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NIETZSCHE'S MITIGATED SKEPTICISM1

Analytically sensitive treatments of Nietzsche, from Danto to Wilcox and

Strong, convey a certain awkwardness when they treat questions of the nature
of knowledge, its relation to the world, and the nature of truth. Nietzsche's
views concerning truth and knowledge häve been characterized äs
"philosophical nihilism" by Arthur Danto.Ä His conception of the relation
between knowledge and the world has been labeled "perspectivism" by
analytical and nonanalytically inclined commentators alike. While Nietzsche's
remarks on truth have been invoked to justify the charge of epistemological
nihilism by Danto, they. have also been cited to support the antipathetic
'cognitivist' ascription, by John T. Wilcox3 for example.
I dont't propose to choose between Danto's and Wilcox's characteriza- ·
tions here. What I do propose, rather, is a different paradigm to capture
Nietzsche's intended relation between 'truth/ 'knowledge/ and 'perspective';
one which will hopefully avoid some of the trivializing consequences of
Danto's and Wilcox's characterizations.4 Finally, I shall suggest that
Nietzsche's epistemic remarks, far from being 'nihilistic,' appeär rather tarne
and even orthodox when contrasted with those of Peter Unger,5 for example,
to which they bear a striking family resemblance.

1
I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Research Committee of the University of
California, Riverside, for its support; to C. S. Taylor for his thoughtful reactions; Arthur
Danto for a classic model of hpw to respond and react; to the APA Pacific Division, for inviting
this paper for oral presentatioii, in 1978.
2
In Nietzsche äs Philosopher. New York & London: Macmillan, 1965. All references to Danto
will be to this work.
3
In Truth and Value in Nietzsche. Ann Afbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1974. All
references to Wilcox will be to this work,
4
This attempt is not without its own dangers. Wrenching Nietzsche*s epistemological notions
from the cpntext in which they are embedded ·<- will-to-power, recurrence, nihilism,
Ühermensch — can also produce caricature instead of characterization. That seems to ine an.
unayoidable risk in so short a paper. This (potential) grievance is redressed, however, in my
Nietzsche's Existential Imperative. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1978.
5
In His Ignorance: A CaseforScepticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.1 dori't for
a moment suggest that Unger is ünder Nietzsche's influence. I suspect he has never even read
him.
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 Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism 261

Discussions of Nietzsche's perspectivist epistemology have, quite rightly,

been preoccupied by his remarks on the nature of truth. If knowledge is
justified true belief, and if Nietzsche asserts that there can be no such thing äs
truth, then there can be no such thing äs knowledge. But given the
(self-referentially) self-defeating character of the assertion that there can be no
such thing äs truth, Nietzsche's puzzling remarks invite reconstruction.
Consider some attempts:
Nietzsche proclaims time and again that everything is false. He means that
there is no order in the world for things to correspond to; there is nothing, in
terms of the Correspondence Theory of Truth, to which Statements can stand
in the required relationship in order to be true. (Danto, 75)
The conception of an independent and objective world structure; and the
conception of truth which states that truth consists in the satisfaction of a
relationship of correspondence between a sentence and a fact, are views
which Nietzsche rejects. (Danto, 72)
He denies that anything is "true" or that we "know" anything in any sense
which presupposes insight into the thing-in-itself, the transcendent reality
which Kant thought had to be distinguished from appearance or phenomena.
Doubt about that kind of truth or knowledge was not uncommon in the
nineteenth Century . . . (Wilcox, 127)
we have explicated some of the senses in which he believed that there is no
truth — there is no truth about any thing-in-itself, and no truth about the
phenomenal world which is not a perspectival Interpretation, simplification,
and "falsification." (Wilcox, 155)
we have seen two senses in which Nietzsche argues that "truth" is not
possible: there is no transcendent truth and no truth which does not simplify
in terms of human perspectives. Nevertheless, in another sense there is truth,
truth which ineets logical and scientific criteria, truth disciplined and based
upon experience. This distinction is necessary if we are to resolve the
antinomy with which we began; for no sense at all can be made of the
cognitivist themes in Nietzsche's thought unless we reject the most extreme
interpretations of his epistemological skepticism. (Wilcox, 171)
The "extreme interpretations" which Wilcox would have us reject refer to
the sort Danto offered. Wilcox's Nietzsche is essentially a cognitivist whose
view of truth and knowledge "was not uncommon in the ninteenth Century."
On this construal, we are simply to ignore Nietzsche's literal assertion that
there is no truth, substituting a neo-Kantian reading which transforms this
raging Hon into a meek kitten.
Danto, on the other hand, accepts that Nietzsche claims that there is no
truth, and calls this nihilism, not cognitivism.
Let us pause to draw an inference. Zarathustra says that God is dead. If he
is right, and God is identified with truth, then truth must be dead. Is this .not
anotber way of stating that there is perhaps no truth, no objective order,
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262 Bernd Magnus

