Beyond Good and Evil · Chapter
The Will to Truth explained
The chapter opens by questioning the long-unexamined 'Will to Truth' that has driven philosophers.
What happens
The chapter opens by questioning the long-unexamined 'Will to Truth' that has driven philosophers. It challenges the value of this will, asking why we prefer truth over untruth, uncertainty, or ignorance. The narrator frames this as a fundamental and risky new problem, positioning himself and the reader as Oedipus confronting the Sphinx of this question.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Traditional Philosophy
Directly challenges the unexamined foundation of philosophical inquiry—the 'Will to Truth'—and questions its value, marking a fundamental critique.
Perspectivism
Implied in the radical questioning of why truth should be valued over 'untruth, uncertainty, even ignorance,' suggesting a shift away from a single, absolute value.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Acts as the philosophical questioner, challenging the foundational 'Will to Truth' and positioning himself as confronting a Sphinx-like problem.
- Socrates
Implicitly referenced as part of 'all philosophers' who have spoken of truthfulness with respect, representing the tradition being questioned.
- Plato
Implicitly referenced as part of the philosophical tradition whose reverence for truth is being interrogated.
Key passages
“The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us!”
The drive for truth, which philosophers have always revered, actually leads us into danger and poses profound, unsettling questions.
Establishes the central subject and its problematic, untested status.
“Granted that we want the truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?”
Assuming we desire truth, why shouldn't we prefer falsehood, doubt, or not knowing?
The core, radical challenge to the value hierarchy of Western thought.
“It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before...”
We are met with a crowd of questions. Astonishingly, it feels as if this fundamental problem has never been seriously raised until now.
Emphasizes the novelty and foundational nature of the inquiry.