MPEC. Deception. September 2025

The Moscow Philosophy English Club.
Part 1: German.
Chapter 4: Nietzsche.
Section 4: Deception (Tauschung)

1.
Our next target is the concept of deception. We’ve already covered “understanding,” “will” and “power.” Although it seems reasonable to start our meditation on deception from linking it to the already discussed concepts, I’d like to say a few words about something else first to distinguish different kinds of deception.

Suppose I say, “The yesterday tea-talk was awesome,” confusing “awesome” with “awful” in my mind as awful students might do. Can a mistake count as deception?

Suppose I use the word “awesome” out of an awful habit, applying it to every talk regardless of its content and form so that the word loses all meaning. Does carelessness count as deception?

Suppose I’m the man of a satirical frame of mind, and when I say “the yesterday tea-talk was awesome,” I expect that everyone would take it as a joke. Does irony count as deception?

Or only in the case when I’m perfectly aware that “the tea-talk was awful” but want to make everyone believe that it was awesome, am I actually lying?

These are quite obvious and easy cases. But what should one do if I, for example, say something like the following. The March Hare raised such a great and important issue on whether it’s convenient to practice teabagging and brilliantly proved with unquestionable rhetorical superiority that everything else but teabagging is inconvenient. The Dormouse jumped on board and reinforced the March Hare’s devastating arguments with a laser-sharp analysis of the issue and a couple of victorious arguments of his own. The Mad Hatter made a grandiose declaration and called tea a monster responsible for the 18th-century American Revolution and the 19th-century Chinese Opium Wars. You see, opium was just a stalking horse, but the real reason the last Chinese dynasty—Qing—lost power, the root cause, was the British obsession with tea. Meanwhile, Alice and the Mock Turtle had a breathtaking disagreement over one of the most significant, historical, cultural, political and philosophical controversy between green and black tea. The White Rabbit said they were divided on purpose by coffee. Divide et impera.

Do you have any idea how to discern a mistake from carelessness or both of them from irony and deception here?

2.
I’m going to start today’s meditation by quoting Schopenhauer: “Das durch die Vernunft richtig erkannte ist Wahrheit, n;mlich ein abstractes Urteil mit zurechendem Grunde; das durch Verstand richtig erkannte ist Realit;t, n;mlich richtiger Uebergang von der Wirkung im unmittelbaren Objekt auf deren Ursache. Der Wahrheit steht der Irrtum als Trug der Vernunft, der Realitat der Schein als Trug des Verstandes gegenuber.”

According to Schopenhauer’s statement, we have two kinds of deception (Trug) here. Если друг оказался в Trug, we have to figure out what has brought him or her there. If it were the understanding (Verstand), hardly any talk or text would bring them back to reality, в какие бы метафизические горы and “enterprises of great pitch and moment” мы бы ego ни тянули. If it were the reason (Vernunft), a powerful argument would probably suffice to save the day.

When it comes down to the understanding, we’re largely left to ourselves. It’s the deception that occurs through perception, like taking a dumb bush for a maniac in the dark. This is quite different from the deception manifested through language, like gaslighting somebody to believe that hearts or clubs are a trump in the game, while in Wahrheit, it’s diamonds or spades. In certain, exceptional cases, it’s plausible to use a powerful argument to convince the hopeless understanding, which throughout thousands of years has been falling all the way down to the rabbit hole, that the sun is bigger than “the width of a human foot” and our “pale blue dot” is revolving around it rather than vice versa. But as a rule, der Wille zur Wahrheit in homo sapiens would remain and perhaps must remain a subject and Werkzeug of der Wille zur Tauschung.

3.
Whoever has been deceived by the grand style and later found the courage to admit it to himself—also admitting that he is not invincible and even a brief moment of indulgence or complacency might prompt new deceptions—learns thereby something that is impossible to communicate through language. Yet an attempt to communicate it is what drives one to gain more and more power over the language even though one might be fully conscious of the fact that ultimately it leads nowhere. It’s easier to deceive someone than to convince her that she’s been deceived and keeps deceiving herself and others and there is no way out. “Either—or” in our days means the following. Either we’re mastering the art of deception and intentionally building die Ubersprache, or we shut up, convert to Buddhism or something, refuse to engage in any discourse and silently observe how somebody else practices the art of deception. The belief that the second path is noble or truthful or in any way superior to the first is as naive as the belief in our language’s innocence or its acquisition of power in a “fit of absent-mindedness.” Language is the medium of power. Deceive or be deceived, or get out of the way! What about the old trick so gracefully used by the writers of all types of fiction? Does “I’m a liar who can’t help himself; don’t believe anything I say!” constitute the golden mean? Nah, it’s just a more sophisticated method of Selbst-Betr;g—the sophistry of the first rank—and hence it’s even more radical, risky and dangerous. Everyone who lies openly and reframes the art of deception as the art of the deal might enjoy a momentary triumph, but as Greek, Latin, French, German and a handful of other languages know, it comes at a great, great cost.

