(Nietzsche Today) João Constâncio, Maria João Mayer Branco - As The Spider Spins - Essays On Nietzsche's Critique and Use of Language (2012, de Gruyter)

As the Spider Spins
Nietzsche Today
As the Spider
Spins
Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language
Edited by
João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco
DE GRUYTER
ISBN 978-3-11-028090-6
e-ISBN 978-3-11-028112-5
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Acknowledgements
The editors wish to express their gratitude to the following institutions that
made this book possible: Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem (IFL), especially
its Director, Prof. António Marques; Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
(FCT), which is currently funding the research project “Nietzsche and the Con-
temporary Debate on the Self”, PTDC/FIL-FIL/111444/2009; Universidade Nova
de Lisboa (UNL)/Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH), especially
its Director, Prof. João Sáàgua.
The editors also wish to express their gratitude to the following persons
that worked at translating and proof-reading the papers: Richard Bates, Katia
Hay, Sean Linney, and Bartholomew Ryan.
Contents
References, Citations and Abbreviations IX

‘As the Spider Spins’: Introduction 1
I. On Metaphor and the Limits of Language
Céline Denat
“To Speak in Images”: The Status of Rhetoric and Metaphor in Nietzsche’s
New Language 13
Luís Sousa
Knowledge, Truth, and the Thing-in-itself: The Presence of Schopenhauer’s
Transcendental Idealism in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense (1873) 39
Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós

Physiology and Language in Friedrich Nietzsche: “The Guiding Thread of the
Body” 63
II. On Language, Emotion, and Morality
Andrea Bertino
Discovering Moral Aspects of the Philosophical Discourse About Language
and Consciousness With Nietzsche, Humboldt, and Levinas 91
Tom Bailey
Vulnerabilities of Agency: Kant and Nietzsche on Political
Community 107
Chiara Piazzesi
What We Talk About When We Talk About Emotions. Nietzsche’s Critique of
Moral Language as the Shaping of a New Ethical Paradigm 129
VIII Contents
III. On Language, Self-Expression, and Consciousness
Jaanus Sooväli
The Absence and the Other. Nietzsche and Derrida Against Husserl 161
Luca Lupo
Drives, Instincts, Language, and Consciousness in Daybreak 119: ‘Erleben
und Erdichten’ 179
João Constâncio
Consciousness, Communication, and Self-Expression. Towards an
Interpretation of Aphorism 354 of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science 197
Maria João Mayer Branco

The Spinning of Masks. Nietzsche’s Praise of Language 233
IV. On Language, Self-Expression, and Style
Bartholomew Ryan
The Rise and Fall of Zarathustra’s Star 257
Maria Cristina Fornari

‘And so I Will Tell Myself the Story of my Life’. Nietzsche in His Last Letters
(1885–1889) 281
Contributors 297
Complete Bibliography 298
Name Index 307
Subject Index 309

References, Citations and Abbreviations
All German quotations of Nietzsche’s writings are from the following editions:
KSA Nietzsche, Friedrich (1980), Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studien-
ausgabe in 15 Bänden, Giorgio Colli/Mazzino Montinari (eds.),
München/Berlin: DTV/de Gruyter.
KGW Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967ff), Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
established by Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, continued
by Wolfgang Müller-Lauter und Karl Pestalozzi (eds.), Berlin/
New York: de Gruyter.
KSB Nietzsche, Friedrich (1986), Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studien-
ausgabe in 8 Bänden, Giorgio Colli/Mazzino Montinari (eds.),
München/Berlin: DTV/de Gruyter.
References to published or titled texts by Nietzsche follow the standard abbre-

viations, which are given below. For a complete list see also: http://refworks.
reference-global.com/Xaver/extern/10.1515_NO/statics/NO_Siglen.pdf).
Unless otherwise stated, the cited translations are the following:
Works By Nietzsche
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1966), The Birth of Tragedy, ed./transl. by W.
Kaufmann, New York: Random House.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967), On the Genealogy of Morals, ed./transl. by W.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1983), Untimely Meditations, transl. by R. J.
Hollingdale, Cambridge/London/New York/New Rochelle/Melbourne/
Sydney: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1986), Human, All Too Human, ed. and transl. by R. J.
Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1989), “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, in: F.
Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed. & transl. by S. L. Gilman/C.
Blair/D. J. Parent, New York: Oxford University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1989), “The History of Greek Eloquence”, in: F.
Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed. & transl. by S. L. Gilman/C.
Blair/D. J. Parent, New York: Oxford University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1997), Daybreak, ed. by M. Clark/B. Leiter, transl. by R.
J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1998), Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, ed.
and transl. by M. Cowan, Washington: A Gateway Edition.
X References, Citations and Abbreviations
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1999), “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, in:
F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, ed. by R. Guess/R.
Speirs, transl. by R. Speirs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2001), The Gay Science, ed. by B. Williams, transl. by J.
Nauckhoff, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2002), Beyond Good and Evil, ed. by R.-F. Horstmann/J.
Norman, transl. by J. Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2005), The Anti-christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols
and Other Writings, ed. by A. Ridley/J. Norman, transl. by J. Norman,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2005), “The Case of Wagner”, in F. Nietzsche, The Anti-
christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by A.
Ridley/J. Norman, transl. by J. Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2005), “Nietzsche contra Wagner”, in F. Nietzsche, The
Anti-christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by A.
Ridley/J. Norman, transl. by J. Norman, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2006), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. by A. Del Caro/R.
Pippin, transl. by A. Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Occasionally, some of the authors have chosen to quote from the following
translations:
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954), “Twilight of the Idols”, transl. by W. Kaufmann,
in: W. Kaufmann (ed.), The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking
Penguin.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1966), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed./transl. by W.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1966), Beyond Good and Evil, ed./transl. by W.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974), The Gay Science, ed./transl. by W. Kaufmann,
New York: Random House.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1979), Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s
Notebooks of the 1870’s, ed. and transl. by Daniel Breazle, New Jersey:
Humanities Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1996), Beyond Good and Evil, ed./transl. by D. Smith,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1996), On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, ed./
transl. by D. Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In German XI
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2009), “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”, in:
F. Nietzsche, Writings from the Early Notebooks, ed. by R. Geuss/A.
Nehamas, transl. by L. Löb, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Translations from the Nachlass follow the two most recent editions in English:
WEN Nietzsche, Friedrich (2009), Writings from the Early Note-books,
ed. by R. Geuss/A. Nehamas, transl. by L. Löb, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
WLN Nietzsche, Friedrich (2003), Writings from the Late Note-books,
ed. by R. Bittner, transl. by K. Sturge, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
In order to translate two notes from the Nachlass not available in WEN or WLN
we have used the English edition of the notorious (and non-existent) book Der
Wille zur Macht:
WP Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967), The Will to Power, ed. by W. Kauf-
mann, transl. by W. Kaufmann/R. J. Hollingdale, New York: Ran-
dom House.
Notes from the Nachlass not available in WEN, WLN, or WP have been trans-
lated by either the editors or the authors. In the footnotes, Nietzsche’s text is
usually reproduced in the original German.
References to the Nachlass are given as follows: NL year, KSA volume,
note; e.g., NL 1885, KSA 11, 31[131]. References to a translation are added
after the references to the KSA, e.g. NL 1885, KSA 11, 31[131] = WLN, 10; e.g.
NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[164], my translation. Sections or chapters that are not
numbered but given a title in Nietzsche’s text are quoted following the stand-
ard abbreviations in English and German: e.g. EH Clever 9/EH klug 9.
Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In German
AC Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christenthum

DD Dionysos-Dithyramben
DW Die dionysische Weltanschauung
EH Ecce Homo. Wie man wird, was man ist
FW Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
FWS FW “Scherz, List und Rache.”
GD Götzen-Dämmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt
GM Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift
XII Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In English
GT Die Geburt der Tragödie

GT Versuch Die Geburt der Tragödie, Versuch einer Selbstkritik
JGB Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft
M Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile
MA Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister
NW Nietzsche contra Wagner. Aktenstücke eines Psychologen
PHG Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen
PV Die Lieder des Prinzen Vogelfrei
UB Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen
VM (MA II) Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche
WA Der Fall Wagner. Ein Musikanten-Problem
WL Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne
WS Der Wanderer und sein Schatten
ZA Also Sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen
ZB Ueber die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten
Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In English
A The Antichrist
AOM (HH II) Assorted Opinions and Maxims
BGE Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
BT The Birth of Tragedy
BT Attempt The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt At a Self-Criticism.
CW The Case of Wagner
D Daybreak
DD Dithyrambs of Dionysus
EH Ecce Homo. How One Becomes What One Is
GM On the Genealogy of Morals. A Polemic
GS The Gay Science
HH Human, All Too Human
NW Nietzsche contra Wagner. Out of the Files of a Psychologist
PTAG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
TI Twilight of the Idols. How To Philosophize with a Hammer
TL On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense
UM Untimely Meditations
WS (HH II) The Wanderer and His Shadow
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Abbreviations Of Works By Other Authors XIII
Abbreviations Of Works By Other Authors
ApH Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hin-

sicht”, in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische
Akademie der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
CPR Kant, I. (1998), Critique of Pure Reason, ed./transl. by P. Guyer/
A. W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CPrR Kant, I. (1997); Critique of Practical Reason, ed./transl. by Mary
Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
EKU Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Erste Einleitung in der Kritik der Urteil-
skraft”, in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische
FR Schopenhauer, A. (1974), On the Fourfold Root of the Principle
of Sufficient Reason, transl. by E. F. J. Payne, La Salle, Illinois:
Open Court.
G Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sit-
ten”, in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische
GesS Humboldt, Alexander von (1968), Gesammelte Schriften, 17
vols., ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaf-
ten, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
KpV Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Kritik der praktischen Vernunft”, in:
Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie
der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
KrV Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”, in: Gesam-
melte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wis-
senschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/
KU Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Kritik der Urteilskraft”, in: Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/New
York: de Gruyter.
MAN Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Nat-
urwissenschaften”, in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche
Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
XIV Abbreviations Of Works By Other Authors
MS Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Die Metaphysik der Sitten”, in: Gesam-

melte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wis-
senschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/
R Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
bloßen Vernunft”, in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche
Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
TP Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in
der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis”, in: Ges-
ammelte Schriften, ed. by Königliche Preussische Akademie der
Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/
WWR I Schopenhauer, A. (1958), The World as Will and Representation.
Vol. I, transl. by E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover.
WWR II Schopenhauer, A. (1958), The World as Will and Representation.
Vol. II, transl. by E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover.
WWV I Schopenhauer, A. (1949), “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.
Erster Band”, in: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, ed. by A. Hübscher,
Wiesbaden: Brockhaus.
WWV II Schopenhauer, A. (1949), “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.
Zweiter Band”, in: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 3, ed. by A. Hübscher,
Wiesbaden: Brockhaus.
‘As the Spider Spins’: Introduction
I
In the unpublished essay On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, Nietzsche
writes that space and time are representations that “we produce within our-
selves and from ourselves with the same necessity as the spider spins” (TL 1/
WL 1, KSA 1, p. 885, translation modified). In Daybreak, he uses the same
metaphor to describe “the habits of our senses”:
The habits of our senses have woven us into lies and deception of sensation: these again
are the basis of all our judgments and ‘knowledge‘ – there is absolutely no escape, no
backway or bypath into the real world! We sit within our net, we spiders, and whatever
we may catch in it, we can catch nothing at all except that which allows itself to be
caught in precisely our net (D 117/M 117).1
The sense impressions and sensorial horizons that encircle our bodies and
depend on our sense organs are the cobwebs that we ourselves spin, and our
conscious thoughts, our words and judgements, our “truths” and pieces of
“knowledge” are no more than developments of those cobwebs and hence part
of what we ourselves spin (“we spiders”). In fact, the whole world can be seen
as a spider – “the great world-spider” (AOM 32/VM 32) – and our cobwebs as
part of that enormous cobweb which is “the great spider’s web of causality”
(GM III 9). Indeed the monotheistic conception of “God” is precisely the con-
ception of “God as spider” (A 18/AC 18).2
However, in several other passages Nietzsche uses the spider metaphor
specifically to express his conception of the formation and development of
concepts. In TL, for example, he writes:
Here one can only certainly admire humanity as a mighty architectural genius who suc-
ceeds in erecting the infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts on moving foundations,
or even, one might say, on flowing water; admittedly, in order to rest on such foundations,
it has to be like a thing constructed from cobwebs (Spinnefäden), so delicate that it can
be carried off on the waves and yet so firm as not to be blown apart by the wind (TL 1,
147/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 882).
1 See also NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[439], NL 1881, KSA 9, 15[9]. In NL 1870, KSA 7, 5[33], our
“illusions” are designated as “cobwebs” (Spinngewebe).
2 See also GM III 9, NL 1888, KSA 13, 16[58], NL 1888, KSA 13, 17[4].
2 João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco
Here this “delicate” and yet “firm” web spun by the spider is seen in a positive
light, but in other texts Nietzsche presents the spider as a “bloodsucker” (BGE
209/JGB 209) that either manages to feed on the blood of its victims or gets
caught in its own web and has to drink its own blood.3 He uses the spider and
spinning metaphors to describe in a negative way the unfortunate and harmful
type of life of priests (“the most dangerous type of parasite, the true poisonous
spiders of life”, A 37/AC 37), scholars and “specialists” (GS 366/FW 366),
sceptics (BGE 209/JGB 209), theologians (NL 1887–88, KSA 13, 15[55]),
“metaphysicians and scholastics” (NL 1888, KSA 13, 17[4]). Most importantly,
he refers in a negative way to several of the greatest philosophers as “spiders”:
to Parmenides (PTAG 10–11/PHG 10–11), Plato (WS Preface/WS Vorrede), Spi-
noza (A 17/AC 17, TI Skirmishes 23/GD Streifzüge 23), Kant (A 11/AC 11),
Schopenhauer (NL 1885–87, KSA 12, 2[197]). Philosophers in general are
“spiders” – “cobweb-weavers of the spirit” (BGE 25/JGB 25) – and all philoso-
phies seem to be just the “brain diseases of sick cobweb-weavers” (TI Reason
4/GD Vernunft 4). At bottom, the idea in all these passages is that “philoso-
phising is a type of atavism”. “Philosophical concepts” are spun by spiders
because they “belong to a system just as much as all the members of the fauna
of a continent do” (BGE 20/JGB 20), that is, because they are no more than
historical developments of the “metaphysics of language” (TI Reason/GD Ver-
nunft). All philosophical concepts, no matter how “individual” they seem to
be, express “the unconscious domination and direction through similar gram-
matical functions” (BGE 20/JGB 20), they all unknowingly unfold and explore
the metaphysical “grammar” which is embedded and presupposed in human
language, particularly in the Indo-Germanic languages.4 Hence, the image of
the philosopher as a “spider” is the image of him “imprisoned in the nets of
language” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[135], our translation).
From all of this it seems to follow that Nietzsche has a fundamentally
negative and critical view of language. Most certainly his “task” of “revaluating
all values” involves a liberation from the metaphysical “cobwebs” of language,
and he famously indicates that overcoming metaphysics, the “ascetic ideal”
and “man’s sickness of man” would have to involve a “deconstruction” of our
entanglement in language and its grammar: “I am afraid that we have not got
rid of God because we still have faith in grammar…” (TI Reason 5/GD Vernunft
5).
3 See PTAG 10–11/PHG 10–11, HH I 427/MA I 427, AOM 194/VM 194, D 71/M 71, Z III Virtue
3/ZA III Tugend 3, BGE 209/JGB 209.
4 See BGE 20/JGB 20, BGE Preface/JGB Vorrede, BGE 34/JGB 34, BGE 54/JGB 54, TI Reason
5/GD Vernunft 5.
However, one of the main pillars of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the belief

that “the world that counts as ‘real’, so-called ‘reality’” (GS 58/FW 54) is to a
great extent a linguistic phenomenon. A complete “deconstruction” of our lan-
guage does not make sense for Nietzsche. It would be the same as a destruction
of our world and life. Nietzsche wants to “destroy” only to “create”, he wants
to “revaluate all values” only to “create new values”. This point is most clearly
made in The Gay Science:
Only as creators! – This has caused me the greatest trouble and still does always cause
me the greatest trouble: to realise that what things are called is unspeakably more impor-
tant than what they are. The reputation, name, and appearance, the worth, the usual
measure and weight of a thing – originally almost always something mistaken and arbi-
trary, thrown over things like a dress and quite foreign to their nature and even to their
skin – has, through the belief in it and its growth from generation to generation, slowly
grown onto and into the thing and has become its very body: what started as appearance
in the end nearly always becomes essence and effectively acts as its essence! What kind
of a fool would believe that it is enough to point to this origin and this misty shroud of
delusion in order to destroy the world that counts as ‘real’, so-called ‘reality’! Only as
creators can we destroy! – But let us also not forget that in the long run it is enough to
create new names and valuations and appearances of truth in order to create new ‘things’
(GS 58/FW 58).5
This should make clear how crucial it is for Nietzsche to create a “new lan-
guage” (BGE 4/JGB 4). His critique of language is not meant as a rejection of
language, for in criticising the harmful effects of language and its metaphysical
grammar Nietzsche is always already creating new uses of language – uses
that, on the one hand, call attention to the very fact that “even one’s thoughts
one cannot entirely reproduce in words” (GS 244/FW 244) and “every word is
also a mask” (BGE 289/JGB 289), but, on the other hand, also claim to be
“better” than the traditional, ascetic, metaphysical uses of language. Nietz-
sche’s anti-metaphysical philosophy – his “genealogy” or “psychology” as a
“morphology and doctrine of the development of the will to power” (BGE 23/
JGB 23) – is a “new language”.
In other words, Nietzsche uses the metaphor of the spider that spins its
cobweb to express his critique of the metaphysical and “sick” use of language –
but he also suggests that human beings (“we spiders”) are in principle able
to spin different, life-affirming, non-metaphysical cobwebs. Philosophy is not
condemned to failure, the creation of new values via the philosophical creation
of new concepts is a very difficult task – a task for which one has perhaps to
be “destined” – but it is not at all an absurd and harmful task. On the contrary,
5 See also, for example, BGE 24/JGB 24, BGE 34/JGB 34.
Nietzsche’s hopes for himself and his equals, indeed for humanity as a whole,
lie in philosophy – in “every daring of the lover of knowledge”:
Indeed, at hearing the news that ‘the old god is dead’, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’
feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebod-
ings, expectation – finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our
ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge
is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an
‘open sea’ (GS 343/FW 343).
II
This book is a collection of 12 essays that focus not only on Nietzsche’s critique
of the metaphysical assumptions of language, but also on his effort to use
language in a different and better way. Hence the subtitle, “Essays on Nietz-
sche’s Critique and Use of Language”. It is from that perspective that the book
considers such themes as consciousness, self-expression, metaphor, instinct,
affectivity, style, morality, truth, and knowledge.
The authors that we invited to contribute to this book are Nietzsche schol-
ars who belong to some of the most important research centres of the European
Nietzsche-Research: Centro Colli-Montinari (Italy), GIRN (Europhilosophie),
SEDEN (Spain), Greifswald Research Group (Germany), NIL (Portugal). The
scholarly and philosophical exchange among these research centres has been
very intensive in recent years, and we are very happy to contribute with this
book to a wider divulgation of our colleagues’ and our own work on Nietzsche.
One of the aims of our research project (“Nietzsche and the Contemporary
Debate on the Self”, PTDC/FIL-FIL/111444/2009) is precisely to promote the
kind of international exchange and research that made this book possible. In
the same spirit, we edited Nietzsche on Instinct and Language in 2011, which
was also published by de Gruyter. In fact, the two books may be said to com-
plement each other.
Let us now conclude this brief introduction with a summary of each chap-
ter and each essay in the book.
III
In the first chapter – I. On Metaphor and the Limits of Language – , we have
assembled three essays that give pre-eminence to Nietzsche’s early writings on
language and knowledge and hence to his conception of language as meta-

phorical. Céline Denat’s essay focuses mainly on Nietzsche’s lectures on Rhet-
oric (1872) and On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense (1873), as well as
on the notebooks from the same period, and it tries to show that Nietzsche
gives new, wider meanings to the words “rhetoric” and “metaphor”. Nietzsche
presents language itself as “rhetorical” and “metaphorical” because he rejects
the notion that there is, or there could be, a “proper”, “adequate” (or “ideal”)
language. No discourse is “true” in an absolute sense, and therefore no dis-
course can be labelled as being merely “rhetorical” or “metaphorical” by con-
trast with an absolutely true discourse. In fact, every human discourse can
and should be traced back to a rhetorical “force” that creates metaphors. Most
importantly, Denat’s essay also tries to show that this view involves a critique
of truth as adequacy or correspondence, but it does not lead to scepticism. For
already in his earlier writings Nietzsche conceives of the possibility of what he
later calls his “new language” (BGE 4/JGB 4), a language which “remains a
speech in images (Bilderrede)” (NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[128], p. 487) but also
enlarges the limits of language and hence allows for higher degrees of philo-
sophical probity.
Luís Sousa’s essay analyses Nietzsche’s conception of “knowledge” and
“truth” in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense (1873) and aims to show that
the claim that language is metaphorical is part of a radicalisation of Schopen-
hauer’s idealism. In that early text Nietzsche does not yet fully abandon the ide-
alistic distinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself. Although some pas-
sages already outline his later claim that the very concept of a “thing” and a
“thing-in-itself” is just a human creation and “fiction”, he is still mostly “agnos-
tic” with regard to the existence of the “thing-in-itself”. Therefore, he still uses
the notion of an adequate access to the “thing-in-itself” as a means for calling
human knowledge into question. Since we can know nothing about the “thing-
in-itself”, no type of human discourse – or even perception – can claim to be a
token of “knowledge” or “truth” in the traditional sense of these words.
Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós starts by considering the same early
texts as Céline Denat and Luís Sousa – and therefore he also analyses the
thesis that language is metaphorical – but he then moves on to Nietzsche’s
more mature works and focuses on his purpose of philosophising by following
“the guiding thread of the body”, that is, of using the metaphor of the body,
the metaphor of a multiplicity of drives and affects, in order to interpret reality.
Guervós argues that the early texts already prefigure this metaphor because in
presenting language as metaphorical they present the “aesthetic” as a sort of
foundation of all thought. But it is only in later writings that Nietzsche fully
develops the anti-metaphysical metaphor of our “pulsional life” (Triebleben)6

and transforms it into a foundation of his whole philosophy. This is, however,
a paradoxical foundation. It seems that in trying to overcome metaphysics
within language and by exploring new metaphors, Nietzsche cannot avoid
remaining entangled in the metaphysical grammar of human language. Or can
he?
The second chapter – II. On Language, Emotion, and Morality – assembles
the three essays most concerned with the emotional and moral dimension of
human language. Andrea Bertino’s essay deals with the ways Nietzsche, Hum-
boldt, and Levinas’ views on language and consciousness question the moral
autonomy of individuals, i.e. of the “I” or “Self”. Firstly, Bertino argues that
for Nietzsche our linguistic self-understanding in terms of an “I” or “Self”
causes a loss of autonomy and individuality, whereas for Humboldt it is only
through language, and specifically through the linguistic production of an “I”,
that we become autonomous and individual. Secondly, he argues that Levinas
has managed to criticise the traditional conception of autonomy and individu-
ality in a more radical way than both Nietzsche and Humboldt. On the other
hand, according to Bertino’s argument, the three authors share the belief that
philosophy can contribute to the development of new forms of self-understand-
ing and communication which enable new and better forms of ethical life.
Tom Bailey’s essay suggests that notwithstanding his criticisms of modern
moral and political language – of such terms as “freedom”, “responsibility”,
“duty”, “rights”, and “equality” – Nietzsche’s political philosophy is best situ-
ated in the modern tradition, that fundamentally concerned with the nature
and possibility of human “autonomy”. In particular, Bailey interprets Nietz-
sche’s political philosophy as reformulating Kant’s conceptions of “autonomy”
and “community” by affirming a “respect” for agency that involves a reciprocal
vulnerability and measurement of agency among “equals”. Bailey shows how
these conceptions inform Kant’s and Nietzsche’s accounts of political obliga-
tion, and particularly how Nietzsche’s reformulations of Kantian terms issue
in substantially different political conclusions, before exploring what such a
Kantian approach might contribute to contemporary debates over the individ-
ual’s place in a political community. Bailey’s reading thus implies that, rather
than leave modern philosophical concerns behind, Nietzsche provides sophis-
ticated, if neglected, responses to them.
6 Throughout the whole book, we have used the expression “pulsional life” to translate the
expression Triebleben and the word “pulsional” to translate triebhaft. This is because it is
sometimes very important to distinguish triebhaft from instinktiv, and hence the usual
translation of triebhaft by “instinctive” and Triebleben by “instinctive life” is inadequate.
Chiara Piazzesi’s essay discusses the emotional and moral dimension of

human language by making the fundamental point that according to Nietzsche
the words that refer to our affects, passions or emotions do not denote what
the latter really are, but rather what we think they are. This point has several
consequences, which Piazzesi sharply emphasises. Firstly, it entails that every
attempt to develop a scientific discourse on the emotions will always remain
attached to the history of the words we use to speak about emotions and hence
to the “folk psychology” which is embedded in that history. Secondly, one
cannot separate the history of our discourse on the emotions from our emo-
tions themselves. The creation and use of different words to speak about emo-
tions give rise to different emotions, and we can never become aware of our
emotions outside of a social and historical context in which the way we speak
about our emotions decisively influences the way we interpret them. Thirdly,
all discourse on the emotions is evaluative or “moral”, and this also applies
to the type of reflexive, critical, second-order discourse which is favoured by
Nietzsche, that is, to a “psychology” which is “genealogical” and hence takes
the history of our linguistic creations into account. Nietzsche’s philosophical
approach is fundamentally aimed at changing our evaluations and liberating
our emotional experiences from traditional morality, and not at presenting a
scientific description of what our evaluations and emotional experiences
“really are”.
The third chapter – III. On Language, Self-Expression, and Conscious-
ness – includes four essays that deal with the problem of language from the
perspective of self-expression and consciousness. Jaanus Sooväli discusses
the status of the word “I” in Nietzsche’s writings, and he attempts to show
that Nietzsche’s views can be said to complement and anticipate Derrida’s
critique of Husserl’s conception of the “I”. According to Husserl, the meaning
of the word “I” can only be given in solitary speech and is tantamount to an
immediate representation of my personality. That meaning, then, can only be
given to me; for the others, it will always remain no more than a sign or
indication of my personality – it can never be “given” to them. Nietzsche takes
a different view. By emphasising the role of communication and rethinking
consciousness as an event that occurs only within social and communicative
contexts, he anticipates the so-called “death of the subject”. The word “I” is
also just a sign or an indication for myself: even in “solitary speech” its mean-
ing remains social and communicative, and hence the “self-presence of the
subject” in speech acts is no more than a fiction. The meaning of the word “I”
cannot be “given” in Husserl’s sense.
Luca Lupo’s essay is an attempt to interpret aphorism 119 of Daybreak,
an aphorism which famously describes the unconscious realm of the drives
and instincts as a “text” and consciousness and language as a “commentary”

on that “unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text” (D 119/M 119). The
main point of Lupo’s analysis is to show that, according to D 119/M 119 and
many other texts from the 1880’s, “to live an experience” (Erleben) and “to
invent” (Erdichten) the contents of that experience are equivalent terms. Expe-
riences depend on “instinctive judgements”, as well as on “intellectual judge-
ments” that are built upon them, and all such judgements are driven by a
“poetic” (dichtende), “inventive” (erdichtende) force (Kraft) of our organism.
Thus the “external world” is actually an environment (an Umwelt) that we, as
living-organisms, fabricate by means of the activity of our drives, instincts,
conscious thoughts and words. This thesis is mostly explored in the Nachlass,
but it is also present in Nietzsche’s published writings. However, as Luca Lupo
emphasises, Nietzsche does not put forward that thesis in a dogmatic way. On
the contrary, everything he states about consciousness, language, the instincts,
and the drives has a hypothetical, conjectural, even sceptical, status.
João Constâncio’s essay is an attempt to interpret aphorism 354 of The
Gay Science, which is arguably one of the most important texts Nietzsche has
written on consciousness and language (and which is also one of the main
focuses of Andrea Bertino and Jaanus Sooväli’s essays). Constâncio begins by
arguing that in GS 354/FW 354 “consciousness” (Bewusstsein) designates a
properly human form of awareness which involves conceptualisation, inten-
tionality, and self-reflexivity. However, the most original aspect of this view of
consciousness is that it conceives of conceptualisation, intentionality, and self-
reflexivity as part of a “systemic” event that only arises within social and lin-
guistic spaces, by means of communication-signs. There is thus an intrinsic
public dimension in consciousness and language, and yet this does not imply
that self-expression is impossible. According to Constâncio’s argument, Nietz-
sche believes that all forms of conscious and particularly linguistic communi-
cation are forms of indirect self-expression – and, most importantly, that there
are forms of self-expression which are better than others. To a great extent,
Nietzsche’s “new language” is precisely a means for better self-expression.
The main point of Maria João Mayer Branco’s essay is to emphasise that
Nietzsche’s critique of language goes hand in hand with a praise of language.
Branco uses the spider metaphor as presented in Human, All Too Human to
argue that Nietzsche’s project of creating a “new language” is analogous to his
project of liberation from the cobwebs of habits via the creation of new, “brief
habits” (GS 295/FW 295, HH I 427/MA I 427). The heart of this process is
Nietzsche’s “intellectual conscience”, his Redlichkeit, a new “intellectual hon-
esty” that recognises that “everything is a mask” and you can only express
yourself by growing a mask – or a multiplicity of masks – within the realm of
“appearance” (Schein). Nietzsche’s love of appearances, Branco claims,

includes a love of language, which is compatible with his mistrust of language.
Such a love is a form of “action at the distance” (e.g. GS 60/FW 60).
The fourth and last chapter – IV. On Language, Self-Expression, and
Style – assembles two essays that deal with language and self-expression from
a different perspective, namely Nietzsche’s way of writing, his “style”, or
rather, his “styles”. Bartholomew Ryan focuses on Nietzsche’s performative
use of one of his favourite metaphors: the star. As Ryan shows, this metaphor
has been used throughout human history in a variety of ways and as such this
is what attracts and compels Nietzsche to explore and subvert “the star”. The
word, which has been mostly neglected by commentators, is of paramount
importance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and it functions as a “curtain raiser
and closer” in The Gay Science, but it is also present in many other texts.
According to Ryan, it usually represents “that which is both the creative force
and also the result of acknowledging and struggling through the chaos”. Thus
the metaphor functions as a means of expressing Nietzsche’s conceptions of
chaos, cosmos, and creation. Most importantly, the way Nietzsche uses the
metaphor, that is, his artistry in appropriating and deconstructing “the lan-
guage of the stars”, shows what he wants to say about chaos and cosmos. Put
differently, Nietzsche’s use of the metaphorical image of the “star” performa-
tively expresses his conception of the human being as ever changing and “still
undetermined” (BGE 62/JGB 62).
The volume closes with Maria Cristina Fornari’s essay on Nietzsche’s last
letters (1885–1889). These letters are “a sort of autobiography” that reveals
the personal experiences behind the ideas expressed in the published writings
and the notebooks. Most importantly, the letters are an important part of Nietz-
sche’s effort to “recapitulate”, that is, to look back “over the experience of his
past writings, with the aim of making himself understandable for action on
the present”. In the letters he clearly sketches “a personal development of
which he can only become aware himself with hindsight”. The retrospective
reading of his own works allows him to find coherence in them, but also to
give them a new meaning in the light of the philosophical ideas that they
prepared but could only emerge later. However, Nietzsche’s reinterpretation of
his previous works also makes him reinterpret his whole “task”. It changes his
assessment of the posthumous effect of his work and, therefore, they create
the need for new forms of expression. Thus, in the letters, we can see Nietzsche
constantly searching for new “masks” of self-expression, new “masks” which
are in the end different styles that he wants to imprint on his writings. Such
styles aim to adequately express not only his new philosophical ideas, but also
the personal experiences that lie at their origin. We believe it is wonderfully
fitting to end this introduction with a quotation from one of the letters ana-
lysed by Fornari:
My writings are difficult because rarer and more unusual states of mine prevail over
normal ones. I am not boasting about this, but that is how it is. I search for signs of
similar emotional situations that are not yet understood and often hardly understandable;
my inventive capacity seems to me to be revealed in this. […] Is it not perhaps true that
a work’s intention must always create first of all the law of its style? I require that when
this intention changes, the whole stylistic procedure must change too (Bf. an Josef Viktor
Widmann 04.02.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 986).
I. On Metaphor and the Limits of Language
Céline Denat
“To Speak in Images”: The Status of
Rhetoric and Metaphor in Nietzsche’s
New Language
It has been noticed for a long time: Nietzsche’s texts are characterised by a
constant use of tropes or rhetorical figures, which seem to be set against “a
‘simple’ use of the German language, but equally (…) the language of philo-
sophical discourse”.1 Whereas philosophers tend to use a language capable of
conveying – as accurately as possible – the rigorousness of their ideas, con-
cepts and arguments, Nietzsche, as he himself sometimes explicitly indicates,
does not cease to “speak in images”, to proclaim his purpose in a “figurative
way” (im Bilde or im Gleichniss reden).2 This is something which, on the other
hand, may have raised doubts about Nietzsche’s rigor: as an author who could
seem much more prone to persuade through a mere rhetorical use of language,
than to convince through a strict use of rational argumentation.
And yet, Nietzsche himself underlines the necessity of the “coldest mis-
trust” (WS 145) of “images and comparisons” through which we can “con-
vince, but not prove” and which arouse only “conviction and belief”. Moreover,
he recalls the need of all philosophical activity to be built upon rigor. How
should we, hence, understand Nietzsche, when he explicitly claims to make
use of a “pictorial language” and at the same time clearly refuses to use that
sort of rhetorical figures which are “images and similes”?
In order to account for the coherence of Nietzsche’s intention in this respect,
we will study the specific and new meaning that Nietzsche gives to the notion of
rhetoric and, thus, of metaphor as well. Indeed these notions no longer bear the
meaning that has been traditionally ascribed to them. Thus, rhetoric will no longer
refer exclusively to the art of “speaking well”, the art of persuasive eloquence,
essentially distinct from common or philosophical language; and the metaphor
will not be reduced here to its stylistic and ornamental status, as a short version
of a comparison which only makes sense in relation to a pre-existing and “proper”
term and meaning. For this purpose we shall, first, pay special attention to the
texts from the early 1870’s, most particularly to his lectures on rhetoric given in
Basel in 1872, and to his text On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, where
1 Blondel (1991), p. 18. See also Blondel (1984).

