On Truth And Untruth

Newly translated and edited by Taylor Carman, On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful influence over modern and contemporary thought. This original collection features the complete text of the celebrated early essay “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense” (“a keystone in Nietzsche’s thought” —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), as well as selections from the great philosopher’s entire career, including key passages from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.

Newly translated and edited by Taylor Carman, On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful influence over modern and contemporary thought. This original collection features the complete text of the celebrated early essay “On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense” (“a keystone in Nietzsche’s thought” —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), as well as selections from the great philosopher’s entire career, including key passages from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.

A part of Harper Perennial’s special “Resistance Library” highlighting classic works that illuminate the “Age of Trump”: reissued for a time of “fake news” and “alternative facts” comes a striking reissue of Friedrich Nietzsche’s classic collection of writings on truth, more relevant now than ever as we confront as a society the nature, and value, of truth. “We continue to live within the intellectual shadow cast by Nietzsche.”—New York Times Book Review “Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what ‘truthfulness’ is.”— from On Truth and Untruth On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful influence over modern and contemporary thought. This original collection features the complete text of the celebrated early essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (”a keystone in Nietzsche’s thought”—Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), as well as selections from the great philosopher’s entire career, including key passages from The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Will to Power, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.

"On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense") is an (initially) unpublished work of Friedrich Nietzsche written in 1873, one year after The Birth of Tragedy. It deals largely with epistemological questions of truth and language, including the formation of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases-which means, strictly speaking, never equal-in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. According to Paul F. Glenn, Nietzsche is arguing that "concepts are metaphors which do not correspond to reality." Although all concepts are human inventions (created by common agreement to facilitate ease of communication), human beings forget this fact after inventing them, and come to believe that they are "true" and do correspond to reality. Thus Nietzsche argues that "truth" is actually: A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms-in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. These ideas about truth and its relation to human language have been particularly influential among postmodern theorists, and "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" is one of the works most responsible for Nietzsche's reputation (albeit a contentious one) as "the godfather of postmodernism."

While many studies of On the Concept of Irony treat Kierkegaard's "irony" primarily from a literary perspective,The Isolated Self also examines irony with an eye to the fundamental problem in Kierkegaard's authorship, namely, the challenge of becoming a "self." Kierkegaard's "irony" is a cavalier way of life that seeks isolation from the other - an isolation he considers necessary to becoming a self. At the same time, irony is said to be a hindrance to selfhood because the self fails to become a part of the social world in which it resides. The Isolated Self thus puts the existential tension of On the Concept of Irony into relief and suggests how it sets the stage for the rest of Kierkegaard's authorship. The Isolated Self reconstructs the horizon of understanding during Kierkegaard's time, including Hegel's interpretation of both Socratic irony and Friedrich Schlegel's romantic irony. In addition, the work explores material from the little-known Danish discussion of irony in the works of Poul Martin Møller, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen Martensen.

In this study, Gert-Jan van der Heiden shows that this hermeneutic understanding of the relation between truth, untruth, and language can be clarified by inquiring into the meaning of two notions: disclosure and displacement. Unconcealment and hiding, truth and untruth, disclosure and displacement are the key notions to understanding the various conceptions of language in contemporary approaches to hermeneutics in continental philosophy. By painting a picture of the different meanings of these concepts in the work of Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida, illuminating the differences and affinities of their respective projects, he finds an original way of showing how these three thinkers mutually discuss the relation between truth and language.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that explains why bullshit is far more dangerous than lying One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

National bestseller A fresh, insightful guide to reading body language in the post-digital age Whether you’re at a job interview or a cocktail party, searching LinkedIn or swiping right on a dating site, you want (no—need) to understand what people are really thinking, regardless of what they’re saying. Understanding what others are trying to tell you with their posture, hand gestures, eye contact (or lack thereof) or incessant fiddling with their iPhone might all be even more important than what you’re projecting yourself. Do they plan on making a deal with your company? Are they lying to you? Can you trust this person with your most intimate secrets? Knowing what others are thinking can tell you when to run with an opportunity and when not to waste your time, whether at work, in a crucial negotiation or on a promising first date. Bestselling authors Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson, principals at the communications company Truthplane, illustrate the essential points of body language with examples from everyday life, leavened with humour and insights that you can use to your advantage in virtually any situation.