Honors Interdisciplinary Seminar (IDS 175)

Study Questions for Friedrich Nietzsche
"On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense"


  1. What is Nietzsche's view of the human intellect in the opening of the essay? What is its real value and function?

  2. What is humanity really like, according to Nietzsche?

  3. What is Nietzsche's view of social life? (look up the reference to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan).

  4. What is invented to enact the "first laws of truth"?

  5. Do you think Plato would concur that the "thing-in-itself" is "incomprehensible to the creator of language"?

  6. If the word "leaf" cannot capture the essence of the thing denoted by the word,
    why does this apply even more so to concepts? What does he mean by "qualitas occulta"?

  7. What definition of truth does Nietzsche offer on page 250? Does he always use the word in this sense throughout the essay?

  8. What kinds of images and metaphors does Nietzsche employ on page 251?

  9. What does he mean by "truth in itself"? How does it differ from the other kinds of truth?

  10. Why does he refer to man as an "artistically creative subject"? What is involved in an "aesthetic stance"?

  11. Why is the notion of the "right perception" a "self-contradictory absurdity"?

  12. What is his view of the "laws of nature"?
    Do you think Nietzsche would revise his claims about math and science had he lived to see Einstein's era?

  13. Comment on the opening paragraph of section two. What do you notice about the writing?
    What are the "truths of quite another kind"?

  14. What has happened to man's fundamental drive to form metaphors?

  15. What happens when the intellect is freed from "its usual servile tasks"?

  16. How are the "rational" man and the "intuitive" man described? Does he appear to favor one over the other?

  17. What characterizes the era when the intuitive dominates? Has this ever existed?

  18. Reconsider question 16 in light of the description of the stoic man at the end,
    and comment on the metaphor with which Nietzsche ends the essay.

  19. What appears to be Nietzsche's view of life (human or otherwise)?

  20. Attempt to delineate Nietzsche's view of truth and lying.

 


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