NIETZSCHE on TRUTH: What JORDAN PETERSON gets WRONG

Did Nietzsche believe that “Truth ought to serve life”? In fact, in Nietzsche’s works, we find a very different and more nuanced view, in which Nietzsche argues that truth in and of itself is usually harmful to life, and that lies may be needed to support life instead. What public intellectuals such as Dr. Jordan Peterson get right about Nietzsche is often his understanding of the truth as a value contingent on human flourishing, and as referring only to a world of phenomena. But the fatal error in the formulation that “truth ought to serve life” is that the health or life-giving nature of a claim doesn’t actually make it “truer”. In fact, for Nietzsche, the truth value and the life-giving value of a statement must be assessed separately. Oftentimes we find that the truth is harmful to life, and what is life-giving is a lie.

In spite of this, Nietzsche writes that we must search for a life “as a means to knowledge”, and that the Great Liberator for himself was the idea of a life as an experiment and an adventure in truth-seeking. “Here the ways of men divide: if you wish to strive for happiness and peace of the soul then believe. If you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.”

Learn about all this and more in this episode (episode eight) of the Nietzsche podcast. We cover Nietzsche’s thoughts contained in the essay On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, Human, All Too Human, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and some of his unpublished notes found in Will to Power. We also briefly discuss Von Helmholtz and the Neo-Kantian movement in the German sciences.

[aWomanFreed]

This is the first Nietzsche channel I’ve found that doesn’t seem to twist everything for some agenda

[ShawnFamily-mu]

The hardest thing about nailing Nietzsche is he does not even believe in his own philosophy. He creates one half of a literary Rorschach test and leaves you to research the other half. In the end, your interpretation of what he creates tells you more about yourself than it says about him. "The truth is not good. Humans need lies."

[MrYost-xxbj]

The three principles:
The truth is not the good
All truth is human
Humans need lies

[Cergey-txmv]

A couple of years ago I was struck with this idea: "Truth is the privilege of the strong". Growing up as a pathological liar made the process of embracing the truth a challenging, fun and rewarding endeavor.
Deceit was my shield for a long time. It was easy to lie, especially to myself, until I understood that it won't help me really stand up for myself.
In my case truth turned out to be prolific. Though too much truth in one single moment can sometimes be harmful.

[PinoSantilli-hpqq]

Ignorance is a scary thing. And saying the ignorance is a required thing is even scarier.

[brianmclaughlin]

When I was a young man i was blown up by an i.e.d. in Iraq. This was to much truth about humanity. As a result I devolved ptsd. These themes defiantly ring true in my human experience.

[whoaitstiger]

Did Nietzsche and Truth leave each other mortally wounded in the end, laughing as they lay dying together on the field of battle?

[Entheos]

I subscribed because of your clear explanations of Nietzsche's beautiful ideas. Keep up the good work! 😃

[werdeduselbstwerdeduselbst]

I like the point on language including mathematics - because it is the case that mathematical truths are only "true" within the assumptions that any mathematics is done within. Math is internally consistent, but that doesn't imply anything about the world outside mathematics unless we can somehow use math to point to truths beyond the assumptions of math - which is how math comes to gain utility through the sciences and arts.

[samuelinauen]

Great 3 points you decided to summarize the nietzschean view on thruth!
I've been binge watching your podcasts for a couple of days now, wanna get through all of them, because they seem so full of knowledge about Nietzsche's philosophical views!

[gingerbreadzak]