What is it in us that compulsively lies, exaggerates, conceals, misinterprets, mischaracterizes and, technically speaking, hallucinates whenever we generate language? What gives it so much power over our emotions, making us act like fools and forcefully double down when we are backed into a corner? Why is it so hard to admit that we are constantly deceiving each other to make our point?

All of us have created this dramatic narrative—the grand theater of deception—in which we play the central role, sometimes with a stunning display of philosophical rigor, sometimes shouting into a well and calling the echo “discourse,” sometimes putting on the velvet gloves of impeccably crafted sarcasm, sometimes appearing as ghosts in the machine, sometimes representing ourselves as a parliament of warring instincts, a chaos of wills vying for power. All of us have been crafting and perfecting this narrative since the time we learned to speak, each by means of the linguistic power he has been able to obtain. Without this narrative, we are nothing but a bunch of molecules and atoms floating around in the abyss of an endless transformation. All our conceptions, theories, descriptions and declarations serve to preserve this narrative, to turn it into “the narrative,” die Philosophie der Ubersprache, something that would never be surpassed. Thus we amuse ourselves for a century, then drop dead and start all over again. First, by subscribing to somebody else’s narrative while being deceived by its grand style, and then, by deconstructing it and pushing forward our own.

The more I learn German, the more I’m getting convinced that everybody who speaks English—including myself—ist ein Narr. Is that how die Ubersprache works? Does it make us believe that everyone who doesn’t understand it is a fool despite their status, wealth, popularity, longevity or happiness?

4.
Based on what has been said so far about deception, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the MPEC as a conception is nothing but a delusion. It’s been almost three months since I conceived it. It’s body of knowledge is still very small, no signs of sentience. Feeding it constantly with the best nutrients of my thinking with no social support seems a little bit problematic. Perhaps it’s not too late to make an abortion? I’ve tried to do my best. I’ve made a commitment and followed through it. I’ve been honest and consistent in every step. Wait… what? Abortion? Am I going to kill the helpless fetus of the MPEC? How irresponsible! How cruel! I shouldn’t do that. It’s already alive and has a huge potential for growth. I must keep nurturing it at least for another six months without worrying about social support of any of that shit.

Isn’t it funny that as soon as we start doubting virtually any course of action we’ve taken, we can always find arguments to abrupt it? Whatever lies behind our motivation for studying English or any other Ubersprache of the future it doesn’t have the property of a finished structure. It’s always possible to put a new foundation under it. All we have to do is find a reason that might have a greater potential for gaining power over our thoughts and actions in the long run and integrate it into a current structure of reasons.

Before I started working on the MPEC at the end of June, I had been obsessed with the concept of Ubersprache. The abandonment of English seemed inevitable and I even wrote that at the end of the year I must be prepared to shift my thinking to German. Since the parliament of my warring instincts is terrified by the idea of dissolving “I” in “Ich” the same way as “я” was dissolved in “I,” the MPEC was a plausible alternative to this course of action. Now, it seems, the MPEC might not be an alternative but the main reason that will drive me to quit English.

5.
A great deal of philosophical attitude towards life consists in overcoming self-deception. The most powerful “self,” whether it is the old “ego” or the familiar-to-all-of-us “I,” can’t survive without lying. Just think for a moment about all these judgments your “I” has made (without necessarily articulating them even to itself) while processing my meditations. How many of these judgments were based on a genuine attempt to understand me? How many were guided by the desire to engage in an actual philosophical discussion? How many were determined by an authentic search for wisdom?

See, your “I” is programmed to avoid anything that can potentially harm it, whereas philosophy aims not just to harm but completely obliterate it. One of the most famous “inventors” of our time, Steve Jobs, once said that he would trade all of his technology for an afternoon with Socrates. Do you think you would be able to talk to Socrates?

Overcoming self-deception requires decades of serious work. It’s not just about using language in a proper way, drawing a line between the known and the unknown and pulling back our minds whenever this line is crossed. We must also think about the nature of the language itself, its relation to the world, its structure. By the structure, I don’t mean syntax but the permanently shifting hierarchy of all languages and the position of our language in it. This is what I have in mind when I use the concept of Ubersprache—the language that temporarily occupies the top position and thereby imbues its subjects with the complex of superiority, which is always followed by arrogance and an eventual downfall.