. Yet, here we are, 20 months into a virus threatening to kill us all and across the United States, there are literal riots - violent riots and screaming PTA meetings — over wearing masks. 

Masks inhibit our freedom. Therein lies the deception. We are not free, first of all, to do whatever we want. We are free to pursue happiness but not if personal happiness leads to the destruction of other people's actual lives. 

The question becomes: to what extent is it life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating? (BGE 11). The falsest judgments are the most indispensable for us — without cultivating a life of fiction, falsehoods, indeed without the masks that we need to survive, we would renounce life. We deny life. 

To recognize untruth as a condition of life — that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would be that token alone place itself beyond good and evil. (BGE 12)

Taking off the mask and living a life that is authentic is a risk. However, in this case, taking off the mask - literally - is a risk that can kill you, a risk that can kill others. So what are we going to take from this claim that Nietzsche makes above: to recognize untruth as a condition of life. Our own untruth? The untruth of those around us? Fake news? We’ve baptized our own prejudices as truth. 

Our morality bears decided and decisive witness to who we are — we see what we do, what drives us and the way our actions bear this out is a show for the world telling them who we really are.