If Truth Were A Woman
Supposing truth is a woman-what then?
Is there not reason to suspect
that all philosophers, in so far as they were dogmatists,
have known very little about women?
That if their aim was to charm a female,
they have been especially inept and inapt
in making advances to truth
with such awful seriousness and clumsy insistence?
One thing is certain:
she has not let herself be charmed
and nowadays every dogmatism
stands dejected and dispirited-if it is standing at all!
Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, Preface
I preserved a few books from my undergraduate days. I selected this one to read again. The translation by Walter Kaufmann has a published date of 1965. The spine of the paperback is reinforced by gray duck tape. Notes are in the margins, selected lines are underlined in red ink. I hold the weathered volume and remember what it felt like to be in my late twenties, reading Friedrich Nietzsche for the first time. I felt as if my hair was on fire.
3 thoughts on “If Truth Were A Woman”
Wow.
Better that than your pants on fire (since truth is being discussed).
No question, there’s a difference.
Nietzsche was very focused upon truth, coming over and over at “truth” from a number of angles. His perspectivalism was anything but a rejection of truth.