Critique on Nietzsche

Nietzsche makes an interesting metaphor and parallel to our own ability to obtain knowledge (epistemology) and further, how we come to interpret the world around us. Nietzsche uses the artist as an example. The artist paints his masterpiece desiring to relay to his audience an interpretation of reality. Whether this be literal or metaphorical, most importantly the painter is trying to relay a specific interpretative representation of reality. As the painter attempts to capture reality in his painting inevitably he falls short of the magnificence that reality is. Unfortunately, the intrinsic beauty and aesthetic sensation of reality cannot be appropriately captured in a painting. In the same way, Nietzsche expresses that we "onlookers" of reality attempt to interpret reality through the methodology of language and words. Nietzsche argues that the same concept of interpretation is occurring here. Personally, I found that Nietzsche was on to something. However, his conclusion seems to be a bit misguided and arbitrary.

Nietzsche concludes that the humanity has the incapacity and inability to interpret reality as it actually is. Each individuals lens is skewed, inevitably manipulated by conditioned interpretive habit, which coerces us to falsely capture reality in thought. This is where Nietzsche's nihilism is birthed. If no human can adequately interpret and appropriately define reality, then there must in fact be no truths. Again, Nietzsche is definitely on to something, however, he seems to miss an important facet of his metaphor.

Let's go back to Nietzsche's metaphor, and approach it through a biblically informed lens. T.S. Eliot beautifully interprets the outcome of "the fall" according to the Genesis account expressing, "you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images" (The Wasteland). Eliot appropriately articulates mankind's inability to adequately comprehend the world around them.  We are interpreting the world through "broken images", Eliot insists. If God created the world, therefore, the world is inevitably objectively beautified understood in some way or form.  Although the world contains within itself this objective beauty in being made by a creator with intended purpose, humanity cannot attempt to truly grasp the "trueness" of its intended beauty. Again, in accepting the persuasion of "the fall", according to Christian theology, humanity is broken.  In being broken, we can only see and interpret the world around us through a broken lens.
          So, Nietzsche was on the right track. However, he seems to have failed to observe the basic premise of his argument when delivering his metaphor to his readers. The painter painted. The Creator created. We cannot see the beauty of the original scene, which the painter had painted. We cannot see the magnificent beauty that God created in the world. We can only see through our measly distorted and broken interpretations of reality.