Father Time: The Liar

In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” Nietzsche puts forward the idea that, considering the non-linear and multiple nature of language, the very desire for truth is in fact astounding. Nietzsche explains that the best-suited activity for the evolved human intellect is lying, since this assures the survival of weaker-bodied but intellectually stronger people in face of stronger-bodied but intellectually weaker forces. The powers of deceit – of hiding, of fooling, of the illusion – guarantees the life of the thinking agent more than any desire to express truth about a situation. This shocking appraisal of human language and intellect (the beautiful parallel brought between vitality and illusion) brings Nietzsche to conclude that truth is something supported by the powerful in a society and used in order to pass judgment on, and thus lessen the vitality of, their fellow creatures. This is a far cry from the idea that truth is liberating (the truth will set you free!) and noble. “The truth is the illusion that we have forgotten is an illusion – it is a used and senselessly powerless metaphor, like coins used too well, it has lost the image stamped on it and so we forget where it came from and from where it receives its value” – namely from the State, “society,” the policy-makers, the structure of capitalism – whatever you want to call it, the truth in Nietzsche’s sense is nothing encompassing or non-human or, well, true.
Deleuze takes up what Nietzsche begins in his own sober way. Narration is often deemed the truthful retelling of a story ‘as it was’, or, in terms of fictitious narration, the telling of a story in such a manner that the mode of telling gives the impression that it ‘could be true’ – the minimum conditions for truth are fulfilled – chronology, non-contradiction, etc. Deleuze, however, picks up on methods of narration that “[falsify] narration…[which] frees itself from this system [of judgment]; it shatters the system of judgment because the power of the false…affects the investigator and the witness as much as the person presumed guilty,” (133). Narration is no longer about passing judgment about what it true (i.e. who is guilty of non-conformity), but rather can tap into the creative, artistic power of the false, and its intimate relationship with “irreducible multiplicity,” (ibid). The power of the false is to allow for incompossible worlds and, in so doing, to display a direct image of time. Time in its directness, says Deleuze, is exactly what disallows truth – what today may be a battle tomorrow, tomorrow will indeed be no battle and the once-possibility of that battle becomes a lie (see 130). Time makes liars of us all.