Nietzsche, Friedrich

716 Nietzsche, Friedrich Promotes Punitiveness.” William and Mary Law Review, v.48 (2006). Cavender, Gray. “Media and Crime Policy: A Reconsideration of David Garland’s The Culture of Control.” Punishment and Society, v.6 (2004). Dowler, Kenneth. “Media Consumption and Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice: The Relationship Between Fear of Crime, Punitive Attitudes, and Perceived Police Effectiveness.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, v.10 (2003). Dowler, Kenneth, Thomas Fleming, and Stephen L. Muzzatti. “Constructing Crime: Media, Crime, and Popular Culture.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, v.48 (2006). Farsetta, Diane and Daniel Price. “Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed.”http://www .prwatch.org (Accessed February 2013). Pfeiffer, Christian, Michael Windzio, and Matthias Kleimann. “Media Use and Its Impacts on Crime Perception, Sentencing Attitudes, and Crime Policy.” European Journal of Criminology, v.2 (2005). Nietzsche, Friedrich A concern with lies and deception is central to the oeuvre of German philosopher, philologist, and cultural critic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). In his 1873 essay “On Truth and Lies in an ExtraMoral Sense,” Nietzsche argues that language operates on the basis of a social contract that obligates everyone to lie according to ixed linguistic convention. He claims that language has no interest in the objective truth of what he calls, following Immanuel Kant, the “things in themselves.” Instead, language only designates the subjective relations between humans and the world around them through metaphors that correspond in no way to the essence of external objects. For the purpose of security and consistency, society obligates individuals to use a ixed set of metaphors, and by the force of habit, individuals forget that the words and concepts that they consider truthful are nothing but metaphorical functions of their conventional morality. Signiicantly, Nietzsche’s argument itself relies heavily on metaphors, many of which revolve around the opposition between life and death. For instance, he compares language to a Roman columbarium and calls it a graveyard of perceptions, suggesting that the lies that society obligates individuals to use to designate things kill their colorful and vivid irst impressions and intuitions. Nietzsche’s own heavy use of metaphors seems necessary because he believes that a criterion for “correct perception” is not available: between the human subject and the perceptual object there can only be an aesthetic relation at best. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes the essay by distinguishing between “rational” and “intuitive” people, who use metaphors in different ways. Whereas rational people cling to an immense “framework and planking of concepts” and live regular and prudent lives in scientiic disenchantment, intuitive people, such as the ancient Greeks, dare to choose beauty over need and embrace the “immediacy of deception,” which can lead to the establishment of art and culture. Like various other 18th- and 19th-century German critics of modernity, Nietzsche, who was a professor of classical philology in Basel, Switzerland, from 1869 to 1879, often presented an idolized view of ancient Greek culture in order to critique what he saw as the lifeless and artless utilitarianism of modernity. Critics have argued that what Nietzsche discovers in “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense” is not that language as such is a lie, but the inadequacy of so-called correspondence theories of truth, which hold that a linguistic utterance is true only if it corresponds to a fact in the world. According to this objection, Nietzsche’s discovery of language’s failure to correspond to “things in themselves” should simply lead him to adopt either a coherence theory of truth, which holds that the truth of linguistic utterances is determined by their coherence with other utterances; or a pragmatic theory of truth, which views those linguistic utterances as true that successfully organize individuals’ experience of the world for practical purposes. However, this objection fails to engage with Nietzsche’s philosophical project as it develops in his mature work, which might be summarized as a radical critique of lies and deception in the present, composing a “prelude to a philosophy of the future” (this is also the subtitle of his 1886 book Beyond Good and Evil). Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche’s fundamental orientation toward the future irst manifests itself in Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (1878), in which he calls for “historical philosophizing.” In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche argues that all previous philosophers have mistakenly taken their contemporaries as the measure of all things, attributing an eternal essence to a notion of humanity that has in fact been constituted historically by particular religions and particular political events. Just as Charles Darwin argued in On the Origin of Species (1859) that species do not have a transhistorical essence but evolve over time, Nietzsche maintains that there are no eternal facts or absolute truths, and that everything, including humanity itself, is in a constant process of becoming. This fundamental insight harbors the possibility of progress as originality, because if people disentangle themselves from their false, essentialist, humanist metaphysics, they might create a better culture and a better morality. They might do this by comparing existing world views, customs, and cultures and by making conscious decisions, relying on their now liberated aesthetic sense, about which values are best. Scientist or Allegorist? Given Nietzsche’s consistent project of exposing lies and deception, it might seem surprising that although he often presents himself as a scientist (compare his book The Gay Science, 1882), most of his books are not systematic treatises but collections of aphorisms, and he relies heavily on iction to develop his arguments. In what is perhaps the most famous instance of Nietzsche’s historical philosophizing, On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), he argues that individuals have forgotten that their current values do not relect eternal moral truths but result from historical struggles for hegemony of certain value systems over others. More speciically, he seeks to demonstrate that Christian morality is a cynical lie. Nietzsche develops