Nietzsche’s Metaphor of an Effaced Coin and its Relationship with Money, Language, and Truth

Nietzsche in his essay On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense gives the linguistic metaphor of truth being a worn-down, effaced coin that no longer is a coin, but a piece of metal. The notion of truth (tenor) being linked to an effaced coin (vehicle) requires a ground. To establish the ground I apply the four functions of money in economic theory (medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account, and standard of deferred payment) to language and truth to explore how they are related and which enable this novel metaphor to be stated and understood. Nietzsche’s definition of truth is given together with a brief overview of metaphor (etymology, definitions, and Aristotle’s comments on using metaphor given in the Rhetoric). The notion of word meaning variability is illustrated by an example from Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale and Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts is discussed with reference to Greek, Newtonian, and Einsteinian scientific theories.