2 See, for instance, HH I 231/MA I 231, GS 24/FW 24, GS 93/FW 93, GS 354/FW 354, BGE
252/JGB 252.
14 Céline Denat
Nietzsche develops and justifies these theses explicitly. In effect, this study shows
how Nietzsche, in an apparently paradoxical way, rethinks language as deriving
primarily from a “rhetorical force” which is its creative source. And he does so
precisely against the view that rhetoric, metaphors and images only make sense
against the background of a “proper” language, as if they were its derivatives. Even
more precisely, in these first writings and as a result of this first thesis, Nietzsche
rethinks language as being totally metaphorical. In this way he gives the notion of
metaphor an original meaning, enjoining us to renounce the idea of a proper or
adequate use of language in relation to reality, and hence, most certainly too, lead-
ing us to renounce the demand of an absolutely true discourse. We believe that
this observation regarding the nature of language enables us to understand better
the nature and the use of the “new language” which characterises, as Nietzsche
himself admits, the whole of his writings. It also explains the reason why Nietz-
sche will later say (although without going to the trouble of explaining the precise
meaning of this affirmation), that whatever we may do or intend to do, “it all
remains a speech in images (Bilderrede)” (NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[128]).3
On the other hand, our effort will also be to show that, with these affirma-
tions, Nietzsche is by no means giving up the demand of rigorousness and coher-
ence, in short: the demand of intellectual probity,4 which, according to Nietzsche,
must characterise all philosophical activity and philosophical texts. For, to be pre-
cise, what has led philosophy until now to remain dogmatic and a prisoner of the
limits and illusions of established modes of discourse is the belief in a true dis-
course, capable of expressing with adequacy a reality existing “in-itself”. In this
sense, language has remained one of the biggest “danger[s] to spiritual freedom ”
(WS 55). Conversely, to think of language as being rhetorical and metaphorical is
to underscore the vivid and mutable character of language, and hence, of thought
itself. This opens both speech and thought to new possibilities, new forms of say-
ing, thinking and interpreting the world – perhaps more rigorous and coherent
than the previous ones in spite of the latter’s pretension, or more precisely because
of their pretension of adequately conveying “what is” and, thus, of finding abso-
lute truths. Whenever the belief reigns that words necessarily denote real things,
and whenever fixed and established modes of discourse are being used without
being questioned, the philosopher remains ineluctably “imprisoned in the nets of
language” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[135]).5 So far we have believed with too much
3 “Es bleibt eine Bilderrede” [editors’ translation].

4 In relation to this demand for probity and “intellectual honesty”, which Nietzsche never
ceases to affirm, see for example HH I 225/MA I 225, WS 37, GS 2/FW 2, BGE 5/JGB 5. For a
deeper analysis of this point we shall refer to: Granier (1966), p. 501–506, Wotling (1995),
p. 43, also to our work: Denat (2006a).
5 “der Philosoph in den Netzen der Sprache eingefangen” [editors’ translation].
“To Speak in Images” 15
confidence that we could “grasp the true in things” (WS 11), without noticing that
words very often hide problems rather than solve them,6 and that the distinctions
and structures (the “grammar”) of language cover modes of thought which are
not necessarily self-evident.7 Nietzsche, thus, intends to think a “new language”.8
Overall, this means that we shall find in his writings new uses of language, which
allow him to develop the novelty and freedom of a thought in search of higher
degrees of philosophical probity. The notion of metaphor – understood in its wid-
est sense as a shift, a transposition – is precisely what allows Nietzsche to convey
the constant shifts, the procedures of substitution or exclusion in relation to
accepted uses which can be operative at the core of a given language, and this is
what will enable him to overcome the frozen, simplifying and misleading schemes
in which language and thought have so far remained imprisoned.
The clarification of the specific nature of the “new language”, that Nietzsche
believes to be establishing in order to radically express new modes of thought, will
enable us to understand the status and importance of such “rhetorical” state-
ments which are so abundant in Nietzsche’s texts. To the question, which we cer-
tainly cannot ignore: “do they have an ornamental or a philosophical value?”,9
we must answer that, given that the distinctions between philosophical and rhe-
torical language, as well as between conceptual and pictorial language, will be
overcome and denied in Nietzsche’s writings, such statements are in themselves
philosophical statements, even though – or to be more exact – precisely because
they renounce to present themselves as a proper language. They are not merely
ornamental or secondary and are not to be retranslated and reduced to a concep-
tual language more fundamental than them, because now philosophical language
recognises itself as being necessarily rhetorical and pictorial. In this context, we
will be able to consider more rigorously the precise meaning and significance of
several types of statements which in effect pervade and characterise Nietzsche’s
writings and which are troubling statements (“‘spirit’ resembles a stomach more
than anything”, BGE 230/JGB 230), or apparently contradictory statements
(“truth does not signify the antithesis of error”, NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[247] = WLN,
15), or statements which at the very least seem to blur admitted distinctions (the
body is “your great reason”, “the soul is just a word for something on the body”,
ZA I Despisers/Verächtern; our body is “a society constructed out of many ‘souls’”,
BGE 19).
6 M 47/D 47: “Words lie in our way!”. See also WS 55, BGE 16/JGB 16.
7 For Nietzsche’s critique of “grammar”, see BGE 17/JGB 17, BGE 34/JGB 34.
8 See, among others, BT Attempt 6/GT Versuch 6, BGE 4/JGB 4, EH Books 1/EH Bücher 1.
9 See Blondel (1991), p. 18.
16 Céline Denat
Rhetoric as a Force Inherent to Language

In his lectures on rhetoric and the history of Greek eloquence held in Basel in
1872,10 Nietzsche extensively insists on the fact that philosophers have given
almost no privilege to rhetoric so far. The reason being, that philosophers have
misunderstood this topic or understood it only in a very superficial way. The
art of rhetoric, being the art of “speaking well”, has too often been considered
as a simply formal art, an art of artifice, style and ornament. As a result phi-
losophy, understood as an activity designed to search for and express the truth
accurately, i.e. openly and without ornaments, has been opposed to rhetoric
as an art of eloquence, designed to seduce in favour either of the true or the
false. Hence, the distinction – which seems to go without saying – between a
“proper”, clear and “natural” language and a simply rhetorical and “artificial”
one11 has led us either to despise and criticise all art of rhetoric for being
deceptive, or to do our best to use it as an instrument for accomplishing the
philosophical goals themselves. In the first case, the art of rhetoric is expelled
from the realm of true philosophy as the demands of rigor, neutrality and
clarity for the philosophical discourse proscribe the pursuit of rhetorical
effects,12 that is, of all stylistic effects, which could affect the discourse’s uni-
versality and objectivity. In the second case, rhetoric is reduced to a second
rank, as a simple and subordinate medium. This was the case for Plato, who,
even though he confessed to feel a “strong dislike for” rhetoric, nevertheless
acknowledged that rhetoric is capable of helping to “inspire a doxa” where the
nature of the audience or “the brevity of time allows for no scientific instruc-
tion”.13 Rhetoric is hence nothing more than philosophy’s servant: it is true
10 Cf. “Darstellung der Antiken Rhetorik”, and “Geschichte der griechischen Beredsamkeit”,
in: KGW, II/4, pp. 363 ff. and KGW, II/4, pp. 413 ff.; see the English translation: Nietzsche
(1989), “Description of Ancient Rhetoric” and “The History of Greek Eloquence”, in: F.
Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed. & transl. by S. L. Gilman/C. Blair/D. J. Parent, pp. 2
ff. and 213 ff.
11 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW, II/4, p. 425): “We call an author, a
book, a style ‘rhetorical’ when we observe a conscious application of artistic means of
speaking; it always implies a gentle reproof. We consider it to be not natural, and as
producing the impression of being done purposefully”.
12 One might think of Leibniz’s Préface à Nizolius sur le style philosophique. Nietzsche
refers to Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, III, 10, §34, p. 508: “But yet, if we
would speak of Things as they are, we must allow, that all the Art of Rhetoric, besides Order
and Clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of Words Eloquence hath invented,
are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong Ideas, move the Passions, and thereby mislead
the Judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheat”.
13 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, I, pp. 7–8 (KGW II/4, pp. 417–419).
that Plato grants a certain value to rhetoric, but only in those cases where the
latter “rests upon philosophical education”, and even then only “provided it
is used for good aims, i.e., those of philosophy”.14
Whether seen as an enemy or as a servant the difference is only superficial
and only takes place on the basis of a deeper agreement and prejudice: in both
cases, rhetoric is understood on the basis of a series of dualistic oppositions –
between concept and image, between the seduction of the passions and intel-
lectual knowledge, between knowledge and art, more specifically between the
natural and the artificial, between the proper and the improper. The use of
rhetoric, being pictorial and improper, is supposed to emerge from a first,
natural and proper use of language. It is only in Nietzsche’s later texts that we
can find an explicit critique of this dualism, a dualism which he denounces
as “the prejudice by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized”.15
And yet, already in his notes from the early 1870’s, Nietzsche clearly questions
the dualistic distinctions, which lead to a misunderstanding, and more pre-
cisely to an unjustified reduction, of the modes in which the notion of “rheto-
ric” must be understood. This questioning is realised through a double and
regressive inquiry: the first one aims to interrogate the history of the notion of
rhetoric itself, and the second, in a more radical manner, questions the sources
of human language.
First of all, the reference to the history of the notion of rhetoric allows
Nietzsche, in the first paragraph of his lectures, to recall that the art of rhetoric
has not always been considered to be a simply secondary discipline or art,
derived from a “natural” use of language. Originally, the Greeks, and even
Aristotle, didn’t conceive of rhetoric as being a singular and secondary technē
or epistēmē, but as a power (dynamis).16 Nietzsche translates this and desig-
nates it as a force (Kraft)17 inherent to language, which renders it naturally
capable of producing an effect of persuasion on the audience.
This historical element plays an important role, giving us a first indication
of the way in which we can conceive of rhetoric in contrast to other modern
reductive and devaluating conceptions. But this initial indicator will be con-
firmed and dealt with in depth in the third paragraph of the same text, which
questions “the relation of the rhetorical to language”, and which develops a
14 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, I, p. 9 (KGW II/4, p. 419).

15 BGE 2/JGB 2: “The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in opposition of
values”.
16 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, I, p. 9 (KGW II/4, p. 419). See Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 2,
1355b18–20.
17 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, p. 425): “Die Kraft, welche
Aristoteles Rhetorik nennt”.
18 Céline Denat
critical argumentation quite similar to and clearly preparatory to the one devel-
oped at the beginning of On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense. In effect,
in both texts, Nietzsche questions the usual distinction between a “proper” or
“natural” language and a rhetorical, “artificial” or “pictorial” language. The
very particular sense that is given to the concept of rhetoric in the 1872 lec-
tures can be seen as a preparation for the equally singular use Nietzsche makes
of the term “metaphor” in his On Truth and Lying, to which we will come back
later.
Nietzsche’s argumentation here consists in showing that the terms which
we call “proper” or “natural” are only said to be so in as much as a long habit
has made them seem to be so. The classical distinction, according to which
Achilles is properly designated as a “man” and rhetorically or metaphorically
designated as “a lion”, comes from a customary, but always conventional, use
of the terms lion and man. But neither of them is more “proper”, more
“adequate” than the other to designate the species man or the individual Achil-
les. So much so that the greater part of classical philosophy would indeed
admit the conventional character of language, manifest through the diversity
of languages.
Hence, what appears to be artificial or rhetorical in a given linguistic, his-
torical and cultural context could end up seeming quite different in another
one. According to Nietzsche, when we make quick and “pejorative” judgements
concerning the “rhetorical” and “forced” character of an author or book, we
should question “the taste of the one who passes judgement”, that is to say,
“what exactly is ‘natural’ to him”.18 This could be just the result of a long
habit, of something, which, to start with, is only a conventional creation. The
“natural” is always the effect of a long-lasting and habitual convention. There-
fore, the belief in a proper language and in its real differentiation from an
improper language is the effect of having forgotten the history and the develop-
mental nature of language, as well as of our “taste” for certain modes of
expression rather than others.
This radical reconsideration about the idea of a proper language allows
Nietzsche to abolish the distinction between proper and improper or “only
pictorial” languages. What does a word designate in fact? From his early writ-
ings, Nietzsche incessantly insists that it is never the thing itself, which is
never accessible to us as such. Nietzsche picks up and radicalises a Kantian
topic: we only ever have access to the thing’s and the world’s image (Bild) –
and of the world as it is in itself, we are unable to say anything at all. So that
18 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, p. 425), translation modified.

the whole idea of the “in-itself” can be legitimately abandoned.19 The word
never designates an existing “reality” or a pure “fact”; according to Nietzsche’s
lectures on rhetoric, the word only designates the image (Bild) we have or
make of things: these remain for us unknown, and their images are mere
appearances beyond which no being is accessible to us.20 These appearances
or images are nothing else than what Nietzsche will later call “interpreta-
tions” – interpretations which depend on our own physiological constitution,
in as much as we are their authors.21 Moreover, the word itself does not resem-
ble this sensitive image more than the latter can be said to resemble the “thing
itself”, which remains unknown to us. The word cannot constitute a “perfectly
adequate reproduction” of the visual or sensitive image, because it belongs to
a totally different order, namely to the order of sounds and vocality. If it is
also in a certain sense an “image”, it is a “sound image” (Tonbild). Therefore,
language never says “the essence of things” adequately, but only the way in
which they appear to us. In addition, and to be more precise, words and lan-
guage do not refer to a real thing, but only to the images, to the interpretations
which constitute our world, the only ones we can claim to “know”. Language
is the image of an image, the original model of which remains for us forever
unknown. It never produces, as Nietzsche puts it, “anything more accurate
than an image”.22 This is why we can say that language is always pictorial,
always improper, always the result of a double process of production or crea-
tion, in which we are the creators, although often unconsciously. This is the
reason why Nietzsche can say that that “conscious art”, which is the art of
rhetoric such as it has normally been conceived, is no more than a “further
19 Although in the 1860’s Nietzsche still seemed to embrace Kant’s distinction between
phenomena and thing-in-itself, it is clear that he tried to overcome it since the 1870’s: see,
for example, the radical critique of that distinction in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral
Sense: “The ‘thing-in-itself’ (which would be, precisely, pure truth, truth without
consequences) is impossible for even the creator of language to grasp” (TL 1, 144/WL 1), so
that also the term “phenomenon” (Erscheinung) is deceptive. For the image is itself an
“appearance” (Schein) which does not manifest anything besides itself. See also HH I 9/MA
I 9 and NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[154], editors’ translation: “Supposing there is an in-itself, an
unconditional, it cannot, precisely for that reason, be known”.
20 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, pp. 426), translation modified:
“Man, who forms language, does not perceive things or events, but stimuli (Reize): he does
not reproduce sensations (Empfindungen), but merely copies (Abbildungen) of sensations.
The sensation, evoked through a nervous stimulus (Nervenreiz), does not take in the thing in
itself: this sensation is presented externally through an image (Bild)”.
21 On the relation between the concepts of interpretation and image, a relation which
allows Nietzsche to defend that even sensible and allegedly immediate knowledge is already
the result of an interpretation, cf. Denat (2006b).
22 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 23 (KGW II/4, pp. 426), translation modified.
20 Céline Denat
development (…) of the artistic means already found in language”; in other

words, it is merely the fine tip of an “unconscious” rhetorical art, which is
necessarily present in all forms of language:
The force (Kraft) to discover and to make operative, with respect to each thing, that which
has an effect and makes an impression, a force which Aristotle calls rhetoric – this force
is, at the same time, the essence of language; the latter is based just as little as rhetoric
is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things; language does not desire to
instruct, but to transpose to others (auf Andere übertragen) a subjective emotional
response and its acceptance.23
Put differently: because language is always the (sound) image of an image, the
vocal transposition of the image we make of “reality” according to the type of
beings that we are, and because it could never aspire to more than to “convey
only a doxa and not an epistēmē”, we can conclude that “there is obviously
no unrhetorical ‘naturalness’ of language to which one could appeal: language
itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts”.24 In other words we must say that
“[…] language is rhetoric […]”.25 And, in addition, as Nietzsche will say again
in a later note, “[…] the figures of rhetoric [are] the essence of language” (NL
1872–73, KSA 7, 19[215], editors’ translation).
Rhetoric is, hence, not just that specific use of language which could be
opposed to a philosophical, rational, demonstrative or dialectic use of lan-
guage; it is not just that artifice which enables discourses to exercise a certain
persuasive effect on the audiences, particularly in political contexts. Rhetoric
must be conceived, more radically, as that force (Kraft) which is at the core of
all creation and of all particular linguistic uses. It is what gives all discourses
the force to perform a particular form of thinking: human discourse can never
“instruct” in a neutral way and regarding ideas or truths already existing in
themselves, it can only “transmit” or “transpose” to others “a subjective emo-
tional response and its acceptance”. This is the case even when this force
inherent to language has been forgotten and remains neglected, such that we
come to believe in the objectivity and truth of a discourse, which pretends to
be neutral and perfectly “adequate to reality”. The beginning of Nietzsche’s
Lectures on Greek eloquence announces this thesis in other terms, recalling
what the Greeks knew, and we have forgotten, namely that the mastery of
discourse is what allows us to “control ‘opinion about things’ and hence the
effect of things upon men”.26
23 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, p. 425 f.), translation modified.
24 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, p. 425).
25 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 23 (KGW II/4, p. 426).
26 “The History of Greek Eloquence”, p. 213 (“Geschichte der griechischen Beredsamkeit”,
in: KGW II/4, p. 371).
From this perspective we can now understand that language is never neu-
tral, because it is originally understood as a “force”, as a “power”. A particular
language entails the practical rather than theoretical power of inducing ways
of thinking, values, and hence, of inducing specific modes of life. The unity of
a word, for instance, leads us to believe in the reality and unity of the “thing”
it is supposed to designate. This applies to terms such as “spirit” or even
“will”, which lead us to believe in the existence of a certain faculty27 that
would be the condition of our freedom and moral responsibility, or, if that
should be the case, the condition of our culpability and condemnation. Certain
“linguistic usage[s]” are supposed to make us overestimate the intellectual,
spiritual and divine spheres and, conversely, devaluate the “closest things”
(WS 5) that concern the body and the conditions of everyday life. Because we
are not able to abstract from these “things” and we do not take them seriously
enough, we come to neglect our own existence. In later texts, Nietzsche does
not cease to insist upon these “deceptions” (Täuschungen) that are involved in
language, deceptions that are as difficult to detect as they remain “uncon-
scious” (NL 1872–73, KSA 9, 19[216], editors’ translation). In the same way
he insists that we must resist the “philosophical mythology” which remains
“concealed in language” (WS 11), because it forms our ways of thinking, living
and acting without our noticing it. As Nietzsche insistently claims at the begin-
ning of the 1870’s,28 language is one of the essential conditions for the consti-
tution of any particular culture and this is why it is so important to avoid
neglecting its specific nature and effects.
Conversely, we must say that such inattention to and such misreading of
the rhetorical character and force inherent to language, which, on the other
hand, ensure the creation and/or recreation of language itself (what Nietzsche
sometimes calls its “plasticity”), condemn those who neglect these aspects to
stay trapped in immutable forms of talking and thinking, where they will
remain incapable of questioning the singularities, limits and eventual problem-
atic character of language. In as much as philosophers consider conceptual,
rational language as the only rigorous form of language, giving it thus an
absolute value, they neglect the developmental character of this particular form
27 See HH I 14/MA I 14: “the unity of the word is no guarantee of the unity of the thing”; NL
1876–77, KSA 8, 23[163], editors translation: “Once there are words, human beings believe
that something has to correspond to them, e.g. soul, God, will, destiny etc”; D 33/M 33,
BGE 19/JGB 19.
28 See the posthumous notes from the period of the Untimely Meditations I-II: NL 1872–73,
KSA 7, 19[308], 19[329], editor’s translation: “First stage of civilization: the belief in
language, as a form of designation which is entirely metaphorical”, NL 1872–73, KSA 7,
26[16], etc.
22 Céline Denat
of language, as well as the particular modes of thought which are “embedded”

within it.29 Because they make a radical distinction between proper and rhetor-
ical language, reducing the latter to an inessential art of linguistic figures and
ornament, and hence, neglecting language’s inherent plastic and practical
force, they have condemned themselves to dogmatism, to remain prisoners of
the “nets of language” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[135]), as Nietzsche clearly
indicates already in 1872 in his Lectures on the history of Greek eloquence:
The philosophers, however, have no sense for this activity [sc. eloquence] (for they have
no understanding of the art which lived and flourished around them […]), and so their
hostility is too vehement […].30
By contrast, the way in which Nietzsche shifts the meaning attributed to the
notion of rhetoric, and with this shift, the attention paid to the rhetorical force
and the creative power at the root of language, which are inherent to language
itself – all of this invites us to think of the possibility of a modification, a
recreation of language, and hence, a modification of the ways of thought which
are entangled within language, as well as a modification of the types of culture
which are conditioned through language. As Nietzsche will write in 1880, “to
improve one’s style” is not just to change ornaments and form: “To improve
one’s style – means to improve one’s thoughts and nothing else!” (WS 131).
At this point, however, we come across a manifest difficulty: if there isn’t
any proper language and if there isn’t any true discourse, why should we want
to “improve”, correct or modify them? If all forms of objective knowledge of a
given reality are impossible, and if all discourses are equally inadequate, must
we not say that they are all equal? And what is the purpose of wanting to
create a “new language”? These are the difficulties that we intend to resolve
in the second part of our essay.
A “New Language”: Learning how to “Use

Language as an Artist”
First of all, as we have seen above, what needs to be “improved” is the belief
that language can be the holder of an absolute truth, the belief that through
language “we grasp the true in things” (WS 11). But Nietzsche’s critique of
KSA 7, 19[117], NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[215], NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[216].
30 “The History of Greek Eloquence”, p. 216 (KGW II/4, p. 371).
language does not end here: far from considering all languages and all, present
or future, forms of discourse to be necessarily equivalent, he stresses the intrin-
sic difficulties – both practical and theoretical – of certain forms of expression,
so that he indicates the necessity of conceiving new forms of discourse: differ-
ent forms of discourse which will surpass the present ones. Even if we were to
admit, as Nietzsche himself sometimes does, that “all hundred different lan-
guages express in different ways the needs that are typical and unchangeable
in human beings” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 29[88], editors’ translation), after
having exposed the problematic or weakening character of those very needs,
as well as of the modes of expression responding to them – which in the end
only reinforce and perpetuate them – , the necessity of conceiving a new lan-
guage becomes clear, a new language which, in its turn, would allow us to
transform humanity. However, as Nietzsche mostly insists, we must add that
the different languages or the varied styles existing within a language presup-
pose different needs, values and types of interpretation, which can also be
incited in new audiences and readers.31
In this respect, what Nietzsche mostly criticises is the lack of finesse within
a language, its simplifying character. The word, or to be more precise the belief
in its referential character, i.e. the belief that one word necessarily designates
one thing (and, conversely, that what lacks a name should be disregarded,32)
leads us to conceive of complex phenomena as substantial unities. Words make
us believe in the unity and simplicity of a sentiment for instance, whereas a
more rigorous examination will reveal its “polyphonic”33 character. They make
us believe in the unity and simplicity of the “will”, which, in fact, presupposes
a complex flux of affections, sentiments and tendencies, which do not have a
“verbal unity” (BGE 19/JGB 19). The belief in the referential character of words
and grammatical distinctions induce a simplifying, and hence, reassuring
vision of the world.34 The grammatical distinction between subject and verb
leads us to believe in a real distinction between the agent and his (or her)
31 See BGE 28/JGB 28, and BGE 20/JGB 20: “Philosophers of the Ural-Altaic language group
(where the concept of the subject is the most poorly developed) are more likely to ‘see the
world’ differently, and to be found on different paths from those taken by the Indo-Germans
or Muslims: the spell of particular grammatical functions is in the last analysis the spell of
physiological value judgments and racial conditioning”.
32 See D 115/M 115.
33 D 133/M 133: “All of this, and other, much more subtle things in addition, constitute
‘pity’: how coarsely does language assault with its one word so polyphonous a being!”
34 See WS 11: “Through words and concepts we are still continually misled into imagining
things as being simpler than they are, separate from one another, indivisible, each existing
in and for itself”.
24 Céline Denat
action, between a cause and its effect,35 i.e. precisely at the point where it
seems most legitimate to perceive and think of a complex and fluid continu-
ity.36 Through dualistic oppositions (such as good and evil, true and false,
natural and artificial or proper and improper) it is easy to allow oneself to
ignore a big part of what is real, because as we overvalue one of the terms to
the detriment of the other we tend to neglect the totality characterised by the
latter. In other words, the faith in the truth of one sole interpretation leads us
to neglect other possibilities of thought; the belief in the proper character of a
certain form of discourse leads us to reject all other forms of expression for
being inadequate, to such an extent that “the way seems as good as blocked
for certain other possibilities of interpreting the world” (BGE 20/JGB 20). But
Nietzsche accuses such a necessity of simplification and negation of being a
symptom of both intellectual dishonesty and weakness. Dishonesty, because
by doing this, one simplifies the text itself and cuts it off from the appearances
in which it is based, i.e. from the indefinitely varied and changing character
of the images that function as one’s starting point. Weakness, because these
simplifications are evidently a measure which saves us from confronting the
complex and contradictory character of the apparent world and spares us the
difficulty of understanding it. In this context it is easier to understand why it
is not pointless for Nietzsche to want to create and use a new language. If it
is true that no language could ever adequately say what is reality in itself, it
is nevertheless also true that certain languages produce a weak and weakening
vision of “reality”, whereas others enable us to think in a more nuanced way,
which is also more difficult to embrace, and which therefore requires more
courage. It is precisely in this context that we need to consider Nietzsche’s
critique of conceptual language, which he develops in his On Truth and Lying
in a Non-Moral Sense: in the same way we believe a word to be designating a
thing, we come to believe that one general term, such as “leaf” for instance,
necessarily covers a certain concept, which is also general and which is sup-
posed to be independent and more fundamental than all the singular and
varied leaf images; in fact, however, this concept is just the effect of the nega-
tion of all such particular leaf images, even if it comes first and foremost from
them and their infinite differences. That is, the concept is nothing else than
the effect of reducing the non-identical to the identical (TL 1/WL 1).
All these elements enable us to comprehend the necessity of a new lan-
guage: intellectual honesty presupposes that we use a language that does not
claim to designate reality adequately; philosophical probity entails that the
35 See BGE 21/JGB 21, GM I 13.