his argument through the following allegory. Once upon a time, the word good relected an aristocratic value judgment based in a feeling of superiority. The noble and mighty deined themselves and their actions as “good,” and called those they considered low, base, and plebeian “bad.” However, a slaves’ revolt in morality took place in which the 717 dominated classes managed to radically reverse the values of their aristocratic masters, calling their former masters not “bad,” but “evil,” out of ressentiment (resentment), and designating themselves as “good” by comparison. This radical reversal of values led to the establishment of a reactionary morality that was not grounded in afirmation but in negation. Contrary to the “naturally” felt, active happiness of the former masters, the former slaves lied themselves into an artiicial, passive happiness by telling themselves, through “sublime self-deception,” that they were not evil and therefore good. This myth allegorizes the triumph of Jewish and Christian morality over the “life-afirming” values of the Romans and other “noble races.” Nietzsche, whose father and grandfather were Protestant pastors, denounced Christianity as a nihilistic ideology premised on a hatred of reality (compare also The Anti-Christ, which he wrote in 1888, only months before his nervous breakdown, from which he would never recover). Just as Nietzsche can only expose the false, metaphorical nature of language by resorting to metaphors, he can only expose Christian morality as a reality-denying iction through the use of iction. This is because an objective outside perspective on the web of lies and deception in which individuals are entangled is never immediately available. Therefore, instead of making a vain attempt to construct such a “truthful” perspective in his texts, Nietzsche appeals to what he alternatively calls his readers’ aesthetic sense, their intellectual conscience, or their will to truth, provoking his readers, often through the use of irony, to see all their present values for what they are: a constellation of lies and deception, daring individuals to overcome these lies in the present so that they may consciously create new values in the future. Michiel Bot New York University See Also: Darwin, Charles; Fiction; Freud, Sigmund; Kant, Immanuel. Further Readings Nietzsche, Friedrich and Carol Diethe, trans. On the Genealogy of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 718 Nixon, Richard Nietzsche, Friedrich and Marion Faber, trans. Beyond Good and Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs, eds. The Birth of Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Nietzsche, Friedrich and R. J. Hollingdale, trans. The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. New York: Penguin, 1990. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann, trans. The Gay Science. New York: Vintage, 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich and Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann, trans. Human, All Too Human. Lincoln, NE: Bison, 1996. Nixon, Richard As Richard Nixon sought, and subsequently won, a second term as president of the United States, he became embroiled in a massive scandal involving illegal practices during his reelection campaign. On June 17, 1972, ive members of President Nixon’s staff were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. This intrusion funneled responsibility directly to the president and was not the only improper or illegal campaign activity sanctioned by the Nixon administration. Formally known as the Watergate scandal, such wrongdoings from Nixon and his staff led to the president’s resignation from ofice on August 9, 1974. In an effort to gather intelligence from the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign, the Nixon administration attempted numerous break-ins at their opposition’s headquarters. The irst, authorized by the Committee for the ReElection of the President’s general counsel G. Gordon Liddy, instructed a team to invade the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on May 26, 1972. By prearranging a dinner at the DNC complex, a group of hired burglars had access to the building and tried to obtain information from the Democrats. This was unsuccessful and required another effort. The second break-in was made one evening later on May 27. Eight men were disguised as Federal Reserve workers reporting to the Watergate complex. They dodged security and tried to breach the DNC facility’s security system. However, the mission failed, as one trespasser did not have the correct tools to complete the break-in. The two attempts on the DNC center were documented solely by testimonies of the coconspirators. Evidence does not exist to verify that either of the failed entries actually occurred. Members of the Nixon administration were dissatisied with their futile breach of the Democratic Party and remained committed in their efforts to seize competitive information. Nixon’s team was eventually successful on May 28, when a well-equipped unit of ive men took photographs of various DNC documents. Speciically, snapshots were taken of a DNC contributors’ list to enable Republicans to strategize toward obtaining more voter support prior to the November 1972 election. Intruders also wiretapped the phones of Democratic strategists during the break-in. One of the phone taps was improperly executed at the DNC facility. This required another visit to the Watergate, which took place on June 17, 1972. While surveying the grounds, a member of the Watergate security force, Frank Willis, noticed that tape was covering the bolts of various doors in the building. He removed the tape and did not believe this to be a concern. However, Willis made another search of the premises and noticed that the tape had been reapplied at approximately 1:00 A.M. Police were subsequently notiied, and the authorities caught ive men who were burglarizing the DNC headquarters. Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, along with head conspirators Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were all connected to the series of intrusions on the Democratic Party. They were eventually indicted for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping. President Nixon denied any personal involvement in the scandal and maintained that no one in his administration had taken part in the illegal activities. Speciically, he stated, “I can say categorically that . . . no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.” Several months passed while Nixon