In Ancient Greece, at the Temple of Apollo, three maxims of critical importance were inscribed.
And one of these three, the one I’m most interested in at the moment, read, “certainty
brings ruin.”
And in /Ecce Homo/, Nietzsche wrote, “It is not doubt, it is certainty which makes
mad…But to feel in this way one must be profound, abyss, philosopher…We all /fear/
truth…”
Even Socrates said that all he knew was that he didn’t know.
So it seems that the wise are united in at least one quality: they refuse to be certain.
And so we’re left to wonder: /why/ do they refuse to be certain?
I think I might have an idea why.
All of your actions have an effect on the world.
And for the purposes of this essay, let’s say that if you know the effect that each
of your actions will have on the world, then you know the truth.
So if you knew the truth, then you’d know how to act to achieve any effect in the world.
And in this way, the truth would set you free.
And if you ask me, I think the only way to reach the truth is to doubt everything you
think you know.
And that’s why the wise refuse to be certain: doubt is the way to truth.
Let me explain.
Imagine an area of land.
The land has locations and ways to those locations.
The land represents truth.
Now imagine that you have a map of that land.
You have a map that indicates the locations of the land and the way to those locations.
The map represents your knowledge.
So if your map overlaps with the land, then your knowledge is true, or for the purposes
of this video, we can say you have the truth.
Now imagine if the land was constantly changing, literally changing every second.
Your map would rarely ever be true.
You’d rarely have the truth.
But what if your map could account for the changing land.
What if it updated just as fast as the land changed, so you could always reach your destination?
Then we’d say the map was always true.
We could say you have the truth.
And so what would it mean to have the truth?
/It means having knowledge that works across any space and at any time./ And to return
to our original question, how does doubt lead to truth?
Doubt is testing knowledge across space and time.
Doubting your beliefs means taking what you think you know and finding a space or a time
where it doesn’t hold true.
This will destroy the belief and force you to remake it in a way where it does hold true.
And if you continue to doubt and test your knowledge in this way, you will make your
knowledge better.
Your knowledge will start to hold true across more spaces and more times.
It will become more useful and more true, and you yourself will have more truth.
And if doubt leads to truth, and truth will set you free, then doubt will also set you
free.
That concludes my exploration of Nietzsche’s teaching.
As always, this is just my opinion and understanding of Nietzsche, not advice.
If you’re looking for another video to watch after this one, I recommend watching my video
“Nietzsche - Challenge Yourself, Learn the Truth”.
I’ll put a link to it in the description below and in the top right of the screen
right now.