Nietzsche on Philosophy, Interpretation and Truth

Abstract

“Interpretation” according to Nietzsche, has always been the actual — if generally unacknowledged — activity of philosophers and other thinkers, at least to the extent that they have been more than mere philosophical and intellectual “laborers” content to work within and with the framework of interpretations developed by others. And it is his further contention that genuine philosophers — including the “new philosophers” he envisions and calls for — will not and should not abandon interpretation in favor of some more “exact” form of thinking and reasoning, but rather must engage more self-consciously and deliberately and less dogmatically in it. So he characterizes his own philosophical activity as interpretive, despite the fact that this would appear to place his own positions on a par with those he rejects and brands as “lies,” “errors,” and “fictions.” “Supposing that this also is only interpretation — and you will be eager enough to make this objection? — well, so much the better” (BGE 22).

For a much more extensive treatment of issues dealt with in this paper, and of others related to them, see the Introduction and first two chapters of my Nietzsche (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), from which several paragraphs in this paper have been taken. See also my “Nietzsche and Nihilism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (January, 1973), which appears as Chapter 8 of my Hegel and After (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975).