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stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

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What is his type, his will to power?” (NP 94-5). The type that wills the truth is not the type that<br />

takes this life to be already true. “Who is the truthful man, what does he want? First hypo<strong>thesis</strong>:<br />

he wants not to be deceived, because it is ‘harmful, dangerous and inauspicious to be deceived.’<br />

But this hypo<strong>thesis</strong> presupposes the truthfulness <strong>of</strong> the world itself. For, in a radically false world<br />

it is the will to not let oneself be deceived that becomes inauspicious, dangerous and harmful”<br />

(NP 95). For this reason, Deleuze argues, the opposite is the case. The type that wills the truth is<br />

the type that takes this life to be something false, an error. “If someone wills the truth it is not in<br />

the name <strong>of</strong> what the world is but in the name <strong>of</strong> what the world is not. It is understood that ‘life<br />

aims to mislead, to dupe, to dissimilate, to dazzle, to blind” (NP 96). But why does this type take<br />

this world to be something false, an error? Could it be the case that this life is just that? Could it<br />

be the case that that is the truth? It is unclear what that would even mean. Life is becoming.<br />

However, I hope that by now it is clear that this is not an ontological statement if it is not at the<br />

same time an ethical statement. In fact, it must be an ethical statement for it to be an ontological<br />

statement. Becoming is not subject to truth. It is the truth that is subject to becoming. That life is<br />

becoming means that I am becoming as an Overman. But the reactive, negative type does not<br />

become. But what does this mean other than that the reactive, negative type denies life,<br />

specifically, that it demands that becoming submit to being? The power <strong>of</strong> contagion, pollution,<br />

oppression. “The attempt to deny differences is a part <strong>of</strong> the more general enterprise <strong>of</strong> denying<br />

life, depreciating existence and promising it a death (‘heat’ or otherwise) where the universe<br />

sinks into the undifferentiated” (NP 45). This is the sufficient reason for the submission to truth:<br />

the reactive, negative type submits to truth because he cannot live this life right here, right now.<br />

The Cogito cannot get himself to become. It is for this reason that truth, in other words, that<br />

knowledge becomes opposed to life in the first place. “Knowledge is opposed to life, but because<br />

252

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