36 See GS 112/FW 112.
modes of discourse used do not intend to simplify the appearances, but rather
to embrace their diversities and their complexity without negating them. But,
for this purpose, it is necessary to gain a certain distance from language and
from the common uses of language, in which Western philosophy has
remained trapped until now.37
Nietzsche does not, however, think of this distance as a radical “goodbye”
to common language. His writings give evidence to this: Nietzsche’s “new lan-
guage” is not radically unknown to the reader; in many respects, the original
language Nietzsche uses is not so different from the common language used
by his compatriots. The novelty does not consist in the creation ex nihilo of
new terms, but rather in renovated uses and definitions of old terms, and in
completely new ways of associating terms which had not been related in the
same way before, or which had even been considered to be mutually exclusive.
It is this aspect, which we would now like to develop further, and which will
enable us to better understand the sense in which Nietzsche uses the notion
of metaphor.
It is important to note that from his early as well as in his later writings
Nietzsche insists on the following idea: “mastery” of language involves more
than just mastery over known and admitted usages of a given language. To
master a language means to be acquainted with the usual uses, but also to
be aware of its deficiencies, its impoverished or vulgar character and to know
how to make up for these deficiencies with singular, personal and new uses.
In this sense and throughout his Lectures on Greek eloquence, Nietzsche
praises the “freedom” and the “audacity” of the ancient Greeks, as well as the
“wonderful process of choosing new forms of language, which never cease to
develop” in Greece, even in late antiquity.38 In contrast to the traditional
demand of universality and stability, Nietzsche indicates in his Lectures on
rhetoric (§6) the importance, i.e. the necessity, of singular uses of language
for all those who intend to develop new thoughts. Thus in the case of Thucyd-
ides:
Thucydides felt that the common language was neither appropriate to him, nor to his
theme. He displayed his mastery of the language in using new and peculiar forms, and
in unusual constructions.39
However, in order to avoid any form of flaw, it is important to note that, as far
as language is concerned, this singularity, this novelty and this freedom cannot
37 See again BGE 20/JGB 20.

38 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, VI, p. 51 (KGW II/4, p. 441).
39 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, VI, p. 43 (KGW II/4, p. 438).
26 Céline Denat
be understood as a rule-less creation of a totally new language. As the example

of Thucydides shows: what he attains is a singular use of the attic dialect,
characterised, for instance, by the use of archaic terms, by the voluntary and
reiterative rupture of certain syntactic rules, but it is not a new language cre-
ated from scratch. In the same period, in the second conference On the Future
of our Educational Institutions, and then later in the first of his Untimely Medi-
tations, Nietzsche insists without any ambiguity upon the fact that an authenti-
cally original use of a language is only possible after one has first assimilated
and learnt the ancient uses of that language. Without this the supposed crea-
tive freedom is nothing more than chaos and lack of style. This is opposed to
modern tendencies; the modern content themselves with a theoretical knowl-
edge of language and are generally satisfied when they use the most vulgar
linguistic forms, thus avoiding the effort of a “rigorous training” (ZB, KSA 1,
p. 683, editors’ translation) in the practice and effective assimilation of the
rules of language. In this way they prematurely encourage a form of originality,
which nevertheless can only be achieved on the basis of the ancient rules and
constraints.40
On the other hand, if, as Nietzsche writes from 1874 onwards, it is true
that we must be able to “find” or “make our own language”41 in order to
convey a thought or singular experiences, we also have to admit that such a
new language will only be understood and will only have imitation effects on
the audience or readers, if this new form consists in a displacement and revival
of the ancient, rather than in the creation ex nihilo of radically unknown terms
and idiomatic turns.42 In contrast to the “modern rage for originality”, we
must understand and admit, such as the ancient artists did, that “obstinately
to avoid convention means wanting not to be understood” (WS 122) and that
newly created conventions will only make sense upon the basis and from
within old conventions.43 During the period of his Untimely Meditations Nietz-
sche wrote that we must be able to
[…] pass a judgment on the corruption of today’s language, and thus to ask the past for
help. The treasure of words and expressions which are available to everyone now must
40 Cf. ZB II; see also UM I 11.

KSA 7, 34[20] and NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 37[7]; see also the BT Attempt 6/GT Versuch 6.
42 This is why the demand of a “new language” does not preclude Nietzsche from
criticizing the will to violently create “neologisms”: see, for instance, WS 127: “Against
innovators in language”, an aphorism that I quote below.
43 WS 122. See also WS 140: “This was the school in which the Greek poets were raised:
firstly to allow a multiplicity of constraints to be imposed upon one; then to devise an
additional new constraint, impose it upon oneself and conquer it with charm and grace: so
that both the constraint and its conquest are noticed and admired”.
be seen and felt as used; language is much richer than this treasure suggests […]. There-
fore, one should use language in an artistic way, so as to escape from feeling nauseated
(NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 37[7], editors’ translation).
To create “one’s own” language does not mean to create a new idiom, but to
know how “to use language in an artistic way”. It means to revivify and renew
the usages of language and of the pre-existing “treasure of words and expres-
sions” – and all this, in order to reach new ways of thinking. As Nietzsche will
note in The Wanderer and his Shadow, in relation to language, creation should
not be understood as the addition of new, previously unknown elements, of
neologisms. It is a question of “possessing better” than others the language in
use, of using in a “light and delicate way […] the everyday and seemingly long
since exhausted in words and phrases” (WS 127).
It is precisely in this context that we need to understand the nature of
Nietzsche’s new language and also the nature of the difficulties hereby
involved: if Nietzsche still uses old terms, he does so in order to modify the
use, the sense and the relations between them. To describe, for instance, the
“spirit” as being analogous to a “stomach” is a way of overcoming the dualism
between spirit and body, but without neglecting it from the beginning; it is
a way of indicating that thought and knowledge, far from being intellectual
phenomena, are part of the vital activity of assimilation which characterises
the human beings’ way of being alive. Moreover, it is a way of indicating that
the spirit, far from being a “mirror” truthfully reflecting an external reality, is
a means and a movement of appropriation responding to and being deter-
mined by certain needs. Nietzsche does by no means renounce the usage of
the old terms he criticises – such as the term “soul”, for instance. But far from
contradicting himself through this, it is important to see that, by reusing such
terms in his own way, he shows what type of new and more complex usage
can be made of them. The continuous interweaving of physiological with
psychological vocabulary (the body’s “great reason”, the soul considered as
“something on the body”, and more generally speaking, the claim of a “genu-
ine physio-psychology”44) should lead us to overcome the distinction between
them.45 The description of “new versions” and “new hypotheses” concerning
the plurality of what has so far been called “soul” should enable us to
renounce thinking of it in terms of its substantial unity46 and to glimpse the
44 See Z I Despisers/ZA I Verächtern and BGE 23/JGB 23.

45 For this precise question see the study of Wotling (1999), p. 52 ff.
46 BGE 12/JGB 12: “Between you and me, there is absolutely no need to give up ‘the soul’
itself, and relinquish one of the oldest and most venerable hypotheses – as often happens
with naturalists: given their clumsiness, they barely need to touch ‘the soul’ to lose it. But
the path lies open for new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis – and
concepts like the ‘mortal soul’ and the ‘soul as subject multiplicity’ and the ‘soul as a
28 Céline Denat
complexity of what we call “thinking”. By enunciating in multiple ways new

relations between old words and by showing the deficiencies of traditional
definitions, it is possible to lead the reader to form a new image of man and
the world. But, as we shall now see, these displacement and transposition
procedures in relation to language and its common terms is precisely what
allows us to think of the term “metaphor” in the sense in which Nietzsche
uses it in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.
The Metaphor as a Transposition Process

It is precisely because the already existing turns of phrase and words need to
be treated differently and because this is a matter of displacing and transform-
ing rather than creating radically new terms and formulations that the notion
of metaphor (which, on the other hand, should be understood in relation to
what has been said above about the new sense Nietzsche gives to the notion
of rhetoric) has a particular importance for Nietzsche. We have already seen
it: Nietzsche stretches the sense that the modern give to the notion of rhetoric
and by doing so he surpasses the distinction between “rhetorical” and
“proper” language. In this way he invites us to undertake a practical task
concerning the recreation of language, and hence, of culture. In this sense we
can rightly talk about a metaphorical renewal of the term “rhetoric”: whereas
we usually (though not “properly”) use this term to designate a particular use
of language, for Nietzsche rhetoric comes to designate the source and nature
of language, which, hence, is considered to be the result of a creative force, as
well as the bearer of a power to modify both individuals and cultures. Accord-
ing to its etymology, and as Aristotle’s Rhetoric clearly shows (which in this
case is one of the most important influences in Nietzsche’s thought), such a
displacement in the meaning and use of a given word is precisely what the
idea of “metaphor” primarily designates. In effect, Aristotle defines metaphor
(metaphora) above all as the “transport” or “transference” (epiphora) of a name
whose meaning is usually “strange” or “foreign” to what it is transferred to.47
This etymological and relatively broad definition is the same definition
Nietzsche ascribes to the term in §3 of his Lectures on rhetoric. Having shown
that language is as a whole improper and rhetorical, he can then affirm that
society constructed out of drives and affects’ want henceforth to have civil rights in the
realm of science”.
47 Aristotle, Poetics, 1457b6.
“there is as little distinction between actual words and tropes as there is

between straightforward speech and so-called rhetorical figures”:48
[…] all words are tropes in themselves, and from the beginning. […] In sum: the tropes
are not just occasionally added to words but constitute their most proper nature. It makes
no sense to speak of a ‘proper’ meaning which is carried over to something else only in
special cases. […] What is usually called speech (Rede) is actually all figuration.49
Recalling the principal tropes we are used to distinguish, Nietzsche defines

metaphor in the following terms:
The second form of the tropus is metaphor. It does not create new words, but gives a new
meaning to them (Sie schafft die Wörter nicht neu, sondern deutet sie um).50
Metaphor is to be understood as a displacement of the meaning of a word,

from a usual context and use (“man is endowed with feet”) towards an unusual
context and use (“the foot of the mountain”). One could reproach Nietzsche
for making an inappropriate use of the notion of metaphor; the inappropriate-
ness being due to the fact that his use is excessively broad. Indeed his defini-
tion can be confounded with the notion of catachresis. In this sense, a far too
imprecise and not sufficiently technical definition of metaphor would lead him
to wrongly see metaphor as being at work everywhere.51
However, in the end, such an objection overlooks three points: first of all
the radically new way in which Nietzsche thinks of rhetoric, which now does
not refer to a particular discipline, the function and specific use of which
would need to be understood; secondly, the practical dimension of Nietzsche’s
proposal, who by no means intends to offer a theoretical classification of the
figures and is least of all worried about his definitions being faithful to the
ones admitted by the language specialists. Nietzsche is much more preoccu-
pied with rethinking the vital and cultural issues at stake here. And finally, in
this particular context and in accordance with the latter requisite, the semantic
choice that leads Nietzsche to displace the usual meaning accorded by the
48 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p 25 (KGW II/4, p. 427), translation modified.

49 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, pp. 23 and 25 (KGW II/4, p. 426 f.), translation
modified.
50 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 23 (KGW II/4, p. 427), translation modified.
51 Cf. Charbonnel (1999), pp. 32–61: “[la métaphore] à l’œuvre partout, […] enrôlant même
sous sa bannière n’importe quel tour, n’importe quelle tournure, le fait même de qualifier,
plus : le fait même de nommer. Est paré alors du prestige de la métaphorisation, de ses
pompes et de ses œuvres, tout déplacement, du moment qu’il se dit en langue, et même le
déplacement premier, celui des choses aux mots. Sous prétexte d’embrasser la rhétorique,
c’est bien là l’étouffer”.
30 Céline Denat
moderns to the term “metaphor” by expanding its meaning and recalling its
ancient signification:
The Greeks first signified the transposition (Übertragung) (Isocrates, for example) by met-
aphora; also Aristotle. Hermogenes says that among grammarians one still calls metaph-
ora what the rhetoricians call tropos. Among the Romans, one adopts tropus; Cicero still
speaks of translatio, immutatio; later, one will say motus, mores, modi.52
In a first instance, metaphora is not only a trope amongst others, which would
have to be formally distinguished from them: synecdoche, metonymy, etc.
These remarks given by Nietzsche enable us to indicate that the metaphor, first
of all, designates all forms of displacement, all forms of translation or change
in meaning, and hence all tropes, – the Greek term tropos appearing only in a
first phase as an equivalent, a simple transposition of the term metaphora: for
if the latter consists in displacing the meaning of a word, etymologically the
tropos is also what “makes it turn”, what turns and modifies it.
It is certainly in this particular sense that Nietzsche uses the term “meta-
phor” (Metapher) at the beginning of On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense:
this term does not really designate a particular rhetorical figure; it does not
even designate a linguistic displacement, but the successive processes of dis-
placement which lead from one sphere to another totally heterogeneous sphere
(from the nervous stimulation to the image, from the image to the word). Nietz-
sche had already evoked these processes in his Lectures on rhetoric.
[The creator of language] designates only the relations of things to human beings, and in
order to express them he avails himself of the boldest metaphors (Metaphern). The stimu-
lation of a nerve is first translated into an image (Bild): first metaphor (erste Metapher)!
This image is then imitated by a sound: second metaphor (zweite Metapher)! And each
time there is a complete leap from one sphere into the heart of another, new sphere (TL
1, 144/WL 1).
The metaphor is not, in itself, an “image”, nor is it an element amongst other

elements of a “pictorial language”, but it is rather the very movement of dis-
placement “from one sphere to the other”, which contributes to produce per-
ceptive images and language. The “boldest metaphors” Nietzsche refers to at
the beginning are clearly not only, and most certainly not immediately, static
forms or results, but rather dynamic processes of transposition – processes
which, on the other hand, do not only concern the sphere of language, but
also the sensible “knowledge” (the image) itself. It is thus, in terms of being
the result of such process of transposition that he will later refer to the “meta-
52 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, VII, p. 53 (KGW II/4, p. 443).

phors of things” which constitute the only knowledge we have, or the “moving
multitude of metaphors”, to which all pretended “truths” are reduced. This
understanding of the term “metaphor” is thus what enables Nietzsche to
express in a new and more precise way the always improper and developmen-
tal nature of language, that is to say, what he designated more generally, in
his lectures of 1872, as its “rhetorical” character.
This means that if we can legitimately say that, according to Nietzsche,
language is characterised by being totally “metaphorical”, we can only do so
in a very singular sense. For sure, if we were to understand metaphor in its
most common sense, such a statement would be absurd: for in that case, one
would be justified in arguing that “I can use language metaphorically only if
I use it literally as well”, and that “we deprive ‘metaphor’ of determinate mean-
ing if we deny the possibility of its opposite”,53 that is, of a proper or literal
use of language. But if, on the one hand, and as we have seen, the “proper”
use is nothing more than the common and usual use, and if more radically,
on the other hand, metaphor means now not a particular linguistic figure, but
a series of displacements producing, in the end, language and its discourses,
the proposition that all language is metaphorical takes on a whole new mean-
ing. The proposition implies not only that (as we have already seen and as
Nietzsche also reiterates in this text) no discourse is “an adequate expression
of reality” (TL 1/WL 1) and that it does not produce “anything more adequate
than an image”. The proposition also means more precisely that this inade-
quacy is the consequence of the fact that language is the result of a series of
displacements which Nietzsche here designates precisely by the term “meta-
phor”, understood in a wider and more original sense than we are used to.
In this sense, it is important that we insist on an outstanding aspect of
these displacements. They do not come from a reality exiting in itself – a form
of existence which for Nietzsche could not be attributed to anything any-
way54 – but from the “nervous stimulation” (Reiz), which is “transposed” into
a sensible image. The “metaphor”, such as Nietzsche understands it here,
derives neither from a literal meaning, nor from a certain reality, which would
have the role of a first principle or an absolute ground and to which we would
like to return in order to escape the sphere of pictorial language, the sphere of
images. It is true that one could be led to ask: is it not the case that the body,
the physiology, the “nervous stimulations”, which Nietzsche mentions here,
53 Clark (1990), pp. 69–70.

54 This point was made above: see, again, TL 1/WL 1: “The ‘thing-in-itself’ (which would be,
precisely, pure truth, truth without consequences) is impossible for even the creator of
language to grasp” (my emphasis); see also the continuation of this passage.
32 Céline Denat
constitute at least one point of reference, a real ground, against which he

ultimately considers all things? And can’t the “nervous stimulation” (Reiz) be
thought of as a “proper” term? In this case there would be a manifest absurdity
and a contradiction: the image we have of ourselves as bodies cannot be con-
sidered as a reality in itself any more than the other images constituting our
“world”. Nietzsche does not think of the body in any way as a real ground or a
first cause; this would mean to follow a contradictory conception, as Nietzsche
himself denounces without any ambiguity.55 On the contrary, he recognises
its “unknown” and “unknowable”56 character and he enjoins us to avoid
claiming we can determine its “ultimate meaning”.57 Nietzsche’s statements
in relation to the body, to the nervous system or even to the drives cannot be
understood as if they were an exception to Nietzsche’s thesis. As Nietzsche
himself admits: as long as we are talking about organisms, physiological move-
ments, affections, it all “remains a speech in images [or “a pictorial language”,
Bilderrede]”.58 However, if this pictorial language is preferable to other lan-
guages it is because it has the advantage, on the one hand, of having the
courage of recognizing itself as pictorial, and on the other, of producing a
complex and refined image of man as a totality of drives, i.e. of the totality
which is at the basis of all image or interpretation of the world – and of man
himself. The notion of metaphorical displacement, as Nietzsche uses it here,
does not lead us to posit an ultimate ground, but rather to admit the absence
of all form of ultimate reality and principle.59
But why does Nietzsche, nevertheless, choose to make such a new and –
from so many viewpoints – strange use of the term “metaphor”? Without any
doubt, his lectures on rhetoric provide evidence that there is a text that consti-
tutes an important source for him in this respect. Indeed, Nietzsche refers to
a passage from Jean Paul’s aesthetical writings, which affirms that “every lan-
guage […] is a dictionary of faded metaphors”, faded metaphors to which all
the supposed “proper” meanings of words can be reduced to.60 But recalling
this possible source does not explain, however, why Nietzsche chose to adopt
this singular use of the term and what this may mean. In order to understand
this better, one must realise, firstly, that this choice makes sense against the
55 See BGE 15/JGB 15.

56 See D 119/M 119.
57 See D 119/M 119 and NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 5[56], editors’ translation.
58 NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[128], editors’ translation.
59 See Blondel (1991), p. 286–292.
60 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, VII, p. 53 (KGW II/4, p. 443), translation modified. Jean
Paul (1861), p. 179. According to Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Nietzsche discovered
this quote in Gustav Gerber (1871), p. 361.
background of the Nietzschean refusal to take a merely theoretical stance with

regard to language and, secondly, that the originality of these developments
lies in the fact that Nietzsche is not satisfied with a merely theoretical descrip-
tion of the nature and origin of language. It is clearly not only a question of
saying what language is, but performatively showing the careful reader the
way in which language is made – and also that it still can be made by “using
language in an artistic way”. In this respect we need to recall three points.
The first one relates to the Aristotelian notion of metaphor, particularly in
his Poetics. In effect, Aristotle characterises the metaphor as coming from an
unusual use of language, which goes against or beyond the common use (para
ton kurion), and which can hence be called “noble” or “dignified” (semnē), in
opposition to the vulgar language.61 To be more precise, Aristotle often insists
on the modifying power of metaphors in relation to the language from which
they emanate. And this in two respects. First of all, the metaphorical procedure
palliates the insufficiencies of language: the metaphorical displacement of an
ancient word enables us to expand its meaning in order to say something for
which “there is still no word”.62 Aristotle is the first to use such displacements,
especially in his ethical works. And he does so in order to designate, in a
significant and clear manner, the virtues that nobody had made the effort to
name until now,63 and that, because of this, had remained unnoticed. But the
metaphor also possesses the power of enabling us to see or to think totally
new connections: a person who creates metaphors, writes Aristotle, creates
“enigmas” in the sense that she is capable of “describing a fact by an impossi-
ble combination of words”.64 In other words, where common language only
sees exclusive distinctions and oppositions, the metaphor is able to bring forth
unusual connections, thereby blurring the usual distinctions and demarca-
tions. Thus, in an Aristotelian context, which is certainly not insignificant for
Nietzsche, the metaphor is what preserves language’s vivid character. Most
61 Aristotle, Poetics, 1458a18–23 : “That which employs unfamiliar words is dignified and
outside of common usage. By ‘unfamiliar’ I mean a rare word, a metaphor, a lengthening,
and anything beyond the ordinary use”.
62 Aristotle, Poetics, 1457b25–30 : “For instance, to scatter seed is to sow, but there is no
word for the action of the sun in scattering its fire. Yet this has to the sunshine the same
relation as sowing has to the seed, and so you have the phrase ‘sowing the god-created
fire’”.
63 See, for instance, Eudemian Ethics, 1230b12–13, where Aristotle writes that in using the
name akolasia (“profligacy” or “intemperance”) “we make a transference of meaning”, we
literally “metaphorise” (metapheromen), because the term usually means “absence of
punishment” in regard to children – and so the displacement of this term in ethics allows us
to name a lack of moderation concerning our own pleasures.
64 Aristotle, Poetics, 1458a23–25.
34 Céline Denat
especially, the metaphor is what gives language the possibility of growing from
within and of renewing itself by using its own forces: through its multiple
metaphorical displacements, a pre-existing and common term acquires a new
and noble meaning. Indeed one can understand the importance of such a
proclamation for a thinker who intends to renew language and its uses, who
intends to palliate its insufficiencies and the deceiving illusions language is
capable of inducing.
To this first idea we must add a double analysis concerning the name and
the concept of metaphor itself. Indeed we should insist on the fact that the
narrow sense usually accorded to the notion of metaphor is in itself metaphori-
cal: if, in a first instance, phora designates a spatial movement, its use to
designate a linguistic and semantic displacement is in effect the result of a
metaphor. In this case, the choice of using this term is by no means irrelevant:
this choice constitutes a good example of a word whose “proper” meaning
appears to be “only metaphorical” when one makes the effort of looking closer.
To put it in a more radical way: it is important to see that the meaning of
“metaphor” is always said metaphorically: indeed, to define metaphor (met-
aphora) with Aristotle as a displacement (epiphora) amounts to defining it
metaphorically. As Paul Ricœur rightly notes: “it is impossible not to talk meta-
phorically […] about the metaphor” because “the definition of the metaphor is
recurrent”, that is to say, it already implies the application of the term to be
defined. From now on, this appears to be determining for Nietzsche’s effort,
because it shows that – to take another clarifying formulation from Ricœur –
“there is no place where one could consider the metaphor or all other figures
as a game displayed before one’s eyes”.65 Indeed, the Nietzschean choice of
using this singular term and, in addition to this, making a new displacement
regarding its own meaning can be explained as follows: Nietzsche is showing
that there is no non-metaphorical language from which we could say and con-
sider metaphorical or pictorial language and that in dealing only with meta-
phors one is allowed to create new metaphors, i.e. to operate displacements
on ancient terms in order to modify their meaning and use. Nietzsche shows
this, not only by saying it in an argumentative manner, but also by doing it:
the theoretical discourse is coupled with statements that can be considered to
be performative, because they effectively undertake a new metaphorical dis-
placement in relation to the terms metaphor, language, but also truth and lie,
which do not appear as opposites any more, but rather as being necessarily
bound to each another.
65 Ricœur (1975), p. 25, editors’ translation.

Overall it is important to say that the question for Nietzsche has practical
as well as theoretical consequences: to say in a new way what language is, is
also to transform the value and use of language. By affirming that to believe
in the truth of a particular discourse is nothing more than an illusion – an
illusion resulting from our “forgetting this primitive world of metaphor”, from
the “scleroses” of “a mass of images, which originally flowed in a hot, liquid
stream from the primal power of the human imagination” (TL 1/WL 1) – ,
Nietzsche confronts the reader with the possibility and even the necessity of
considering other possible modes of discourse. Far from being content with
telling us what language is, Nietzsche already performs a series of modifica-
tions, indicating to us in this way that it is possible for language to become
something different than what it has been so far. The least one can say is that
this is no less a question of transforming language than of understanding it
better.
Conclusion: “To Speak in Images – and Without

Images”
Language, as Nietzsche understands it, does not allow any “proper” or
adequate discourse to remain beyond or beside metaphorical discourses, as if
the former could or should measure the validity of the latter. It does not allow
us to posit the existence of any reality in itself either. All statements, as we
have already seen, are metaphorical, and this means that the difference we
generally think of between “proper” and “figurative” statements vanishes. And
this also means that it is illegitimate to maintain, as some commentators do,
that the statement which says that man is an “animal” has to be taken “liter-
ally”, whereas a statement comparing man to a “plant” would have to be taken
metaphorically.66 This distinction is superficial and impedes us from under-
standing the way in which Nietzsche conceives and most especially uses lan-
guage and its images. By transposing, retranslating the discourse on man
(which is always already a pictorial discourse) into the realm of animality or
into a vegetal order, Nietzsche is rethinking man and his relation to the world
differently. He is allowing a new image of man to emerge, a new image which,
in its turn, might contribute to transform him. To rethink philosophy as “medi-
cine” or “genealogy” is likewise to use metaphors, in themselves significant,
which will lead to a radical modification of the traditional conceptions of phi-
66 We take this example from Reed (1978), p. 159.

36 Céline Denat
losophy. This also means that we do not need to seek to reduce them to more
“proper” conceptual formulae – in which case we would, precisely, risk miss-
ing their meaning.
If we can still think of valuable distinctions and differences in relation to
language, these can only consist in the following: a language can either be
habitual and common and, hence, it can give us the illusion of being obvious
and natural, or it can be new and involve new modes of expression and an
original style. These will be the condition for new modes of thought, but they
will also be “difficult to understand”, as Nietzsche regularly indicates in rela-
tion to his own texts. A language can encourage the need to simplify, to deny,
the need to turn the back on the diversity of the appearances, or, on the con-
trary, it can encourage or even increase our capacity of embracing its variable
and moving character, and hence of increasing our own strength. In this sense,
the power of this new language, which Nietzsche intends to use, comes from
the fact that it recognises itself as an “improper” and “pictorial” language, so
that it constitutes itself as a transformation, displacement and deviation from
the usual language in a way that aims at overcoming the weaknesses and gaps
of this latter form of language.
By affirming with Nietzsche that his language is no more than pictorial or
metaphorical we are thus by no means devaluing Nietzsche’s writings, under-
mining or negating their philosophical character. Neither are we saying that
his language should be rewritten or retranslated into another more conceptual
or more rigorous one: for, in the same way that our knowledge of the world
could never be anything other than an interpretation or an image of the world,
and in the same way that all philosophy “always creates the world in its own
image” (BGE 9/JGB 9), so language is always pictorial and cannot claim to do
anything other than to propose a new image, a new interpretation of the world.
Nietzsche’s text is precisely this paradoxical text, which can be considered as
being totally metaphorical, but also, from now on, as being totally proper, in
as much as it is totally figurative. In this sense Nietzsche sometimes completes
the famous formula “to speak in images”, as follows: “to speak in images (and
without images –)…” (BGE 9/JGB 9).
Finally we would like to argue that, from a point of view which, to those
who are used to the habitual philosophical claims concerning language, will
seem uncommon or even awkward – to say the least – , to speak in images
boils down to the same as speaking without images, because what is proper
to language is that it is always figurative.
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Nietzsche, Imagery and Thought. A Collection of Essays, London: Methuen, pp. 159–
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Nietzsche, Paris: Allia.
Luís Sousa
Knowledge, Truth, and the Thing-in-itself:
The Presence of Schopenhauer’s Trans-
cendental Idealism in Nietzsche’s On Truth
and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873) 1
In this article I will compare Nietzsche’s analysis of the concepts of “knowl-

edge” and “thing-in-itself” in the essay, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense (TL), with Schopenhauer’s idealism.
Nietzsche’s essay is usually read as a turning point regarding his relation
to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and the possibility of metaphysical knowledge
in general. In this essay Nietzsche starts to question not only the possibility of
knowing the thing-in-itself, but also the possibility of knowing anything at
all – the concept of truth itself. At the same time, the essay has been the
subject of many discussions on account of its theory of language. This theory –
according to which all language is metaphorical – has been often presented
as the key to Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics.2
I shall try to show that, despite appearances, TL’s critique of truth and
language can be read as a radicalisation of Schopenhauer’s idealism.3 We will
see how the central tenets of Schopenhauer’s idealism come to be incorporated
and developed in Nietzsche’s essay and used to deny the possibility of knowl-
edge of the thing-in-itself.
In the end we will see that TL is still a hybrid. For while it still betrays a
very strong Schopenhauerian influence, some of its elements already point the
1 I would like to thank Marta Faustino and João Constâncio for their suggestions and helpful
criticism of earlier versions of this article. [Editors’ note: All quotations from TL in this essay
are from Löb’s translation: Nietzsche, Friedrich (2009), “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense”, in: Friedrich Nietzsche, Writings from the Early Notebooks, ed. by R. Geuss/A.
Nehamas, transl. by L. Löb, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]
2 See Emden (2005), p. 82: “Commentators following the more radical positions of Jacques
Derrida and Paul de Man often consider Nietzsche’s understanding of language as
metaphorical to be the cornerstone of his philosophical criticism”.
3 But my intent is not of a historical-philological nature. The comparison between
Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s views is meant to be philosophical and, therefore,
independent of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Schopenhauer, as well as independent of
Schopenhauer’s historical influence upon Nietzsche. For this reason, I shall leave out of
consideration the history of the genesis of TL/WL. For a survey of the most recent interpre-
tations of the essay, cf. Hödl (2003), pp. 183–199. See also Emden (2005) for a compre-
hensive overview of the influences that helped shape Nietzsche’s thought in this essay.
40 Luís Sousa
way to an actual overcoming of transcendental idealism – that is, of the dis-

tinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself – , and so it contains some
of the seeds of Nietzsche’s later views.
1 Schopenhauer’s Transcendental Idealism

Kant’s greatest merit was, according to Schopenhauer, “the distinction of the
phenomenon from the thing-in-itself” (WWR I, 417). This is for Schopenhauer
the kernel of the position called transcendental idealism. Transcendental ideal-
ism means for Schopenhauer very much the same as what it meant for Kant:
that the objects of our knowledge are not things-in-themselves but only phe-
nomena. Thus, transcendental idealism does not question the fact that there
is something outside us, but only that empirical things are in-themselves as
they appear to us. Thus, transcendental idealism is compatible with empirical
realism.4
Transcendental idealism ensues in part, for Schopenhauer like for Kant
before him, from the fact that all our possible knowledge must be submitted
to a priori forms. These forms are, for Schopenhauer, essentially space, time
and causality. Thus, to be an object is, for Schopenhauer, to be located in
space, time and in causal interaction with other objects. Schopenhauer, how-
ever, tries also to give a more systematic account of these forms. Thus, he
holds that we can trace all our a priori knowledge back to one of the forms of
the principle of sufficient reason.5
Although he praises Kant for being the first to establish the distinction
between thing-in-itself and phenomenon by means of the discovery of our a
priori forms of knowledge, he thinks we can establish that idealism is true in
a more straightforward way, namely by means of an analysis of the very con-
cept of knowledge. For Schopenhauer, all knowledge presupposes the relation
between subject and object. This relation is the most general form of represen-
tation (WWR I, 3). This form is instantiated in all particular types of knowledge
and is, thus, the essential structure of all knowledge. The fact that the subject
of representation is a condition of objectivity entails that being an object
means the same thing as being a representation for the subject, i.e., phenom-
enon. These terms, “object” and “representation”, are synonymous.6 Otherwise
it would be possible to conceive an object that was not a representation for a
4 See FR, 49–50, WWR I, 4, WWR I, 14–15.

