Max McLoughlin: "Nietzsche on Bitter Truth"

Max McLoughlin, Uppsala universitet: "Nietzsche on Bitter Truth"

Abstract
Bitter truths are common and familiar, yet they pose practical problems. Self-deception, denial, willful ignorance, intentional suppression all loom as possibilities once we meet with something we would rather not know. In this paper, I hope to extract some general lessons for living with bitter truths by considering the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Not only does Nietzsche provide insightful discussion of this topic, but it is an area that exposes a rich tension in his thought – between the primacy of truth and the primacy of life. Nietzsche is better than anyone at exposing and confronting bitter truths. However, he is also profoundly concerned with affirming life and opposing all forms of pessimism and nihilism. To affirm life in the face of bitter truths, then, requires some general method for living with them. I survey four general strategies – spanning his early, middle, and late period – and I discuss their relative merits.