Friedrich Nietzsche takes a markedly different stance on knowledge- exhibiting a poetic yet nihilistic perspective in his rant On Truth and Lies. Nietzsche persuasively argues that perceived knowledge is merely a human construct capable of fabricating “the illusion of truth”, while also unfolding its principle power in “dissimulation” (Nietzsche 13). Truth as a product of untruth, he claims, exists as a survival mechanism for humans, and that society hypothesizes these ‘truths’ from discrete cases and then employs such concepts in circumstances where they do not and should not really apply (Nietzsche 6). This is where, he indicates, the role of language comes into play. Nietzsche asserts that “concepts” in human knowledge arise from equating