nothing which we must acknowledge äs higher than ourselves, äs fixed,

eternal, and unchanging? Which is nihilismt Nietzsche indeed means this
inference to be drawn . . . (191)
Nietzsche's Nihilism — his idea that there is no order or stfucture
objectively present in the world and antecedent to the form we ourselves give
it . . . (195)
Danto is not unalive to the "cognitivist" elements which Wilcox Stresses:
"Nietzsche's is a philosophy of Nihilism, insisting that there is no order and a
fortiori no moral order in the world. Yet he sometimes wants to be saying
what the world is like" (80). Indeed, the doctrine of the Will-to-Power may be
just such an attempt to say what the world is like. So Danto struggles to
understand what Nietzsche's prima facie self-defeating utterances about truth
could possibly mean. "He had hit upon the idea that for a Statement to be true,
nothing need correspond to it. Then he made a metaphysicäl principle of this
'not' by saying that nothing corresponded to our proposition, so that — since
they meant to say something — all propositions were false" (193). Putting the
matter this way suggests a simple enough thesis. Nietzsche's diction overshot
his insight. Mischief followed. The insight which got buried in the linguistic
conundrum which masquerades äs metaphysicäl insight can then be stated
plainly: the correspondence theory is false.
We are, therefore, to coristrue Nietzsche's perspectivism by reverting to'
geometry.
To revert to the analogy with geometries, if we decide that Euclidean
geometry is 'true/ this will be because it has worked for us for a long tirne äs
an Instrument in surveying, triangulation, and other metrical activities. More
we cannot say. (77)
The question sometimes arises äs to which of these geometries correctly
describes the geometry of the physical world; a Nietzschean answer would be
that not one of them does, for the world has no geometry to describe. So with
philosophies, including that of common sense. There is no real world
structure of which each of these is an Interpretation, no way the world really
is in contrast with our modes of interpreting it. (76)
As I said at the outset, I do not propose to choose between recent
competing characterizations of Nietzsche's perspectivism; nihilism or cogni-
tivism. I shall simply assert, baldly and boldly, that neither characterization is
entirely successful, and offer an alternative.

II
Against positivism, which halts at phenoitiena — There are only facts — I
would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We
cannot establish any fact "in itself": perhaps it is folly to want to do such a
thing.
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 Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism 263

"Everything is subjective," you say; but even this is Interpretation. The

"subject" is not something given, it is something added and invented and
projected behind what there is. — Finally, is it necessary to posit an
Interpreter behind the Interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis.
In so far äs the word 'knowledge* has any meaning, the world is knowable;
but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless
meanings. - "Perspectivism."6
Knowledge is Interpretation for Nietzsche. But the Interpretation which
knowledge is is not what we customarily mean by "Interpretation." We
sometimes say "Oh, that's only your Interpretation," meaning thereby to
mark a difference between the "Interpretation" and the "facts" in the case. The
word "Interpretation" functions in this case äs a synonym for the word
"opinion." We do not mean to say, for example, "Oh, that's only your
Interpretation, but then again there are only interpretations." Yet Nietzsche
appears to be committed to saying some such thing äs that. For him there are
only interpretations. But Nietzsche says it more flamboyantly of course.
"Truth is errpr."7 And, "there is no truth."8 Perhaps most dramatic and
succinct of all: "Truth is the kind of error without which a certain kind of
living being could not live."9
This thesis of Nietzsche's about the relation between representation and
represented can be made accessible by employing and unpacking the following
metaphor: Knowledge is like a reconstructed text; the world is like the lost
original.10
This metaphor is motivated by the following scenario. Suppose I show
you a Renaissance manüscript which purports to be the legendary but lost
Aristotle treatise on the art of letter writing. The manüscript, we believe on
decent internal and external evidence, is a copy of the original Aristotle text. In
the process of authenticating oür Aristotle text we infer that our copy is copied
from lost medieval versions. Each of these copies is, in turn, related to an
earlier one, and the chain of copies presumably derives from the "original"
copy which a scribe transcribed.
Suppose further that we now found several earlier copies, but not the
original. Plainly there will be discrepancies between copies. Paragraphs appear

