A study in ambiguity : Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty on the question of truth

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Abstract

This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the history of modern
continental philosophy by establishing a structural link between the thoughts of
Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I argue that this link lies in the
question of truth: both thinkers criticise the traditional concept of truth as
objectivity. However, they both find in the existence of this very concept a
problem that its rejection alone does not solve. What is it in our natural axistence
that gave rise to the notion of truth? It is this questioning which I call the
"question of truth". I locate three ways in which the question of truth informs
Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty's thoughts. Firstly, both thinkers propose a
genealogy of the concept of "truth," one in which they suggest that our natural
existence is structured in a pre-objective way: existing means making implicit truthclaims.
Further, they each explain the appearance of our belief in truth in terms of
a radicalisation of this implicit attribution of truth (Chapters I and IV). Secondly,
both thinkers seek to recover the pre-objective ground from which truth as an
erroneous concept arose. They propose strikingly similar methods to do so
(Chapters II and V). This ground, once uncovered, must be examined. This
investigation leads both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty to ontological
considerations. They both ask how we must conceive of a Being whose structure
allows for the existence of the belief in truth, or as I argue, error. As a conclusion,
I suggest that both thinkers' investigations of the question of truth lead them to
conceive of Being in a similar way, as the process of self-falsification by which
indeterminate Being presents itself as determinate (Chapters III and VI).

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