The Labyrinth

How the “True World” Finally Became a Fiction 

History of an Error 

1. The true world, attainable for the wise, the devout, the virtuous—they live in it, they are it. 

(Oldest form of the idea, relatively clever, simple, convincing. Paraphrase of the assertion, “I, Plato, am the truth.”) 

2. The true world, unattainable for now, but promised to the wise, the devout, the virtuous (“to the sinner who does penance”).

(Progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more devious, more mystifying—it becomes woman, it becomes Christian . . .) 

3. The true world, unattainable, unprovable, unpromisable, but a consolation, an obligation, an imperative, merely by virtue of being thought.

(The old sun basically, but glimpsed through fog and skepticism; the idea become sublime, pallid, Nordic, Königsbergian.) 

4. The true world—unattainable? In any case, unattained. And if it is unattained, it is also unknown. And hence it is not consoling, redeeming, or obligating either; to what could something unknown obligate us?

(Gray dawn. First yawnings of reason. Rooster’s crow of positivism.) 

5. The “true world”—an idea with no use anymore, no longer even obligating—an idea become useless, superfluous, hence a refuted idea: let’s do away with it! 

(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens [good sense] and cheerfulness; Plato blushes; pandemonium of all free spirits.) 

6. We have done away with the true world: what world is left over? The apparent one, maybe? . . . But no! Along with the true world, we have also done away with the apparent! 

(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)

-excerpted from “The Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer” by Nietzsche (1888)