I'm certainly no expert on Nietzche who's work has never interested me, but the two sentences make for great jokes. Often I tell people the moment I become perfectly humble I insist the whole world know.

Nietzsche denied the reality of universals, so that all concepts, or ideas were metaphors, which equate things that are inherently unequal, and are alive and useful only to the extent that they have sensuous power, or point to things in your own experience.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial. — Nietzsche

I'm curious about how truth is being used in each of these sentences. . . — Mongrel

Looks like they don't use it but mention it.

Nietzsche denied the reality of universals, so that all concepts, or ideas were metaphors, which equate things that are inherently unequal, and are alive and useful only to the extent that they have sensuous power, or point to things in your own experience. — Wosret

Universals are dependent entities. That's kind of like saying they aren't real. But what about truth?

He only makes explicit this view on truth in an earlier essay, but I doubt that he holds to it by his mature philosophy.

He though, continually speaks of "lies" as a counter-balance to truth. The first example seems to me to be using truth as honesty. When you're lying at least you know the difference. The truth is risked, and muddled, but not entirely abandoned... conviction not so much.

The second seems to be indicating that mystic experiences have no sensuous content, don't point at anything in experience. They aren't even superficial, as they aren't about anything at all.

Again, I don't think that he holds to this view, particularly not as a conviction, lol.

Understand though that Nietszche isn't on a crusade, he isn't an ideologue, he's a troll. He looks for hugely successful, impossible to affront beliefs, traditions, opinions or institutions, and then he attempts to attack them. He does the opposite of going for the weakest, or easiest target.

I'm not a fan of Nietzsche in general--despite the fact that there are a number of views of his that I agree with, and typically I'm not a fan of any philosophers without an analytic bent (or at least a "proto-analytic bent").

Part of the reason why, for both, is given by the following two quotes about Nietzsche's epistemology:

Any interpretation of Nietzsche’s ideas on the issues of truth and knowledge requires, then, a degree of excavation. Karl Japers [compares] Nietzsche’s writings to a destroyed building that must be reconstructed from the hints and clues provided by its ruins... — http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol9/Nietzsche.html

It is no easy task trying to understand what Nietzsche’s views on metaphysics and epistemology are. Beyond getting past Nietzsche’s manner of writing and doing philosophy, the ideas themselves seem to be somewhat muddled and confused. — http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/4435-nietzsche-s-metaphysics-and-epistemology

I prefer philosophers who write in a straightforward, clear, systematic manner, so that one doesn't have to reconstruct ruins. I don't want to do some other philosophers' work for them.

However, some people don't mind doing this, and here's the beginning of one attemped (re)construction of Nietzsche's truth theory:

The thesis of this paper is that, on the whole, Nietzsche operated with two theories of truth, a correspondence and a pragmatic theory, the pragmatic theory of truth being derivative from a more fundamental pragmatic theory of belief. A version of the correspondence theory is presupposed in Nietzsche's claim that his conception of the world as a matrix of forces and powers is a true account of how the world really is. It is also presupposed in his claim that our ordinary beliefs that there are enduring things, objects or bits of matter or material is an illusion or error, i.e., these ordinary beliefs are false. Since the world is just a matrix of forces and powers there can be no such items. However NIetzsche alleges that since we are creatures that have evolved with certain sensory organs and intellectual capacities that enable us to form beliefs, then there must have been some life-preserving utility in having beliefs that such items exist (despite the alleged falsity of such beliefs). Beliefs in such items, Nietzsche claims, can have pragmatic value but they are no guide to how the world really is. Since most pragmatists do not openly admit that pragmatically held beliefs are false, Nietzsche is not so much a pragmatist about truth as a pragmatist about belief. — Robert Nola: Nietzsche's Theory of Truth and Belief, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 47, No. 4 (June 1987) pp. 525-562

What Nietzsche probably had in mind with "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" was kind of the typical superior-than-thou attitude we get in venues like message boards where he's downplaying others beliefs per se contra what Nietzsche himself knows to be true. "Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial" is surely the same sort of thing, with Nietzsche at least being clear in his writing that he's not very sympathetic with religious/mystical approaches.

Again, I don't think that he holds to this view, particularly not as a conviction, lol. — Wosret

Cool.

Thorough answer, TS. Thanks!

There is a later reference, in the AntiChrist, (http://4umi.com/nietzsche/antichrist/55)

Is there any actual difference between a lie and a conviction? — Nietzsche

I find the argument quite compelling, and his attack on 'the party man' of conviction on the mark.

The attack on mysticism on the other hand is a convoluted notion that the Schopenhauerian will is undeniable, yet mystics purportedly claim they can deny it. Here Nietzsche calls his own conviction about the impossibility of not willing 'truth' and thereby gets it wrong. Well, so it seems to me.

It's worth adding that "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" fits in with the understanding our epistemology is driven by our values and the pragmatic defence of them.

Our convictions will see us claim truth to a lie when it is right in front of us boldly proclaiming its dishonesty.

