Wednesday, September 23, 2009

From Nietzsche:

"Let at least this much be admitted: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective estimates and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and clumsiness of some philosophers, one wanted to abolish the "apparent world" altogether - well supposing you could do that, at least nothing would be left of your "truth" either. Indeed, what forces us at all to suppose that there is an essential opposition of true and false? Is it not sufficient to assume degrees of apparentness and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance - different "values," to use the language of painters? Why couldn't the world that concerns us be a fiction? And if somebody asked, "but to a fiction there surely belongs an author?" - couldn't one answer simply: why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the fiction too? Is it not permitted to be a bot ironical about the subject no less than the predicate and object? Shouldn't philosophers be permitted to rise above faith in grammar?..."

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