240. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” – a very silly proposition.
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted” is the famous maxim of the novel Alamut (1938) by Vladmir Bartol which tells the story of the assassin Hassan-i Sabbah and the Order of Assassins he founded (the Hashshashin that existed in Nizari Isma’ili from 1090-1275). In the contemporary world the maxim is known to many from the video game series Assassin’s Creed. But it was referenced by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) when Zarathustra says: “‘Nothing is true, all is permitted’: so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!” (see the section “The Shadow”). And it has been referenced by plenty of radical thinkers, artists, musicians, and so on (I was recently reminded of it while listening to John Zorn’s work for three cellos 777 (nothing is true, everything is permitted) from his album What Thou Wilt (2010).
Having come across the maxim for many years now, and having noticed the general enthusiasm with which it is embraced by those who espouse it, I would like to finally point out how silly it really is.
After all, if nothing is true then the proposition “nothing is true, everything is permitted” cannot be true. And if that is the case then, well, perhaps something is true after all (like the claim that the maxim itself is silly). Moreover, the maxim claims everything is permitted. But that, too, can’t be right since it doesn’t permit the truth (although it can’t avoid the truth insofar as it is an assertion).
So anyone who thinks that by adopting this maxim they can be a radical thinker, or perhaps even a radical assassin, I have bad news: you are really just adopting a self-refuting proposition.
2 replies on “240. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” – a very silly proposition.”
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I believe you misunderstood the concepts while the laws of nature can be said to be true , this idea refers to the what humans consider a truth in there understandings of the world , truth like the world is flat was a shared truth , Truth is often just agreed consensus and we know from our studies that consensus is not reality, the same goes for the morals that humans teach espouse and judge society by . Nothing is true , everything is permitted . Find your own truth and choose your own morality don’t be tied down by the consensus of the world .
Thanks for your comment Mike. I don’t think I misunderstand the proposition. If we say, as you do, that “Truth is often just agreed consensus and we know from our studies that consensus is not reality,” then we can ask: what is the status of that proposition? Is it TRUE that “consensus is not reality”? If so, then you seem to be offering a claim that corresponds to the facts – it says something about the way the world is and how human activity relates to “reality.” In that case you are refuting yourself. If your claim is NOT TRUE then it is false and so the contradiction of your claim, that truth is NOT just consensus, may be true after all; and so again you refute yourself. So the same logic I offer in the post applies to your claim which is not surprising since it is a restatement of the original claim. Moreover, the view that truth is consensus doesn’t allow us to immediately infer, as you say, that “consensus is not reality.” For example, the consensus of the scientific community at any particular time is usually held to represent reality since the type of consensus they reach is a function of a community that employs the scientific method. It is a consensus that, due to corroborated experiments, may indeed correspond to the facts and so is usually connected to the correspondence theory of truth. Of course, the way we reach consensus matters and we may have little to no confidence that some forms of consensus represent reality (consensus that comes about due to unwarranted conspiracy theories for example). But we should be careful not to claim that all forms of consensus are the same. Finally, I would suggest that it is oxymoronic to say we can find our “own truths”: truth, in the paradigmatic understanding of the word, is a property of a proposition that corresponds to facts that are intersubjectively available. I would call what you are talking about an opinion.