Well, you can't take what he said literally, you know. What he really meant was [insert explanation deemed approrpiate].

Here Nietzsche calls his own conviction about the impossibility of not willing 'truth' and thereby gets it wrong — mcdoodle

Could you expand on this? Would that be called conviction?

Our convictions will see us claim truth to a lie when it is right in front of us boldly proclaiming its dishonesty. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Could be. He seemed to think that losing your sense of humor is the worst thing that can happen.

Yep.

"But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and all the marvelous uncertainty and ambiguity of existence, and not to question, not to tremble with desire and delight in questioning, not even to hate the questioner -- perhaps even to make merry over him to the extent of weariness -- that is what I regard as contemptible..." -- Gay Science.

I tend to think of Nietzsche as a pragmatist on truth (if we had to place him in a category, at least). That which is true is that which is useful, more or less -- and perspective as well as context changes with what is useful. (Though take it with a grain of sand -- I've just read a few of his books, and that was some time ago too.)

Which is why I believe conviction is something he would castigate sincerely (as not all of his verses cohere together). Conviction would stop one from questioning, stop one from considering alternatives or different or new ways of looking at a question and answer. It is something which keeps one sticking to an answer in spite of what may come.

I agree with @Wosret with respect to the second quote.

In a way, I'm not sure it matters all that much for Nietzsche what his - or any - 'theory of truth' would be. Nietzsche's questioning rarely broaches the question of what truth 'is', so much as what truth 'does' - how 'useful' is it, how much does truth - regardless of what it is - affirm life? Nietzsche has a 'theory of the value of truth', much more than he has a 'theory of truth'. Consider the following lines:

"We do not object to a judgment just because it is false; this is probably what is strangest about our new language. The question is rather to what extent the judgment furthers life, preserves life . . . ; and we are in principle inclined to claim that judgments that are the most false (among which are the synthetic a priori judgments) are the most indispensable to us, that man could not live without accepting logical fictions, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, self-referential, without a continual falsification of the world by means of the number — that to give up false judgments would be to give up life, to deny life. Admitting untruth as a condition of life: that means to resist familiar values in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that dares this has already placed itself beyond good and evil."

And the following, far more famous lines on truth: "[truth is] A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."

In each case it's a question of how truth can be mobalized, used or employed with respect to the affirmation of life. And Nietzsche's judgement is that in general, truth hasn't really been used all that well for the purposes of affirming life. But this in turn means that truth may nonetheless have the potential to affirm life, if employed in the 'right' way. Hence some of his other pronouncements, which acknowledge the value of truth nonetheless: "How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value. ...My philosophy will triumph one day, for what one has forbidden so far as matter of principle has always been — truth alone." And "so far, the lie has been called truth."

Elsewhere, truth even constitutes a 'test' of one's spirit: "Something might be true, even if it were also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree; indeed, it might be part of the essential nature of existence that to understand it completely would lead to our own destruction. The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much “truth” he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified." Again, all of this is to say that it's not so much 'a theory of truth' that matters in Nietzsche so much as a 'theory of the value of truth (whatever it may turn out to be)'.

This is why Nietzsche doesn't really care at all for the specificity of truth, and says that there's no real reason to assume a difference in kind between truths and falsities to begin with: " Really, why should we be forced to assume that there is an essential difference between “true” and “false” in the first place? Isn’t it enough to assume that there are degrees of apparency and, so to speak, lighter and darker shadows and hues of appearance—different valeurs, to use the language of painters? Why should the world that is relevant to us not be a fiction?"

I am puzzled as to how you could know what truth does, if you don't know what it is. Perhaps you (and Nietzsche) are really talking, not about truth, but about the idea of truth?

Sure, but then, Nietzsche would probably argue that all truth is 'the idea of truth'. Hence the wonderful line about truth being a mobile army of metaphors: truth is as truth does, in all it's various guises - rendering it no less different in kind from falsity, save a nominal difference.

I'm not going to look shit up, but he talked about virtues, philosophy as confession, and also seemed to distinguish types based on virtues, and suggested that one ought not be greedy, but rather work on cultivating their natural virtue. His of course being honesty, and is implied is the virtue of all great philosophers.

To say something about usefulness though, why do we want truth to be about anything else? To be an authority, a persuasion, an impetus, an absolute reality, or what? What's the use of that beyond control, or vindication?

I don't care about that at all. I care what people's beliefs actually are... that's way way way more useful.

As I understand him (an important qualification), Nietzsche does seem to contradict himself on the topic of truth. The man who claimed there are no facts but only interpretations frequently distinguished between truth and falsity in his writings, even if only implicitly. Platonism and Christianity are based upon deceptions and are therefore inferior to other 'thisworldly' perspectives; the 'overman' is superior to the last man; atheism is superior to religious dogmatism; embracing war and struggle is superior to seeking out peace and security, etc.

