Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes on Knowledge
Nietzsche's epistemology is organized around the genealogical critique of the will to truth: what calls itself objective knowledge is interpretation under specific conditions of life and power, and the philosophical history of treating truth as a metaphysical absolute is itself a symptom of life-denial. On the Genealogy of Morality and the late notebooks develop the doctrine of perspectivism — every act of knowing is from somewhere, with affective and evaluative commitments built into its conditions of possibility. The position is not relativist in the cheap sense but anti-foundationalist: there is no view from nowhere from which the manifold perspectives could be ranked.
Quotes
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Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
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“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) -
“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 ”
Letter to Carl Fuchs (14 December 1887) -
“I now myself live, in every detail, striving for wisdom, while I formerly merely worshipped and idolized the wise.”
Letter to Mathilde Mayer, July 16, 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers , Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 46