On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
A short essay on how language turns shifting experience into apparently fixed truths.
Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne
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In Nietzsche’s life
When it was written
- Written
- 1873
- Publication
- Published posthumously, 1896
This unpublished essay examines the metaphors and conventions through which human beings organize experience and call their descriptions true.
“What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms”
What it’s about
Nietzsche traces concepts to acts of comparison that overlook differences. He asks what happens when useful human conventions are mistaken for a direct account of reality.
Key ideas
- 1
Concepts erase differences
A general term groups together things that are never exactly identical.
- 2
Truth and convention
Communities establish rules for what counts as truthful speech.
- 3
Metaphor and experience
Language’s creative origins become hidden through habitual use.
Who it’s for
- Readers exploring Nietzsche’s thought
- Anyone interested in philosophy, culture, and the history of values
