The Will to Truth

Abstract

One of the primary focuses of Nietzsche’s genealogical analysis, in which he demonstrates the presence of partiality where there is a claim to impartiality is our understanding of truth itself. Nietzsche demonstrates not only that what we have taken to be true is often linked to the needs of a particular perspective but also that the way we have understand truth and the importance accorded to it has been driven by the needs of particular perspectives. The will to truth, however, is also a perspective, or drive within us. Nietzsche shows that its need to assert itself may come to undermine the needs that led to its formation and entrenchment in our psychology and culture. In this chapter, I will explore Nietzsche’s understanding of the relationship between the ascetic ideal and the will to truth, and his account of the history of the will truth through a reading of the passage from Twilight of the Idols: How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Fable. I refer to the readings of the same passage provided by Maudemarie Clark and Martin Heidegger.1 While, contra Heidegger, I fundamentally share Clark’s position that Nietzsche is committed to truth, in a form that can respond to his criticisms, I suggest that Clark overlooks the sense in which this requires the old form of truth to be overcome and the challenge that this presents. What is missing in her reading is the recognition that, being a perspective itself, truth has an existence as a cultural practice and habit within us.