Abstract

The theme of truth as useful fiction is the focus for a treatment of a variety of aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. Nietzsche's perspectivism--his view that concepts and purported truths are, at best, perspectival falsifications--is consistently maintained because a program for the attainment of objective or universal truth is rejected. ;The role of language in commending certain fictions is explored, and Nietzsche's views on the possible extrication of thought and experience from the hegemony of language are aired. Several philosophical positons often attributed to Nietzsche are suggested by his language, but are rejected by Nietzsche himself. ;The role of fictions in science is discussed in conjunction with Nietzsche's view that science describes its subject matter, but can't explain it. Bacon, with his doctrine of the idols of knowledge, serves as a foil in this discussion. ;The notion that Nietzsche's formula of truth as useful fiction involves a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth is discredited; what he rejects are the ontological underpinnings of many traditional versions of that theory. Nietzsche's so-called "pragmatism" is discussed with A. O. Lovejoy as a foil. Pragmatic concerns are important for Nietzche's theory of truth, but it is misleading both to say that his is a "pragmatic" theory of truth and that he advances a pragmatic criterion for the adjudication of truth. ;The charge that Nietzsche's doctrine of fictions undercuts himself is examined; Nietzsche actually welcomes the reflexive application of his criticisms to his own philsophy. A discussion of some of his most prominent notions, those of the Eternal Return, the Will to Power, and the Overman, treats them as self-conscious fictions, and their perceived utility is described. In acknowledging that his own philosophy is fictive and perspectival, Nietzsche is not to be understood as paradoxical; he is ironic in the tradition of insoluble, self-conscious, Romantic irony