ABSTRACT

In this chapter we will be looking at Nietzsche’s analysis of the origin and constitution of truth. The suggestion that truth might have an ‘origin’ and ‘constitution’ may seem puzzling to many readers. After all, we commonly assume that ‘truth’ represents a timeless and unchanging criterion of assessment by which we establish a proper relationship between thought and experience. Moreover, the propriety of philosophy is usually thought to depend upon a distinction between values (which describe the concepts a culture employs to regulate itself, and which vary in different times and places) and truth (a transcendent concept that establishes a universal and objective relationship between facts). One of the principal challenges of Nietzsche’s work consists in his refutation of this distinction between truth and value. Truth, he argues, does not exist in a transcendent realm beyond the contingency of human values; truth is itself a value with a history that must be interrogated.