Dissimulation in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”

In his paper On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Friedrich Nietzsche discusses man’s systems of abstractions and the processes by which he constructs knowledge within an anthropomorphized global truth. Nietzsche argues that knowing is a pursuit by man to exercise and fulfill the “solitary flame of [his] vanity,” whereby his intellect “employs its principal powers in dissimulation” to assert itself effectively against the minds of others. Nietzsche posits that it is through this process of intellectual fitness, as opposed to the biological fitness of survival, that man’s drive for truth emerges. Man’s use of knowledge is all he cares for, and, in light of such a truth, it is “incomprehensible…how an honest and pure drive for truth could arise among them.” Truth itself, within this context, is merely an agreement on a shared knowledge base, and, logically, to deviate from the fixed representations of reality—the common describers of the world and its derived knowledge—is to lie. In a very real sense, lying is physically breaking what connects humanity: a single, shared set of concepts. Collectively, man gives up creativity to choose concretely the derivation of order. Thus, at every intersection of man’s senses, man deludes himself. He chooses that which brings him a sense of law and structure, even if it is tentative, for to live in abstraction is to live without definition, to live without intellect. Man dissimulates.

So what is dissimulation? Superficially, it is defined as the concealment of thoughts, feelings, and/or character. But what does it mean within the context of Nietzsche’s argument? This is a fundamental question, as it deals with the foundational premise of the paper: man’s ignorance of the fluid malleability of the “universal and rigid truth” he has self-conceptualized. At the beginning of his paper, Nietzsche characterizes dissimulation as a power and art, almost as if it were a tangible skill to be wielded. He says that its application is to “deceive, flatter, lie, delude, talk behind the back, put up a false front, live in borrowed splendor, wear a mask, hide behind convention, and play a role for others and for oneself.” But what is dissimulation, and why is it, as Nietzsche says, a natural occurrence? Why is the intellect’s main function to dissimulate? How can the principal composition of a word whose etymology points to a core meaning of to discern be that which means to conceal something’s true nature? How can a word associated with reason and knowledge be linked directly to what would seem to be the very opposite? These questions are the objective of this paper. Without them, we would fail to understand Nietzsche’s core point: the responsible utility and application of intellect.

Nietzsche introduces the concept of dissimulation for the first time as something “the intellect unfolds its principal powers in,” used specifically as a means “for preserving the individual.” He continues to outline how it is a process by which “weaker, less robust individuals,” in lieu of the physical battle for survival, wage a sort of intellectual battle for existence that, he states, reaches its maximum in man. But what characterizes the “weaker, less robust individual”? Are they physically weaker and need to resort to intellect to disguise their lack of physical value? This would be the literal case—a reference to Darwin’s natural selection—which implies that man’s intellect is all that delineates him from animals. Or are they of weaker minds, with more primitive tendencies that yearn for some sort of—whether physical or intellectual—modern-day survival of the fittest? It is challenging to choose a definite answer, but, luckily, such an answer is not necessary, for both fall under the category Nietzsche defines as “the solitary flame of vanity.” The “weaker, less robust individual” is he who seeks self-preservation through any pathway of “deception, flattering, lying, deluding…etc.” He is self-absorbed, using the intellect at his disposal to conceive positions that cause him to appear great and strong. But in truth, he is not. Thus, man is weak because he thinks. He constructs ideas designed to feign intellectual ferocity and delude himself about his failures in fabricating anything substantive. Such is the core of dissimulation: a false sense of creation and achievement.

The challenge with dimensionalizing dissimulation within the paper is its constant tension with language. The inception of language was purposefully to dissimulate and to metaphorize the world of abstractions into categorizable concepts, to, as Nietzsche phrases it, create “a uniformly valid and binding designation of things.” These concepts and their recursions form the “legislation of language,” “the first laws of truth,” and the foundation for communication between men. Yet they are, in themselves, a dissimulation from the truth of existing objects. They generalize qualitative items into approximate quantities, correcting automatically for minor differences and, therein, concealing true natures. For example, a man asked to grab a water bottle for a room may walk in to find two very different objects, each capable of holding water, yet neither adhering exactly to the prototype for the metaphor he was sent to find. Thus, language, while serving the function of conveying truth and bestowing understanding, is the same vehicle by which lies and metaphorical incongruity are bestowed. Man, then, is naturally disposed to dissimulate merely by virtue of how he communicates. However, for the purpose of social order and communicative clarity, man accepts this degree of dissimulation as necessary to create a shared “truth.” Truth is built on deceit; order is built on chaos. Such is the fragile reality man crafts: he reduces his world into language, and, in doing so, invites dissimulation and misunderstanding. Dissimulation thus forms an integral part of man’s collective organization.

According to Nietzsche, there are two archetypes of man, each with his own employment of dissimulation: the rational and the intuitive. For the latter, he is characterized as an “overjoyed hero” whose primary motivation is the illusion of hedonic pleasure. For the former, his principal endeavor is the “meeting of his needs” through measured action. Though Nietzsche focuses primarily on the intuitive man, he juxtaposes the dissimulation of intellect, associated with fulfilling human needs, with abstraction and artistic intuition, the driver behind culture and beauty. It seems that Nietzsche holds a lesser degree of respect for the man of intuition, whose life is composed of the “disavowal of indigence, the glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and in general this immediacy of deception,” and full of items—“clay jugs”—and human behaviors—“the gait”—that have been invented without any apparent need. In contrast, he describes the rational man as “meeting his principal needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity.” The intuitive man pretends to meet needs, creating and designing societies built upon metaphors and artistic composition that are not only unneeded but devoid of meaning. They have been created for the purpose of creating, which is different from the function of creativity. Here lies Nietzsche’s contempt, for he argues that man should defamiliarize himself with the rigid shared truth so that he may open himself to poke, prod, and produce new dimensions of it through metaphoric representation. Whereas the intuitive man creates offhandedly, Nietzsche proposes a form of linguistic and impressionistic invention that is deeply intentional. Anything less is, fundamentally, a further dissimulation. Thus, his regard for the rational man is elevated because of the measuredness of his dissimulation. The rational man creates what he must out of deliberate need to self-preserve and a measured understanding of what he is conceptualizing.

So what is dissimulation? It is the freer of the intellect. Dissimulation appears to be characterized by some apparent deviation from the truth. But, as has been discussed extensively, the truth is not fixed. Man is preoccupied his entire life with the navigation, the substantiation, and, occasionally, the augmentation of a shared system of Atlas-like scaffolding. Therein, liberty ceases. Creativity is self-restrained within the concepts of thought allowed by the structure of language. How, then, is man allowed to breathe? How, then, is man allowed to stretch the legs of his intellect from underneath the scaffolding? Dissimulation. “So long as he is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free.” “The intellect is free,” and “with creative pleasure it throws metaphors into confusion and displaces the boundary stones of abstractions.” And in totality, nothing has changed. The scaffolding holds, dissimulating like a solar flare off the inescapable, all-consuming, all-illuminating sun of the construction of communication: a flare of creativity subsiding, yet enough to let loose the ideas otherwise held in by that invisible rope that defines the fiery sphere. Suddenly, what seems like an inevitable river of consciousness, pulling into its current any and all men, becomes a stream—the moving path that carries man’s ideas where they would otherwise be unable to walk.