Nietzsche’s “Sensualism” from 1885 to 1888

Abstract After having held through much of his career the view that our senses and our intellect falsify the world, Nietzsche published in Twilight of the Idols the claim that the senses do not lie at all. A preparation for this apparent change of mind has often been seen in BGE 15, where Nietzsche seems to recommend “sensualism,” at least for scientists working on the physiology of the senses. I try to characterize in some detail what “sensualism” means by drawing on contemporary discussions and suggest a clarifying reading of the argument in BGE 15. Nietzsche’s attitude towards sensualism, however, is ambivalent. It is a suitable view to hold for scientists engaged in accomplishing “coarse tasks.” But there is a nobler way of doing science, exemplified by Copernicus and Boscovich who “triumphed over the senses.” I explicate this more nuanced attitude towards sensualism and suggest that the senses do not lie insofar as they show us change , that is, temporal relations between events, while they do lie about the events themselves. This happens to be a view that the eminent physiologist of the senses, Helmholtz, had arrived at in 1867.