stem: roger scruton
titel: truth
bron: an intelligent person’s guide to philosophy

There are no truths, said Nietzsche, only interpretations. Logic cries out against this remark. For is it true? Well, only if there are no truths. In other words, only if it is not true. Nietzsche is widely revered for his ‘iconoclastic’ epistemology, and cited as an authority by modernists, structuralists, postmodernists, poststructuralists, postpostmodernists… indeed, just about anyone who has no patience with the idea of authority. Certainly, Nietzsche was a genius, a great writer, and one of the few who have peered into the abyss and recorded, in the brief moment of sanity that then remains, just how it looks. We should be grateful to him, since real warnings are rare. But we should also be warned. Don’t come down this path, his writings tell us, for this way madness lies.