In the writing “On Truth and Lies” by Nietzsche, we are introduced to an arguement that not everyone gets to think about often. Of course, this is because changing this issue would be far too hard, but realizing it is an issue to be discussed throws the reader into a new set of thoughts, and then thoughts of how the words we use are affecting us. Nietzsche argues that there is no truth in the world, and that we cannot ever find the truth, because of how language was created by humans, for humans.

Nietzsche brings the argument up that language is falsifying the world, and giving us the false comfort that we know things. Language is not spoken fact, but a tool that we use in order to express how we feel, to communicate with one another in order to get what we desire from them, or to share an idea. As Nietzche states, “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out,” thus fooling society into believing that these sounds we use are not in fact facts at all. What we say is almost the opposite.

All humans made up language, using definitions to describe what they’re talking about, or to assign an attribute to an item. With all words being made up, there is no one true thing on this earth that we know has a real name or meaning, as we are the ones who game them life and meaning. You can call a chalkboard a whiteboard easily, if you change the definition of chalk or of a whiteboard, you could even go as far as calling it a whole desk, and you could possibly be right. My family and I do this every day. Sometimes we have word slips, or more Filipino family that we listen to say things like “close the light,” or “turn on the window.” We have accidentally and playfully redesigned language in our house, and know what it means when someone says that to us, and technically in our house, that’s correct terminology. Whether it is an official definition or not makes no difference in the fact that those are words with some kind of meaning that we recognize in commands. Calling language a metaphor puts into perspective how little we really do know about the world around us, and how we have made up what we think we know.

As we know “so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors.” With this in mind, it gives us something to come to terms with. Our truth right now can remain as is, but the question of whether or not we know anything at all is knowledge. It is impossible it seems to know something, so we must accept the fact that this is how we have to work around knowing and not knowing something.

Nietzsche continues about how the artist can escape this. He says that you can create your own world in which everything is organic, if you are able to aesthetically recreate the entire world for yourself. I understand that this can be a nice way to have a new view on things, but I do not think that this brings you any closer to a truth, if one existed in the first place. A big limit I can think of for artistic freedom is that you would have to be born with no one around to teach you about any of society and our normatives. I think that surviving like that at all would be a struggle, and then starting a new world for yourself only brings us back to the question before we released this child into the wild. Even if you make a whole new aesthetically organic world is that we continue to have the problem that nothing in that world can be truth either.

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