Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
As a writer, one lives more in fear of being taken seriously than being thought superficial and fraudulent. Thus, like Wilde, one greatly values insincerity ...
If sincerity is the ideal virtue of speaking clearly in accordance with one's true feelings and genuine beliefs, then insincerity is the demonic gift of speaking in tongues and a method for multiplying our personalities and proliferating perspectives.
Insincerity is, therefore, one of the crucial components of art, which, of necessity, is an impure and unhealthy practice; that is to say, a form of decadence that is the very opposite of sincerus. And yet, there are surprisingly many writers who deny this and defend sincerity in all spheres, including artistic sincerity.
Orwell, for example - whom we might regard as the the anti-Wilde - argued that insincerity gives rise to muddled thinking and that this in turn has pernicious (sometimes fatal) political consequences. He condemns writers who seek to disguise their real thoughts and authentic selves by using complex metaphorical language and long words, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
But as Nietzsche pointed out, plain speaking Englishmen are the least philosophical creatures on earth and hardly deserve even to be considered as artists, lacking as they do the imagination to lie and the immoral playfulness of those who delight in wearing masks.
The problem, ultimately, is that sincerity requires perfect knowledge of self - and that isn't possible; not even for philosophers, who remain (of necessity) strangers to themselves just like the rest of us. It's because - as Nietzsche says - Jeder ist sich selbst der Fernste that we remain beings born of insincerity ...
Notes
The line from Nietzsche that reads in English 'everyone is furthest from himself' is found in the 'Preface' to On the Genealogy of Morality. See p. 3 of the Cambridge University Press edition, 1994, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and trans. Carol Diethe.
For a sister post to this one on the ethics of ambiguity, click here.
The line from Nietzsche that reads in English 'everyone is furthest from himself' is found in the 'Preface' to On the Genealogy of Morality. See p. 3 of the Cambridge University Press edition, 1994, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and trans. Carol Diethe.
For a sister post to this one on the ethics of ambiguity, click here.