5 See FR, 42, FR 232–233.
6 See FR, 41–2, WWR I, 95 and passim.
Knowledge, Truth, and the Thing-in-itself 41
subject. According to Schopenhauer, this was one of the points where Kant
had gone astray (WWR I, 434). For Kant got entangled in confusion and contra-
dictions concerning the status of the object of representation. According to
Kant, there are, on the one hand, representations and, on the other hand, an
object to which representations must correspond. This is Kant’s transcendental
object, to which our representations are said to be related by means of the
categories. For Schopenhauer this amounts to a kind of “object-in-itself” (WWR
I, 434), since it is, on the one hand, an object that is beyond representation,
but, on the other hand, it is an object that is not yet the thing-in-itself, occupy-
ing a sort of middle position between both.
Besides these general arguments in support of transcendental idealism
Schopenhauer tries to demonstrate it in more detail by means of an account
of how our cognitive faculties come to represent objects on the basis of sensa-
tions and how these objects get conceptualised. I now turn to this account.
As was already the case for Kant, for Schopenhauer all knowledge begins
with sensation. Sensation is an affection of the body, in particular an affection
of the senses. For this reason, Schopenhauer says that the body is the subject’s
immediate object, meaning that our most immediate knowledge is knowledge
of affections of our own body. Thus, sensations are submitted only to the form
of inner sense, that is, to time, which for Schopenhauer consists only in rela-
tions of succession.7 Although all knowledge begins with the affection of the
senses, in particular sight and touch, for Schopenhauer it is of the utmost
importance to highlight the fact that sensations have a totally subjective status.
Nothing is really known only through the senses, i.e., without further contribu-
tion from our cognitive apparatus. As Schopenhauer says, “all perception is
intellectual, for without the understanding we could never achieve perception,
the apprehension of objects”.8 The senses do not give us objective data about
objects, “sensation of every kind is and remains an event within the organism
itself; but as such it is restricted to the region beneath the skin; and so, in
itself, it can never contain anything lying outside the skin and thus outside
ourselves” (FR 76–77).9 In order for representation to take place, the subjective
7 See WWR I, 48.

8 See “On Vision” in FR, 237.
9 There is a problem in Schopenhauer’s account of perception. If objects exist only for the
understanding, they cannot exist prior to the activity of the understanding. But from whence
comes sensation? First of all it is important to emphasise that, in contrast to what Kant
suggests, sensation is not an effect of a thing-in-itself. That would entail a causal relation
between the thing-in-itself and our representations, which, according to Schopenhauer, is
absurd. On the other hand, if we take sensation to be the effect of an empirical object, this
object would exist prior to the activity of the understanding. It should be noted that
Schopenhauer nowhere says that sensation is an effect of the object, but he does not offer
42 Luís Sousa
data of the senses must be transformed into an intuitive perception of an

object. This is, according to Schopenhauer, the outcome of the activity and
operation of the understanding.
Although the effects of the understanding can be manifested in many
ways, Schopenhauer tries to reduce them to a single function. This function,
which defines the understanding, is knowledge of causal relations:
To know causality is the sole function of the understanding, its only power, and it is a
great power, embracing much, manifold in its application, and yet unmistakable in its
identity throughout all its manifestations (WWR I, 11).
Before anything else, the function of the understanding is to render intuitive

perception possible. For we only represent “objects” in the proper sense of the
word when the brain interprets the data of the senses as the effect of a cause.
Accordingly, the outcome of this operation is that sensation is perceived as an
effect of an object located in a part of space which is different from the one
my body occupies.10 Moreover, this operation is not the product of reflection
or reasoning – it is, rather, immediate and intuitive.11
Application of the principle of causality to the affection of the senses is
the minimum level of possible cognition, and it is something common to all
animals, although the understanding can have many levels of extension (Aus-
dehnung) and acuteness. In humans, it can pursue long chains of causal rela-
tions and perceive hitherto unknown causal relations, thereby discovering laws
of nature. Nevertheless, for Schopenhauer this is something that can take place
in the absence of reason. In opposition to the understanding, reason is the
privilege of man alone.12 It is the mark that distinguishes man from the animal.
What, then, is specific to reason? What does reason contribute to our knowl-
edge of the world?
Schopenhauer reduces reason – with all its different manifestations, such
as language, deliberate action and science – to the power of forming concepts:
Reason also has one function, the formation of concept, and from this single function
are explained very easily and automatically all those phenomena, previously mentioned,
that distinguish man’s life from that of the animal (WWR I, 39).13
an alternative explanation for the origin of sensation, and this is no doubt a gap in his
account of intuitive perception.
10 For the details of Schopenhauer’s physiological account of this process cf. FR, 75–120.
11 See FR, 78.
12 See FR, 145.
13 See also FR, 145 and FR 150.
Concepts are characterised by their abstract nature, that is, they, as opposed
to intuitions, are not objects of perception, but of thought. But although their
form is essentially different, the power of abstraction or reflection is defined
precisely by its relation to intuitive objects or objects of perception.14 Since
this relation is the essence of concepts, they are essentially “representations
of representations” (WWR I, 4o). For all concepts have their origin in intuitive
perception. All their material or content must be drawn from the objects of
intuition. On that account, reason is a secondary power of the mind, and its
strength consists in mirroring the world by means of the isolation of features
that belong to it. Therefore, reason cannot contribute with anything new to
the world of perception that is not already contained, even if implicitly, in
intuitive perception. It achieves at best a change of form, not of content. This
has some important consequences for Schopenhauer’s theory of knowledge
(Wissen) and science. According to Schopenhauer, all true and genuine knowl-
edge must be rooted in intuitive perception.15 Although truth exists only in the
domain of reason, its nature is utterly relational since it must be referred ulti-
mately to some intuition.16
Closely connected with reason is language. For Schopenhauer language is
one of reason’s essential “manifestations” and one that distinguishes man’s
life from the animal in important ways. Language allows us to keep concepts
in our memory by means of signs, i.e., words, and thus to communicate them
further. Without language abstract representations would “slip entirely from
consciousness and be absolutely of no avail for the operations it intended
therewith (…)” (FR, 148).17 Thus, we can only think, that is, represent objects
in an abstract manner, by means of those arbitrary, perceptible signs, words.18
With his analysis of the different faculties of the mind, of which I have just
presented a short summary, Schopenhauer strengthens his case in favour of ide-
14 See WWR I, 40–41. See also FR, 146: “Such abstract representations have been called
concepts (Begriffe), since each conceives or grasps (begreift) in (or rather under) itself
innumerable individual things, and hence a complex or comprehensible totality (Inbegriff)
thereof”.
15 See FR, 154, FR 155, WWR II, 71–72.
16 See FR, 156, FR, 159.
17 See also FR, 149: “(…) and to reduce the whole essence of such a world to abstract
concepts is the fundamental business of the faculty of reason, a function that it can carry
out only by means of language”.
18 Besides thought by means of words there is, for Schopenhauer, thought “in a wider
sense”, which means thought by means of images: cf. FR, 153–154. Actually only thought in
this wider sense is “original” and “genuine”, since it goes back to the source of all truth,
intuitive perception. Cf. FR, 155. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer suggests that thought by
means of images is not the operation of reason in the strict sense, but of the mediator
between reason and understanding, that is, the power of judgement. Cf. FR, 153–154.
44 Luís Sousa
alism. He argues that, since all elements that constitute intuitive perception – no
matter whether they be material, such as sensation, or formal, such as space,
time and causality – are of subjective origin, they do not lead us to reality in-
itself.19 Concepts have meaning only by their reference to intuitive perception,
and therefore reason cannot take us beyond the realm of experience.
Frequently, Schopenhauer tries to give a more physiological account of his
idealism. Whereas Kant did not concern himself with the material status of
transcendental representations, Schopenhauer is resolute in presenting such
representations as functions of our brain.20 According to this physiological
version of transcendental philosophy, representations are processes in the
brain and are conditioned by it in a way that precludes access to things-in-
themselves.21 But in view of the contrast that I shall try to establish with
Nietzsche’s TL, the most important aspect of this naturalistic turn in Schopen-
hauer’s transcendental philosophy is the view of the intellect that it implies.
According to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the organism is the objectivity of
our individual will.22 Its different organs exist in function of the organism’s
various needs, which ultimately can be reduced to the end of preservation and
propagation of the species.23 Accordingly, the brain as a product of the organ-
ism is not only dependent on it, but works in its “service” as much as any other
organ.24 According to Schopenhauer, this entails an objective corroboration of
his idealist thesis. For, he holds, if the intellect is a servant of the organism
qua will, it cannot know things-in-themselves, but only their relations, in par-
ticular their relation to the needs of our organism (our will).25 However, it is
doubtful whether the idealist position established by the “objective view of
the intellect” (i.e., by “physiology”) can really be seen as equivalent to Kant’s
transcendental idealism – an equivalence that Schopenhauer held to be true
as long as he lived. In any case this is extremely relevant not only for Nietz-
sche’s reading of Kant, but also for our interpretation of Nietzsche’s own “ide-
alist” stance, as we shall see.
Regardless of its different versions, the outcome of transcendental idealism
is, in any case, that the thing-in-itself cannot be reached if one follows the path
of representation. This means that the principle of sufficient reason in any of its
19 See WWR II, 10–12, WWR II, 193.

20 See WWR II, 254–256 and WWR II, 259: “That which, seen from within, is the faculty of
knowledge, is, seen from without, the brain”.
21 See WWR I, 191–192.
22 See WWR I, 101–103, WWR I, 107.
23 See WWR I, 108–109.
24 See WWR I, 150, WWR II, 259, WWR II, 278–279.
25 See WWR II, 284–290.
forms, but especially in the guise of the principle of causality, cannot be used to
reach the thing-in-itself. Thus the relation between representation and thing-in-
itself cannot be one of causality.26 Causality can only be valid for relations
between objects. In following the thread of causality we are always led from an
object to another object. This means, also, that the thing-in-itself is essentially
something non-objective. Even Kant has, according to Schopenhauer, made pre-
cisely the mistake of positing the thing-in-itself as a cause or ground of the phe-
nomena, that is, he has applied the principle of causality – which should be
immanent to experience – to the relation between the phenomena and the thing-
in-itself, thereby conceiving of the latter as another kind of object.27
As we saw, Schopenhauer’s theory of representation closes every path that
could be thought to lead us beyond phenomena. Actually this is something
that follows analytically from Schopenhauer’s conception of the nature of
knowledge. He even says explicitly that “being-known of itself contradicts
being-in-itself, and everything that is known is as such only phenomenon”
(WWR II, 198).28 For the thing-in-itself is, by definition, a thing as it may be
apart from its representation. Accordingly, in order to know what the world
is – i.e., what it is besides being representation for a subject – , Schopenhauer
appeals to what he thinks is a form of acquaintance with the world thoroughly
different from the one provided by knowledge.
This notwithstanding, a reader only perfunctorily acquainted with Scho-
penhauer could easily object to us that Schopenhauer certainly goes beyond
the phenomenon by claiming that the thing-in-itself is “will”. Although we
cannot enter here into the core of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical argument, it
should be noted that it is at least questionable whether the will is the thing-
in-itself in the strict sense referred above.29 And there are passages where
Schopenhauer stresses explicitly that the will is only the most immediate phe-
nomenon of the thing-in-itself, and precisely for that reason the one which
has to serve as a clue or point of departure for the interpretation of nature’s
phenomena.30 If this is so, then Schopenhauer’s metaphysics does not claim
to be knowledge of a thing-in-itself in an absolute sense, but only of a thing-in-
26 See WWR I, 13–16 and passim.

27 See WWR I, 502–503.
28 See also WWR II, 275: “Accordingly, a ‘knowledge of things-in-themselves’ in the
strictest sense of the word would be impossible, because where the being-in-itself of things
begins, knowledge ceases, and all knowledge primarily and essentially concerns merely
phenomena”.
29 For an interpretation of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics as one which remains immanent in
the Kantian sense of the term, cf. Young (1987).
30 See WWR I, 110–111.
46 Luís Sousa
itself insofar as it appears, insofar as it is phenomenal. Thus Schopenhauerian

metaphysics can be said to be akin to a hermeneutics of nature that always
remains relative to the phenomena.31
2 Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral

Sense
We will now turn to Nietzsche’s 1873 text On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral
Sense. The text was written a year after Nietzsche published his first book, The
Birth of Tragedy. The Birth of Tragedy is embedded in the language and meta-
physics of Schopenhauer. Even when Nietzsche is consciously recasting some of
Schopenhauer’s doctrines regarding art, and even if it be debatable how much
Nietzsche actually accepted of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics at that time, the
tone is definitely shaped by Schopenhauer’s thought. By contrast, the tone in
Truth and Lie seems to be thoroughly sceptical concerning metaphysics. More-
over, the essay is usually taken as the starting point of Nietzsche’s questioning
of truth and knowledge in general. However, what is generally overlooked is how
much Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics is based on Schopenhauer’s theory of
knowledge. In fact, Nietzsche’s overcoming of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics can
in part be seen as the outcome of a radicalisation of his predecessor’s transcen-
dental idealism.
With this I do not intend to claim that the essay does not go beyond Scho-
penhauer in many ways. It is here that Nietzsche lays the basis for his critique
of the “drive for truth” and the value of truth, as well as his valuation of the
drive for illusion as the fundamental drive of man. Since we will not deal with
many of the aspects that transcend Schopenhauer’s influence, we will start by
giving a general account of the essay in order to highlight the aspect of it that
will be dealt with and put in relation to Schopenhauer’s thought.
The essay’s main purpose seems to be a bit ambiguous. On the one hand,
the essay is designed to show that the human being does not have an inborn
drive for truth, i.e., that the human being does not seek truth naturally. That
would not by itself necessarily involve scepticism, for it would be conceivable
that humans had knowledge without having any natural tendency to acquire
it. On the other hand, the outcome of Nietzsche’s argumentative strategy – of
31 See WWR II, 183. For an interpretation that stresses the relative character of the thing-in-
itself and Schopenhauer’s metaphysics as hermeneutics cf. Atwell (1995).
his genealogy32 of the drive for truth – is a radical scepticism regarding all
knowledge. In other words, Nietzsche tries to establish his main thesis that we
do not have a drive for truth by arguing that, as a matter of fact, we do not
know anything in the sense that we usually presume we do. Nietzsche argues
that all knowledge is an illusion, a mere set of anthropomorphisms, and this
applies both to our common sense and to science. The drive for truth is
exposed by Nietzsche’s genealogical method as a development of a more fun-
damental drive, a drive for illusion. This drive for illusion, or the drive to form
metaphors, has its purest and freest expression in art. Nietzsche makes use of
this in order to go back to a central motive of The Birth of Tragedy, the contrast
between the theoretical and the artistic man. After Nietzsche has shown that
the human being does not have a natural drive for truth and that he is unable
to know anything except anthropomorphically, he attacks the value of truth
itself, and of the endeavours related to it, like science and philosophy, so that
he revalues art as the activity where illusion is given free rein. As we can see
from this sort of summary, Nietzsche’s attack on truth in TL is threefold. He
manages to contend against (1) the idea of man as a being who strives natu-
rally for truth, (2) the possibility of knowledge; and (3) the value of truth.
In this article I shall not deal with points 1 and 3. That is, I shall concern
myself only with Nietzsche’s denial of the possibility of knowledge. This ques-
tion involves, of course, Nietzsche’s critique of the thing-in-itself. However, it
is on this point that a philosophical debt to Schopenhauer becomes clear, i.e.,
precisely where it is usually not acknowledged.
a) Language, Metaphor and Truth
I begin by analysing Nietzsche’s theory of language and truth in TL. This theory
emerges in the context of Nietzsche’s investigation of the origin of the “drive for
truth”. By means of his genealogy of the “drive for truth” Nietzsche manages to
32 Although in TL Nietzsche does not yet give the name “genealogy” to his method of
investigation, the essay already displays all the distinguishing features that would later form
the core of his genealogical method. According to Hödl (1997), pp. 17, pp. 37–39 and
pp. 106–107, TL/WL, rather than Human, All Too Human, is the text where Nietzsche breaks
with his early thought, and the Untimely Meditations, although written after it, must be,
from the point of view of Nietzsche’s development, situated earlier. In this context Hödl
shows how the question about the origin of the drive for truth is the first application of the
genealogical method that Nietzsche fully developed later. I do not deny that TL represents a
break with Nietzsche’s early thought. What I shall try to show is that that break must be
seen against the backdrop of Schopenhauer’s thought, no less than his early work.
48 Luís Sousa
produce a theory of the origin of knowledge, language and truth, the upshot
of which is that “truths are illusions” (TL, 257/WL).
In what seems to be for Nietzsche the “natural state of things”, human
beings are involved in a war of all against all and the intellect is used mainly
for “dissimulation”. In this pre-social stage, there is no concept of truth. The
first step towards the emergence of a concept of truth takes place by means of
socialisation, more precisely with the development of language. According to
Nietzsche, with language a first concept of truth is created, i.e., “a universally
valid and binding designation of things is invented and the legislation of lan-
guage supplies the first laws of truth” (TL, 255/WL). Truth, in this first stage,
implies no more than the use of language in accordance with what has been
agreed upon. Accordingly, the drive for truth has here the shape of a mere
social pressure to use designations in their usual sense and, ultimately, it
merely serves to preserve society by guaranteeing peace and security as an
alternative to the bellum omnium contra omnes that prevails among human
beings while they are still isolated beings. Thus, Nietzsche concludes that lan-
guage was not created as a means to the end of representing things as they
are in-themselves, and so even “to the creator of language too, the ‘thing-in-
itself’ (which would be precisely the pure truth without consequences) is quite
incomprehensible and not at all desirable” (TL, 256/WL).
According to Nietzsche, this first stage in the development of the concept
of truth contrasts strongly with the present one, where a “sense of truth” has
already been developed and cultivated. The consequence of this “sense of
truth” is that truth, i.e., our employment of language, is not taken for what it
is – namely, an instrument of socialisation. Man has forgotten that through
language he does not have cognitive access to things. The origin of language
is not a need to know, language is not an instrument of knowledge:
Moreover: how about those conventions of language? Are they perhaps products of knowl-
edge, of the sense of truth, are designations and things congruent? Is language the
adequate expression of all realities?
Only through forgetfulness can man ever come to believe that he is in possession of truth
in the degree just described (TL, 255/WL).
Although in this excerpt Nietzsche seems to question the ability of language

to represent things adequately by pointing out that what things are called is
conventional and therefore arbitrary, Nietzsche has something else in mind.
The main point of his analysis of language can be read as a critique of the
idea that language achieves an objective representation of things in a way
that is totally independent of our perspective, i.e., that language achieves a
representation of things-in-themselves. Nietzsche argues, in the first place, that
predicates do not stand for real properties of things: “How could we say that
the stone is hard, as if ‘hard’ were known to us in any other form than that of
a totally subjective irritation?” (TL, 255/WL).
Moreover, every word that appears as the grammatical subject in a sen-
tence is, in fact, only another predicate. Although we tend to interpret the
grammatical subject as referring to a real, independent “thing” – to a bearer
of properties – , this results, according to Nietzsche, from no more than an
arbitrary selection of a certain feature, which is then taken to represent an
“essence”. Nietzsche’s example of the snake makes this clear. In German, a
snake is called Schlange, which according to Nietzsche stems from the verb
schlingen, meaning “winding around something”:
We talk about a snake: the designation refers only to its winding motions and could
therefore also apply to worms. What arbitrary demarcations, what one-sided preferences,
now for one property of a thing and now for another! (TL, 255–256/WL).
Thus, there is nothing “outside us” that could correspond to the relation
expressed in a proposition or even to its elements. A word is only “the portrayal
of a nerve stimulus in sounds. But to infer from the nerve stimulus to the
existence of a cause outside us is the result of a false and unjustified applica-
tion of the principle of sufficient reason” (TL, 255/WL). When Nietzsche denies
that the inference of a cause “outside us” is “false and unjustified”, this should
not be read as an attack on Schopenhauer’s doctrine of intuitive perception.33
According to Schopenhauer we can only infer a cause by applying the principle
of sufficient reason to sensations from an empirical point of view. As Schopen-
hauer sometimes stresses, this cause is, from a transcendental point of view,
“inside us”, because time, space and causality cannot be valid for things-in-
themselves.
The problem with language is, then, that its referent is a subjective stimu-
lus and not a thing totally independent from us. It is undeniable, though, that
there seems to be a tendency in Nietzsche to refer to our language’s conven-
tional character in order to question its ability to represent things as they are.
We can take as an example the following excerpt:
A juxtaposition of the different languages shows that what matters about words is never
the truth, never an adequate expression; otherwise there would not be so many languages
(TL, 256/WL).
The problem with this argument is that the conventionality of language would
only bear on its truth if language did not have a referent outside of its own
33 Cf. Clark (1990), pp. 80 f.

50 Luís Sousa
sphere. But from what we have seen so far it follows that the words of a lan-
guage have nerve stimuli as their referent. Therefore, it is not the case that for
Nietzsche language is self-referential.34 Instead, the quotation above may be
read as an assertion that different languages express different relations and,
hence, as a rule different languages express different conceptions of actions
and things.
Accordingly, Nietzsche does not efface language’s intentional dimension:
when we speak, we are in fact directed towards something. The question for
Nietzsche concerns the status of the referent and not the fact that language
refers to something. Thus, concerning the status of the referent, the problem
for Nietzsche is that this referent is altogether subjective.35 The creator of lan-
guage designates only “the relations between things and men and to express
them he resorts to the boldest metaphors” (TL, 256/WL). Language expresses
relations of things to man and not to things-in-themselves:
Think of a man who is stone deaf and has never felt the sensation of sound and music:
imagine how he gazes in astonishment at Chladni’s sound figures in the sand, and, realis-
ing that they are caused by the vibration of the string, swears that he now knows what
men mean by ‘sound’. This is the situation in which we all find ourselves with regard to
language. We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we talk
about trees, colours, snow and flowers, and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for
things which do not correspond in the slightest to the original entities (TL, 256, my
emphasis/WL).36
The thesis that all language is metaphorical does not refer primarily to an
intra-linguistic phenomenon. We have to distinguish between two senses of
metaphor: metaphor as an intra-linguistic phenomenon, as one trope along-
side others; and metaphor in the wider sense of a creative transference. It is
the latter that is at play in TL. For Nietzsche, the metaphorical character of
language does not refer, first and foremost, to relations that emerge between
words, but applies to relations between language, perception and reality
34 Moreover, only complete sentences and not isolated words can have truth-value, as is
pointed out by Clark (1990), p. 67: “The sentence or judgment constitutes the smallest truth-
valued unit. Since only complete sentences can be true or false, nothing ensues in regard to
the concept of truth from the fact that language is conventional”.
35 Pace Paul de Man. De Man reads the essay as an attack on the possibility of literal
language that puts the extra-linguistic referent into question. Cf. De Man (1979), pp. 106–
110. According to the interpretation that is being proposed here, Nietzsche does not efface
the referent of language. His genealogy of the drive for truth is designed, instead, to correct
the most common interpretation of what this referent actually is.
36 Maudemarie Clark’s contention that there is a distinction between “things-in-
themselves” and “things themselves” seems untenable to us. Cf. Clark (1990), pp. 82–3.
(things-in-themselves), i.e., to our whole so-called “cognitive” process. Lan-

guage is metaphorical in the sense of stemming from a process that begins
with a subjective nerve stimulus, to which it ultimately refers.37 That is, Nietz-
sche reverses the traditional hierarchy between knowledge of the senses and
knowledge of reason. Sensual knowledge is usually seen as subjective knowl-
edge, and rational knowledge, on account of being articulated linguistically,
is seen as an ability and an achievement that transcends our animal condition
and provides an objective picture of things. But, according to Nietzsche’s
theory of language in TL, the most direct access we have to reality is not lin-
guistic or conceptual, but bodily.38
Language and reason are, in fact, – to use the platonic expression39 –
“two removes” from reality in comparison to nerve stimuli. First of all, our
representations’ relations to reality correspond to a “transference” (the original
meaning of “metaphor”) between two incommensurable spheres (reality in-
itself and representation).40 Thus, knowledge begins with a nerve stimulus.
This triggers the formation of an image (Bild) of a thing. Nietzsche does not
elaborate too much on what this image might be. Nevertheless, it seems to be
something like the pre-conceptual perception of a thing. If we link the “nerve
37 Clark (1990), pp. 77–80, has made the same point regarding the thesis that all language
is metaphorical. After rejecting the literal interpretation of the thesis, she speaks of a
“metaphorical use of metaphor”. For Clark, metaphor does not apply primarily to language
but to perception. She also draws attention to the fact that “Nietzsche’s classification of the
object of perception as a metaphor relies crucially on Schopenhauer’s representational
theory”. Josef Simon (1999) also draws attention to the metaphorical use of the concept of
metaphor, although my interpretation of TL is thoroughly different from his in other
respects. Cf. Simon (1999), p. 90: “Sein Sprechen über Metaphern ist ‘notgedrungen’ selbst
metaphorisch”. See also Celine Dénat’s essay in this volume.
38 Emden (2005) stresses precisely that for Nietzsche the metaphorical character of
language is something that has primarily to do with its rootedness in perception and
ultimately in the body. Cf. Emden (2005), p.62: “Inasmuch as his discussion of language was
from the beginning inextricably linked to the problems of consciousness and perception,
these reflections are also connected to a particular notion of the body. Metaphor is thus
grounded in both rhetoric and physiology; it concerns not only language but also the body”,
and Emden (2005), p.106: “Language, Nietzsche seems to suggest, is a figurative discourse
in itself (that is, in the form of speech and writing), but the metaphoricity of language
results from a more fundamental metaphorical process located beyond or perhaps before
language”.
39 Cf. Plato, The Republic, 597e-598a.
40 TL, 260/WL: “For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and
object, there is no causality, no correctness, no expression, but at most an aesthetic
attitude: by this I mean an allusive transference, a halting translation into an entirely foreign
language…”.
52 Luís Sousa
stimulus” to Schopenhauer’s blind “sensations”, then the “image” would cor-

respond to intuitive perception, which for Schopenhauer consisted in the appli-
cation of the principle of sufficient reason to the “material” of sensation. It is
significant that, in contrast to what Schopenhauer thought, the relation
between nerve stimulus and image is not the result of the application of the
principle of sufficient reason. Since for Schopenhauer the principle of suffi-
cient reason is tantamount to a necessary relation between two terms – and
this is even the only meaning we can give to the concept of necessity41 – the
fact that the perceptive image does not derive from the application of the prin-
ciple of sufficient reason entails that, for Nietzsche, there is no necessity in
the relation between the two instances and no possibility of correctness or
incorrectness. Other species and other specimen of the human species could
have formed other images, whereas for Schopenhauer there is a correct or
incorrect application of the principle of sufficient reason that is valid for every
knowing being, including animals. But for Nietzsche every transference from
a nerve stimulus to an image is as correct or incorrect as any other. As he puts
it, the relation is purely aesthetical.42 Thus the image is a way of expressing
the nerve stimulus by other means. That is, the image is a metaphor: “A nerve
stimulus first transformed into an image – the first metaphor!” (TL, 256/WL).
Then, the image is converted into a sound, and this is tantamount to
another transference, another occurrence of the metaphorical process: “The
image then reproduced in a sound – the second metaphor!” (TL, 256/WL).
These sounds that exist in order to give expression to those perceptual
images mark the beginning of the process that will lead to language, that is,
to the formation of concepts. For Nietzsche these sounds are in fact words,
and every word
becomes a concept precisely because it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the

unique, entirely individualised primal experience to which it owes its existence, but
because it has to fit at one and the same time countless more or less similar cases which,
strictly speaking, are never equal or, in other words, are always unequal (TL, 256/WL).
Besides the fact that the referent of language is ultimately subjective – sounds
or words stand for images, which in turn stand for nerve stimuli – , the origin
of concepts amounts to “the equation of non-equal things” (TL, 256/WL),
41 See FR, 225–7.

