Volume XI, Issue II, Spring 2018

THE AGONIST
world” (TI “Reason” 2); the traditional distinction between the apparent world
and the true world is in fact a distinction between the actual world and nothing
(KSA 13: 14 [184]). At times Nietzsche exchanges the true-false binary for degrees
of appearance (BGE 230, KSA 12: 9 [40]), that is to say, how apparent something
is to us. In GS 54, Nietzsche decisively rejects the distinction between
appearance and some opposite “essence” or “thing in itself.” And here
Nietzsche identifies his understanding of appearance with “that which lives and
acts effectively.” So, appearance—in life—is not mere appearance, because it
names real (living) events that nonetheless cannot satisfy traditional standards of
metaphysical realism or dogmatic certainty. An 1881 notebook passage
pointedly captures Nietzsche’s positive appropriation of appearance: “My
philosophy is an inverted Platonism: The further something is from true being, the
more clear, beautiful, and better it is. Living in appearance (Schein) is the goal”
(KSA 7: 7 [156]).
What bearing can all this have on coming to terms with Nietzsche’s charge
of “falsehood” that we are examining? An 1881 Nachlass passage (KSA 9: 11
[156]) might help. There Nietzsche distinguishes between three degrees of
“error” in relation to an eternal flux: “the crude error of the species, the subtler
error of the individual, and the subtlest error of the creative moment
(Augenblick).” Species-form is the crudest error because it corrals differences
into a common universal. The assertion of the individual is a “more refined
error” that comes later, rebelling against commonality in favor of unique forms.
But then the individual learns that it itself is constantly changing and that “in the
smallest twinkling of the eye (im kleinsten Augenblick) it is something other than it
is in the next [moment].” The creative moment, “the infinitely small moment is the
higher reality and truth, a lightning image out of the eternal flow.” The “higher
reality and truth” of the creative moment is thus an “error” in a quite different
sense compared to the species-error and the individual-error.
Even the notorious fragment “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense”—the supposed source of Nietzsche’s critique of truth as an erroneous
superimposition of stable form onto a stream of flux—shows some leeway in
distinguishing creative formation from secured form. The metaphorical transfer
of fluid and variable experience to fixed words and concepts is actually preceded
by the more original operation of “intuited metaphors” and “images” that are
closer to the flux of experience by being singular, unique apprehensions; and
such pre-conceptual apprehension is associated with an artistic imagination that
does not fall into the trap of fixed words and concepts (TL, 256-58).
Nietzsche often articulates the meaning of appearance in terms of creativity
and art. In an 1887 note he claims that truth is not “found” in reality, it is created
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