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?There are no truths,? states one. ?Well, if so, then is your statement true?? asks another. This statement and following question go a long way in demonstrating the crucial problem that any investigator of Nietzsche?s conceptions of perspectivism and truth encounters. How can one who believes that one?s conception of truth depends on the perspective from which one writes (as Nietzsche seems to believe) also posit anything resembling a universal truth (as Nietzsche seems to present the will to power, eternal recurrence, and the Übermensch)? Given this idea that there is no truth outside of a perspective, a transcendent truth, how can a philosopher make any claims at all which are valid outside his personal perspective? This is the question that Maudemarie Clark declares Nietzsche commentators from Heidegger and Kaufmann to Derrida and even herself have been trying to answer. The sheer amount of material that has been written and continues to be written on this conundrum demonstrates that this question will not be satisfactorily resolved here, but I will try to show that a resolution can be found. And this resolution need not sacrifice Nietzsche?s idea of perspectivism for finding some ?truth? in his philosophy, or vice versa. One, however, ought to look at Nietzsche?s philosophical ?truths? not in a metaphysical manner but as, when taken collectively, the best way to live one?s life in the absence of an absolute truth.

By looking at one of Nietzsche?s specific postulations of perspectivism, we can get a better idea of precisely how this term applies to his philosophy and how it relates to the ?truthfulness? of his other claims. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche begins with a chapter entitled ?On the Prejudices of Philosophers.? Almost immediately he begins to tear into the lack of integrity on the part of traditional philosophers who present their ideas as the product of pure reason. Nietzsche declaims, ?they pose as having discovered and attained their real opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic: while what happens at bottom is that a prejudice, a notion, an ?inspiration,? generally a desire of the heart sifted and made abstract, is defended by them with reasons sought after the event? (Beyond Good and Evil, which will be referred to as BGE, I.5). Thus, philosophical insights are not the universal claims to truth that philosophers have presented them as and wished them to be. The philosophy of an individual is precisely that, not a product ?of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic.?

This example is typical of the very personal method that Nietzsche uses in his philosophy. (This method is what generates his perspectivism.) For him, every idea has a life, a skin wrapped around it through which it is presented to the world and by which it is created. It would be fallacious to look at a philosopher?s ideas without looking at the philosopher who was motivated to write them down. Nietzsche regarded himself, as Richard Solomon points out, ?first and foremost as a psychologist.? And as a psychologist, he was perhaps more interested in what led someone to believe something rather than what they actually believed.

The very next section after the previous quote in Beyond Good and Evil supports this hypothesis of Nietzsche as a ?psychologist.? Nietzsche states that ?It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir? (BGE I.6). While this quotation shows another instance of Nietzsche looking at the personal aspect of philosophy, the most important word in the quotation may be that these personal touches are ?unconscious.? Nietzsche?s perception that these prejudices which characterize a philosopher?s work remain unconscious to his readers is the main impetus for Nietzsche to do his work. He wants to make these ?unconscious? prejudices, conscious; he wants us to question what we have not questioned before.

If we are doomed (or blessed, depending on your perspective) to always view the world from our own point of view, then one can never know an absolute truth. Nietzsche states that in light of perspectivism the very idea of an absolute truth is unintelligible, so there can be no absolute truth to be known. He writes, ?I shall reiterate a hundred times that ?immediate certainty?, like ?absolute knowledge? and ?thing in itself,? contains a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction in terms]: we really ought to get free from the seduction of words!? (BGE I.16). All of these terms, ?immediate certainty,? ?absolute knowledge,? and ?thing in itself?, are ways that Western philosophers beginning with Plato, the originator of the ?thing in itself?, to Kant and even Schopenhauer have explained their position that there is a more valuable transcendental world that is untouched by our petty prejudices. It is through Nietzsche?s idea of perspectivism that the world of absolutes, as posited by a specific philosopher, becomes a contradiction in terms. For, as Nietzsche has made clear, no person can ever write untouched by these worldly prejudices.

Although Nietzsche has made it clear that we can never know an absolute truth, he deplores the scepticism that he sees as rampant in the Europe of his time. Just because one does not know that one?s beliefs are true does not mean that one should not forcefully will them to be true. Indeed, if there is no transcendental truth, we are given the freedom to create truth as we want it to be. However, Nietzsche sees a prevalent scepticism, one might even call it ?nihilism,? in Europe that has resulted from his cultural ?death of God? and usually produces a ?paralysis of will? (BGE VI.208) that Nietzsche despises. He believes that humans need to continue to act in the face of this uncertainty, which should be viewed as the opportunity to create something new rather than an ominous burden preventing us from moving.