42 TL, 260/WL: “For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and
object, there is no causality, no correctness, no expression, but at most an aesthetic
attitude: by this I mean an allusive transference, a halting translation into an entirely foreign
language…”.
because every concept (or word) can be used to designate several different
things. This entails, according to Nietzsche, that the “emergence of language
is not a logical affair” (TL, 256/WL). Although Nietzsche says this in the essay
without further comment, he seems to be suggesting that the emergence of
language would be logical if concepts were generated in accordance with the
principle of identity, which is the highest principle of logic. Since there are no
identical instances of anything in the primordial world of images, the forma-
tion of concepts, by equating non-equal instances, violates the principle of
identity. This analysis implies that the idea of identity and the principle of
identity that is based upon it arise only within the sphere of conceptual lan-
guage. And this means that logic itself has illogical foundations.
Thus, after a language is fully developed and inherited over many genera-
tions, man comes to feel that it faithfully mirrors the way nature is organised.
The world of language becomes more real than the world of perceptive images:
For in the domain of those abstract patterns something is possible that would never work
under the intuitive first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to
casts and degrees, that is, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations
and border demarcations, which now confronts the intuitive first impressions as some-
thing more solid, more universal, more familiar, more human and therefore as the regulat-
ing and imperative force (TL, 258/WL).
Knowledge consists in the attempt to classify everything particular under the

concepts we have at our disposal. In the process man forgets that those con-
cepts are his own creation. The knowledge he achieves is a mere translation of
something unknown into the anthropomorphic world generated by language:
(…) the searcher for such truths seeks only the metamorphosis of the world into man; he
struggles for an understanding of the world as something resembling humans and he
achieves at best a sense of assimilation (…). He forgets that the original intuitive meta-
phors were in fact metaphors and takes them for the things themselves (TL, 259/WL).
b) Schopenhauer’s Legacy
We can see from what has been shown that Nietzsche’s account and assess-
ment of human knowledge shows some striking similarities to Schopenhauer’s.
First of all, as we saw, Nietzsche’s account of the origin of language implies
that language and concepts, far from presenting an intrinsic order of things,
are ultimately rooted in nerve stimuli. This can, in fact, be seen as a develop-
ment of Schopenhauer’s thesis. As we saw, Schopenhauer held that reason,
the faculty of concepts, was a secondary power compared with intuitive per-
54 Luís Sousa
ception. Moreover, intuitive perception consisted in the application of the prin-

ciple of causality, which is of subjective origin, to sensation. Nietzsche sees
perceptive images as a result of a transformation of nerve stimuli and lan-
guage, and he identifies the latter with conceptual thought, as a further trans-
formation of those images. Despite the differences in the terms that are used,
the outcome is basically the same: language and truth are rooted in perception,
and perception is a thoroughly subjective phenomenon.
Moreover, the rootedness of language in perceptive images and of these in
nerve stimuli points to another affinity with Schopenhauer. As we saw, Scho-
penhauer did not refrain from establishing the identity of the intellect with
the brain. Consequently, Schopenhauer saw the intellect as a function of the
organism. From this he concluded that the intellect is designed only to know
relations between things and itself, and not things-in-themselves. In TL, Nietz-
sche shows the same tendency, already present in Schopenhauer, to conceive
of the intellect as a natural product, not designed for “truth” and “knowledge”.
This idea, which would be familiar to any reader of Schopenhauer, is almost
like a hidden premise of TL. Thus, by pointing out that language has nerve
stimuli as its referent, Nietzsche is able to show that language is not an instru-
ment of truth, since everything rooted in the organism must be seen as having
been naturally selected to fulfil its needs.
In addition, Schopenhauer’s main argument in favour of idealism is that
every possible object whatsoever presupposes a subject and thus a thing-in-
itself is by definition something unknowable. Nietzsche resorts to a similar
kind of argument in regard to knowledge of things-in-themselves:
In fact, correct perception – which would mean the adequate expression of an object in
the subject – seems to me a self-contradictory absurdity: for between two absolutely
different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, no
expression but at most an aesthetic attitude: by this I mean an allusive transference, a
halting translation into an entirely foreign language, which in any case demands a freely
creative and freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force (TL, 260/WL).
As we see Nietzsche differs from Schopenhauer in this point only in regard to

the question of the nature of representation. For Nietzsche representation is
thoroughly aesthetic and creative, whereas for Schopenhauer the intellect
works according to the principle of sufficient reason as a fixed rule.
This distinction has important consequences for the type of “idealism”
proposed by both authors.43 For Schopenhauer, the principle of sufficient rea-
43 If I dare speak of “idealism” in regard to Nietzsche, it is only in the strict sense of a

doctrine that holds that the objects of our knowledge are only phenomena and not things-
in-themselves. “Idealism” in this sense does not have anything to do with the idea that only
son rules over all objects and submits their relations to a strict necessity. Scho-
penhauer manages thus to retain the idea that the phenomenal world is empir-
ically “real” in that it follows necessary rules. But Nietzsche argues that
phenomena have no necessary connexion. We saw that for Nietzsche our cogni-
tive endeavours can be traced back to subjective nerve stimuli. But human
beings tend to “forget” this because they are always already caught in a net-
work of relations of transference between nerve stimuli, images and words –
or, put simply, because they are not at all aware of the whole process that leads
from nerve stimuli to the “chamber of consciousness” (TL, 254/WL) where they
are imprisoned. We acquire a sense of certainty in regard to knowledge and
truth, as if the same nerve stimulus produced always the same images and
these in turn were adequately expressed by words. All these transferences
seem to us absolutely necessary and natural after they have already occurred.
Thus, Nietzsche wants to point out that:
Even the relation of a nerve stimulus to the image it produces is not in itself a necessary
one. But if the same image is produced millions of times and transmitted through many
generations, until in each case it finally appears to the whole of mankind as an effect of
the same cause, it will ultimately acquire for man the same meaning as if it were the only
necessary image and as if the relation of the original nerve stimulus to the conventional
image were a strictly causal one; just as a dream, eternally repeated, would be perceived
and judged as absolutely real. But the congealment and solidification of a metaphor by
no means guarantees the necessity and exclusive justification of that metaphor (TL, 260).
This entails, on Nietzsche’s view, that the regularity of nature is a “highly

subjective construct”, for “if we could only perceive now as a bird, now as a
worm, now as a plant; or if one saw the stimulus as red, another as blue, and
a third even heard it as a sound; then nobody would talk about such a regular-
ity of nature” (TL, 261/WL).44
The denial of necessary relations between nerve stimuli, images and words
implies that for Nietzsche there is no empirical reality in opposition to illusions
the mind is real. When I refer to Nietzsche’s view and use of the term “idealism”, I use it
always in that strict sense and in quotation marks.
44 Nietzsche’s idea of transference is akin to that of Hume’s association of ideas. For Hume,
the relation of causality, for instance, is just such a subjective association, to which habit
gives the appearance of an objective necessity. What seems to us to be a necessary
connection between things when an event follows another event reveals itself to be, when
we analyse our ideas, no more than a mechanism of association produced by habit. Habit
makes us expect a certain effect whenever we see a known cause. Nietzsche’s “forget-
fulness” is produced by a kind of Humean mechanism of habit that is fostered by a process
of socialisation, and this process determines the transmission and reproduction of the same
transferences between nerve stimulus, image and word (concept), so that they come to seem
“binding” to us.
56 Luís Sousa
or dreams.45 Our feeling that the empirical world is real results from our habit
of positing the same images as causes of the same nerve stimuli and conceptu-
alising those images by means of the words we inherited. In other words,
we forget the “primitive world of metaphors” (TL, 259/WL) and ourselves as
“artistically creative” subjects (TL, 259/WL).
The denial that there are any necessary relations in nature may suggest
that Nietzsche renounces any form of transcendental philosophy and his “ide-
alism” is just the doctrine that our knowledge is fundamentally conditioned
by the intellect’s rootedness in our body. However, this view is qualified by
Nietzsche’s account of space and time in TL. According to Nietzsche, space-
and time-relations are the subjective forms that bestow an appearance of
necessity to the “laws of nature”. The regularity of nature consists in these
forms alone. Their necessity is transcendental, for they are a priori forms that
we ourselves bring into nature. These forms are “produced in us and out of us
by ourselves with the same necessity as a spider spins its web” (TL, 261/WL).
According to Nietzsche, the creation of metaphors “with which every percep-
tion begins […] already presupposes, and is thus implemented in” space and
time. Everything that comes to us through nerve stimuli is embedded in this
transcendental structure. These forms are that which is thoroughly intelligible
in things, because they are what we bring into things. For “if we must under-
stand all things in these forms alone, then it is no longer a miracle that what
we really understand of all things are only these forms…” (TL, 261).46
Space and time are, in fact, the only remnant of Kant’s (and Schopen-
hauer’s) transcendental apparatus. Otherwise Nietzsche seems to embrace in
TL an idealism based on a full-fledged naturalism, which is in fact the natural
development of Schopenhauer’s view on the intellect as a natural product.47
45 Nietzsche even refers with approval to Pascal’s contention that “if we had the same
dream every night we would be as much exercised by it as we are by the things that we see
every day” (TL, 262/WL).
46 This is actually only a repetition of Schopenhauer’s contention that the more formal our
knowledge is, the more it is foreign to the thing-in-itself, for the forms of our knowledge are
merely subjective. Cf. WWR I, 121–122.
47 However, for both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (around the time of TL/WL) there are
exceptions to the instrumental character of the intellect. Although, as we saw, the intellect
creates the ideas of knowledge and truth, for Nietzsche its main power lies in “dissimu-
lation” (TL, 254/WL). The intellect is most free when he can “deceive without causing harm”
(TL, 263/WL). Accordingly, when we give free reign to the “fundamental drive of man”, “the
drive to the formation of metaphors” (TL, 262/WL), the intellect becomes capable of
shattering the rigid world of concepts. This is done, of course, in the realm of art and myth.
And here another interesting parallelism with Schopenhauer comes to light. For
Schopenhauer, the intellect can be liberated for a short period of time from the dictatorship
of the will (or the organism) and come to an adequate knowledge of the world. This
c) The Thing-in-itself and the Standard of Truth in TL
So far, my exposition of Nietzsche’s TL may seem to suggest that he embraces

“idealism” in a more consistent way than Schopenhauer, for he does not pro-
pose anything parallel to the latter’s metaphysics of the will. Thus Nietzsche
seems simply to move from Schopenhauer’s to Kant’s position. But, whereas
Kant and Schopenhauer tried to save the phenomena’s empirical reality, this
idea seems forever lost in TL. Nietzsche’s “idealism” could then be said to be
even more radical than both Kant and Schopenhauer’s. But this can only be
presented as an accurate reading of TL on the condition that we confirm that
Nietzsche continues to uphold the distinction between phenomenon and thing-
in-itself.
The question on the thing-in-itself in TL depends on the question on Nietz-
sche’s concept of truth. It seems that without presupposing the ideal of knowl-
edge as knowledge of a thing-in-itself, Nietzsche is unable to attack both com-
mon sense and science’s claim to truth as an illusion. In other words, he
manages to expose their claim to truth only by setting it against the idea of
truth as knowledge of the thing-in-itself.48 Although this interpretation of
Nietzsche’s thesis is fairly tenable, it may be put into question by other pos-
sible interpretations of the essay. According to Maudemarie Clark’s interpreta-
tion of TL, Nietzsche holds three incompatible positions concerning truth:
Therefore, […], Truth and Lie‘s denial of truth is based on an unstable amalgamation
of three mutually incompatible positions: the ‘Kantian’ position that the ‘pure’ truth is
conceivable but unavailable to human beings, the ‘agnostic’ position that we simply can-
knowledge is intuitive and can be communicated by means of works of art. Thus, both he
and Nietzsche see art as the domain where the intellect can become free from its servitude.
But, whereas for Nietzsche this is achieved by the creation of illusions for illusion’s sake, for
Schopenhauer we truly achieve adequate knowledge of the world through art.
48 Maudemarie Clark has drawn attention to the fact that in TL Nietzsche develops a
metaphysical correspondence theory of truth as a standard for assessing what we take as
true. See Clark (1990), p. 83: “Far from rejecting the conception of truth as correspondence,
Nietzsche’s denial of truth evidently presupposes the metaphysical correspondence theory.
He claims that truths are illusions because he assumes both that truth requires
correspondence to things-in-themselves and that our truths do not exhibit such
correspondence”. Daniel Breazeale makes the same point too, cf. Breazeale (1979), pp. xiii-
xlix, xxvii: “On the one hand, Nietzsche constantly presupposed, and thought that science
presupposes, a rather literal correspondence model of knowledge and ideal of descriptive
adequacy. When the knowledge that we actually think we possess is measured by such an
ideal it invariably falls short of the expected standard of truth”. We will see that, although
this is in part quite correct as an interpretation of TL, the essay furnishes elements that put
the idea of truth as correspondence into question.
58 Luís Sousa
not know whether our truths match the ‘pure’ truth, and the ‘neo-Kantian’ position that
such truth is unavailable precisely because it is inconceivable.49
The first position she mentions corresponds to the interpretation we have just
hinted at. “Pure truth”, i.e., knowledge of things-in-themselves, although una-
vailable to us, would be the standard for assessing the “truth” of common
sense and science. These, as we saw, fail the test and cannot live up to this
standard at all. Moreover, this position is unequivocally expressed in the essay.
This can be seen, for example, when Nietzsche talks about “original entities”
to which our metaphors “do not correspond” (TL, 256/WL), or about nature
as an “X which, for us, is inaccessible and indefinable” (TL, 257/WL), and
especially in the passage that compares the relation of language to things-in-
themselves as that between “Chladni’s figures in the sand” and sounds (TL,
256/WL).
Nevertheless, Clark’s characterisation of the first position must be subject
to some qualification. It is true that for Kant “pure truth” is unavailable and
yet conceivable. But in TL Nietzsche’s position is in this respect more akin to
that of Schopenhauer. For Schopenhauer, surprising as it may be, “pure truth”
is not even conceivable, for, as we saw, he considers that by definition the
thing-in-itself cannot be known: “being-known of itself contradicts being-in-
itself” (WWR II, 198).50
This first position is certainly called into question by “agnosticism”, which
is Clark’s second position. There is also some good textual basis for considering
this possibility.51 Consider this passage in particular:
We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking the individual and the real,
while nature knows no forms or concepts and therefore no species either, but only an X
which, for us, is inaccessible and indefinable. For our contrast between the individual
and the species is also anthropomorphic and does not stem from the essence of things,
even though we dare not say that it does not correspond to it, because that would be a
dogmatic assertion and as such just as unprovable as its opposite (TL, 257/WL).
49 Clark (1998), p. 47.

50 This position may be explained if we take into account that the conceivability of the
thing-in-itself depends, for Kant, on the possibility of an intellectus archetypus, i.e., a divine
intellect that could know things by means of an intellectual intuition. Schopenhauer does
not consider this kind of knowledge a possibility. Nietzsche, too, does not need the idea of
an intellectus archetypus in order to conceive of the existence of things-in-themselves.
51 There are some hints of the “agnostic” position in unpublished writings from this period.
See NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[125] = WEN, 130: “We must then say against Kant that, even if we
agree with all his propositions, it still remains perfectly possible that the world is as it
appears to us”.
According to the “agnostic” interpretation, nature as an X would be so

unknowable for us that we could not even say that we do not know it, i.e., we
cannot dogmatically affirm that none of the properties that we recognise in
objects (e.g. time) correspond to intrinsic properties of nature. The problem
with this interpretation is that it would weaken Nietzsche’s devaluation of sci-
ence and common sense’s claim to truth. The world constructed by science
could be the “true world” after all. Moreover, this would call into question the
idea that all kinds of representation involve a metaphor, that is, a transference
between incommensurable spheres. Thus, it seems that there are good reasons
for rejecting the “agnostic” position if we confer weight, as we should do, to
Nietzsche’s theory of metaphor, a theory according to which every level of
representation involves a creative leap in relation to the one that preceded it.
The idea of such a leap implies that perception and language cannot be
adequate to or correspond to the thing-in-itself, since nerve stimuli are already
a first metaphor of the thing-in-itself.52
Clark’s third position, according to which the thing-in-itself is “unavailable
because it is inconceivable”, could be, in fact, better expressed as the idea that
the thing-in-itself is a human creation. According to this position, “truth” – in
the sense of what common sense and science take it to be – is a standard that
they themselves created and yet fail to meet. This position comes into the fore
when we consider the fact that there was no concept of truth before the emer-
gence of language. When language was created, “truth”, according to Nietz-
sche, meant no more than “using the valid designations” for things. Truth was
only a convention. With time and the “obligation to call one thing red, another
cold, a third mute” (TL, 258/WL) man has come to achieve a “sense of truth”.
This “sense of truth” corresponds to the belief that “this sun, this window, this
table is a truth in itself” (TL, 258/WL), that is, the belief in knowledge of
things-in-themselves. This is also the reason why Nietzsche says that it would
be pointless to ask which of the world’s perceptions are correct, that of a man,
an insect or a bird, “because the answer would require the prior application
52 It could be argued that the process of metaphorisation begins only in the transition
between nerve stimuli and images. In fact, this would correspond to Nietzsche’s later
position, according to which “falsification” and “simplification” are not a falsification and
simplification of a thing-in-itself (the “true world” is abolished) but exclusively of the “chaos
of sensations”. For this interpretation of the later Nietzsche, see Constâncio (2011a).
Although in TL (TL, 256/WL) this position is suggested – “A nerve stimulus first transformed
into an image – first metaphor!” (TL, 256/WL) – in the following passage Nietzsche explicitly
takes nerve stimuli to be metaphors of the unknown X: “Just as the sound appears as a
sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing-in-itself appears first as a nerve stimulus, then
as an image and finally as a sound”.
60 Luís Sousa
of the standard of correct perception, i.e. a non-existent standard” (TL, 260/

WL). In the same passage he also calls this standard a “self-contradictory
absurdity” (TL, 260/WL).
It is true that Schopenhauer would agree with Nietzsche that the concept
of “correct perception” is self-contradictory. However, in those passages, Nietz-
sche seems to want to go a step further and undermine the very idea of knowl-
edge as adequacy to a thing-in-itself. This position seems also to be reinforced
by the first sentence of TL: “some clever animals invented knowledge” (TL,
253/WL). Moreover, this position seems quite close to Nietzsche’s later posi-
tion, according to which the idea of a thing-in-itself is a contradiction in terms.
But here in TL Nietzsche’s focus is on questioning the idea of adequacy to the
thing-in-itself and not on a straightforward denial of this concept. In fact, the
passages where he shows agnosticism with regard to the thing-in-itself are
evidence that he has not yet fully rejected this concept.
In sum: Nietzsche could only have held the third position coherently if he
had dispensed with the concept of the thing-in-itself altogether, and this he
does not do for most of TL. Thus, the idea that human beings created the
concept of thing-in-itself cannot be clearly established as Nietzsche’s position
in TL. The essay is still too much of a hybrid. There are a number of passages
where Nietzsche keeps falling back into Schopenhauer’s idealist position,
using the idea of adequacy to the thing-in-itself to call ordinary and scientific
knowledge into question.
Nevertheless, and despite the fact that TL’s position is not fully clear, the
third position, the position according to which truth as adequacy to the thing-
in-itself is a human creation, sheds an altogether different light on Nietzsche’s
position in regard to idealism. His campaign against the predominant concep-
tion of knowledge should be seen, on the one hand, as a development of
Schopenhauer’s idea that knowledge is by definition inadequate to its object
(understood as a thing-in-itself). But, on the other hand, it should also be seen
as an overcoming of that idealism – for it suggests that the very idea of knowl-
edge as adequacy is itself a human creation. And, once this idea of adequacy
is called into question, there is no more reason for considering our knowledge
as “merely phenomenal” in the Schopenhauerian sense of “merely illusory”
(and, hence, in the Platonic sense of insulated from the “true world”). This
last step is the one that Nietzsche will venture into in his later writings.
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Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós
Physiology and Language in Friedrich
Nietzsche: “The Guiding Thread of the
Body”
Nietzsche’s philosophy would lose all the creative tension it generates if we
were to forget the radical reflection on language and the aesthetic and physio-
logical perspective from which Nietzsche approaches the problem of language.
In order to understand his critique of the traditional problems raised by meta-
physics and epistemology, it is crucial that we are able to use his critique of
language as a hermeneutical guide. Thus, the strategy is to follow his critique,
because it constitutes an adequate instrument to question the cultural values
of our Western civilisation and its decadence. Nietzsche’s issues with philology
were definitively settled with his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, as well as
with the controversy it subsequently generated.1 As for philosophy, its starting-
point had to be reappraised, that is to say, those very instances, which philoso-
phy had so forcefully fought against ever since the Socratic turn (myth, poetry,
art, eloquence, style etc.), had to be transformed into operative elements. But
amongst all this, a genuine and fundamental problem emerged with sharp
clarity polarising all the rest. It was the problem of language, its origin, its
unconscious grounds, its artistic value, its instinctive force, its figurative and
tropic character, and above all, the strength and power it conceals. However,
Nietzsche does not hesitate to polarise this problem from the “prism of art”
(BT Attempt 2/GT Versuch 2), because this was the only way in which a new
linguistic paradigm could be articulated; a new paradigm which was able to
liberate philosophy from the nets of a language that had lost all its creative
value from too much use.
Firstly, we shall present the problem of language within the first develop-
ments of Nietzsche’s philosophy and we shall see how, in the end, language
is considered aesthetically, taking the “body” as a reference; secondly we shall
examine Nietzsche’s intuition that a possible solution to the problem can be
found in metaphorical language, i.e. in a pictorial language in which language
as art has its ground; thirdly we shall see how physiology opens up the path
for new ways of expression; and finally we shall expose the paradoxes that
arise from a radical position – such as Nietzsche’s – in relation to language. It
1 In relation to the controversy regarding The Birth of Tragedy, see my introductory work,
Guervós (1994), pp. 9–44.
64 Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós
should also be noted that this development bears something in common with
the one mentioned above: in contrast to the modern tendency that excludes
the pulsional and affective aspects of human life in order to preserve a certain
unity, by favouring one element alone, namely the rational, Nietzsche claims
the former reality – i.e. the drives and the affects – to be the foundation of
philosophy. The theoretical thought inaugurated by Socrates left the reality of
the body aside – how was this possible? Language, as Nietzsche said, is sick;
and because of this dissociation, the same goes for our culture. Nietzsche’s
philosophy breaks the silence philosophy had kept regarding the body and it
makes the world of the concealed unconscious speak:
Essential to start from the body and use it as a guiding thread. It is the far richer phenom-
enon, and can be observed more distinctly. Belief in the body is better established than
belief in the mind (NL 1885, KSA 11, 40[15] = WLN, 43).
Therefore, in order to evaluate Nietzsche’s conception of language, we also

need to take the body as our starting point, because it is the centre of our vital
experiences and the field where we can find the centres of force that generate
the drives for our most diverse activities and interpretations. For man, before
building concepts and judgements, is a creator of forms. And the body is, in
actual fact, the source from where all our vital creations come: the “sovereign
sage”. In these originary infrastructures, in the field of physiology, Nietzsche
seems to find the firm ground to build an alternative to the abstract forms of
thought, i.e. beyond all logical thought or the philosophy of consciousness.
In this way, the body is turned into that “guiding thread” (NL 1885, KSA
11, 37[4] = WLN, 29); it becomes the centre – the multiplicity of forces – that
generates our vital creations. The body reveals itself as the metaphor that
enables us to interpret the real, in such a way that even what is ideal comes
to be seen as a pulsional way of interpreting the real world:
Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing ‘given’ as real, that we
cannot get down or up to any ‘reality’ except the reality of our drives (since thinking is
only a relation between these drives) – aren’t we allowed to make the attempt and pose
the question as to whether something like this ‘given’ isn’t enough to render the so-called
mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? (BGE 36/JGB 36).
1 Diagnosis of Language and Its Creative

Function. Instinct and Language
Nietzsche’s first diagnosis regarding language is that “language is sick” (UM
IV 5/UB IV 5). And it is sick: firstly, because language has ceased being a
Physiology and Language in: “The Guiding Thread of the Body” 65
“production” and has lost all its “creative impulse”; secondly, because we are
no longer able to communicate what happens to us, because we have become
prisoners of conceptual language, which, in its turn, has lost its connection to
our feelings, and hence, to nature. This stagnation in language takes place
fundamentally because language operates only by convention, as a machine.
But, in contrast to the life-threatening domination of conventions, art offers a
new perspective out of which the essentially metaphysical conception of lan-
guage can be overcome and a re-appropriation of the power of language can
be attained. This is why, from Nietzsche’s first writings, art and language main-
tain an on-going relation of implications, in such a way that it would not be
an exaggeration to claim that one aspect of Nietzsche’s aesthetics is focused
on what language means to art and what art has to do with language. In this
context, the principle that “existence can only be aesthetically justified” must
be understood in the sense that real existence can only be conveyed through
an adequate expression and in a justified way by an aesthetical language, i.e.
precisely by the language of real art. And this is why the problem lies not in
existence, but in its justification, that is, in its linguistic and figurative repre-
sentation.
In the end, Nietzsche’s diagnosis is a critique of the philosophers’ faith in
linguistic structures – in those structures that they deified and converted into
the highest representatives of reason. Everybody is now familiar with Nietz-
sche’s sentence that the overcoming of nihilism depends on the unmasking of
the grammatisation of reason and, thus, of those who succumbed to the seduc-
tion of grammar:
‘Reason’ in language: oh, what a deceptive old woman that is! I am afraid that we have
not got rid of God because we still have faith in grammar… (TI Reason 5/GD Vernunft 5).
That is also why Nietzsche asked himself quite laconically whether philoso-
phers should “rise above the belief in grammar” (BGE 34/JGB 34) or, in other
words, whether it would be possible to overcome those modes of speaking and
those particular ways of thinking which examine the causes and fundaments
of the whole of being, unifying and separating concepts, as if these were real
things.
In response to the linguistic excesses of metaphysics, Nietzsche does not
offer a theoretical, but an aesthetical alternative. However, this alternative or
this critique is not restricted to a simple critique of reason, but rather offers
the possibility of a transformation of philosophy, as well as of the conceptual
language that founds it, by following the path of the experience of artistic
creation and aesthetical reason. This reason is not an analytical, but an intui-
tive reason; a reason based on instincts and passions, for instincts are more
reliable and deserve more authority than rationality. This rapprochement

between the production of language and the artistic process can be appreciated
in the posthumous fragments2 from around 1871–73, i.e. from the moment
when Nietzsche considers the “artistic condition” and the artistic attitude to
be the true source of language – the originary moment where the force of life
is driven to overflow itself creatively. This is also how the reconciliation
between man and nature would take place.
In a fragment from 1869 with the title “On the Origin of Language”,3 it is
already clear that Nietzsche’s critical position towards language does not fol-
low the guiding principles of Kantian criticism. Nietzsche took two theses as
his starting point: that language precedes truth and that language is prior to
thought. And although they are not originally from Nietzsche, they already
mark the direction he takes. However, Nietzsche had located the origin of lan-
guage within the context of nature’s own development, thus affirming that
language was a product of natural instincts, and also already hinting towards
its physiological basis. At a first glance, language – as a means of communica-
tion and a form of mutual understanding – satisfies the needs of the “herd”.
This is why one of the first functions of language in its origin was, above all,
to express feelings. But on a philosophical level, Nietzsche exposes the follow-
ing thesis which also provided the germ for future thoughts: “the most pro-
found philosophical insights are already prepared in language”.
These first thoughts regarding language are certainly in tune with the tend-
encies of the time and with authors such as Schelling or Eduard von Hartmann,
where Nietzsche explicitly or implicitly finds a great deal of his inspiration.4
Thus, for instance in that short text quoted above, “On the Origin of Lan-
guage”, Nietzsche adopts for his conclusion the following text from Schelling’s
Philosophy of Mythology, in which language is grounded upon the unconscious:
Because not only no philosophical consciousness, but rather also no human conscious-
ness at all, is thinkable without language, the ground of language could not be laid
consciously; and yet, the deeper we inquire into language, the more definitely it becomes
known that its depths exceed by far that of the most conscious product. It is with lan-
guage as it is with the organic beings; we believe we see them blindly emerge into being
2 Most especially in KSA 7.

3 Friedrich Nietzsche: “Vom Ursprung der Sprache (1869–70)”, in: KGW II/2, pp. 183–189.
Nietzsche used this short text as an introduction to a lecture on Latin grammar for the
winter semester of 1869–70.
4 Sometimes Nietzsche’s dependency on other authors of his time is too much emphasised.
In spite of the similarities, it is important to insist on those truly original elements
introduced by Nietzsche.
and cannot deny the inscrutable intentionality of their formation, right up to the smallest
detail.5
This text enables Nietzsche to introduce in his reflection the two levels upon
which his conception of language is based. Firstly, at a more original and
primary level the unconscious provides the physiological foundation for the
artistic and creative drive, and, on the second level, consciousness. In this
conception of language, the first level, the unconscious language, is the condi-
tion of possibility for the second, the language of consciousness. In this way
the principle was settled that language does not find its origin in conscious-
ness, but at a more obscure and profounder level. It is at this level that we can
also find an explanation for linguistic phenomena. Thus, Nietzsche thinks that
human consciousness is what it is depending on the particular form and
strength of the language that structures it. In other words, Nietzsche believes
that consciousness has a linguistic structure. Nietzsche’s originality lies not so
much on the claim of language’s instinctive and unconscious origin – this idea
was already present in Rousseau, Schopenhauer and E. von Hartmann6 – , but
on his emphasis on the unconscious nature of instinct and its strength relative
to the pretensions of reason:
Instinct is even identical with the innermost kernel of a being. This is the actual problem
of philosophy, the infinite purposiveness of organisms and the unconsciousness of their
emergence.7
Thus, from his first writings, the idea that the unconscious linguistic processes
are the condition of possibility for the conscious use of conceptuality and
5 Schelling (1979), p. 54, English translation quoted from Schelling (2008), Historical-critical
Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology. Like Schelling, Nietzsche gives primacy to the
aesthetical, but in a different spirit. Schelling sees art as the culmination of philosophy, on
the ground that only art is able to give us an immediate intuition of what is reality from the
inside. Nietzsche gives primacy to the aesthetical precisely because it does not offer an idea
of “reality”. On Nietzsche’s view, human beings have no access to reality. Their abstractions
are worn-out metaphors, and their language is in fact only an embodiment of their innate
talent for aesthetical creation.
6 Nietzsche knew the work of E. von Hartmann (1869), Philosophie des Unbewussten. The
allusions to Hartman are very frequent in the fragments from the years 1869–1874 in KSA 7.
Alwin Mittasch (1952) believes that Nietzsche’s ideas on the unconscious come also from
Schelling and Schopenhauer.
7 “Vom Ursprung der Sprache (1869–70)”, in: KGW II/2, p. 186, editors’ translation: “Der
Instinkt ist sogar eins mit dem innersten Kern eines Wesens. Dies ist das eigentliche
Problem der Philosophie, die unendliche Zweckmässigkeit der Organismen und die Bewusst-
losigkeit bei ihrem Entstehn”.
abstraction constitute the guiding thread of the later development of his radi-
cal critique of metaphysics, morality and religion. And from these assump-
tions, Nietzsche will not cease to emphasise, time and time again, that if
human beings were to develop their capacity to explore the unconscious forms
of language as creative possibilities, and if they were to transform them in a
conscious will as force and action, this very transforming quality of language
would enable human beings to embrace a transvaluation of values.
In the later writings from the first period, as in the Dionysian Worldview
from 1870, Nietzsche already considers conceptual language as a deficient
modality of communication in comparison to other forms, such as dance and
song. Nietzsche considers these to be “languages” that constitute a more imme-
diate access to the world of feelings. These “languages” are “totally instinctive,
without consciousness”.8 A year later, in the fragments on Music and Word,
he adopts a more sophisticated conception of language. In this fragment,
words are only symbols, not of the thing-in-itself, but of representations. In
this way he already questions the relation between language and reality such
as it had been understood in the philosophical tradition.9 In the Birth of Trag-
edy, language is defined by Nietzsche as “the organ and symbol of phenom-
ena” (BT 6/GT 6) and, as such, it cannot express anything about the intimate
secrets of nature and the “heart of things” (BT 16/GT 16). In other words, it
cannot express all that which only music is able to express. Wagner in Bayreuth
marks a profound turning point. Firstly because Nietzsche clearly detects that
language is a problem; and, secondly, because he starts thinking about how
to overcome the critical state language finds itself in – a critical state which is
due to its social instrumentalisation and its becoming purely conventional. But
it is in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense (1873) that Nietzsche corrects
and summarises his views from The Birth of Tragedy. It is in this short text
that Nietzsche synthesises in a brilliant way his philosophy of language. The
problem of language cannot be reduced to the problem of its origin alone; the
problem of language is the problem of its history, that is, of the history of its
fall, of its destruction and, above all, it is the problem of the “history of the
forgetfulness” of its nature. Nietzsche ventures to give an answer to this prob-
lem from an aesthetic perspective. This enables him to show how the theory
on the relation between language and reality, traditionally understood as a
relation of “adequacy”, has constituted the cornerstone of metaphysics, and
how the latter will only be overcome if we understand the relation between
language and reality as an “aesthetic relation”:
8 DW 4, KSA 1, p. 572, editors’ translation: “durchaus instinktive, ohne Bewußtsein”.

