Teorie e pratiche della verità in Nietzsche ed. by Pietro Gori and Paolo Stellino (review)

The matter of truth in Nietzsche’s thought is one of the most studied and debated topics in recent scholarship. It is a topic of great interest and has generated much scholarship, but rarely does such work offer anything new. The book, Teorie e pratiche della verità in Nietzsche, edited by Pietro Gori and Paolo Stellino, is an exception to this trend, as it offers important and original contributions to this area of study.

The text—which is the result of a workshop by the same name held in Valencia in May 2011— develops an original approach on two different levels. On the one hand, the authors acknowledge in the preface not only the importance of the search for truth in Nietzsche’s philosophy, but also the importance of the continuity, both chronological and theoretical, of his reflections on the subject. This point of view might not be shared or agreed upon by all and might even become a subject of debate. However, it seems to be both philologically and hermeneutically supported. On the other hand, each of the nine essays—ten, if we include the introduction by Jesús Conill-Sancho—offers a new perspective on the question of truth in Nietzsche, so that previous research in this field is called into question rather than just accepted. This multiperspectival view reflects Nietzsche’s philosophy itself, which is in deconstructing every possible idolized dogma, even the dogmas of scholarship itself, and proposing a multivocal experimental answer to the question: What could be a Nietzschean “truth”? Or, following the title, what are the theories and practices of a Nietzschean “truth”?

A first attempt at an answer is offered in the introduction, in which Conill-Sancho clearly locates the distance between Nietzsche’s conception of the truth and the traditional adaequatio paradigm in the importance Nietzsche gives to the experimental dimension of truth. This dimension has to be understood in a twofold way. On the one hand, truth is originated by life itself, which is the psychophysiological grounds of our experience of the world and ourselves, and has the form of a value rather than a logical statement about reality. Nonetheless, on the other hand, the rejection of the metaphysical paradigm of truth doesn’t seem to imply the impossibility of entering into a relationship with reality, as long as it can be conceived as an experimental creation led by the same process that creates language and that the author happily defines as “tropological dynamism.”

The next two essays in the book inquire into the possible influence of ancient philosophy on Nietzsche’s conception of truth. In “Nietzsche amicus sed. Reconstrucción de las fuentes e interpretación de las lecciones de Nietzsche sobre los diálogos platónicos,” Francisco Arenas-Dolz reveals the complexity of Nietzsche’s approach to Plato at the time of his philological lectures, retracing his sources and underlining the deep relationship that links the two philosophers. Despite the traditional understanding of their contrast, according to the author, Nietzsche had found in Plato’s dialogues a conception of truth that isn’t in the world of ideas but in the practical (political) intervention of the philosopher as legislator of reality.

Expanding on the controversial question about the degree of skepticism Nietzsche wishes for his philosophy and those who follow his philosophy, Maria Cristina Fornari, in “Il paradosso del veridico. A partire dall’aforisma 213 de Il viandante e la sua ombra,” offers a reading of WS 213, displaying how the skeptical approach of Pyrrho, as understood by Victor Brochard, represents for Nietzsche an unavoidable step in the process of failing to reach the truth. From a Nietzschean perspective, as the author outlines, truth can’t be reached because it constantly undergoes a process of self-sublimation. Rather than embracing the vanity of skepticism brought to nihilism, Nietzsche develops a constructive and experimental approach, which embraces perspectivism and inexhaustible research.

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