Perishing of the Truth
Nietzsche's Aesthetic Prophylactics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4873368 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aaron Ridley (University of Southampton, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 427-437 |
| Publication date | 2010-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayq035 |
| OpenAlex | W2005207618 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
This paper offers an interpretation of Nietzsche’s well known unpublished remark, ‘Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ I argue that it is not helpful to construe this remark as a claim to the effect that art falsifies the truth by, for example, peddling lies or deceptions. Rather, I suggest, the remark should be taken to refer to the various ways in which art can present us with the truth in such a manner that we do not perish of it. And of these ways, I argue, the most interesting is that in which art facilitates awareness of putatively ugly truths while actually abolishing their ugliness: a striking discussion of this possibility is to be found in Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy. I conclude that, overall, Nietzsche is best understood as a conditional cognitivist—as someone who thinks of truth as valuable, but not as valuable no matter what; and I suggest that what makes his position interesting and distinctive is the alethic pessimism (‘Truth is ugly’) that runs through his version of cognitivism
Art · Cognitivism (psychology · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Literature · Pessimism · Tragedy (event · Education, Literature, Philosophy Research · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.27 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |