What is Reality?
The Philosophy of Perspectives
What is reality? How many times have you been told to face reality? And perhaps you also used the same expression to convince others of your views? How did you feel in these situations? As these commonplace reveal, we do not always share the same reality, even when we live in the same context as our interlocutor. Indeed, it is entirely possible that we all have a very different perception of reality. So, what is reality then? Obviously, the answers can be as varied as there are differing viewpoints on it, indicating that no one is able to answer this question with certainty.
Therefore, defining what is real for us responds to a need, deeply rooted in each of us, to see reality in this or that way. And to be able to do this, we start from foreknowledge that somehow already belongs to us, is already within us, and is something that orients us, allows us to decipher the real according to the pattern that is already ours.
What is true and what is false?
Letter to a friend
What is the boundary between what is true and what is false? In many cases it seems very clear to us just where this boundary lays. Yet, the location of this boundary may not be as obvious as it appears to be. For example, what do you think of the "principle of non-contradiction", that is the principle according to which a thing cannot be the opposite of what it is? Is this a "true" principle? The question is of profound significance as the concepts of λόγος (logos) and ἐπιστήμη (episteme) are based on the principle of non-contradiction. Yet Nietzsche, and more recently logicians such as Graham Priest, by Dialetheism have argued that it is not necessarily true.
Nietzsche and the truth
The point is that for the principle of non-contradiction, cogent arguments can be mounted both to support it as well as to deny it. Thus, understanding whether the principle of non-contradiction is true or false with rational arguments may not lead to any results. Therefore, according to Nietzsche, the very notion of the "truth" is itself an "error", a fabrication. Nevertheless, this error is necessary because it is essential to our survival. Thus, the issue is not so much that of revealing to the world that there is no truth (this would already be a paradox anyway, since it would claim to affirm a truth about the truth), but rather to unmask the claim that any truth is "the truth".
Unmasking the claim that any truth is "the Truth"
But on this point we must be careful, because Nietzsche does not invite us not to be deceived: indeed, we are all destined to be deceived. Therefore, the only thing we can do is, at least, be aware of this predicament and eventually choose the most advantageous non-truth for ourselves. In other words, and this is very important, the truth can - at most - be an agreement at a certain moment, in a certain situation, on what is "true" for everyone. Moreover, the reason why we deceive ourselves is not, as one might think, because we are unable to reach the truth as something too beyond us. On the contrary: every time we want "the truth", we reach it, and precisely in this there is deception, or rather, there is the risk of believing that is the only truth possible.
Nietzsche and the pluriverse of meanings
We always find confirmations for our predictions, but it is always us who self-determine them. Therefore, problems inevitably arise when there is a singular truth-claim made for everyone, which is a most dangerous fabrication. The danger of such absolutist claims lies in potential for normative prescriptions for how one should act, think, and be. Now, that does not mean there should not be values and that we are not bound by them. However, from this point of view, "truth" is a value that does not depend on any reality-in-itself, but simply depends on our need to have a viewpoint, or rather a constellation of fixed points that help us maintain our orientation. We can imagine individual truth as a ‘star chart’ of beliefs that indicates a direction, and which we interpret as elements of a state of affairs, on the basis of which we can orient ourselves. Of course, I am not denying that values are useful. However, following Nietzsche, I question their state of reality. At the very least, it should be kept in mind that our constellations of beliefs are as unique as they are changeable (another important aspect that Nietzsche grasps about everyone's belief system), and it is good that they are: so much the better to have a belief system that is as flexible as possible! Nietzsche represents it well with an image when he says that “one must have chaos within oneself to generate a dancing star" [Nietzsche, F., Prologue of Zarathustra, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, from Opere di Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Colli G. - Montinari M., vol. VI, part I, Adelphi eBook 2015, p. 12].
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star
And it is clearly a contradiction with respect to our experience: a star that started dance instead of standing still would disorient us. But this is how our ideal belief system should be: flexible, changeable, adaptable. Furthermore, with this image, the relationship between mankind and the stars is of timeless significance. Indeed, long, understood as bright and luminous points which serve to orient us guide our way. Whereas Plato's philosophy conceives of ideas as eternal and immutable realities, Nietzsche’s philosophy calls into question the enduring platonic belief in the separate existence of a transcendent world of fixed truth as distinct from and hierarchically related to the sensible world. This basic platonic distinction is the bedrock on which much of Western philosophical tradition was built. However, this same bedrock has also bedevilled it in the form of, for example, the principle of non-contradiction introduced above.
The principle of non-contradiction raises the following questions: Must it necessarily hold? That is, are there worlds, cultures, ways of thinking in which the principle of non-contradiction has never been conceived as in the West? There are. Some of the wisdom traditions of the East never came to mind this principle, but not only ...
