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Nietzsche on Language

Humans see things differently than birds, insects - and one another. As a consequence of these different perceptions, how is it possible for one human to communicate to a second human with any assurance that what he says - and she hears - mean the same thing? How is it possible for a human, only one species of existence in the universe out of a trillion trillion, to know that human perception has any meaning at all within that overall context of being? Philosopher-philologist Friedrich Nietzsche would answer that it is impossible to know in both cases and that the conventions of language, which make such an assumption of certainty, are therefore inherently false. It is an answer that stands up well under the scrutiny of rhetorical analysis.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) produced a veritable library of works supporting his basic conclusion that "language ... conveys not sensations but 'copies of sensations,' not things but images of our perception of things" (Bizzell and Herzberg 886). How he arrives at that conclusion - and where that conclusion leads in terms of implications built upon it - was conveyed via a series of published lectures and writings recounting observations on the nature of language as rhetoric. Nietzsche believes that language is rhetoric because it conveys only an opinion, not knowledge (Bizzell and Herzberg 886). Since he has chosen rhetoric as his starting point, it would do well to perform a rhetorical analysis of one of Nietzsche writings on the subject.

"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" ("_ber Wahrheit un Lnge im aussermoralischen Sinne"), was written by Nietzsche in 1873 (Bizzell and Herzberg 886); it may also be translated as "On Truth and Lie in the Extramoral Sense" [this writer's emphasis] (Bizzell and Herzberg 888). The German-to-English translation ambiguity is an important one to note. As an educated 19th Century European intellectual, Nietzsche was steeped in classical languag...

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Nietzsche on Language. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 13:20, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700873.html