On hypocrisy, dissimulation and the like - Nietzsche and the will to deceive

Abstract

We aim to make a defence of hypocrisy on the basis of nietzschean’s thought. First we make a distinction of aspects under which the ideas of hypocrisy [Heuchelei] and dissimulation [Verstellung] appear in his texts – which comes to show us the association between hypocrisy and the ideas of protection, vanity and faith. That distinction points to the fact that the criticisms of Nietzsche is not addressed to hypocrisy as art of dissimulation, but to the self-deception manifested in the conceited’s “lack of belief in self” and in the “belief” proper to faith. If in the first there is a lack of good-consciousness, in the second that one is corrupted by this false vision of itself as the only truth. In a second time, we expose the problem of the will to trueness in Nietzsche. Bringing out the self-deception in this will to trueness, the author reveals the “need for surface” to life, pointing out the will to appearance as the “fundamental will of the spirit”. It is by this will that we seek to confer on the hypocrisy a philosophical reliance.