http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm
>In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.
I am not very familiar with Nietzsche to be honest. What does he mean by this essay? Is it nihilistic thinking? Is he basically saying that humans are insignificant in contrast to the size of the universe?
Anon, he just said it:
> the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts
The philosopher will not claim to have the perspective of a finite, contingent being, but that he describes the univese through an objective, universal, capital T Truth.
>What does he mean by this essay?
Keep reading and find out about Nietzsche's perspectivism. No, it doesn't end here.
>I am not very familiar with Nietzsche to be honest
No shit.
>>9136332
>Keep reading and find out about Nietzsche's perspectivism.
On this I would recommend Peter Poellner's article "Perspectival truth", OP.