9 On the development of Nietzsche’s thought on language, see Schlüpmann (1977).
Our eye binds us to forms. But if we ourselves have gradually acquired this eye by train-
ing, then we see an artistic force at work in ourselves. Therefore we see in nature itself
mechanisms against absolute knowledge: the philosopher recognises the language of
nature and says: ‘we need art’ and ‘we need only a part of knowledge’ (NL 18872–73,
KSA 7, 19[49] = WEN, 109).
In this sense, the only thing left for philosophy is the artistic will, that is to
say, its “will to illusion”, as well as the realisation that “[…] the power of
illusion […] prevails everywhere” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[37] = WEN, 104).
Hence, there is no language that expresses the essence of things. There is only
the “illusion” we create through fantasy as we make up a world which is not
“in- itself”, but is a product of our imagination and fantasy, pure “fable”.
The linguistic scepticism Nietzsche is proposing is merely the result of those
“anthropomorphic fictions” we create and through which we turn an unknowa-
ble and inapprehensible cosmic event into something measurable and knowa-
ble for us.10 That is why, in effect, we only “believe” to know something of
the things in themselves “when we speak of trees, colours, snow, flowers, […]
and yet we possess only metaphors of things which in no way correspond to
the original entities” (TL 1, 144/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 879).
From these assumptions, Nietzsche maintains that reality is the product of
the imagination and that the world is somewhat posited by art. Our laws are
the laws we place in the world; we can only direct our perspective to all things
through a logical-poetical power, and only in this way do we sustain ourselves
in life. Therefore, the artists are the only ones who decide on things, for they
are the ones who show us how to see things from an angle or in perspective.
Artists show us to dispose of things in such a way that they may remain partly
concealed and hence can only be glimpsed from a certain perspective.11 This
does not mean that there is no “world”. There is no world as something “in-
itself”, as something apart from the individuals that interpret, understand or
talk about the world. There is only a world that is created by them: “[…] no
supposed ‘true reality’, no ‘in-themselves of things’ corresponds to this whole
world which we have created” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 38[10] = WLN, 38), for the
subjects themselves are the ones who enable things to become things (see NL
1885, KSA 11, 38[10] = WLN, 38). Consequently, in as much as the world is
a reflection of humanity, we can only talk about the world in an anthropomor-
phic way, as if it were the “infinitely refracted echo of an original sound” (TL
1, 148/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 1883). Thus the way we are reflected in the world
10 See Kirchhoff (1977). Cf. TL 1, 144–145/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 879 for the idea that nature knows
neither forms, nor concepts and is only a “mysterious X”.
11 Cf. GS 299.
becomes confused with objective truths – because men forget themselves as

subjects, and in fact they forget themselves as “artistically creative” subjects
(TL 1, 148/WL 1, KSA 1, p.1883).
These arguments, which try to bring together the unconscious with the
artistic activity, are best expressed through the rhetorical model, which is
another form of expression that describes man’s unconscious activity. Accord-
ing to Lacoue-Labarthe, Nietzsche’s new approach to rhetoric causes a real
bouleversement12 in his reflections on language. Sarah Kofman asks herself
why Nietzsche, who saw in artistic activity a good model of unconscious activ-
ity, then introduces a second model, namely rhetoric.13 Clearly, apart from
taking a step forward in the development of his philosophical ideas about
language, Nietzsche wants to deepen in the artistic model with the firm inten-
tion of showing that such model is the one that really allows us to disarticulate
the opposition between reality and appearance. That is why, Kofman argues,
“artistic activity, at the same time as it invents forms, posits values and mean-
ings which, in its absence, the world would find itself lacking”.14 In this way,
Nietzsche takes the problem of language to the sphere of “rhetoric” and
emphatically maintains the thesis that language is rhetoric15 and that, ulti-
mately, words are nothing else than tropes. It is in this context that the meta-
phor, as we shall see, acquires a privileged position in Nietzsche’s critique of
metaphysics, and most particularly in his critique of knowledge and concep-
tual language. But at the same time Nietzsche can use this as a bridge that
enables him to move from language to the body. Moreover, he also uses it as
an instrument to speak of those drives that search their expression in the body
before they are encapsulated in words and concepts.16 This is why conscious-
ness, the conceptual world, abstract thought, the soul, are nothing else than
modes of a body which is a multiplicity of drives – drives that form that very
unconscious world pervaded by the great strength of interpretation.
12 Lacoue-Labarthe (1971), pp. 67, 74.

13 See Sarah Kofman (1972), p. 52 ff.
14 See Kofman (1972), p. 52, English translation quoted from Kofman (1994), p. 32.
15 See an interesting study of this idea in Kopperschmidt/Schanze (eds.) (1994).
16 See Broc-Lapeyre (1988), p. 147. See Z I Despisers/ZA I Verächtern, where Nietzsche
speaks of the body as a “great reason, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace […].
Your small reason is […] a tool of your body […], plaything of your great reason”. Jesús Conill
stresses how Nietzsche’s inspiration in the body constitutes a neuralgic centre of a
genealogical hermeneutic, which could very well be, in as much as it is a bodily
hermeneutic, an innovation in relation to other forms of hermeneutics such as Heidegger’s
(hermeneutic of being) and Gadamer’s and Apel’s (linguistic hermeneutic). See Jesús Conill
(1997), p. 113 ff.
2 The Metaphorisation of Language: Another,

New Way of Speaking
The metaphorisation of abstract and conceptual language is not something
Nietzsche takes directly from Gustav Gerber’ reflections on language. Previ-
ously, Schopenhauer’s philosophy had already shown him that we can only
have representations of the essence of things, so that both the world and we
are nothing else than indecipherable images. It is therefore not surprising that
man, who has been essentially defined, since antiquity, as a “rational animal”,
should now be defined as a “metaphorical animal” – for the metaphor repre-
sents a fundamental type of human behaviour. This is why Nietzsche considers
the metaphor to be something more than a simple rhetorical trope. Following
this line of thought, some French philosophers, such as P. Lacoue-Labarthe, J.
Derrida, S. Kofman, B. Pautrat, etc. interpreted this rhetorical element in Nietz-
sche’s thought as a strategy to, amongst other things, deconstruct from within
the absolutist sense of “the proper” and thus of metaphysics itself. Moreover,
they thought that this strategy was specifically intended to undermine the
credibility of “the concept”. In this sense, as part of an effort to remain true
to the principles of his own critique, Nietzsche was supposed to be trying to
show that the concept as such is nothing but the product of metaphorical
activity, that is, a product that denies its metaphorical origin and only through
this denial, or this act of forgetting, becomes a concept. In this way, the meta-
phor would not only have a rhetorical use, but also a strategic one; it would
not be a mere stylistic resource or a simple ornament without any philosophi-
cal relevance, but it would also show the praxis of the Nietzschean transvalua-
tion, or the affirmation of the game of becoming. The metaphor is thus turned
into that very power of fiction which speaks of reality, so that our imaginary
relation to the world can be said to take place through the body. Only the
metaphor, as a form of transposition, is able to apprehend life through the
body and with images; and this is what restores life with its artistic power,
thus contributing to the art of living. In this way Nietzsche turns back to those
radical “realities” constituting the underworld of the body, because this is
where we must place the pre-logic and pre-linguistic processes which precede
all that can be thought.17
In order to express “the metaphorical” and interpret the fundamental prob-
lem which is the relation between language and reality, Nietzsche uses the
term Übertragung (transposition) at a pre-linguistic level:
17 See EH HH 3/EH MAM 3.

We divide things up by gender, describing a tree as masculine and a plant as feminine

[tree, Baum, is masculine and plant, Pflanze, is feminine in German] – how arbitrary
these transpositions (Übertragungen) are! (TL 1, 144/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 878, translation
modified).
To be sure, this term also plays an important role in the language conception
both of Gustav Gerber and Zöllner,18 but in Nietzsche’s notes from 1872–3
(before this he only uses this term very rarely19) it is given a special meaning.
Nietzsche was convinced that the way in which language operates is funda-
mentally metaphorical.20 For a metaphor is not an immediate expression of
what is given in nature – which is something he had ascribed to the symbol
in The Birth of Tragedy – but is a linguistic construct and, as such, is an illusion
or a deceit, the same as any other work of art. In contrast with the concept,
the metaphor refuses to present the non-identical falsely as the identical. This
is why the metaphor has a “predicative structure”. To consider something as
being equal means to use propositions of the form P is Q, in other words,
predications. We can see this in Nietzsche’s definition of metaphor: “Metaphor
means treating as equal something that one has recognised to be similar in
one point” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[249] = WEN, 160).
A word on its own is not a metaphor, and this hints towards the referential-
ity of every metaphor.
Thus, through metaphorical language our creative consciousness affirms
the apparent and imaginary character of reality, as well as its power of commu-
nication; for the person who pronounces a metaphor knows she is the subject
and author of what is being communicated and is therefore conscious of her
relative and occasional character: she knows that there is no close link
between speech and its linguistic object, for they belong to “absolutely differ-
ent spheres” (TL 1, 148/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 884). What is more, the analogical
reasoning which is peculiar to metaphor goes from a particular to another
particular and is thus grounded on a mere similarity. But seeing similarities is
already a creative act, an “aesthetic way of relating” (ästhetisches Verhalten,
TL 1, 148, KSA 1, p. 884) that is not subject to any rules through which non-
identical things could be seen as identical by means of words.
18 See Zöllner (1872). On C. F. Zöllner’s influence on Nietzsche see: Andrea Orsucci (1994),
pp.193–207. On the use of this term see also Böning (1988), p. 112 ff.
19 Only in NL 1869–70, KSA 7, 3[20], NL 1870–71, KSA 7, 5[106], NL 1870–71, KSA 7, 5[107].
20 Slobodan Zunjic says that “all human language is metaphorical, even mimicry,
onomatopoeic language and the language of silence”. For him, metaphorical language
represents a kind of foundation of the human species: cf. Zunjic (1987), p. 158, editors’
translation.
Here Nietzsche introduces the power of fantasy or imagination as an essen-

tial element of metaphorisation. The power of imagination is the power to
successively go from one possibility to another and, because it is a “non-logical
power”, it involves the aesthetic ability to see forms, figures, etc. “in the rapid
perception of similarities” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[75] = WEN, 116, see also
PTAG 3, KSA 1, p. 814). Imagination, such as Nietzsche defines it, is a “strange
and illogical drive” for capturing similarities; it is an aesthetical faculty and
as such it acts logically, however paradoxical as this may seem. For, by seeing
similarities, it grounds the logic of concepts. This way of operating, expressed
through the dynamics of metaphor, is the linguistic form that emphasises the
similarities and as such constitutes the “non-logical”, i.e. the aesthetic moment
of language. The metaphor is thus grounded on the aesthetics working behind
all possible conceptual fixations that determine our conception of the world.
Nietzsche’s wager that metaphorical language is the most appropriate form
of language for the artistic philosopher is based on two aspects: one which is
physiological and another which is epistemological. It also offers some advan-
tages in relation to its critical aims. Firstly, man has an instinct or “fundamen-
tal drive” to create metaphors. This drive is identical to the artistic, Apollonian
drive in nature. Reality is like a metaphorical text, resulting from a “drive to
form metaphors” which creates a new “world” from the ruins of a destroyed
conceptual order (TL 2, 150–151/WL 2, KSA 1, p. 887). In this alternation of
construction and destruction we have what Ricœur has called a “semantic
innovation” within the metaphorical meaning. Secondly, on an epistemologi-
cal level, Nietzsche’s argument for claiming that there is a metaphorical rela-
tion between language and reality is as follows:
[…] for between two absolutely different spheres, such as subject and object are, there is
no causality, no correctness, no expression, but at most an aesthetic way of relating, by
which I mean an allusive transference, a stammering into a quite different language. For
which purpose a middle sphere and mediating force is certainly required which can freely
invent and freely create poetry (TL 1, 148/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 884).
In this text Nietzsche claims once more, as he had done in The Birth of Tragedy,
that human beings, and most especially the philosophers, must be artists, for
it is only as such that they create forms and values. And as creators of language
they form, transform and interpret reality from their own perspective. Thus the
relation language-reality is not a causal relation, it is not a mimetic relation,
but a mediated, conventional and, above all, metaphorical relation.
Nietzsche turns to the work of Gustav Gerber to back up his arguments.21
In his work Die Sprache als Kunst (Language as Art), Gerber explains how every
21 Gustav Gerber (1820–1901) was director of the Realgymnasium in Bomberg. He published

Die Sprache als Kunst, 2 vols., 1871–1872. (The two volumes were published together in
concept is the result of a series of “transpositions” or, as Nietzsche would say,

of “the left-over residue of a metaphor” (TL 1, 147/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 882). In
this sense, already Gerber is proposing a “pictorial language” with a physiolog-
ical basis. The first metaphor would be the transposition of a nervous stimulus
into an image, the second would transform an image into a sound and, finally,
there is the transposition of internal forms, sensations and images into the
sphere of objectivity. All these transpositions, which Nietzsche also considers
as the transit of the particular into the general, are metaphors. In his Lectures
on Rhetoric, Nietzsche interprets this process almost in the same terms, stress-
ing the relation between “stimulus” (Reiz) and “images”:
Man, who forms language, does not perceive things or events, but stimuli (Reize): he does
not reproduce sensations (Empfindungen), but merely copies (Abbildungen) of sensations.
The sensation, evoked through a nervous stimulus (Nervenreiz), does not take in the thing
in itself: this sensation is presented externally through an image (Bild). However, we must
ask ourselves how an activity of the soul can be represented by a sound image (Tonbild)
[…]. Things do not enter our consciousness – only our way of relating to them enters our
consciousness” (KGW II/4, p. 426).22
But only in his later work, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, does
Nietzsche simplifies Gerber’s conception:
The stimulation of a nerve is first translated into an image (Bild): first metaphor! This
image is then imitated by a sound: second metaphor! And each time there is a complete
leap from one sphere into the heart of another, new sphere (TL 1, 144/WL 1, KSA 1,
p. 879).23
Language is thus conceived as the result of a double Übertragung in the sense

that it is a transference or transposition and at the same time it unmasks the
linguistic process of denotation as a process of understanding by means of
signs:
1872). In September 1872 Nietzsche borrowed the first volume from the university library in
Basel, as is recorded in the library register, and it is likely that he never read the second
volume. See Luca Crescenzi (1994). On Gerber’s influence in Nietzsche see Meijers (1988)
and Meijers/Stingelin (1988).
22 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1989), “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, in: F. Nietzsche on Rhetoric
and Language, ed. & transl. by S. L. Gilman/C. Blair/D. J. Parent, New York: Oxford
University Press, p. 21, translation modified. See my introduction (“El poder de la palabra:
Nietzsche y la retórica”) to the Spanish edition: Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós (2000)
pp. 9–80. On Nietzsche’s conception of language and his perspectivism, see my book: Luis
Enrique de Santiago Guervós (2004).
23 Cf. Peter Bornedal (2010), especially in chapters 2 and 5, for a recent approach to
Nietzsche’s epistemology as a “Neuro-Epistemology” with a linguistic-biological base.
We believe that when we speak of trees, colours, snow, and flowers, we have knowledge
of the things themselves, and yet we possess only metaphors of things which in no way
correspond to the original entities (TL 1, 144/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 879).
In the first two phases, which set the bases for the third, Nietzsche admits a
pre-linguistic pictorial thought which is the ground for conceptual thought,
such as he puts it in the following passage:
Unconscious thinking must take place without concepts: that is, in intuitions. […] The
philosopher then tries to replace thinking in images with a conceptual mode of thinking
(KSA 7, 19[107] = WEN, 125).
This pictorial thought – or “thinking in images” (Bilderdenken) – is something

in between the nervous stimulus, i.e. the sensitive activity, and language. How-
ever, as far as the relation Nietzsche tries to establish between language and
physiology is concerned, what is important is that he identifies the production
of images with an “artistic force” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[67] = WEN, 113).
Nietzsche interprets this artistic force physiologically as an activity of the nerv-
ous system, and this already hints towards the “will to power”. In effect, it is
the power of the image that acts and determines the character of the linguistic
experience.
For Nietzsche, thus, metaphorisation is a creative and artistic activity
which is undertaken by the subject as a creator of language. And this is to the
extent that the metaphor is able to produce a new world and rediscover reality.
But most of all, it liberates man’s metaphorical instinct for creative activity, it
enables him to pluralise his perspectives in the domains of art, myth etc. –
domains the nihilistic and decadent will of the scientific spirit has devaluated.
The artist, in contrast to scientists and philosophers, actualises things in their
individual vitality, for the artist does not create dead concepts, but living
images that establish an originary relationship with things. The metaphorical
processes, also called intuitive processes, stem from a force which dares to go
from one thing to another and, at the same time, is able to create the greatest
fictions. Indeed it is an instinctive activity in as much as it is an originary
activity of man and, because it is a creative activity it is also unconscious. The
transformation of the world is possible through this activity. The fact that this
is forgotten is, according to Nietzsche, one of the cornerstones in the architec-
ture of metaphysics. We forget that man is “an artistically creative subject” (TL
1, 148/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 883) and that the “drive to form metaphors” is the
“fundamental human drive” (TL 1, 150/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 887) which is at the
origin of language. Here is where we find that originary artistic and poetical
character of human language, which precedes the logical formation of the
concept. This is the path Nietzsche has chosen to show that through the art of
creating metaphors man can directly express, with the most genuine inno-
cence, what is ultimately real.
3 The “New Language” of the Physiology of Art

as an Expression of “True Realities”
We have seen how, on the one hand, language is grounded on the human
“instinct” to create metaphors. Language is thus grounded on that unknown
interior which constitutes the human organism and where we find “true reali-
ties”, that is, the physiological and biological values which enable us to know
about life. Upon this basis Nietzsche creates a “new language” that takes the
physiology of art as a paradigmatic example. It is a clearly anti-metaphysical
language that is announced within a program which could not be any other
than the transvaluation of all values from the perspective of the will to power.
According to Heidegger, in Nietzsche’s new proposal “the ultimate consequen-
ces of the aesthetical questioning of art are thought to the end”,24 that is,
by reducing the “sentimental state” to nervous stimulations and other bodily
reactions. In the end, we are confronting another way of approaching the prob-
lem of language – another Nietzschean strategy to explain the relation between
language and reality. But this time, the explanation has a strong hermeneutical
character and is anchored on physiology and biology, that is, on the inner
world of human beings, on the organic complexity of their instincts and drives.
This physiological perspective from which we believe we can approach the
problem of language in Nietzsche does not exclude the fact that physiology
should also have a “literary function”, as Pfotenhauer remarks,25 or indeed an
aesthetic function in the sense that it carries out an artistic “metaphorical
transposition”.26 Likewise, we cannot forget the ironic tone we find in many
of Nietzsche’s “medicinal” sentences and which Blondel interprets as “bur-
lesque”.27 But, in the end, it is just an alternative way of dealing with the
problem of aesthetics – alternative to his metaphysical approach in The Birth
of Tragedy. This new approach contains a radicalisation and auto-critical
examination of the principles of his “artist’s metaphysics” (BT Attempt 7/GT
Versuch 7), which had guided the first steps of his philosophy: “to look at art
from the prism of life” (BT Attempt 2/GT Versuch 2).
24 Cf. Heidegger (1996), p. 91, editors’ translation.

25 Cf. Pfotenhauer (1984).
26 Pfotenhauer (1984), p. 407.
27 Blondel (1986), p. 125. See also Winschester (1994), p. 62.
Ever since Nietzsche was acquainted with Lange’s28 work, Geschichte des
Materialismus, he searched for a new ground within the physiological and bio-
logical – and in aesthetics he searched for some kind of “superconstruction”.
Nietzsche writes: “the aesthetic values are based on biological values, […] the
aesthetic feelings of well-being on biological feelings of well-being” (NL 1888,
KSA 13, 16[75], editors’ translation). This same idea is expressed more vividly
in a retrospective text from Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche alludes to the period
of Human, All Too Human:
I was worried how thin and starved I had become: my knowledge was completely devoid
of realities, and ‘idealities’ were not worth a damn! – I was seized with an almost burning
thirst: and in fact, from that point on, I pursued nothing more than physiology, medicine,
and the natural sciences (EH HH 3/EH MAM 3).29
But in order to express his philosophical thought from this new perspective,
Nietzsche needed a new language, different and “vigorous”, “his own lan-
guage”, as he claims in his An Attempt at Self-Criticism (BT Attempt/GT Ver-
such) from 1886. Only this could provide him with the appropriate instrument
to release himself from the tutelage of Schopenhauer and Wagner.
This new language which expresses organic and pulsional conditions, that
is, the physiological becoming, is what determines the philosophical radicali-
sation of Nietzsche’s position. However, we cannot affirm that this new lan-
guage is merely “metaphorical” or “ironic”,30 for this would mean to deny
Nietzsche’s endeavour to find a way out of metaphysics – which is the basis
of morality and aesthetics – , and it would also mean rejecting Nietzsche’s
dedication to the study of the theories of biologists, physiologists and natural-
ists of his time, especially from 1881 onwards. His frequent readings of physi-
ologists and naturalists such as Virchow, Roux,31 Haeckel, Darwin, or Boscov-
ich, among others, and his literary incursions in such authors as Stendhal,
Balzac or Baudelaire,32 played an immeasurable strategic role in relation to
28 On Lange’s influence in Nietzsche see George J. Stack (1983). It is important to note that
Nietzsche studied the work of Friedrich Albert Lange (1866), Geschichte des Materialismus
und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart in 1866, shortly after becoming acquainted
with the work of Schopenhauer, and therefore some years before reading Gustav Gerber.
29 On the influence of physiology in Nietzsche’s aesthetics, see Thorgeirsdottir (1996).
30 Blondel believes there might be something ironic in this and affirms that “the impact of
many ‘medicinal’ phrases is less physiological than burlesque”. Cf. Blondel (1986), p. 125.
31 Wilhelm Roux (1881), Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Ein Beitrag zur Vervollstän-
digung der mechanischen Zweckmässigkeitslehre, a book which is in the Nietzsche Library.
32 See Wotling (1995), especially pp. 155–184, where he addresses the topic of the
“physiology of art” as an example of clinical analysis.
the transformation his philosophy underwent during the last period and espe-
cially in relation to the deconstruction of the hegemony of human subjectivity,
which had dominated right up to Kant. In fact, Nietzsche’s new ideas concern-
ing the “will to power” and art need this new language in order to be able to
talk about artistic creativity as the culmination of an indeterminate number of
drives.33
It is therefore not surprising that Nietzsche should be aware of his new
way of undertaking philosophy and that he should talk in methodological
terms about following the “guiding thread of the body”, which is conceived as
a hermeneutical imperative in our understanding of art. For this enables him
to show that art as such is a “sublimation of the most primitive biological
instincts” and also constitutes an appropriate point of reference to describe
the symptoms of “the world seen from inside” (BGE 36/JGB 36), that is, of the
“will to power”. This is also why it is not so much a question of justifying
existence in aesthetic terms or of introducing an “artist’s metaphysics” as it
was in his earlier works. The task now is to elaborate an aesthetical physiology
as a provisional and regulative part of the investigation, which must help us
understand and overcome such problems as nihilism, décadence, Wagner’s
music and our own culture, – and most especially, it must enable us to achieve
“the right idea of the nature of our subject-unity” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 40[21] =
WLN, 43).34 This methodology is in fact a “regulative hypothesis” or “heuristic
principle” (BGE 15/JGB 15) which allows us to express the tensions and forces
that underlie all artistic activity, as well as to express the multiplicity of tend-
encies and drives implied in the idea of “will to power”. Nietzsche was con-
vinced that this new “methodology”, sc. to follow the “the guiding thread of
the body”, was the appropriate strategic instrument that could help us “free
ourselves from the seduction of words” (BGE 16/JGB 16), i.e. of grammar.
Along the guiding thread of the body we find a tremendous multiplicity; it is methodologi-
cally permissible to use the more easily studied, the richer phenomenon as a guiding
thread to understand the poorer one (NL 1885, KSA 11, 2[91] = WLN, 77).35
Furthermore, this way of undertaking philosophy is also “crucial for the fate
of individuals as well as peoples” – i.e. it is crucial for their fate “that culture
begin in the right place” and “the right place is the body, gestures, diet, physi-
33 See Müller-Lauter (1998).

34 This posthumous note begins with the question “why” start from the body and
physiology. On this topic see Stiegler (2001), pp. 17–44.
35 On the body as a radical starting point of all ontological interpretation, see Granier
(1966), pp. 336 ff.
ology, everything else follows from this…” (TI Skirmishes 47/GD Streifzüge 47).
In addition, if one is after a methodological foundation or ground, “the phe-
nomenon of the body is the richer, more distinct, more comprehensible phe-
nomena” and, therefore, “methodological priority” must be given to it (NL
1886–87, KSA 12, 5[56] = WLN, 113).36
Once again, following the body’s “great wisdom” as our starting point and
radical foundation, we are able to deal with decadent ideals, because the truth
is that the body holds the attributes that metaphysics had saved for the soul.
That is, the body thinks, chooses, judges, interprets, creates values, feels, imag-
ines, in such a way that all organic formations participate in our thought, our
feelings and our will. In this sense the “higher functions of the spirit” are no
more than “sublimated organic functions” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 25[356], editors’
translation), “a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps,
unknowable, but felt text” (D 119/M 119). Thus, the status given to the body
goes well beyond the mere functioning of organs. And because the body is a
multiplicity of forces in continuous movement and permanent struggle, it is
the least susceptible of being translated into a conceptual language. The body
is a multiplicity of perspectives enabling a broader interpretation of the world
which opens the way towards a non-metaphysical “conceptualisation”.
Among the different states of the body, Nietzsche gives special relevance
to the physiological state of intoxication (Rausch),37 which he considers to be
the fundamental aesthetic state, “the feeling of fullness and increasing
strength” (TI Skirmishes 8/GD Streifzüge 8), precisely because the creative
power of art is the result of a biological excess:
One physiological precondition is indispensable for there to be art or any sort of aesthetic
action or vision: intoxication. Without intoxication to intensify the excitability of the
whole machine, there can be no art (TI Skirmishes 8/GD Streifzüge 8).38
Here lies the difference between the artist and the “man of knowledge”. While
the former is productive and transforms things, the latter tries to discover fix
and stable norms concerning the nature of things, as if they were immobile
36 See Jaspers (1963), p. 47.

37 The figures of Apollo and Dionysos, which were metaphysical figures in the beginning,
are now symbols of experimental life. Both artistic forces are conceptualised, in this context,
as species of intoxication. See Lypp (1984). On the relation between both principles and
their grounding on the body, see Remmert (1978), especially pp. 35–45. See also TI
Skirmishes 10/GD Streifzüge 10.
38 In a posthumous note entitled “On the Physiology of Art” (“Zur Physiologie der Kunst”,
NL 1888, KSA 13, 17[9], editors’ translation), Nietzsche lists a series of essential points –
and in the 18th point he writes: “Art as intoxication, medically”.
and independent from human action and interpretation. Indeed, the artists’
fundamental feature is to transform and to transfigure things so that they
become the reflection of their own strength and power, that is, they become
an expression of “perfection” (TI Skirmishes 9/GD Streifzüge 9). For Nietzsche
this means that “in art, people enjoy themselves as perfection” (TI Skirmishes
9/GD Streifzüge 9). On the other hand, we must not think that, because intoxi-
cation is a state of pleasure, it means a chaotic increase in strength – on the
contrary, the senses harmonise in a perfect equilibrium which becomes mani-
fest in the simplificatio. Intoxication entails not a dispersion of energies, but a
concentration of strength and power. Heidegger has quite rightly drawn our
attention to Nietzsche’s definition of intoxication as a feeling – a feeling being
“the way we find ourselves in relation to ourselves and, thus, also in relation
to things”.39 So we “feel” intoxicated and transported to other worlds at the
same time as, consciously, we feel that we are bodily beings, because to feel
means to be alive as a body, in one way or another. But intoxication, as a
feeling of “increasing strength”, makes us go beyond ourselves and experience
ourselves as being whole, more translucent and, hence, it makes us feel espe-
cially open to everything, most particularly to beauty. That is why for the artist
nothing is strange.
Nietzsche’s statement that “aesthetics is inextricably linked to […] biologi-
cal presuppositions” (CW Epilogue/WA Epilog)40 is clarified by the fact that
the artistic force is described through the language and the connotations of
the state of intoxication. But this can be better appreciated when he adds that
“the beautiful belongs within the general category of the biological values”
(NL 1887, KSA 12, 10[67] = WLN, 202), instead of evaluating it in terms of an
aesthetic ideal. Hence, the experience of beauty does not refer to an inner
contemplation of the spirit as a reference, but rather to a biological “aesthetic
instinct”. Zarathustra asked: “Where is beauty?”, and he answered briskly:
“Where I must will with my entire will; where I want to love and perish so that
an image does not remain merely an image” (Z II Immaculate/ZA II Erk-
ennntnis). Consequently, the criterion to distinguish between Dionysian and
decadent art must be a biological and physiological criterion, or a feeling of
strength: “If and where a judgement that something is ‘beautiful’ should be
made is a question of strength (of an individual or a people’s strength)” (NL
1887, KSA 12, 10[67], editors’ translation).41
On the other hand, according to Nietzsche, ugly art is a decadent, nihilistic
art, that is, an art that, although it represents the tragic aspects of life, limits
39 Heidegger (1996), p. 99, editors’ translation.

40 See Hillebrand (1966), p. 76.
41 See Rusticelli (1992), p. 192.
itself to reproducing them, and lacks the transfiguring ability of true art, i.e.
of the art of “great style”, which is the only art capable of transforming the
ugly and making it beautiful. “Ugliness means the décadence of a type […],
means a decline in organising strength, in ‘will’, to speak physiologically” (NL
1888, KSA 13, 14[117], editors’ translation),42 for man’s “feeling of power, his
will to power, his courage, his pride – these sink with ugliness and rise with
beauty” (TI Skirmishes 20). Nietzsche sometimes takes this reduction of aes-
thetics to physiology so far as to say that the effect of the ugly and the beautiful
can be measured “with a dynamometer”: confronted with the ugly, man loses
strength and energy, to the extent that such a loss can be measured; and
the same goes for the beautiful, which is quantifiable and measurable as a
physiological phenomenon (TI Skirmishes 20/GD Streifzüge 20). Thus, the
“aesthetic taste” and the “aesthetic judgements”, i.e. judgements saying that
something is “beautiful” (cf. TI Skirmishes 20/GD Streifzüge 20), depend on
the body and bodily states. Taste in particular depends on people’s “lifestyle,
nutrition, digestion, maybe a deficit or excess of inorganic salts in their blood
and brains – in short, in their physis” (GS 39/FW 39). That is why aesthetic
judgements are nothing more than the “‘subtlest tones’ of the physis” (GS 39/
FW 39), which the artist listens to according to his needs. The body, hence,
expands its influence to the realm of aesthetic pleasure. We have an example
of this in Nietzsche’s judgement of Wagner’s music in his later works. Nietzsche
rejects Wagner’s music for the harmful effects it produced; Nietzsche’s objec-
tions become “physiological objections” (e.g. NL 1888, KSA 13, 15[111]).
Taking these physiological assumptions as our starting point, it is only
logical that the judgement on the beauty of an object should not refer to a
beautiful objective characteristic lying in the nature of things. The concept of
“beauty in itself” is nothing more than an idealistic fiction of the imagination,
for the value of an aesthetic judgement does not depend on intellectual rea-
sons, but on physiological ones. Although we are used to finding beauty in
things, Nietzsche maintains, as we have seen, that we are the ones who grant
beauty to the world through our own evaluations. Therefore, in the same way
we impose the stable categories of thought on the flux of becoming, we also
impose our aesthetic valuations on the world. In aesthetics, like in epistemol-
ogy, we only “discover” in nature what we already have put in it:
Fundamentally, humanity is reflected in all things, people find beauty in everything that
throws their image back at them: the judgment ‘beautiful’ is the vanity of their species…
(TI Skirmishes 19/GD Streifzüge 19).
42 See also NL 1888, KSA 13, 16[40].

