Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Hamidreza Mahboobi Arani

Assistant professor of philosophy, University of Tarbiat Modares

Abstract

Nietzsche holds that in all its levels every culture and form of life has been founded on some version of the illusion, be it Socratic, Apollonian or tragic. In the Modern area, we still need illusions as the driving forces of our culture. Hence, the paradox of honest, transparent or conscious illusions. The paradox here lies in that, thanks to the self-consciousness of this era, all the past illusions have collapsed and we came to realize that every kind of value or faith is no more than one version of illusion. Then, how is it possible to live with illusions we know them to be illusions? In this regard, Nietzsche appeals to art and probe into the way it provides us with conscious illusions. Here is the realm where we can learn how to live with transparent illusions in a fictionalist way. Art is the place we enjoy to live with illusions and we, as the free spirit of the future and commanders of new values, should imitate art in this regard, although this time in the realm of real life. In the current paper, I will try to elaborate on this line of thought and interpretation as it is articulated by Hussain, showing how Nietzsche's answer can be constred as a version of fictionalism, or be more exact, value fictionalism.

Highlights

1. Introduction

Moral nihilism is the view that no moral proposition is true. The world, generally speaking, lacks any moral significance and is, both in terms of evaluative and normative aspects, neutral towards our evaluative stances.  This view that moral values are not but our humane untrue subjective projections on a world not dressed with them is also called moral/value antirealism. This view, joined with another premise, called normative objectivism, that is the view that the authority of values rests and relies on their objective standing, leads to normative disorientation.

2.  Normative disorientation and the necessity of a revaluation of all values:

Normative disorientation is the practical upshot of losing our normative guidance in the middle of a world in which values seem bereft of objective standing. No culture and the human being can stand living a disoriented life.  It is totally unbearable and unfruitful. Hence the necessity of the project of a revaluation of all values resulting in such a consequence arises. This project, however, seems to be paradoxical from the very outset since it requires to be conducted under the aegis of at least one standard unconditional value, while there is no such one in a devaluated world. In other words, how Nietzsche reconciles the truth-enduring spirit of his ideal philosophers, who dare to accept the truth of moral nihilism, on the one hand, with the practice of engaging new values or changing the order of values in our evaluative hierarchy. The fictionalist interpretation of Nietzsche's project of the revaluation of all values aims to resolve this paradox or puzzle.   

3. Honest illusions: art and what we must learn from art

According to Hussain's version, the above interpretive puzzle can be solved by taking Nietzsche’s philosophers to be engaged in a fictionalist simulacrum of valuing, as a form of make-believe. Objective values do not really exist. And since we have no other alternative than normative objectivism, so the only available way is "to create values much in the same way as, when we were children, we invented games to play". They are not real, but we suppose or pretend to be objective and real. Rather, they have to be called honest illusions. We believe them to be true, knowing them to be untrue. To see how such a practice is possible, we should look toward art, where a close connection drawn by Nietzsche between art, the avoidance of practical nihilism, and the creation of new values. As Nietzsche says we welcomed the arts as the good will to appearance or even deception and invented this kind of cult of the untrue to be capable of bearing the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness that is moral nihilism. Art is an example of where a form of make-believe and pretending works successfully. Here is where S values X by regarding X as valuable in itself while knowing that in fact, X is not valuable in itself.

 4. Becoming an artist of our life

The example of art, according to Hussain's version, both shows us the psychological possibility of regarding things as valuable even when we know that they are not and provides a source for techniques that, suitably refined, could help us succeed in regarding things as valuable outside the domain of art proper. This is the main reason why art is so valuable for Nietzsche as a metaphysical endeavor in order to make life bearable and even promote it towards those higher values Nietzsche envisages for humankind. Here also I turn back to the Nietzsche's first book to clear Hussain's position and elaborate on some of its other aspects, showing that Nietzsche's paradox, as Hussain articulates it, can be traced back to Nietzsche's earlier thought.

5. Attempts to deals with some difficulties

Here, two main problems are dealt with:

1)    How can we engage ourselves in the practice of creating honest illusion while we know them to be illusion?

2)    What is that difference between our past highest values of Christianity and the supposed new values that Nietzsche aspires to create, that make the former not to be subject to the factionalist revival?

6. Conclusion

The paradox that Hussain claims is actually one between our modern consciousness and the illusory nature of human life. And while Hussain's interpretation makes room for the psychological possibility of fictionalism, it doesn’t provide any sound ground for the practice itself. And it seems that except the metaphysical ground that Nietzsche provides in the Birth of Tragedy, he doesn't think of any justification for the very practice itself.

References

-       Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. (2010) Error theory and  Fictionalism, in The Routledge Companion to Ethics, edited by John Skorupski, Routledge.

-       Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. (2009) Eternal Recurrence and Nihilism: Adding Weight to the Unbearable Lightness of Action, In https://philpapers.org/archive/HUSERA.pdf.

-       Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. (2007) Metaethics and Nihilism in Reginster's “The Affirmation of Life”, In     http://www.stanford.edu/~hussainn/StanfordPersonal/Online_Papers_files

-       Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. (2007) Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits, in Leiter & Sinhababu (ed.2007).

-       Reginster, Bernard (2006) The Affirmation of Life, Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism, Harvard University Press.

Keywords

• moral nihilism
• illusion
• truth
• art
• fictionalism