NIETZSCHE on TRUTH: What JORDAN PETERSON gets WRONG
00:00 🎵 The Nietzschean view of truth is complex and distinct from common philosophical notions.
02:32 🧙‍♂ Nietzsche personified truth as a woman, emphasizing the philosopher's relationship with truth.
06:01 🕵 Three key principles in understanding Nietzsche's view of truth: Truth is not the good, all truth is human, humans need lies.
11:46 🧐 Jordan Peterson's simplification of Nietzsche's view as "truth serves life" overlooks the complexity of Nietzsche's stance.
15:02 🤔 Nietzsche argues that truth and goodness are not necessarily connected; truth can be harmful, and evil people may understand certain truths better.
21:51 💡 Nietzsche believes knowledge can paralyze action, as insight into harsh truths may outweigh motives for action.
23:41 🤔 Nietzsche believed that in moments of existential threat or action, self-criticism and doubt should be suspended for quick and decisive decision-making.
28:36 🧠 Nietzsche's perspective on truth challenges the notion of absolute truth, emphasizing that all human knowledge is relative to the human condition.
33:31 💪 Nietzsche suggests that the value of a statement is not determined by its truth but by its usefulness and impact on life, emphasizing the importance of life preservation over truth.
35:09 🧐 Nietzsche explores the origins of humanity's drive for truth-seeking, suggesting that it is rooted in evolutionary needs and shaped by language and perception.
44:10 📜 Nietzsche's view of truth is that it is a product of human relations, metaphors, and language conventions, highlighting the role of social conventions in shaping truth.
46:59 📚 Nietzsche sought a naturalistic explanation for truth-seeking, viewing the will to truth as a genuine human phenomenon.
47:26 🗣 Nietzsche argued that the concept of truth originates from our collective agreement on language and its usefulness rather than existing independently.
48:22 🧪 Nietzsche's early writings show influence from Kant's phenomenology, but he took it to the logical conclusion, emphasizing the inaccessibility of the true world.
50:57 🔍 Nietzsche acknowledges the importance of science but sees it as a means to falsify hypotheses and discover patterns within the phenomenal world.
52:05 💡 Nietzsche recognizes that scientific discoveries highlight the regularity of the natural world, but it's not a denial of an objective world—it's acknowledging the mix of the objective and human.
54:38 💭 Nietzsche questions the regularity of the world if individuals had different senses, emphasizing that our perceptions are subjective and shaped by our senses.
57:10 🤯 Nietzsche posits that humans have a need to believe in irrational, unprovable things, as we pursue knowledge, which may undermine our values and beliefs.
58:05 🧠 Nietzsche argues that our rational principles, even when logical, are founded on arbitrary, pre-rational values, and these values drive our actions.
59:02 🧩 Nietzsche contends that the will to truth challenges the irrational drives that gave rise to it, making it self-defeating when taken to extremes.
01:06:24 🌟 Nietzsche believed that life as an experiment in seeking knowledge, even in the face of danger, was the path to a good life.

[antidepressant]

In defence of Jordan, I will say this. He got us more simple minded people interested in intellectual things .

[Primetiime]

“To much truth is not good . “ that is interesting and good thought .

[rontimus]

I think the key point is truth as continual experimentation, and that lies and illusion can also serve truth in the end

[yassinbenhaj]

I'm going to binge all of your videos.

[TorMax]

Nietzsche wrote, translated from German, “What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms- in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use, seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

[TorMax]

Lies might have short-term benefits but also long-term disaster.

[donotletthebeeswin]

I would like to see a video that broadly summarizes and responds to JBP's articulation of western philosophy. It seems like he really struggles to understand several key figures and their systems. I've only recently begun to learn about postmodernism and Peterson's regurgitation of his undergraduate study of the subject is deeply frustrating. Given how prolific Peterson is in pop culture these days, and how impressionable his target audience is, I think a total rebuttal of his methods would be incredibly insightful. That would probably a massive undertaking, though.

P.S. This was a great introduction to Nietzsche. It definitely clarified and enriched my high school understanding of him. My only real academic inquiry into Nietzsche has been through Dostoevsky and now I can't help but feel that his position on the role of religion in western civilization has been misrepresented at every turn. Disgustingly, I often hear "nihilism" invoked as a straw man for Christians to attack as some unwieldy, bottomless pit if you reject their authoritarian morality.

[BillJones-fnpt]

Thanks your podcasts on Nietzsche were fascinating to me .

[emZee]

I wanted to comment my contributions to this discussion, but I had barely gotten half way when I saw I had written a whole essay 😂

So I'll just say this, I agree with Nietzsche here and I'll say that the next metaphysical system we create needs to be about serving the will to power not the will to truth

An easy reconciliation is a concept I discovered within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, although I think they copied it from somewhere else. That is the Essence and Energy distinction. We can never know the essence of Truth, that is we can never grasp the completeness of the absolute Truth. But we can experience the energies of Truth and that's good enough because that serves life. Let that which remains outside of our comprehension remain as the divine mystery