1001Philosophers

Friedrich Nietzsche vs Jean-Paul Sartre on Knowledge

Nietzsche treats the will to truth as a problem in its own right and analyzes the supposed objectivity of knowing as a particular historical formation. Sartre treats consciousness as essentially intentional and as the source of meaning that any knowing requires, with the analysis of bad faith as the central diagnostic tool. Both reject the disinterested observer as a useful philosophical fiction.

About this topic

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. Philosophers have asked what distinguishes knowledge from mere opinion, whether it requires certainty or can be probabilistic, and how perception, reason, memory, and testimony each contribute. Ancient skeptics challenged the possibility of knowledge altogether, while rationalists located its source in reason and empiricists in experience. Contemporary epistemology investigates justification, reliability, and the social conditions under which beliefs count as knowing.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Friedrich Nietzsche vs Jean-Paul Sartre comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Knowledge quotes hub.

Representative quotes on knowledge

Friedrich Nietzsche on knowledge

  • “Postcard to Franz Overbeck , Sils-Maria (30 July 1881), tr. Walter Kaufmann , The Portable Nietzsche (1954)”

    I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor , and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza : that I should have turned to him just now , was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely

  • “Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.”

    Notebooks (Late 1886 – Spring 1887) | Popular usage: "There are no facts, only interpretations.

  • “Notebooks (Late 1886 – Spring 1887)”

    Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.

  • “Popular usage: "There are no facts, only interpretations.”

    Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.

  • “In Germany there is much complaining about my "eccentricities." But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been "eccentric." That I was a philologist , for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me — it was the most severe test of my character.”

    Letter to Carl Fuchs (14 December 1887)

All 9 Friedrich Nietzsche quotes on knowledge →

Jean-Paul Sartre on knowledge

  • “L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)”

    Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom .

  • “What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?”

    Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)

  • “Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)”

    What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

  • “Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”

    Every age has its own poetry ; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

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