Nietzsche on Consciousness and the Embodied Mind by Dries Manuel;

Author:Dries, Manuel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

10.2 “Language is Rhetoric”

What does legitimize Nietzsche to use rhetoric as a tool to explore the functioning of language? Nietzsche put the premises of his enquiry already in the short essay On the Origin of Language, written as an introduction to the course on Latin grammar of 1869. In this essay Nietzsche states that language is the product of an unconscious artistic instinct (Kunsttrieb) residing in the depths of the human soul. In other words, he thought of language not, as it was for Schopenhauer, as the product and tool of reason, but rather as its condition of possibility and hidden matrix (KGW II/2: 185).215 In the course Presentation of Ancient Rhetoric (1874), Nietzsche identifies the unconscious artistic instinct from which language originates with a rhetorical dynamis. He took this expression from Aristotle, who defines rhetoric as primarily neither a scientific knowledge (έπιστήμη, episteme) nor a technique (τέχνη, techne), but a power (dynamis) innate to every human being, which can be perfected through education and practice. Aristotle states that rhetoric is “the power to discover (θεωρησαι, theoresai) and make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing” (Rhetoric 1355 b, KGW II/4: 425). In other words, he held rhetoric not only as the specific education and practice aimed at producing well-formed discourse, but first and above all as a universal and innate capacity to understand what, in every discourse, makes it effective and then to use this knowledge to affirm one’s own view. Nietzsche endorses Aristotle’s definition, but takes it much further. Indeed, he states that rhetoric as a conscious art aimed at affirming one’s own point of view relies on an innate and unconscious drive—characterizing all human beings—to create and affirm through language a vision of the world. In other words, Nietzsche states that language from its very beginning is aimed not at conveying a truth, but at persuading. Language “does not refer to truth, to the essence of things. It does not want to inform, but rather to transfer [übertragen] a subjective impression and assumption to other people” (KGW II/4: 425 – 426). In short, the intention that characterizes language from its inception is pragmatic, not theoretical; it is the desire to have our point of view affirmed and recognized (Kopperschmidt 1994: 53). Thus, in the end, Nietzsche uses Aristotle’s definition to sustain a radically opposite stance. According to Aristotle, all men have a natural disposition to knowledge, which is confirmed by the great pleasure they receive from sense experience. Such a pleasure has nothing to do with utility, but arises from disinterested contemplation of nature. The natural disposition to knowledge distinguishes man from all other living beings and places him at the uppermost position in the natural world. In On Truth and Lies Nietzsche systematically inverts all of Aristotle’s assumptions (Ungeheuer 1983: 183). Indeed, Nietzsche states that man strives for ‘knowledge’ only inasmuch as reaching an agreement on ‘what has to be held as true’ assures him of some advantages in the struggle for survival. “He

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