For those who adhere to moral-rationalism, truth is the highest virtue. And all forms of deception inherently diabolical. Such sincere souls live in fear of being lied to, or led astray into falsehood; they hate ambiguity, concealment, illusion.
This may make them good parents, good people, or good policemen. But, unfortunately, it means they'll never be great poets.
For it's not simply the case that deception is an art, but, more radically, all art is deception; a game of creative immorality and evil genius which not only delights in untruth, but regards the truth itself to be metaphorical in character and all too human in origin.
Something, in other words, that has been enhanced, transposed, and embellished; something which after long years of obligatory usage seems firm, fixed, and authentic - the veritable Word of God.
For it's not simply the case that deception is an art, but, more radically, all art is deception; a game of creative immorality and evil genius which not only delights in untruth, but regards the truth itself to be metaphorical in character and all too human in origin.
Something, in other words, that has been enhanced, transposed, and embellished; something which after long years of obligatory usage seems firm, fixed, and authentic - the veritable Word of God.
(It's worth recalling at this point that before Nietzsche finally pronounced him dead, God was brilliantly conceived by Descartes as not only omnipotent but malevolent and mendacious: the Deus deceptor.)
See:
Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense', essay in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin Books, 1976).
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. and ed. John Cottingham, (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
As Oscar Wilde put it with iconic irony, 'Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.'!
ReplyDeleteSympathetic (or unsympathetic) readers may also enjoy David Thomson's excellent article on his near namesake Hunter S. Thompson, the legendary convicted robber, intoxication merchant and pioneer of 'gonzo journalism' - a form of writing that deliberately dissolved the distinction between 'real' journalism and fiction by inserting the journalist into the events on which s/he reported as a character in a drama. (HST died by self-administered gunshot wound in Colorado in 2005 at the age of 67.)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/03/david-thomson-hunter-s-thompson
As Thomson on Thompson memorably puts it, alluding to Polonius' oft-quoted speech in 'Hamlet',
'Against the classic humanist code of "to thine own self be true", he proposed a new liberty: keep making yourself up until you are lost to identity, responsibility or consequence.'