On Truth and Untruth

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Here is the first stand-alone edition of one of Nietzsche’s most important works. “Scholars regard Nietzsche’s 1873 unpublished essay, ‘On Truth and Lies,’ as a keystone in his thought” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), and Columbia University professor Taylor Carman’s translation includes complementary selections that trace Nietzsche’s evolving thinking on truth—making this a valuable text for students. In his celebrated essay, Nietzsche argues that “truth” is an illusion. Those ideas commonly agreed to be truths, according to Nietzsche, are mere beliefs and arbitrary constructions of human thought.