What’s more important to you: Value or Truth? … (The ellipsis gives you time to think before continuing)
According to Frank Magill, editor of a volume on various philosophers, “Nietzsche points out that the value of an idea has greater significance than the truth of the idea.”* Let’s apply.
We hear and read much regarding issues centered on the truth in news and in social media; and since we are somewhat at the mercy of what others tell us, such issues play important personal roles in our thoughts and even, in some instances, our behaviors. We all know, for example, that later-debunked stories have led initially to mob violence, public protests, and festering hatred. Heated responses to unsubstantiated information are nothing new. We could put the Salem Witch trials, runs on banks at the outset of economic downturns, and scapegoating of all kinds into a bucket of falsehoods with often ill effects. On what values do individuals and mobs act upon reading or hearing “truths”?
Inundated as we are—even if we are not addicted to social media and 24-hour news cycles—by an unending string of stories about our contemporaries, we have great difficulty separating what is true over what simply serves some value system. For Nietzsche, according to Magill, “The value perspectives by which individuals live may be necessary and yet not objective. ‘Un-truth’ may carry greater value than ‘truth’ in many situations” (427). For us, that notion applies to where we stand on matters political, social, and religious. Often it applies more in the extremes than in the compromising middle between ends of a spectrum of perspectives.
Nietzsche wasn’t thinking about social media and instantaneous news when he was writing about truth and value, but he might forgive me for stretching his philosophy a bit in applying his notions to twenty-first century life. He identified a change from “classical values” promulgated by aristocrats and church authorities on the bases of truths to values based on the realities of everyday living. He didn’t argue so much a matter of relativism as he argued for re-examination of values as they affected humans personally and socially. In our own times, we might argue that the Superman who directs us toward some distant goal on the basis of his or her forceful words is the authority that has replaced aristocrats and church leaders in establishing values.
Back to my question: What’s more important: Value or Truth? If you are one to broadcast “truths” regardless of their veracity through social media, is it because you are bound to perspectives from which you refuse to vary? Does the value in continuing any point of view or story lie in how it affects others and draws them to your cause? Do you see any conflicting perspective as decidedly untrue so much so that you become emotionally entangled in its refutation? Is there, for example, a component of emotion in any value that is greater than a component of reason or objectivity?
Nietzsche wasn’t opposed to acting instinctively. He saw value in a person of action over a person of thought. So, truth, though seemingly important, might not be what guides us. Values do serve as guides. We seem to have a choice between values imposed by others and constant transvaluation, or at least, re-evaluation. Whether or not we remain secure in the old values or derive new ones seems to rest on what we consider to be Truth.
* Magill, Frank, ed. Masterpieces of World Philosophy. New York. Harper-Collins Publishers, 1990, p. 427.
According to Frank Magill, editor of a volume on various philosophers, “Nietzsche points out that the value of an idea has greater significance than the truth of the idea.”* Let’s apply.
We hear and read much regarding issues centered on the truth in news and in social media; and since we are somewhat at the mercy of what others tell us, such issues play important personal roles in our thoughts and even, in some instances, our behaviors. We all know, for example, that later-debunked stories have led initially to mob violence, public protests, and festering hatred. Heated responses to unsubstantiated information are nothing new. We could put the Salem Witch trials, runs on banks at the outset of economic downturns, and scapegoating of all kinds into a bucket of falsehoods with often ill effects. On what values do individuals and mobs act upon reading or hearing “truths”?
Inundated as we are—even if we are not addicted to social media and 24-hour news cycles—by an unending string of stories about our contemporaries, we have great difficulty separating what is true over what simply serves some value system. For Nietzsche, according to Magill, “The value perspectives by which individuals live may be necessary and yet not objective. ‘Un-truth’ may carry greater value than ‘truth’ in many situations” (427). For us, that notion applies to where we stand on matters political, social, and religious. Often it applies more in the extremes than in the compromising middle between ends of a spectrum of perspectives.
Nietzsche wasn’t thinking about social media and instantaneous news when he was writing about truth and value, but he might forgive me for stretching his philosophy a bit in applying his notions to twenty-first century life. He identified a change from “classical values” promulgated by aristocrats and church authorities on the bases of truths to values based on the realities of everyday living. He didn’t argue so much a matter of relativism as he argued for re-examination of values as they affected humans personally and socially. In our own times, we might argue that the Superman who directs us toward some distant goal on the basis of his or her forceful words is the authority that has replaced aristocrats and church leaders in establishing values.
Back to my question: What’s more important: Value or Truth? If you are one to broadcast “truths” regardless of their veracity through social media, is it because you are bound to perspectives from which you refuse to vary? Does the value in continuing any point of view or story lie in how it affects others and draws them to your cause? Do you see any conflicting perspective as decidedly untrue so much so that you become emotionally entangled in its refutation? Is there, for example, a component of emotion in any value that is greater than a component of reason or objectivity?
Nietzsche wasn’t opposed to acting instinctively. He saw value in a person of action over a person of thought. So, truth, though seemingly important, might not be what guides us. Values do serve as guides. We seem to have a choice between values imposed by others and constant transvaluation, or at least, re-evaluation. Whether or not we remain secure in the old values or derive new ones seems to rest on what we consider to be Truth.
* Magill, Frank, ed. Masterpieces of World Philosophy. New York. Harper-Collins Publishers, 1990, p. 427.
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