Consequently, what really counts is who is pronouncing the judgement about

the “beautiful”; for the beautiful as such is a valuation of the individual, differ-
ent in each being, according to its perspective and power and ultimately
expressed in a primary state of the organism.
Moreover, the will to power is best expressed through these judgements,
for they are related to biological values such as the conservation and auto-
affirmation of the individual. These judgements also explain the artist’s own
creativity, for they express a feeling of “fullness” and “accumulated strength”,
a feeling of power. In aesthetic judgements we set ourselves as the norm of
perfection – our own organism drives us to leave our imprint in everything
that surrounds us. Hence, for Nietzsche, to make the world beautiful means to
“humanise” the world. And this also explains why, according to Nietzsche, the
scope of every aesthetic judgement is circumscribed by the first truth of aes-
thetics: “Nothing is beautiful, only people are beautiful: all aesthetics is based
on this naïvité” (TI Skirmishes 20/GD Streifzüge 20).43
4 The Paradoxes of a Radical Criticism of

Language. The “Lack of an Appropriate
Language” and Linguistic Pragmatism as
a Solution
We have seen how the physiology of art enabled Nietzsche to deal with the
paradoxes of conceptual language and, at the same time, enabled him to find
a practical application of his fundamental idea, the will to power. However,
Nietzsche’s strategy is once again confronted with the problem underlying his
radical line of attack: the “lack of an appropriate language”. Can we really
assert that aesthetical judgements are free from metaphysical corruption? And
does not a physiological language still confuse linguistic conventions with the
description of organic processes? The philosopher, as Nietzsche would say, is
still “imprisoned in the nets of language” (NL 1872–73, KSA 7, 19[135], edi-
tors’ translation), because “our true experiences are completely taciturn” (TI
Skirmishes 26/GD Streifzüge 26). In one way or another, Nietzsche is still scep-
tical about language because the prejudices of language, as he had already
written in Daybreak, don’t allow us to “explain inner processes and drives” (D
43 Cf. also NL 1888, KSA 13, 16[40]. In BT Attempt 7/GT Versuch 7, Nietzsche also condemns
sympathy on the grounds that it is a waste of energy.
115/M 115), and we only have words to express “superlative degrees of these
processes and drives” (D 115/M 115). In spite of his new solution, the so-
called Sprachnot (“language-need”, or simply “the lack of an appropriate lan-
guage”) seems to affect Nietzsche’s latest period as well. This is something he
somehow foresaw in 1881, when he started to get interested in the study of
physiological matters and natural sciences. At that time he already predicted
in a pessimistic tone:
Our natural science is now on its way to clarify the tiniest processes through our semi-
skilled affects and feelings, in short: it is on its way to create a type of language for those
processes: very well! But it remains a pictorial language (NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[128], edi-
tors’ translation).
To be sure, the natural sciences have created their own language to describe
and explain those organic processes, but for Nietzsche that language will still
remain a “pictorial language” or “speech in images” (Bilderrede) – in images
of that same “unknown, perhaps, unknowable, but felt text” (D 119/M 119)
that we are. The subject’s inner world must remain fundamentally hidden from
us, for “nothing […] can be more incomplete than his image of the totality of
drives” (D 119/M 119).44 And the language we use to designate those
unknown physiological processes is a conventional language, a language of
fictions. By saying this, Nietzsche seems to be indicating that the language
used by an anatomist like Roux to describe the cellular and organic world is
still a “metaphorical” language, a “speech in images”. For in fact Roux speaks
of struggles, triumphs, dominations, conflicts, defeats etc., thereby giving us
only an “image” of the body and using a language that cannot be said to
“correspond” to reality.
This kind of linguistic anti-realism which Nietzsche, in the end, defends
so passionately sometimes loses consistency and argumentative strength. Con-
way, for instance, considers Nietzsche to be an “anti-realist” who nevertheless
sees the pragmatic advantages of realism.45 This means that, although he is
proposing a radical perspectivism, always from a point of view strictly relative
to human experience, he inevitably uses the metaphysical, realistic vocabulary
when we he wants to talk about the world. It is difficult to dispossess language
from its grounding in traditional metaphysical connotations; that is why he
falls into inevitable lapses of realism and his writings are pervaded by passages
where language is used realistically – because it is useful to do so and because
there is no other alternative. As Conway says:
44 See Müller-Lauter (1998), p. 120 ff.

45 Conway (1990), p. 96.
Because our grammar is metaphysically freighted, all attempts to formulate synthetic

judgments about the world are vulnerable to metaphysical corruption. Metaphysics thus
comprises a ‘crude fetishism’ that systematically mistakes linguistic conventions for accu-
rate descriptions of the world.46
This is the reason why Nietzsche quite often accepts the occasional pragmatic
necessity of the realistic discourse as something inexorable, or otherwise we
would have to abandon the conventional categories and vocabulary that have
nourished philosophy and science.
However, the kind of relativism Nietzsche wants to introduce into language
through metaphorisation may well be an efficient way of unmasking the abso-
lute instances that emerge from conceptual language. There is no doubt that
Nietzsche’s argumentation, or this kind of linguistic scepticism, is greatly
charged with irony, as Rorty has noticed.47 On the one hand, Nietzsche tries
to show the utterly illusory character of concepts, i.e. he tries to show that “the
infinitely complicated cathedral of concepts” has been erected “on moving
foundations, or even, one might say, on flowing water” (TL 1, 147/WL 1, KSA
1. 882). But on the other hand, far from eliminating the conceptual world,
Nietzsche conceives a “free spirit” who, precisely because it recognises the
illusory character of concepts, will be able to use them in an artistic and truly
creative way. Nietzsche suggests that we use language in a way that forces
language itself to say what it does not say, or says only unwillingly – and this
is in order to decipher it according to other relations than the ones language
itself tries to impose. That is why his method is the genealogy and he carries
out his incursions within the sphere of physiology: he tries to make language
say what it conceals and does not say.
A last question is, however, unavoidable. What language does Nietzsche
speak? If he talks, his language is metaphysical because of its grammar. In
this sense, he does not seem to have overcome metaphysics. He just seems to
go out with a bang after having cultivated and preserved what he is leaving
behind. Such is the sense of the interpretations which turn Nietzsche into a
mere émigré, presenting him as only a poet or underscoring his final madness.
In as much as he speaks he necessarily produces a discourse of a metaphysical
nature, for he cannot avoid using metaphysical concepts. It is, thus, not clear,
how he can recognise the illusory character of concepts or metaphors, consid-
ering that this recognition needs language in order to be articulated as an
illusion. Doesn’t this mean that Nietzsche’s radical criticism is no more than a
declaration of good intentions? If it is not possible to get outside of language,
46 Conway (1990), p. 101.

47 See Rorty (1989), p. 26.
what are the effective results of Nietzsche’s critique? Nietzsche has staked his
Dionysian philosophy within the realm of language. It is possible that he was
seeking something unsayable. Language as such is metaphysical and, as Nietz-
sche says, “crudely fetishistic” (TI Reason 5/GD Vernunft 5), for it everywhere
posits agents and actions, substance, causality, will, being, etc. It is like being
at a summary trial where objections are formulated, but where no evidence is
submitted. His thoughts are deeper than the reasons he gives to prove them.
Perhaps Derrida spotted Nietzsche’s limitations with clarity and saw a pos-
sible solution to his aporias and paradoxes. From his perspective, Nietzsche is
not talking so much about destroying the conceptual world, but rather about
its deconstruction, i.e. its transformation within the framework of illusion and
aesthetic play. In this sense, Nietzsche’s critique should be understood as the
effort of opening fissures from within – fissures that will enable him to see
something beyond what has been established, something that he still is unable
to “say”, because an appropriate language is lacking. Or as Eugen Fink has
put it: Nietzsche’s way out towards an aesthetic theory is an inevitable conse-
quence of that lack of an appropriate language, or of not having been able to
give the proper expression to his new way of thinking.48 But is this to Nietz-
sche’s discredit or, on the contrary, is it his great achievement? In the history
of philosophy it is not a novelty that philosophers should turn to aesthetics
when they cannot find any other argumentative possibility. This could be
Nietzsche’s case and, later, Heidegger’s too. But the truth is that we can only
fight against conceptual language with concepts, and this conflict is an inevita-
ble consequence of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. The grandeur of reason, as Der-
rida said, “is that one cannot speak out against it except by being for it, that
one can protest it only from within it; and within its domain, Reason leaves
us only the recourse to stratagems and strategies”.49 Thus, when Nietzsche
tries to describe the metaphor as a “transposition” of meaning, he also affirms
that that is only possible after having noticed a similarity. Now, to perceive a
similarity involves the application of a conceptual scheme. Thus, all transposi-
tion is necessarily mediated by a pre-existing scheme and, as such, it is
abstract and conceptual.
Finally, Nietzsche was aware that the “cobweb” (D 117/M 117) of our
language is consistent enough to pervade everything without disintegrating.
Language still keeps us immersed in the illusion and the belief that each things
exists in itself, independently of other things, precisely because words give us
the possibility of naming things by isolating them from the totality of being.
48 Fink (1979), p. 25 ff.

49 Derrida (2005), p. 42.
In this way, as Schajowicz50 points out, as we try to discover the essence of

things through language (the very means by which we apprehend them), we
are still introducing metaphysical images in our conception of the world. Lan-
guage is ruled by certain laws which we, quite inevitably, end up applying
also to reality. Something similar is what Heidegger must have experienced
when he criticised the traditional language of philosophy for being an onto-
theological conceptual language and when he felt, not without some perplex-
ity, that thought was unable to transcend the limits of that very language,
precisely because of the “lack of an appropriate language” (Sprachnot):
That difficulty lies in language. Our Western languages are languages of metaphysical
thinking, each in its own way. It must remain an open question whether the nature of
Western languages is in itself marked with the exclusive brand of metaphysics, and thus
marked permanently by onto-theo-logic, or whether these languages offer other possibili-
ties of utterance – and that means at the same time of a telling silence.51
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Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Schelling, F. W. J. (2008), Historical-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology,
transl. by Mason Richey/Marcus Zisselberger, New York: SUNY.
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Stack, George J. (1983), Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
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Nietzsches, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
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Zöllner, J. C. F. (1872), Über die Natur der Cometen. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der
Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Staackmann.
Zunjic, Slobodan (1987), “Begrifflichkeit und Metapher. Einige Bemerkungen zu Nietzsches
Kritik der philosphischen Sprache”, in: Nietzsche-Studien 16, pp. 149–163.
II. On Language, Emotion, and Morality
Andrea Bertino
Discovering Moral Aspects of the
Philosophical Discourse About Language
and Consciousness With Nietzsche,
Humboldt, and Levinas
I
There is a bond between language and consciousness which seems impossible
to dissolve, because becoming conscious of one’s own thinking presupposes
that one is able to speak about it. At least when we speak in the Indo-European
languages about our being conscious we use the pronoun “I”, and by empha-
sising its position at the beginning of our sentences our will is manifested.
Thus it is implausible that we should conceive of our consciousness as a sort
of lighthouse isolated from language, as a transcendental, pre-linguistic
dimension of thinking. If consciousness necessarily involves speaking about
something which has already been said, the structures of one’s language are
the limits of one’s own consciousness. Similarly, the possibilities provided by
one’s vocabulary and grammar define the possibilities of one’s own reflected
experience. Our vocabulary and grammar came to us not from heaven but from
earth: they arise from communication with other human beings and express
the need of being understood by others. The dialogue of our thinking with
itself, i.e. our consciousness, stems from the incorporation of dialogues with
other people.
If consciousness relies on language, it is not possible to conceive of it as
a substance. It should rather be conceived of as a process arising from the
development of language. Therefore, one might ask what is the nature of lan-
guage before the emergence of consciousness and whether any kind of commu-
nication between preconscious subjects was ever possible. The question con-
cerning the “becoming conscious of something” (GS 354/FW 354) is therefore
a question about the origin and the “becoming” of the subject, whose peculiar
character is manifest in his consciousness.
Because a conscious subject is also the condition of moral discourse – a
discourse that presupposes reflection, freedom and responsibility – , a sub-
ject’s consciousness cannot be treated as a purely theoretical problem. In fact,
without an identity-generating self to which actions and intentions can be
ascribed, traditional moral discourse loses its meaning. The unity of a reflect-
ive personality is, above all, a semiotic expression of the communication
92 Andrea Bertino
between human beings – an expression that does not have ontological thick-
ness, but only a pragmatic meaning. Self and consciousness are useful in life
because they allow us to play some linguistic games – moral discourse is one
of these games – that stabilise our social life. Although it is true that language
makes consciousness usable in social life, it is still possible to call into ques-
tion the utility of this moralising stabilisation of the Self, as well as of society.
The idea that drives and unconscious powers are efficacious in determining
our actions is the most important argument against a self-sufficient morality
that claims to be grounded on an absolute foundation beyond the body and
beyond becoming.
Nietzsche considered this whole question and clearly recognised the link
between language and consciousness, as well as its moral consequences. He
did this in aphorism 354 of The Gay Science:
On ‘the genius of the species’. – The problem of consciousness (or rather, of becoming
conscious of something) first confronts us when we begin to realize how much we can
do without it; and now we are brought to this initial realization by physiology and natural
history (which have thus required two hundred years to catch up with Leibniz’s precocious
suspicion). For we could think, feel, will, remember, and also ‘act’ in every sense of the
term, and yet none of all this would have to ‘enter our consciousness’ (as one says figura-
tively). All of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in the mirror; and
still today, the predominant part of our lives actually unfolds without this mirroring – of
course also our thinking, feeling, and willing lives, insulting as it may sound to an older
philosopher. To what end does consciousness exist at all when it is basically superfluous?
If one is willing to hear my answer and its possibly extravagant conjecture, it seems to
me that the subtlety and strength of consciousness is always related to a person’s (or
animal’s) ability to communicate; and the ability to communicate, in turn, to the need to
communicate (GS 354/FW 354).
It is worth noticing that Nietzsche’s discussion of the relationship between

consciousness and communication focuses on the problem of “becoming con-
scious of something” and should not be confused with speculation about con-
sciousness in general. The reification of self-referring mental processes could
simply result, in fact, from the influence of language on philosophical think-
ing. The determination of our mental activity by grammatical structures of
language,1 as well as the relationship between modern philosophical theories
1 Cf. BGE 20/JGB 20: “In fact, their thinking is not merely as much a discovery as at it a
recognition, remembrance, a returning and homecoming into a distant, primordial, total
economy of the soul, from which each concept once grew: – to this extent, philosophizing is
a type of atavism of the highest order. The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek,
and German philosophizing speaks for itself clearly enough. Where there are linguistic
affinities, then because of the common philosophy of grammar (I mean: due to the
unconscious domination and direction through similar grammatical functions), it is obvious
that everything lies ready from the very start for a similar development and sequence of
Discovering Moral Aspects of the Philosophical Discourse 93
of subjectivity and the naive belief in the ontological weight of our grammatical
categories, are discussed by Nietzsche very clearly.2 It should be obvious that
transforming consciousness into a substance prevents us from considering con-
sciousness as a problem. Only if understood as a process does consciousness
lose its self-evident character. For Nietzsche, physiology and natural history
are crucial because they make philosophers aware of the phenomenon of
“becoming conscious” and, thus, of the problematical nature of self-reflection.
This problem is tackled by Nietzsche in GS 11/FW 11,3 where, instead of using
the substantive “Bewusstsein”, he analyses the quality of intellectual activities
calling them “Bewusstheit”. Hence, Nietzsche offers a history of consciousness
as an evolutionary system. In this system, consciousness appears as a disease
of the human organism – an organism which, according to Nietzsche, can
philosophical systems; on the other hand, the way seems as good as blocked for certain
other possibilities of interpreting the world. Philosophers of the Ural-Altaic language group
(where the concept of the subject is the most poorly developed) are more likely to ‘see the
world’ differently, and to be found on paths different from those taken by the Indo-Germans
or Muslims: the spell of particular grammatical functions is in the last analysis the spell of
physiological value judgments and racial conditioning. – So much towards a rejection of
Locke’s superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas”.
2 Cf. BGE 54/JGB 54: “People used to believe in ‘the soul’ as they believed in grammar and
the grammatical subject: people said that ‘I’ was a condition and ‘think’ was a predicate and
conditioned – thinking is an activity, and a subject must be thought of as its cause”.
3 Cf. GS 11/FW 11, translation modified: “Consciousness (Bewusstsein) – Consciousness
(Bewusstheit) is the latest development of the organic, and hence also its most unfinished
and unrobust feature. Consciousness (Bewusstheit) gives rise to countless mistakes that lead
an animal or human being to perish sooner than necessary, ‘beyond destiny’, as Homer puts
it. If the preserving alliance of the instincts were not so much more powerful, if it did not
serve on the whole as a regulator, humanity would have to perish with open eyes of its
misjudging and its fantasizing, of its lack of thoroughness and its incredulity – in short, of
its consciousness; or rather, without the instincts, humanity would long have ceased to
exist! Before a function is fully developed and mature, it constitutes a danger to the
organism; it is a good thing for it to be properly tyrannized in the meantime! Thus, consci-
ousness is properly tyrannized – and not least by one’s pride in it! One thinks it constitutes
the kernel of man, what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, most original in him! One takes consci-
ousness to be a given determinate magnitude! One denies its growth and intermittences!
Sees it as ‘the unity of the organism’! This ridiculous overestimation and misapprehension
of consciousness has the very useful consequence that an all-too-rapid development of
consciousness was prevented. Since they thought they already possessed it, human beings
did not take much trouble to acquire it – and things are no different today! The task of
incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is still quite new; it is only beginning to
dawn on the human eye and is yet barely discernible – it is a task seen only by those who
have understood that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all of our consci-
ousness refers to errors!”.
94 Andrea Bertino
easily find a useful and reliable regulation of its own life nearly by unconscious
impulses only.
The reason why Bewusstheit harms human beings is not just because –
again according to GS 11/FW 11 – they, paradoxically, feel so proud of their
“becoming conscious”. This pride may even set a limit to the dangerous devel-
opment of human consciousness. Human beings who are proud in this sense
(especially philosophers) rely on an image of consciousness which assures
their specificity and their dignity as reflective beings. Therefore they forget the
dynamic nature of consciousness as a mental state, i.e., they become uncon-
scious of the real nature of consciousness. The effect of consciousness is lim-
ited insofar as a false image of consciousness limits self-reflection. So the igno-
rance of human beings about the dynamics of consciousness is a pre-condition
for behaviour not exclusively ruled by self-reflection. Since life requires some
forms of unconsciousness, Nietzsche introduces the idea of a dialectical
shrewdness of the mind, a smartness that produces illusions and feelings that
make human beings less conscious of the processual nature of their own Self.
The function of the feeling of pride can be explained by reference to Nietz-
sche’s early works. Already in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense he
affirms that men have taken the mistakes of the intellect seriously only because
of their pride (“Hochmuth”) in their faculties, while these mistakes were in fact
the very condition of their own conservation.4 This feeling of pride is a false
evaluation about the nature and epistemic value of our mental forces and men-
tal states, but at the same time a condition of life. This means that the task of
the philosopher, as announced by Nietzsche at the end of GS 11/FW 11, may
be very dangerous. By means of a critical discussion of philosophical theories
concerning consciousness the task of philosophers is to prepare a new, deeper
form of consciousness. By challenging the pride of philosophers as expressed
in their theories of consciousness Nietzsche makes it possible to increase a
kind of self-consciousness that is actually dangerous for life. Although he is
aware of this dangerous consequence, Nietzsche deliberately seeks to reach
the very same result that previous philosophers have reached involuntarily,
that is to say, the limitation of the function of consciousness in (the conserva-
tion of) human life. The difference between the task identified by Nietzsche
and the task of previous philosophers is that Nietzsche questions whether (the
art of) limiting our consciousness is better or worse for (the conservation of)
human life. Nietzsche suggests a dialectical development of consciousness
which results in a partial negation of consciousness itself; this, in turn, entails
4 Cf. TL 1, 141–142/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 876.

the legitimacy of instinctual behaviour, which has traditionally been under-

stood as the opposite of consciousness.
Nietzsche’s task presupposes an analysis of the mistakes made by previous
philosophers. Their naive pride about consciousness may have included mean-
ingful insights into the communication processes. The feeling of pride as such
arises from the discourse about the specificity of human nature as well as
about the destiny of man and his particular dignity as a self-reflective being.
This explains why, in GS 354/FW 354, Nietzsche speaks of communication. In
particular, he is interested in the process whereby consciousness, although
potentially dangerous, becomes somehow useful for human life. According to
Nietzsche, our linguistic ability is the condition of the development of con-
sciousness as a particular form of internal dialogue. More precisely, it is under
the pressure of communication that human beings become skilled in using
their language in a more differentiated and finer way. Because of their con-
sciousness they become able to reach a better understanding of their own
needs and to satisfy such needs with the help provided by other people.
It is very important to recognise that the same argumentative scheme had
been already used in GS 11/FW 11, an aphorism where Nietzsche argues that
the development of a specific form of consciousness is what limits the danger-
ous growth of self-reflection. In order to understand Nietzsche’s sketch of the
original form of communication among unconscious individuals, one must
hypothesise a Self that could be able to become aware of his needs without
necessarily becoming consciously aware of his own becoming aware of his
needs. These needs are then satisfied faster and more efficiently by conscious
communication, because the individual becomes a Self, i.e., his needs become
part of an organic representation of a good life and a concrete ideal of happi-
ness. For the satisfaction of their needs articulated in this way human beings
can now carry forward arguments. Through the construction of a Self, commu-
nication acquires not only efficacy, but also stability. Such a Self can acquire
a character, too, and this makes its needs and actions not only predictable,
but also justifiable. Indeed, by referring to the word “character” we try to
clarify the behaviour of a person even when she cannot give us any rational
motives for explaining her actions. Therefore, she becomes able to perform
precisely the role of being a “morally responsible person” – not only in relation
to actions, but also in relation to the character that brings these actions into
existence. Via the idea of “responsibility” consciousness gives rise to “con-
science” (Gewissen), and thus it is consciousness (or the use of the words
of other human beings in communication) that makes morality possible. The
“Verbindungsnetz” – the “net connecting one person with another”, which is
consciousness (GS 354/FW 354) – is in fact the first step towards the existence
96 Andrea Bertino
of the net of duties which characterises every society of animals that are “able
to promise” (GM II 1–2).
According to Nietzsche, we have to deal with a self-organising system
which is able to maintain its unity and functionality through semiotic opera-
tions. Under the pressure of communication human beings develop, according
to Nietzsche, only a partial, superficial form of consciousness; they do not
reach that deep form of consciousness which would be dangerous for their
lives. Furthermore, in GS 354/FW 354 Nietzsche sketches the dialectical devel-
opment of a new form of consciousness, which is capable of incorporating its
opposite: unconsciousness, i.e. the instinctive. The problematic kind of con-
sciousness that Nietzsche wants to overcome is the product of a “Herd-instinct”
(Heerden-Trieb), which is what makes human beings find in other human
beings the satisfaction of their own needs. In GS 354/FW 354 Nietzsche does
not underline the simple loss of certain instincts as he does in GS 11/FW 11;
he is rather concerned with the levelling down of individual differences. With
the development of consciousness we lose our individual existence, precisely
in the moment in which we gain a powerful instrument for our biological
survival. Nietzsche’s critical remarks about the origin of consciousness assume
that there is a philosophical difference between mere biological life and self-
reflective existence. By deconstructing old conceptions of consciousness he
achieves a (more conscious) liberation of our instincts – he indicates the possi-
bility of a conscious work of selecting the instincts that we have to incorporate
(e.g. education).
This means that Nietzsche does not really break with the tradition that
finds personal/individual dignity in self-reflection. Yet, Nietzsche affirms this
proposition at a higher level, by conceiving of an individual capable of deciding
consciously about the limits of his own consciousness. The purpose of Nietz-
sche’s critique of traditional theories of consciousness is, above all, to make
people, and especially philosophers, pay attention to the importance, for our
practical life, of reflecting on the constellation of incorporated drives, routines,
habits, customs that constitute our second nature. Nietzsche’s work compels
us to reflect about the leeways of an active modification of this second nature.
Although in GS 354/FW 354 Nietzsche presents his anti-metaphysical and
pragmatist theory about the origin of consciousness as hypothetical, the idea
of a private language – a language that could designate our individual actions
before their being levelled down in the realm of communication – seems to
entail a great deal of metaphysical assumptions. Moreover, if it is sure that
Nietzsche does not construct a reflective Self that could subsist independently
of the interaction between body and language, it is also true, on the other
hand, that he is forced to use the word “communication” (Mitteilung) in a very
specific way in comparison to its use in ordinary language, where linguistic

communication presupposes an already formed consciousness among linguis-
tic agents. What kind of communication is possible without consciousness?
What kind of beings might take part in this communication?
Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the partial, gregarious conception of con-
sciousness – as well as of its pride and morality – finds its main argument in
the problematical idea of a form of consciousness which lacks an individual
language because it is no more than a means to the end of communicating
needs to other people in an understandable way. Consciousness, in this case,
has to use words that are also common to other human beings, and this implies
that consciousness and self-reflection cannot be totally private. Nietzsche’s
dependence on the tradition that finds in the autonomous, sovereign individ-
ual the most important actor of a mature moral life becomes manifest with his
paradoxical frustration with the loss of individuality supposedly caused by the
development of consciousness – with a loss, that is, which is only conceivable
if a private language is also conceivable. Nietzsche rejects the idea of a pure
singularity of human actions after the birth of consciousness, even if this sin-
gularity is only a philosophical construction. He is thus compelled to hyposta-
sise the idea of individuality, as well as, to some extent, to accept the idea of
a private language that could give access to that individuality. This represents
a strong metaphysical residuum in his account of language and consciousness.
Nietzsche finds it difficult to clarify the nature of communication without a
reference to consciousness and to the existence of a private language: this is
certainly a sign that the tradition to which he belongs is still very active in his
discussion of the problem of consciousness.
II
Similar problems arise in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language.5
Like Nietzsche, he stresses the link between language and consciousness; yet,
according to Humboldt, communication does not limit, but rather intensifies
the individuality of human beings. Reflective thinking is definable, according
to Humboldt, as “the activity that distinguishes the one who thinks from what
is thought” (“ein Unterscheiden des Denkenden von dem Gedachten”).6 Con-
5 Humboldt’s works are cited from: Humboldt (1968), Gesammelte Schriften= GesS. All
translations of the quotations from Humboldt’s writings by the author and the editors.
6 “Über Denken und Sprechen”, in: GesS 17, p. 581.
98 Andrea Bertino
sciousness, as a particular instance of thinking in general – namely, thinking

about our own thinking – develops along with language and communication:
Language begins, therefore, immediately and simultaneously with the first act of reflec-
tion, and as human beings awake from the numbness of the desires in which the subject
engulfs the object and gain self-consciousness, so the word also comes to being – it is,
so to speak, the first impulse that human beings give themselves in order to suddenly
stand still, look around, and find orientation.7
Since language is not possible without reflection, Humboldt seems to exclude –

unlike Nietzsche – the existence of any form of communication that might
precede reflection. Actually, Humboldt, like Herder, posits the existence of a
natural, sensible language that is supposed to have existed before the mature
human language, i.e., when human beings still lived in the animal “numbness
of the desires” (“Dumpfheit der Begierde”). Articulation of linguistic signs is
the most important spiritual performance for the achievement of human lan-
guage. This articulation has modified the first natural sounds that human
beings were able to produced: “Insofar as spirit permeates animal sound, this
sound becomes articulated”.8 According to Humboldt this articulation already
needs consciousness: “Only the strength of self-consciousness forces our bod-
ily nature to accommodate the sharp division and the fixed delimitation of
sound which we call articulation”.9 Humboldt, therefore, still presupposes a
typical human self-consciousness at the origin of human language. Human
beings that live in the simple dimension of unconscious desire have already a
kind of consciousness in potentia; nevertheless, consciousness alone is not
enough for the development of language:
[…] society is the indispensable tool to the development of language, but it is also far
from being the only end for which it works; its endpoint is rather the individual, in as
much as the individual can be separated from mankind.10
7 “Über Denken und Sprechen”, in: GesS 17, 581–582: “Die Sprache beginnt daher
unmittelbar und sogleich mit dem ersten Akt der Reflexion, und so wie der Mensch aus der
Dumpfheit der Begierde, in welcher das Subjekt das Objekt verschlingt, zum Selbstbe-
wußtsein erwacht, so ist auch das Wort da – gleichsam der erste Anstoß, den sich der
Mensch selbst gibt, plötzlich stillzustehen, sich umzusehen und zu orientieren”.
8 “Über das vergleichendes Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen
der Sprachentwicklung”, in: GesS 4, p. 4: “Indem der Geist den thierischen Laut
durchdringt, wird dieser zum articulierten”.
9 “Über das vergleichendes Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der
Sprachentwicklung”, in: GesS 4, p. 4: “Nur die Stärke des Selbstbewusstseyns nöthigt der
körperlichen Natur die scharfe Theilung, und feste Begränzung der Laute ab, die wir Articu-
lation nennen”.
10 “Über den Dualis”, in: GesS 6, p. 25: “[…] die Geselligkeit ist das unentbehrliche
Hülfsmittel zu ihrer Entfaltung [viz.zu der Entfaltung der Sprache], aber bei weitem nicht der
Thus language must belong both to society and to the individual – and it
“belongs in fact to all mankind”.11 If language has its own development, and
if “in the phenomena the development of language is only social”,12 on the
other hand there is for Humboldt a kind of language of consciousness which
exists before social (linguistic) interactions, as well as a kind of language of
the Self – the Self which speaks to other people and reflects as a social agent.
A new quality of subjectivity is possible when we become able to develop a
global view of the world. According to Humboldt, language is not only a “mere
means of mutual understanding” (“ein bloßes Verständingungsmittel”), but also
the “imprint of the spirit, as well as of the worldview of the speaker” (“der
Abdruck des Geistes und der Weltansicht der Redenden”).13 However, Hum-
boldt’s conclusions about the social nature of human individuality are only
partially close to Nietzsche’s theory:
[…] the individuality of the human being pertains only conditionally to the individual […],
his feeling requires a response, his knowledge requires confirmation by another’s convic-
tion […], his whole existence requires a corresponding consciousness outside of himself,
and the more his force expands, the wider become the circles in which he needs this
approving contact14 .
For Humboldt, social life functions as the condition of the objectivity of our
individual uses of language. Like Herder – and later Gerber and Nietzsche – ,
Humboldt is aware of the distance between language and the world (“eine so
befremdende Kluft”, to borrow Humboldt’s own words). If our language is our
world, we cannot be sure that our world is also the world of other individuals.
It is only on account of communication – especially in the interaction between
listening and replying – that our language gains an interpersonal validity.
According to Humboldt, it is even impossible to use concepts if one cannot
einzige Zweck, auf den sie hinarbeitet, der vielmehr, seinen Endpunkt doch in dem
einzelnen findet, insofern der einzelne von der Menschheit getrennt werden kann”.
11 “Über die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaues”, in: GesS 6, p. 180: “und
gehört in der That dem ganzen Menschengeschlecht an”.
12 “Über die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaues”, in: GesS 6, p. 155: “in der
Erscheinung entwickelt sich die Sprache nur gesellschaftlich”.
13 “Über den Dualis”, in: GesS 6, p. 23.
14 “Inwiefern lässt sich der ehemalige Kulturzustand der eingeborenen Völker Amerikas aus
den Überresten ihrer Sprachen beurteilen?”, in: GesS 5, p. 29: “Dass die Individualität des
Menschen nur auf sehr bedingte Weise bloss in den Einzelnen liegt […] das Gefühl in ihm
fordert Erwiederung, die Erkenntniss Bestätigung durch fremde Überzeugung […] sein ganzes
innerstes Daseyn das Bewusstseyn eines entsprechenden ausser ihm, und je mehr sich
seine Kräfte erweitern, in desto weiteren Kreisen bedarf er dieser zustimmenden
Berührung”.
100 Andrea Bertino
observe how other subjects use concepts: “in order just to think, the human
being needs a You that corresponds to the I”.15 Hence, the very existence of
our “I” can be corroborated only by the existence of a “You”; consciousness,
reflection, and scientific knowledge could not exist without our linguistic
exchange with others:
But in human beings thinking is essentially bound with social existence, and in order
just to think, the human being needs a You that corresponds to the I […]. The concept
can only be determined and become clear through the reverberation coming from the
thinking force of another human being.16
According to Humboldt, grasping the universal character of conceptual knowl-

