The True Feeling Short Story The Birthmark

The True Feeling
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Institution
The True Feeling
For the longest time now, human beings have been relying on their intellectual abilities to understand and interpret happenings in the real world. In doing this they arrogantly assume that their intelligence is enough to give a true picture of the reality when in actual sense it only promotes lying. Furthermore as humans and especially using science, we have a tendency to build concepts and wrongly assume that nature also operates within the confines of these concepts. At the end of the day, these exaggerated perceptions on the intellectual abilities, human intuition and concepts only results into great suffering that would otherwise be avoided if man were to think rationally in the first place. These are all views presented by Nietzsche in his essay “On Truth and Lies in the Non-moral Sense.” In every sense, the meaning of the short story “Birthmark” aligns with the theoretical analysis provided by Nietzsche as will be seen in this paper.
In his article, Nietzsche begins by showing an open dislike for human beings given that they tend to overestimate the power and limit of their intelligence in an arrogant manner. This assumed intelligence, he further notes, is largely used in lying especially considering the human nature that is competitive and individualistic. In reference to this, Nietzsche wonders “how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.” This analysis aligns with “The Birthmark” whereby we encounter the scientist Aylmer who believed in his scientific skills so much to an extent of believing that it would provide solutions to all his problems. True to Nietzsche’s words, it is not surprising that Aylmer believes that with his intelligence in scientific matters he can be ...