/lit/ - Literature

>>9097231
Nietzsche believed that happiness and unhappiness, utility and disadvantage, and conclusiveness to the preservation of life, are all irrelevant to the truth of a proposition.

"A belief may be necessary condition of life and yet be false."
"...what presumption to decree that all that is necessary for my preservation must also really be there! As if my preservation were anything necessary!"

From Kaufmann: Nietzsche doubts that there is any "pre-established harmony" between truth and pleasure. Nietzsche concludes that the "will to truth," not being founded on considerations of utility, means—"there remains no choice—'I will not deceive, not even myself': and with this we are on the ground of morality."

Nietzsche goes further: "appearance, error, deception, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion" all aid life; life "has always shown itself to be on the side of the most unscrupulous polytropoi (the wily and versatile)": is not then the "will to truth" a mere "quixotism"? No, says Nietzsche—it is something rather more terrifying, "namely a principle that is hostile to life and destructive," perhaps even "a hidden will to death."

Thus Nietzsche scorns any utilitarian or pragmatic approach to truth and insists that those who search for it must never ask whether the truth will profit or harm them—and yet he considers the will to truth a form of the will to power.

Nietzsche values power not as a means but as the state of being that man desires for its own sake as his own ultimate end. And truth he considers an essential aspect of this state of being.

When Nietzsche describes the will to truth as "a principle that is hostile to life and destructive," he is entirely consistent with his emphatic and fundamental assertion that man wants power more than life. Nietzsche does not condemn the passion for truth but declares truth to be "divine." Power is a state of being for which man willingly risks death and from which he excludes himself if he "tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments." Untruth, in short, is weakness, and truth is power—even if it spells death.

i emailed christopher hitchens a couple of months before he died and he responded

Sir,
The idea of your service awes me (and does me too much credit). I can only tell you what you already know - about the extraordinary calibre of the people you will meet.
On a micro scale, I am honored to have introduced you to some of those authors and feel gratified that you met this. There are more minor Orwell triumphs in store.
Sincerely
Christopher H