6
KGW VIII l, 323; Kaufmann 481 (267). Reference to Kaufmann'* Tbc Will to Power is
provided because bis translations are the most widely read by English-speaking persons. They
are, with perhaps one or two quibbling exccptions, the best available. They are excellent.
Levy's "complete" edition of Nietzsche in Engiish is almost hopcless, in contrast.
7
KGW VIII 3, 300; Kaufmann 454 (249).
8
KGW VII 3, 218; Kaufmann 540 (291).
9
KGW VII 3, 226; Kaufmann 493 (272).
10
At first blush this metaphor may suggest Derrida rather than Nietzsche. That this is not-the
case becomes clear in the unpacking.
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264 Berftd Magnus

to be transposed in some, sentences in others. Gaps appear to exist in several of

our text copies. All that is to be expected, for we assume that errors and
mistakes have crept into the copies just äs typos creep into modern
transcriptions, only with greater frequency. Each successive scribe no doubt
encountered things which were difficult or unintelligible for him, conditioned
äs he must have been by his linguistic, historical and philpsophical limitations.
To copy the text meant, therefore, frequently simply.to Interpret the earlier
version, to make emendations and, sometimes, to simply guess where the
available text is literally unintelligible. So "inteipreted" copies got copied by
generations of scribes until we arrive in our scenario at pur copies of Aristotle's
epistolary treatise.
Our analogy here concerns knowledge. Knowledge, I now want to say, is
like a reconstructed text. This suggests that the relationship between
knowledge and world is like the relationship which obtains between copies of
the Aristotle manuscript and the inaccessible original. The copies do not
correspond in any straightforward sense, just äs knowledge does not
"correspond" to the world simply either.
But to suggest that knowledge is like a reconstructed text is not only to
suppose that no correspondence-relation can, strictly speaking, obtain among
the several copies and, further, in their relation to the original (lost) text. It is*
also and perhaps primarily to presuppose the existence of an accessible original
in terms of which we measure the adequacy of the copies. The putative lost
original is the Standard for our textual reconstruction, indeed for any
reconstruction. So even to speak of "errors" and "mistakes" is to contrast the
reconstructed copy with the paradigmatic original version. But we have
already granted that the original Version is lost, is inaccessible.
So we are in the curioüs position of ascribing "errors" and "mistakes" to
scribes, even in the absence of the lost original, rather than to the author^
Aristotle. For to assert that there are errors is to assume that the copy.deviates
from the inaccessible original text. The paradox is that our copy of Aristotle's
epistolary treatise must agree with, correspond to, the original in order for it to
be a "true" representation of Aristotle's treatise. It is not a true copy if it
misrepresents what Aristotle said, if it does not say what he said. But we do
not have the original before us. It is inacessible, after all. And yet the
authenticity of our reconstruction is a function of its agreement with that
inaccessible original. .
To claim, therefore, that the world is like the inaccessible original is, first,
to point out that in the knowledge Situation there can be no question of a
simple isomorphism between piropositions and "fäcts." The relation between
knowledge (reconstruction) and world (inaccessible original) is not a simple
copy-relation. There is, strictly speaking, no-thing to copy.
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 Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism 265

Second, suppose it is the case that there can be no question of reading

knowledge off or in reality, anymore than we can decode our copy of
Aristotle's work off or in the inaccessible original. It does not follow from
these remarks, however, that we cannot or do not chpose between competing
manuscript copies. We do choose. Often we choose on the basis of the
coherence or Utility of a given Version. Coherence functions äs "correctness"
in such a case — whether Aristotle's inaccessible original is captured in that
reconstruction or not. By extension, then, we choose among competing
perspectives too, äs if measuring them in terms of their "correspondence" to
the world. However, there can be no question of "correctness" here, if
Nietzsche is right.
So perhaps we should take Nietzsche's other remark equally seriously.
Truth is indispensable. We must hold things to be true, he says. And, further,
we are the sort of beings who could not live without truth, Nietzsche says. But
the sense of truth we must live by is complex. We must act äs if knowledge
corresponded to the world, is "true," even though it does not, is not. We must
behave äs if knowledge were that reconstructed text which we are comparing
to an accessible, available original. In our Aristotle-text Illustration, for
example, we still "fill the gaps" in the earlier manuscript copy, "correct" the
"mistakes" in spelling and sentence transposition, äs if we were comparing it
to an accessible original. We even choose among competing versions with
reference to this nonexistent original version. Reconstruction of the Aristotle
manuscript, therefore, may be characterized äs Interpretation according to a
scheme that we cannot dispose of, cannot throw off.
That, of course, is precisely how Nietzsche wishes us to understand
knowledge and rational thought generally: "Rational thought is Interpretation
according to a scheme that we cannot throw off."1*
"Truths" then are "interpretations." Interpretations are perspectives, and
Nietzsche often calls these latter "fictions." The fictions are logical fictions,
heuristics, however. They are neither fairy tales nor whimsy. In some ways
they resemble Kuhn's "paradigms."12 They are based upon the presupposition
of correspondence "truth," without which any inquiry becomes hopelessly
impossible. They then control the inquiry itself. Some of these "fictions^'
prove so valuable that they become unquestioned assumptions; for example,
"that there are enduring things, that there are things, substances, bodies."13
Assumptions whose Utility has invested them with the rank of unquestioned

