Standing Problems 235that we always need to be on our guard against the philosopher’s idea of a ‘pure,
will-less, painless, timeless knower’, pure reason and absolute knowledge ‘presuppose
an eye...no living being can imagine’. This is the core of his rejection of classical
metaphysics. Conversely, for Nietzsche ‘all seeing is essentially perspective, and so is
all knowing’ (Nietzsche 1956: 255). Perspective is the fundamental condition of all
human existence. There are no facts, only interpretative perspectives. As such the
worldper segives no pointers or directives. There isnoobjective standpoint, nodeus
ex machina, and no god’s eye view.
As a consequence Nietzsche had little patience with orthodox epistemology and
theories of truth. His perspectivism led him to reject correspondence theories of
truth and representational accounts of knowledge. Truths are not discovered, repres-
ented, or found for Nietzsche, conversely, they are created. Knowledge is not about
an increasingly adequate grasp of reality, it is rather about greater mastery and the
will to power by the subject. Logic, equally, is not about careful methodical thought
processes, rather it is again aperspectivereflecting the self-constitutive will to power.
Truth and falsity do not exist as absolutes anywhere. We should, however, be inter-
ested in how far any idea cultivates strength and the will to power. Truth, logic, and
knowledge are thus highly overrated ideas for Nietzsche—they are nothing but con-
ventional fictions invented by the human subjects to exercise power. In one sense,
Nietzsche’s arguments here are very close to a form of solipsism. As Nietzsche com-
ments, ‘No matter how far a man may extend himself with his knowledge, no matter
how objectively he may come to view himself, in the end it can yield him nothing but
his own biography’ (Nietzsche 1986: 182). We fabricate our own realities and then
dress them up in the clothes of knowledge and truth and claim that they mirror some
external reality. Academic knowledge is one of the worst offenders here. In fact, art
is much more important for Nietzsche than academic truth or knowledge. Art allows
us the possibility of coping and living joyfully in the world that we create. The bulk of
academic knowledge, however, is not only false, encouraging us to live inauthentically
and slavishly, but it is also utterly without any efficacy for human life.^3
Perspectivism is the essence of what I have termed the ‘radical use’ of conventional-
ism. In effect, our truths are nothing but conventions. To briefly repeat the questions
outlined earlier: What is the relation between the ‘chaotic becoming’ of the world and
the intellectual structures that we bring to bear upon them? Further, do our intellec-
tual structures actually give us any insight into the ‘reality’ of this becoming or flux?
In addition, does this becoming have any meaning that can be unscrambled through
our intellectual structure? Nietzsche’s answer to the first question is not an isolated
response. In effect, for Nietzsche our conceptual structures (our knowledge, truths,
sciences, and the like) are a subjective grid placed over the flux and chaos of sensation.
These grids help us to organize the chaos (subjectively), however such structures are
purelyinstrumental and conventional in character. The conventions areourfictions.
It is worth noting in passing that Nietzsche was not alone in this account of human
knowledge. In one sense, the seeds are present in Kant’s distinction between the
phenomenal and noumenal worlds. We can thus never have knowledge of reality
or the noumenal ‘thing in itself’. However, in Nietzsche’s own time, Henri Bergson