The Truth Imperative

Certainly it would be foolish to posit, in a species as wily and mendacious as our own, something like a primitive, irreducible will to truth—and Kant does not do so. And if the will to truth which regulates the procedures of pure speculative reason is to be founded in practical reason, this certainly does not mean that the will to truth is sustained by some presumed evidence of its utility for human nature, that is, for sensuous human nature lured by pleasures, afflicted with the phantasm, the phantom goal, of happiness. The unconditional will to truth, the will to not allow oneself to be deceived, is a special case of the will to not deceive; it cannot, Nietzsche has argued, owe its origin to a calculus of utility; the cunning of our reason, it's conceits and deceits, prove their utility every day. What imperative then makes the soul truthful? And how?