The significance of ‘How ‘the true world’ finally became a fable’ is showing the development of Nietzsche’s revaluation of values leading to a path to the overman. The error he is showing is the development of morality over time and how humans have let go of the previous stage, leading up to the final mode of human existence in the overman.
The value for existentialism is in our moral progression throughout our history and the breaking away from a dependence on external or abstract contingencies that define what morality is for us. The overman is the one who is beyond morality as formally understood in terms of good and evil.
In the first stage, the true world is an abstract conceptualization understood as in Plato’s forms. Nietzsche states, “I, Plato, am the truth.” (97) The idea of Plato’s forms is the moral truth that becomes inverted in Nietzsche’s morality through the revaluation of values. Instead of valuing the abstract forms, Nietzsche directs us to our humanly/earthly values. The good person can attain the true world.
The second stage is defined by an adherence and adoption of the Platonic values within a christian framework. The true world is unattainable for man the sinner, but promised only if he repents and becomes virtuous or pious to god.
The third stage is Kantian and represents an unknowable state of affairs. We do not have access to the noumena, the real world. We do not know what exists ‘out there’ in the true world and are left with skepticism. Even though it is beyond us, ethically it is something we are obliged to do and follow; hence the categorical ‘imperative.’
The fourth stage is an acceptance that the unknowable world is also not an obligation to us. The fact that the true world is unattained means that it is not known. This is a positivist view of empiricism that if we cannot experience something, it really has no power over us. The beginning of reason is here, where we determine that we do not have to hold on to moral codes that we cannot possess.
The fifth stage is one where people recognize that the ‘true’ world is not an idea that has any value. Here we can create our own values when we recognize that we do not have any moral ground to follow. We do not have any values we are obligated to possess so we have the ability to create our own. It is here that god is truly dead.
Finally, stage six is marked by an abolishment of the true and apparent world as Nietzsche states, “The true world - we have abolished. What world remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.” (97) It is now time for the overman, man-overcome, man who is beyond the error of morality. The overman who is in a state of joyous existential wisdom.
References
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Existentialism, edited by Robert C. Solomon, Oxford, 2005.
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