11
KGW VIII l, 198; Kaufmann 522 (283).
12
Kühn, Thomas S., The Structure of Sdentific Revolution*. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1962; and "Refleccons on my Critics" in Critidsm and the Growth of Knowledge\ eds.
I. Lakatos and R. Musgrave. Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1970.
13
KGW V 2, 147; SA . 116.
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266 Bernd Magnus

"truths" become embedded in our habits of thought and speech; embedded in

our language. And one consequence of this imeresting fact is that for
Nietzsche
we are still being constantly led astray by words and eoncepts into thinking
things are simpler than they are, äs separate from one another, indivisible and
existing each on its own. A philosophical mythology lies hidden in language,
and it breaks out again at every moment, however careful one may be.14
It is not entirely clear how far Nietzsche's critique of knowledge was
intended to go. At times, äs in the remark just eited, he sounds strikingly like
the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations. But he has also been
interpreted äs suggesting that logic itself is entirely dispensable, even that the
laws of logic are an accretion of Indo-European gramman
There is much to be säid about Nietzsche's partial linguistic turn, äs there
is about the metaphor I have impösed upon his epistemology — to the extent
that he may be said to have had one at all. On this strait-jacketed occasion,
however, I have time for only one or two further suggestions.

III

I have suggested that neither Danto's nor Wilcox's construals of

Nietzsche's scattered remarks on 'truth,' 'knowledge,' 'perspective' and
'Interpretation,' capture his intended meaning very well. Wilcox's strategy is to
attach differential weight to competing elements of Nietzsche's teaching, so
that cognitivist elements outweigh noncognitivist elements. Danto's earlier and
— I believe — mofe subtle treatment, on the other hand, recommends to us an
interesting analogy; an analogy with geometries. While perhaps more alive to
Nietzsche's nuances, Danto's analogy fails to capture Nietzsche's intent in
three respects at least, it seems to me. First, it is scärcely possible to compare
Nietzsche's perspectivism with geometries without inviting that other
question äs to which geometry "fits" the world. Indeed, the analogy with
geometries presupposes for its own force the very contrast Nietzsche is
anxious to avoid; an ultimate eontrast between formal and empirical Statements
and truth. In consequence, second, it is difficult to appreeiate Nietzsche's
intention that his perspectivism is meant to apply to the truth of empirical
propositions, not merely formal ones, without making»him appear eveh more
arbitrary than he may perhaps be. Finally, Danto's analogy fails to capture the
tforcarbitrary character of a choice among perspectives, suggesting instead that
we "decide" what will work for us on utilitarian or pragmatic grounds. His

14
KGW IV 3, 185; SA I, 878-79.
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 Nietzsche's Mitigated Skepticism 267

analogy misses the extent to which correspondence continues to function äs a

heuristic truth determinant in Nietzsche's epistemology, I think.
If, for Nietzsche, knowledge is like a reconstructed text and the world is
like the lost original, and if, further, neither the term "nihilism" nor
"cognitivism" really captures this epistemic metaphor very well, what
ascription does?
There is a striking thematic and systematic similarity in Nietzsche's
Janus-faced epistemology and recent work of Peter Unger and Keith Lehrer
which is worth mentioning in this connection. Even the competirig titles of
their works Ignorance15 and Knowledge,16 may remind us of 'nihilism' and
'cognitivism.'
Lehrer and Unger agree that error is always logically possible, that one
can never rule out all conceivable counterexamples to any knowledge claim.
For Lehrer this means that knowledge does not entail certainty. Rather, the
justification of a knowledge claim is synonymous with the coherence of that
claim with other propositions within a System of belief. Lehrer refers to this
System of belief äs the "doxastic System of man." Unger, in contrast, argues
that skepticism is true (paradoxically), since one can never be undogmatically
certain of anything. Barry Stroud summarizes Unger's views nicely:
He thinks that nobody knows anything at all about anything, and that, äs a
consequence, nobody is ever to the slightest degree reasonable or justified in
believing anything or in doing anything. Furthermore, it follows that every.
attribution to a person of an attitude or state of mind that implies that
something is known to that person is false; so, for example, nobody ever
notices anything or regrets anything, or is ever angry or happy or gratified
that something or other is so. In fact, Unger in his zeal even devotes a chapter
to showing that there is no truth, on the grounds that if something is true it is
in agreement with "the whole truth about everything," but that there is no
such thing äs "the whole truth about everything." He concludes that nothing
whatsoever is true, and that consequently nobody ever believes or thinks that
anything is so, or asserts or says that anything is so.17
The point of this superficial mention of Lehrer and Unger is plain enough.
Lehrer's views and Unger's are anticipated by Nietzsche, And if Unger's work
is to count merely äs "skepticism," not äs nihilism, then Nietzsche's
skepticism is surely of the mitigated variety.

15
Op. dt.
'· Uhrer, K. Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
17
The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. LXXIV, Number 4, April 1977, 248.
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