He appears to ground these judgments in some broad metaphysical conception of 'Life' akin to Schopenhauer's notion of blind striving will (to power). Those perspectives which are true(r) to Life are ipso facto more life-affirming and desirable, however much they may offend our modern sensibilities. Heraclitus, for instance, comes in for heavy praise by way of juxtaposition with Parmenides (or was it Plato?) precisely because he articulates an accurate view of Life--one characterized by constant movement and change and warfare instead of positing some eternal and ideal world beyond this one.

But this may be a specious reading of Nietzsche. I'm an admirer of many aspects of his thought, and find his life to be of great interest (like Wittgenstein's), but I definitely need to revisit his works after many years away. I do think he felt his perspective was true, and not merely one more useful illusion amongst many others. If this weren't the case, and he looked at all perspectives and interpretations as equally groundless, then he should have had a tremendous respect and admiration for Christianity's overpowering of the world and the values of the ancient Greeks. He may have felt a grudging admiration for this achievement, but he clearly didn't think it was a positive development for historical humanity.

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Could you expand on this? Would that be called conviction? — Mongrel

I was just being a bit flip, suggesting that he doesn't regard his own certainties - like the impossibility of not willing by mystics - as 'convictions', only other people's.

Right so we may know what the idea of truth does, but we do not know what it is an idea of.

Some questions about this passage quoted by @StreetlightX

"We do not object to a judgment just because it is false; this is probably what is strangest about our new language. The question is rather to what extent the judgment furthers life, preserves life . . . ; and we are in principle inclined to claim that judgments that are the most false (among which are the synthetic a priori judgments) are the most indispensable to us, that man could not live without accepting logical fictions, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, self-referential, without a continual falsification of the world by means of the number — that to give up false judgments would be to give up life, to deny life. Admitting untruth as a condition of life: that means to resist familiar values in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that dares this has already placed itself beyond good and evil."

What is 'our new language' a reference to?

What does 'furthers life, preserves life...' mean? Is this a reference to the supposed 'life-denying' vitiation of Christianity and Platonism?

Why are a priori judgements are among the 'most false' of judgements?

The 'purely invented world of the unconditional' - a reference to the purported philosophical or spiritual 'absolute', first cause, ground of being.

'Admitting untruth as a condition of life' - in so doing, one goes beyond the bounds of conventional morality with its pious platitudes and empty philosophical reasoning.

So the anti-philosopher breaks out of the stifling un-realities of philosophy, which is spun around the philosophical fictions of there being a real good in the Platonist sense, and thence creates imaginary worlds in which man imprisons himself; thereby shattering the conventions by which culture defines good and evil.

A work out for what I think is going on: global warming.

Bernie Sanders recently stated that unless we do something about global warming the planet will be "less healthy." This is an example of an imperative a reformer like Sanders would embrace with conviction. It's a belief recommended to the herd which is made of folks who want to be free of shame.

This is a case where the conviction formed by the desire to escape shame is powerful enough to block wonder. People can't question it because they'd risk losing the key to their shame-free status. Thus conviction is worse than a lie.

I'm not quite sure how determinism fits into it. I think that might be the truth that people don't want to face... or it's that truth which is potentially destructive (that N talked about.)

I think Nietzsche admired Jesus Christ, but he considered Christianity to be a slave morality because it is dispensed 'from above'.

Someone above suggested that Nietzsche did not understand Buddhism. I think Nietzsche, despite the fact that his father was a clergyman (or perhaps because of it), did not understand Christianity (or any notion of transcendence) either.

Right so we may know what the idea of truth does, but we do not know what it is an idea of. — John

It's not a question of ignorance ("don't know what truth is..."), so much as it is a question of indifference. That is it an idea - whatever it is, of truth, or the false - is enough to ask of it: how does it affirm life? Who cares (to know) what it 'is'? Hence - again - Nietzsche's relative indifference to the specificity of truth (and his question: "why should we be forced to assume that there is an essential difference between “true” and “false” in the first place?"). Truth might be many things - one could reply: truth is x, y, z - and in all cases, Nietzsche would deem the 'is' of that truth not very relevant, lacking in significance, so long as we do not know what that truth 'does'. This is not a 'bug' so much as a 'feature' of his approach to truth (I don't want to say 'theory of truth...').

Recall also that it's a bit anachronistic to speak in general about 'theories of truth' with respect to Nietzsche's time: Truth still has a Platonic ring about it, in the sense of eternal Truths (of Man!, or Reason! of the Absolute!), and not 'is the cat on the mat?' sort of truths which philosophy today tends to speak about. Nietzsche inveighs against the former.

You seem to have got it down relatively well, albeit in a bit grandiloquent terms.

I certainly agree that truth is not analyzable, and in that sense, and that sense alone, we do not know what it is. But I also think most people intuitively know very well what truth is even though, they cannot explain what it is. Of course, I am not suggesting anyone knows, in the sense of being able to demonstrate, what the truth is, in the sense of what is actually true, even about the more subtle points concerning what ideas contribute to flourishing and what don't. Such a thing is obviously (and with many caveats) known only in the extreme unsubtle cases.