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Nietzsche on truth

Friedrich Nietzsche, 100 years after his death, remains a controversial figure in philosophy.
Much of this controversy stems from Nietzsche's view of truth, which seems superficially
hopelessly contradictory, vacillating between relativism and denial of truth on the one hand, and praise for science and hard truths on the other. Thus, any person wanting to defend Nietzsche's positive philosophy must first make sense of his epistemology. The solution to this puzzle regarding Nietzsche's theory of truth is the realization that Nietzsche changes his view on truth. Much like Wittgenstien, Nietzsche had an early and a late period in his epistemic views, and a middle period where he is struggling with two very different, incompatible views. The late view of truth is surprisingly straightforward: Nietzsche can be seen as an early pragmatist. Once we have a coherent truth theory, we can then start to conclude some of the more contentious arguments in Nietzsche's philosophy, such as: what is the Will to Power, and how does Nietzsche's view of truth interact with his criticism of morality? This thesis will trace the development of the former and endeavor to answer some of the latter.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-08092008-194304
Date05 September 2008
CreatorsWarr, Aaron
ContributorsHudson, Robert G., Howe, Leslie A., Dwyer, Philip, Dayton, Eric, Thorpe, Douglas
PublisherUniversity of Saskatchewan
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-08092008-194304/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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