Nietzsche, From On Truth And Lying

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays a married man disillusioned by the townspeople’s complicity in evil. In the tale, Brown discovers that every wholesome person he knows, including his wife, are in league with the devil. His life after the night that he discovers this truth is one of cynicism and depression, as he regards everyone to be a facade of who they truly are. Conventional wisdom would uphold this condemnation of dishonesty. However, in Judith Viorst’s “The Truth About Lying,” she presents a reality where various types of dishonesty-social, peacekeeping, protective, trust-keeping- are necessary. I believe that lying is morally right only if it facilitates harmonious social interactions between people. Lies meant

Human nature can be defined as characteristics, feelings, or traits that of all humans share. Human characteristics and traits can differ from personal cultural background and or by the community that you are surrounded in. The significance of your community and culture is that it can be of importance since it could affect you negatively or positively. Human nature is by origin naturally good but is corrupted gradually or abruptly by the community or religion. Individuals from society and society itself can immensely make an impact on people.

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

Have you ever told a lie? Why? Why do we feel the need to lie? Is it because we are afraid of what the consequences of our sins might be, or maybe it is because we feel like lying is the only way to keep those around us content and happy. Whatever the reason is, we are all guilty of lying at some point. However, it is how you justify yourself the reason of the lie was that counts. Some, lie out of cowardice, afraid that others may think of them in a detrimental way. Self-deception is another reason to lie. Self-deception causes us to think that the only reason we are sinning is for the good of others. However, what good will lying do for us and to what end will it lead us? Nathaniel Hawthorne creates the character of Arthur Dimmesdale to illustrate how a lie derived of cowardice and self-deception lead to hypocrisy and misery.

Throughout the entire existance of our species humans have done something that no other species can demonstrate, lying. Erase that “fact” from your minds, because the behavior is seen all across the animal kingdom, and can be even traced with the existence of life itself. Even though this reality may seem to dampen the spirits on your “human superiority” complex, the reason why we lie is an obvious tactic that would ensure survival within any species. We lie to ensure our survival that nature wouldn’t have intended. But our insurrection isn’t always unchecked. Such that, continuous disruptions of natural law can lead to doomed results. This is seen through the course of two stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In The Scarlet Letter, and Young Goodman

Nietzsche's madman allegory represents the current moral situation of society during his time--a growing belief that God does not exist, a movement away from religious values. Nietzsche does not mean literally that God has been murdered, but because mankind created God, we also have the ability to kill God. In Nietzsche’s point of view, mankind created God by also creating a belief in God. By saying that mankind ‘murdered’ God, Nietzsche is proposing that we no longer believe in Him. With the grounding that religion provided in the past, Nietzsche fears that mankind will be left without purpose and virtues to lead them to do the correct thing. The ‘light,’ in Nietzsche’s allegory is belief in God; for this paper, light is a focus because of the implications that follow when there is none. With no light, everything previously known about moral beliefs and the world is overturned. Nietzsche proposes that instead of God guiding people (because people no longer believe in Him), people can follow their own virtues, such as courage, faith in oneself, and patience for the future.

Admittedly, we as humans are considered to be savages, on the other hand there are those who perceive there is a greater good to humanity. So as humans, we tend to lie in order to better our image. This shouldn’t be the way things are, life should be about the honest truth and pointing out our mistakes when made. But as we all know the truth is not always

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

Nietzsche starts this second essay by looking at and reviewing the importance of our ability to make and keep promises. To hold yourself and others to a promise means having the need of both a good memory, the ability to remember making said promise and a strong feeling of confidence what will happen next and a long term ability to know you will be able to fulfil said promise. In order for us to make the commitment and have the confidence to do so means that on some level, we must give a feeling and make ourselves into the ideal of becoming in a way predictable, to be able to achieve this we as humans need a set of guideline to follow, certain rules that make this predictability a possibility, the certainty that a set of actions will lead to a set of reactions both internally and externally.

According to Nietzsche’s assertions in the first two essays of On the Genealogy of Morals, human beings suffer because they have lost the ability to enjoy life to its fullest extent. A significant shift in morals occurred from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who carried out good deeds with a surplus of energy simply because they could afford to do so, to the predominantly Judeo-Christian era of self-repression. This transition demonstrates a decline in our ability to make sense of our lives and understand our true human purpose. Nietzsche suggests that we have become out of touch with the truth – we are no longer present in our lives. He urges us to recognize the social constraints to which we sometimes unknowingly submit

Telling the truth demonstrates maturity because you’re ‘fessing up to your mistakes and not getting caught up in a never ending spiral of lying and guilt. Tom does this in multiple occasions. First, When Tom gets back from pirating, he tells Aunt Polly about extremely accurate dream he “had”. Aunt Polly finds out it was not a dream and really him listening to them mourn him under the bed. Tom tells the truth as lying would only make the situation worse. But that’s not the only time Tom’s told the truth. Tom witnesses a murder that the town believed was Muff Potter as he was framed. Tom, sorta quick to act HAD to tell Muffs lawyer about what really happened which saved Muff from being punished and possibly lynched / hanged. Not stopping there,

First, he states that it is okay to lie so you can save yourself from embarrassment.(516) Secondly he claims that consistently telling the truth has it’s advantage in trust.(516) To this he says there are exceptions to this rule. Namely that if withholding information from someone results in saving them from evil occurring to them.(516) Even with these exceptions, he says that we have to recognize that the lie may be breaking down trust so we can truly weight the cost and the benefit of both.(516)

We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.

This is because silence is not the truth, so by remaining quiet, that person is not telling the truth. A more recognizable form of lying is outright lying, such as when a student claims to be working hard on her philosophy paper when she has in fact been partying at Myrtle Beach for the last two days. Deception is yet another form of lying, because by tricking another person into believing something false, one is withholding the truth from that person. By withholding the truth, the truth is not being told, so the deceiver must be a liar. Regardless of the form in which a lie is being presented, all lies have one thing in common. By giving others false thoughts or perceptions of an event, lies can have a strong influence on our free thinking. Therefore, they are all violations of human reason, something that many people strongly respect. As we will see shortly, the ability to reason is also considered valuable to both Mill and Kant, since it underlies both of their moral theories.

5. Discuss Nietzsche’s theory of “will to power” and “the innocence of becoming”. Does the hypothesis of the will to power successfully “debunk” traditional religion, morality, and philosophical claims to provide the “disinterested” or “objective” truth?