edge by means of language does not imply that human beings lose their indi-
viduality by communicating in society. The means of the mediation between
subjects are at the same time the means of their individuation: language “con-
nects by individualising” (“verbindet, indem sie vereinzelt”).17 According to
Humboldt, language is an “individuating principle” (“ein individualisierendes
Princip”),18 a principle that makes the at first abstractly self-conscious animal
an increasingly differentiated individual. The Herd-instinct, which for Nietz-
sche implies the negation of the properly individual language and the individ-
ual inner spiritual life, is for Humboldt a more neutral “inclination to social
existence” (“Neigung zu gesellschaftlichem Dasein”). For Humboldt, individuals
never cease to have a force. Language for Humboldt is energeia – and hence it
becomes more and more particular as different possibilities of expression
develop. For Nietzsche, consciousness and language are above all functions of
a Verbindungsnetz (a “net connecting one person with another”) whose junc-
tions tend to become more and more similar, whereas for Humboldt the condi-
tion of a deeper individuality lies in the possibility of joining others and modi-
fying one’s own point of view – a point of view which only becomes more
complex through the incorporation of other points of view.
For this reason, one could never find in Humboldt the tragic accent which
characterises Nietzsche’s thesis that individuality is always in danger because
we need a language to articulate it and yet human a language is fundamentally
15 “Von der grammatischen Baue der Sprachen”, in: GesS 6, p. 393: “der Mensch bedarf
[…] zum blossen Denken eines dem Ich entsprechenden Du”.
16 “Von der grammatischen Baue der Sprachen”, in: GesS 6, p. 160: “[…] Im Menschen aber
ist das Denken wesentlich an gesellschaftliches Daseyn gebunden, und der Mensch bedarf
[…] zum blossen Denken eines dem Ich entsprechenden Du[…]. Der Begriff erreicht seine
Bestimmtheit und Klarheit erst durch das Zurückstrahlen aus einer fremden Denkkraft”.
17 “Von der grammatischen Baue der Sprachen”, in: GesS 6, p. 125.
18 “Von der grammatischen Baue der Sprachen”, in: GesS 6, p. 183.
non-individual. However, there is one aspect which remains common to Hum-

boldt and Nietzsche: they both presuppose the unquestionable value of the
autonomous individual and they both measure the utility of social life from
this point of view, even if they draw different conclusions. For both thinkers,
communication is the means by which human beings come into the world as
subjects. Yet, for Humboldt social life represents a chance to be more individ-
ual: whereas for Nietzsche it is mainly an obstacle. Their approach to the prob-
lem of (the relationship between) consciousness and language contains, there-
fore, a normative core. For Humboldt the development of individuality gives
meaning to the development of language and consciousness, i.e., the develop-
ment of individuality makes language and consciousness valuable. For Nietz-
sche individuality is precisely what is lost by the development of language and
consciousness in society.
In order to make clear how Nietzsche’s and Humboldt’s philosophical dis-
courses on language and consciousness are motivated by a moral interest, I
now turn to Emmanuel Levinas.
III
With his philosophy, Levinas wants to overcome idealism as a philosophical
formulation of egoistical and narcissistic feelings. Even though Humboldt and
Nietzsche are not idealist thinkers, they too can be seen as targets of Levinas’
critique. The production of an “I” that creates its own world through language
is the starting point of Humboldt’s speculation. Similarly, Nietzsche retains
this idea of the production of an “I”, even if he stresses the role of the body
in the creation of the world and the Self. According to Nietzsche and Hum-
boldt, culture and philosophy have the function of developing autonomous
individuals (in Nietzsche’s words, “sovereign individuals”). It is precisely the
autonomy of the individual, in its theoretical and practical sense, which
becomes questionable for Levinas. According to Levinas, true philosophy,
especially ethics as first philosophy, is the product of experience, i.e., of some-
thing that comes from a foreign dimension – that is, of something heteronomic
and always dependent on other wills. The problem of Western philosophy is
that philosophers, in their search for autonomy, have tried to reduce this for-
eign dimension to the Self – and in doing so they have lost the possibility of
authentic experience.
Levinas’ phenomenological account of the development of the Self in com-
munication with others is more nuanced. Levinas distinguishes between an
102 Andrea Bertino
“Ego” (le moi) and a “Self” (le soi).19 Both represent possibilities of our self-
consciousness, but they have different ethical meanings. Since the Self is
always one-for-the-other, it is incapable of autonomy. The Self cannot escape
responsibility, even if in taking responsibility it finds no reciprocity (the Self
is, in this sense, selfless). The construction of our Ego, by contrast, presup-
poses the kind of moral responsibility that implies the existence of an autono-
mous subject. The Ego may recognise a form of enlightened selfishness accord-
ing to which it is rational to be respectful of others if this is useful for all. Yet,
the Ego can also take a purely narcissistic, self-centred and self-interested
form, striving above all for its own self-preservation. Nevertheless, it is possible
to move from one kind of consciousness to the other; this is what Levinas calls
the “recurrence of the Ego to the Self”,20 which becomes possible when the
“active Ego reverts to the passivity of the Self” – a reversion which is especially
meaningful for ethical life.21 This return to the Self should be seen as a going
back to something original, insofar as “the Self does not begin in the auto-
affection of a sovereign Ego”.22 We cannot analyse this dynamic in detail here,
but it is important to note that the whole process is bound up with a particular
form of language and communication. There is a specific language that belongs
to the original Self, and that language is different from verbal language. As in
Nietzsche, we find here the idea of a private language suited to our private
actions, a language existing before the socialisation that generates our “I”.
Like Humboldt and Nietzsche, for Levinas human language has a prehistory
which does not yet include a mature Ego. There is an original, pre-conscious
form of language, with a totally different ethical pathos, and this is the basis
that allows one to “become a Self” which is able to assume unconditioned
responsibility. But this is not the truly problematic idea of a private language –
this is rather a “saying” (“le dire”) without a “said” (“le dit”), a speaking to
the other before saying something. So the idea of a form of communication
that precedes the formation of the conscious Ego is also found in Levinas, but
as a living possibility for ethical agents and neither as an ideal private lan-
guage nor as natural language of the animal man. It is difficult to describe this
speaking to the other in terms of a traditional “subject” and, therefore, Levinas
prefers to speak of a “who of the saying” (“le qui du dire”).23 With his “saying”
he stays in relation to the other, in a “proximity of one to the other: involve-
19 For this distinction see Kleinberg-Levin (2005), pp. 199–236, pp. 210–219.
20 Levinas (1981), p. 155–156.
21 Levinas (1998), p. 147.
22 Levinas (1981), p. 117.
23 Levinas (1981), p. 60.
ment of approximation, one for the other”.24 This form of communication

before verbal communication is the kind of sensibility or contact in which a
face expresses itself – it is not a site from which a sender delivers certain
messages by means of linguistic tools. Whenever a face speaks to us, “the first
content of expression is this expression itself”.25 This becomes particularly
clear in the essay Language and Proximity,26 where Levinas shows how the
dimension of ethics becomes open to a sensitive contact and, for a moment,
suspends the objectification of the other that is peculiar to our intentionality.
The active intentional consciousness experiences its own deep passivity in
front of the face of the other:
This relationship of proximity, this contact unconvertible into a noetico-noematic struc-

ture, in which every transmission of messages, whatever be those messages, is already
established, is the original language, a language without words or propositions, pure
communication.27
In this kind of communication the other calls one directly to responsibility,

even before one has made a theme of him or given him an identity through
(his) language. The kind of consciousness that takes place in this sensitive
communication is more like a form of obsession. The distance from both Nietz-
sche’s and Humboldt’s description of the original contact that regulates the
development of consciousness and language is also clear if we remember that,
for Humboldt and Nietzsche, what determines this contact is first of all a Bed-
ürfnis (a need) or a Begierde (a desire). Levinas has a well-known distinction
between “need” (besoin) and “desire” (desire). Needs can be satisfied through
the reduction of something foreign to the Self, through the incorporation of
the Other in the Self in view of its self-preservation, whereas the “désir d’Aut-
rui”, the desire for the Other, can never achieve a definitive satisfaction,
because the experience of the Other is always the experience of a sign or
“trace” (trace), something that cannot be reduced to a definitive knowable
object. Levinas’“responsibility” is an obsession that results from the proximity
to the face of the Other. The Self, the particular subject of this responsibility,
is heteronomically determined and passive. Therefore Levinas’ concept of
responsibility, which depends on his conception of original communication,
24 Levinas (1981), p. 6.
25 Levinas (1969), p. 51.
26 See Levinas (1998), p. 109–26, and Levinas (1988), pp. 217–236, p. 228.
27 Levinas (1998), p. 119; cf. Levinas (1988), p. 228. “Cette relation de proximité, ce contact
inconvertible en structure noético-noématique et où s’installe déjà toute transmission de
messages – et quels que soient ces messages – est le langage originel, langage sans mots
ni propositions, pure comunication”.
104 Andrea Bertino
cannot be the same as Nietzsche’s.28 The responsibility of Nietzsche’s “sover-

eign individual” is the result of an autonomous decision and implies the active
and conscious realisation of a philosophical and existential task: taking dis-
tance from the herd-like form of life.
Thus philosophy, for Nietzsche, becomes something ambivalent, that pre-
pares human beings for dangerous experiences through the development of
a new form of consciousness. Becoming aware of the possibility of original
communication can make individuals unsure, and the natural history of con-
sciousness is also dangerous because it makes human beings more conscious.
It endangers their routine representation of the Self – a Self that is made pos-
sible by illusions, pride, and communication. Nietzsche and Levinas seem to
agree in recognising this danger as a possibility of a higher form of life, but
the risk of an original communication takes on quite a different meaning for
Nietzsche and Levinas. According to Nietzsche, the life of the new philosopher
and his communication with the public are always problematic because they
foster individuality and create the risk of a conflict with the community and
its customs. From Levinas’ point of view, however, contact with the Other is
dangerous too, but above all because it makes us more responsible, or, in other
words, creates a new type of moral subject who is liable to be bound up with
a strong and unpleasant dependence from the Other. But, despite their differ-
ences, Levinas and Nietzsche – and to some extent Humboldt too – have tried
to reconstruct an originary form of communication that is much more than
just a simple theoretical speculation about the nature of language. This recon-
struction is an attempt to make plausible – not so much through argument as
rather through a convincing contextual narrative – the possibility of new, and
more profound, forms of ethical life.
28 Silvio Pfeuffer (2008) has convincingly shown that both Nietzsche and Levinas aim to
question and challenge the traditional concept of “responsibility” in order to recapture a
more profound ethical disposition that also involves a certain feeling of responsibility in
relation to others. However, again according to Pfeuffer, Nietzsche’s ideal of a “sovereign
individual” capable of assuming responsibility without feeling that his or her actions should
be justified in terms of a universalist morality – this ideal is in many ways different from
Levinas’ ethical conception. In fact, the idea that only exceptional human beings – and not
all human beings as human beings – are able to experience an authentic, non-moral sense
of responsibility is not at all involved in Levinas’ ethical conception [Pfeuffer (2008), p. 256];
but, above all, the sovereign individual’s consciousness of its own individuality and exceptio-
nality is entirely foreign to the experience of feeling that one is a hostage in the face of the
other, as described by Levinas.
Bibliography
Humboldt, Alexander von (1968), Gesammelte Schriften, 17 vols, ed. by Königliche
Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Kleinberg-Levin, David M. (2005), “Persecution: The Self at the Heart of Metaphysics”, in:
Nelson, E. S./Kapust, A./Still, K. (eds.), Addressing Levinas, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, pp. 199–236.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1969), Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso
Lingis, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1981), Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, transl. by Alphonso
Lingis, The Hague: Kluwer.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1988), En découvrant l’existance avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris: Vrin.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1998) Collected Philosophical Papers, transl. by Alphonso Lingis,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Pfeuffer, Silvio (2008), Die Entgrenzung der Verantwortung. Nietzsche – Dostoejewskij –
Levinas, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Tom Bailey
Vulnerabilities of Agency: Kant and
Nietzsche on Political Community
In both political philosophy and political discourse, a shared habitat, origin,
status, history, practice or language is often considered sufficient to constitute
a ‘community’ of individuals, whose identities as its members are supposed to
justify their political obligations. Such claims raise worries about the identifica-
tion, authority and demands of such a ‘community’, however, and it is often
considered preferable to conceive of political obligations as determined inde-
pendently of individuals’ membership of such a ‘community’. Membership of
a ‘community’ is then, at most, considered a secondary, contingent and even
voluntary, feature of an individual’s moral circumstances. However, these con-
ceptions raise worries of their own, notably regarding their apparent commit-
ment to a certain moral isolation of individuals. Hence the continuing debates
between ‘communitarians’ and their ‘liberal’ or ‘individualist’ opponents and
the echoes of these debates in political discussions of such highly-charged
issues as euthanasia and abortion, immigration and multiculturalism and the
international enforcement of human rights.
The purpose of this paper is to argue that an alternative conception of
political ‘community’ can be found in Immanuel Kant’s and Friedrich Nietz-
sche’s political philosophies and that this conception is a valuable one, not
least because it avoids the worries raised by the common conception and its
common rejection. Notably, by revealing this novel contribution to debates
over the nature of political obligations, and the political ‘autonomy’, or self-
determination, and ‘community’ involved, the paper also suggests that, not-
withstanding his general criticisms of morality and politics, philosophy and
language, and his caustic treatments of Kant, Nietzsche’s political philosophy
is best understood in the context of such debates, and in the context of
neglected aspects of Kant’s contribution to them in particular.
The structure of the paper is as follows. The paper begins with an outline
of the conceptions of moral goodness upon which Kant and Nietzsche base
their political philosophies and a brief consideration of the ways in which they
express their conception of ‘community’ when presenting these conceptions of
moral goodness. The second part of the paper then provides an account of
Kant’s and Nietzsche’s more elaborate employments of this conception of ‘com-
munity’ in their political philosophies. The third, and final, part of the paper
turns to the critical consideration of this conception and argues that it offers
substantial advantages over the prevailing options regarding ‘community’ in
political thought.
108 Tom Bailey
I Kant and Nietzsche on Autonomy and Moral

Community
Since Kant and Nietzsche base their accounts of our political obligations upon
their conceptions of moral goodness in general, it is worth first sketching the basic
elements of these conceptions and briefly considering how, in presenting these
conceptions, they both also express their shared conception of ‘community’.
I will suppose that the basic elements of Kant’s and Nietzsche’s concep-
tions of moral goodness are the following.1 Firstly, both Kant and Nietzsche
conceive of moral goodness as a goodness distinguished from other goodnesses
by being uniquely achievable by, and required of, an agent as such. This is
what each means by calling moral goodness an expression of the agent’s
‘autonomy’. For instance, regarding his formula of autonomy Kant writes that
‘the will is not merely subject to the [moral] law, but so subject that it must be
viewed as also giving law to itself’ and Nietzsche similarly equates ‘sovereign’,
‘autonomous’ agency with the ability to ‘affirm oneself’ as an agent.2 Secondly,
both Kant and Nietzsche identify this ‘autonomy’ with action according to an
attitude of respect for agency as such – rather than, say, action expressive of
an agent’s natural ‘flourishing’ or action expected to maximally satisfy desires
or needs. Kant expresses this attitude with his formula of ‘the end in itself’,
according to which agency is to be treated as an ‘end’ and not merely a
‘means’, while Nietzsche expresses it in terms of the extension of the agent’s
‘self-affirmation’ to the affirmation of other agents.1 Thus, insofar as both Kant
and Nietzsche conceive of moral goodness as ‘autonomy’ and of ‘autonomy’ as
a practical attitude of respect for agency as such, they share the same concep-
tion of moral goodness.
However, there are significant differences between Kant’s and Nietzsche’s
conceptions of agency. Firstly, while Kant defines an agent as a being capable
1 The following claims are admittedly controversial and I cannot defend them here. I provide
some grounds for accepting them elsewhere, in my “Nietzsche’s Kantian Ethics” (2003), “La
filosofia come pratica di comunità: Leggere La Gaia Scienza II e Così Parlò Zarathustra IV”
(2010a), “Analysing the Good Will: Kant’s Argument in the First Section of the Groundwork”
(2010b), and “Nietzsche the Kantian?” (2012).
2 G 431, GM II 2–3. Translations of Kant’s and Nietzsche’s texts are my own and, with two
exceptions, references are to page numbers in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königliche
Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften/Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, or to
section numbers, or essay and section numbers, in Nietzsche’s texts. The two exceptions are
Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the single reference to which is to page numbers in the
second (‘B’) edition, and Nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks. For further details see the list
of abbreviations at the beginning of this volume.
1 G 428–433, GM II 3.
Vulnerabilities of Agency: Kant and Nietzsche on Political Community 109
of acting according to reasons, Nietzsche understands an agent as a being

capable of acting according to certain non-cognitive states, however cogni-
tively-informed. For Kant, agency consists of a being’s ‘ability to be, through
its representations, the cause of the objects of these representations’ and
human agency is distinguished by the potentially rational character of these
causal representations, their being instances of ‘practical reason’ and thus free
from determination by ‘impulses’.3 Nietzsche, on the other hand, insists that,
regarding any rational consideration, an agent can always ask, “what actually
drives me to give a hearing to it?”, and that this motivation always consists of
her ‘drives, inclinations, aversions’, rather than in the ‘belief’ of the judgement
itself.4 More importantly for their conceptions of moral goodness, unlike Kant,
Nietzsche also holds that the capacity of agency can vary across agents and
over time. Consequently, while for Kant the duties required by an attitude of
respect for agency depend only on the agent’s circumstances, Nietzsche also
emphasises the need to ‘measure’ agents’ agency itself and to determine duties
accordingly. Thus he writes of agency that the ‘self-affirming’ agent ‘has in
this possession his measure of value: looking out from himself upon others,
he honours or he despises’.5
In presenting these conceptions of moral goodness, Kant and Nietzsche
also both provide brief expressions of their shared conception of ‘community’.
In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant writes that the conception
of moral goodness as an attitude of respect for agency ‘leads to a very fruitful
concept dependent on it, namely that of a realm of ends’.6 His brief discussion
3 MS 211, MS 213. For related remarks on ‘choice’ in general, see MAN 544, KpV 9n, KrV B
IX-X, KU 177n, MS 356–357, MS 381 and MS 384–385, ApH 251 and EKU 206 and EKU
230n.
4 GS 335/FW 335. Similar claims can be found elsewhere in Nietzsche’s texts. In BGE 32/
JGB 32, for instance, he writes of the belief in ‘[t]he intention as the whole origin and
prehistory of an action’ that, in fact, ‘the intention is only a sign and symptom that first
needs interpretation, moreover a sign that means too many things and consequently almost
nothing by itself’. In GS 360/FW 360, he similarly insists that, although ‘one is used,
according to an ancient error, to seeing the driving force [of an action] precisely in the goals
(purposes, professions, etc.)’, in fact these are ‘relatively discretionary, arbitrary, almost
indifferent’. He again articulates this position in TI Errors/GD Irrthümer 3, where he treats
the claim that actions are motivated by reasons as a supposed ‘inner fact’, according to
which ‘all the antecedentia of an action, its causes, were to be sought in consciousness and
could be discovered there, if one sought them – as “motives”: otherwise one would not
have been free for it, not responsible for it’. This claim is simply an ‘error’, Nietzsche insists,
because a reason is ‘[m]erely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment
of the act, which conceals the antecedentia of an act rather than represents them’.
5 GM II 2.
6 G 433.
110 Tom Bailey
indicates that this concept is ‘dependent’ on his conception of moral goodness

in the sense that it makes explicit what his other expressions of moral good-
ness do not – namely, that, given a plurality of agents, the attitude of respect
for agency must not concern merely the agency of an agent or some agents, to
the exclusion of others’, but rather be an attitude of respect for the agency of
every agent.7 Furthermore, in this discussion Kant also makes a claim which
implies that, among a plurality of agents, the requirements of this attitude are
determined only and precisely according to the mutual vulnerabilities of
agents’ agencies. This claim concerns what he calls a ‘sovereign [Oberhaupt]’
in a realm of ends, the function of which is not explicitly stated, but is presum-
ably to judge moral goodness among a plurality of agents.8 Crucially, Kant
claims that, to fulfil this function, a sovereign must be an agent which is ‘not
subject to the will of any other’, in the sense that he or she must be ‘a com-
pletely independent being[,] without need and limitation of abilities adequate
to the will’.9 The significance of this claim lies not so much in its implications
for a sovereign, but rather in its implication that other agents are not neces-
sarily ‘independent beings’ in the sense defined and its suggestion that the
lack of such independence is pertinent to determining the requirements of
moral goodness among them. Furthermore, given that, for Kant, what is perti-
nent to determining these requirements can only be agency as such, the lack
of such independence must be a matter of an agent’s agency being ‘subject to’
another agent’s agency – rather than, say, the achievement of an agent’s
desires, needs or other particular goods being ‘subject to’ the achievement of
another’s. In other words, Kant’s claim about a sovereign implies that what is
pertinent to determining the requirements of moral goodness among a plural-
ity of agents – and thus, indeed, what constitutes them as a ‘realm’ at all – is
only and precisely the mutual vulnerabilities of their agencies. Nonetheless,
Kant’s claim also identifies ‘need’ and ‘limitation of abilities’ as sources of
such vulnerabilities and he consistently refers to human agents in general as
7 Kant expresses this by defining ‘a realm’ as ‘a systematic connection [or association,

Verbindung] of various rational beings through common [or communal, gemeinschaftlich]
laws’ and ‘a realm of ends’ as such a ‘connection’ insofar as its common laws are
‘objective’ – that is, insofar as it is governed by the requirements of the attitude of respect
for agency (G 433). See also G 436.
8 This function is suggested at G 439, where Kant refers to a sovereign as a ‘lawgiver’ who
‘judges the worth of rational beings’. See also R 95–100 and compare the usages of the
term, with which Kant was acquainted, in Leibniz, Discours de Métaphysique, §36, Leibniz,
Principes de la nature et de la grace fondés en raison, §15 and Leibniz, Principes de la
philosophie ou monadologie, §§85–90 and particularly Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, bk. 1,
chs. 6–7.
9 G 433, G 434.
having ‘needs’ and being limited in their practical abilities. Thus he allows,
not that factors other than agencies as such are morally pertinent in them-
selves, but that they can be morally pertinent insofar as they are sources of
mutual vulnerabilities of agency.10
In presenting his conception of moral goodness, Nietzsche too maintains
that, among a plurality of agents, the requirements of respect for agency must
be determined only and precisely according to the mutual vulnerabilities of
their agencies. This is indicated particularly by the ‘noble’ character of his
conception of moral goodness. For he describes as ‘noble’ any ethics that iden-
tifies ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actions with those performed by exemplary ‘good’ or ‘bad’
agents and that identifies ‘good’ and ‘bad’ agents by a distinguishing charac-
teristic – such as their being ‘blond-headed’, a ‘warrior’ or ‘truthful’ – which
is supposed to bestow ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ on their actions. With such an
ethics, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actions are determined, and agents motivated to per-
form ‘good’ actions and not to perform ‘bad’ ones, by a constant, creative and
mutual demonstrating and measuring of the relevant ‘goodness’-bestowing
characteristic, a practice that Nietzsche often refers to as ‘requital [Vergeltung]’.
The requirements of a ‘noble’ ethics are thus necessarily determined with refer-
ence to a certain community of ‘equals’ who ‘measure’ each others’ achieve-
ment of the relevant distinguishing characteristic. In a representative passage
of Beyond Good and Evil, for instance, Nietzsche writes,
egoism belongs to the essence of the noble soul, I mean the immovable faith that to a
being such as ‘we are’ other beings must be subordinate by their nature and sacrifice
themselves to us. […] Under circumstances which make it hesitate at first, it admits that
there are equals-in-rights with it […] it honours itself in them and in the rights it concedes
them, it does not doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the essence of inter-
course, likewise belongs to the natural condition of things. The noble gives as it takes,
out of the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital which lies in its ground. (BGE 265/
JGB 265)11
It is plausible to consider Nietzsche’s conception of moral goodness as a par-

ticular instance of such ‘noble’ ethics, according to which agency itself is a
10 On human ‘needs’ and limited abilities, see, for instance, G 413n and G 414. Of course,
that human agents in general have ‘needs’ and limited abilities implies that no human agent
could fulfil the sovereign’s function. But Kant does not emphasise this implication or take it
up elsewhere and he apparently introduces the ‘sovereign’ here only to illuminate, by
contrast, an aspect of his conception of the ‘realm of ends’.
11 For Nietzsche’s account of ‘noble’ ethics, see in particular BGE 259/JGB 259, BGE 262/
JGB 262, BGE 263/JGB 263, BGE 265/JGB 265, BGE 272/JGB 272 and BGE 287/JGB 287 and
GM I 10 and GM I 11.
112 Tom Bailey
goodness-bestowing characteristic that must be continually demonstrated in

actions and judged to do so by others. If this is so, then, like Kant, Nietzsche
holds not only that moral goodness consists of an attitude of respect for
agency, but also that the determination of these requirements necessarily
refers to a certain community of ‘equals’ in agency. He differs from Kant only
in considering agency, and therefore the requirements of respect for it, to vary
across agents and over time.
The nature and role of this particular community of ‘equals’ is further
illuminated by a section of Daybreak, in which Nietzsche describes agency as
a ‘sphere of power’ in which other agents might ‘intervene’ and moral good-
ness as requiring that a ‘part’ of each agent’s ‘sphere’ of agency be ‘granted’
and ‘preserve[d]’ by others. As he puts it here, ‘The right [Recht] of others is
the concession of our feeling of power to the feeling of power of those oth-
ers’.12 For Nietzsche, then, rights and duties are determined not according to
agents’ desires or needs or according to a notion of agents’ ‘flourishing’, but
rather according to their varying degrees of agency, or ‘power’, and specifically
the vulnerabilities of their agency to the ‘interventions’ of others.
Thus for both Kant and Nietzsche agents constitute a morally salient com-
munity precisely insofar as their agencies are mutually vulnerable, since they
both hold that among a plurality of agents the requirements of respect for
agency as such must be determined only and precisely according to these vul-
nerabilities. Nietzsche differs from Kant only in considering agency to vary
across agents and over time and therefore in considering the relative communi-
ties and requirements to vary correspondingly. In order to explore the possible
employment of this conception of community in distinctively political contexts,
I will now turn to Kant’s and Nietzsche’s own employments of this conception
in their political philosophies.13 This will allow me then, in the final part of
the paper, to offer some independent critical consideration of this conception
and its implications for the role of ‘community’ in the determination of our
political obligations.
12 D 112/M 112. Notably, of the ten sections of his earlier texts to which Nietzsche refers in
GM Preface/Vorrede 4 as prefiguring claims made in GM, six present his notion of ‘requital’
in some detail and one of these is D 112/M 112, one of two successive sections of M which
present lengthy analyses of ‘requital’ precisely in terms of agency. See HH 45/MA 45 and HH
92/MA 92, WS 22, WS 26 and WS 33 and D 112/M 112, and also HH 44/MA 44 and D 113/M
113.
13 I would also suggest that both Kant and Nietzsche employ this conception in determining
non-political moral obligations, such as those concerning love and friendship. I provide
some grounds for this in Nietzsche’s case in Bailey (2010a) and Bailey (forthcoming).
II.1 ‘The Unity of All Places on the Earth’s

Surface’: Kant on Political Community
For Kant, an agent’s political obligations are obligations which other agents
may coerce the agent to fulfil and are therefore obligations merely to do or
refrain from certain kinds of actions, rather than to do so for certain kinds of
reasons.14 According to Kant’s ‘Doctrine of Right [Recht]’, the first part of his
Metaphysics of Morals, the basic principle of these obligations is the ‘Universal
Principle of Right’: ‘Any action is right if it[,] or according to its maxim[,] the
freedom of agency [Willkür] of each can exist together with everyone’s freedom
according to a universal law’.15 The nature and grounds of this principle are
subject to much scholarly controversy. It is variously claimed, for instance,
that Kant’s principle expresses a voluntaristic, ‘social contract’ theory, a non-
voluntaristic, ‘natural law’ theory, an independent analysis of the concept of
‘right’ or a commitment to a substantive moral good presented by the formula
of the end in itself.16 However, I will argue that the place of the principle in
Kant’s derivation of the most substantial of our basic political obligations bet-
ter supports an alternative interpretation – namely, that he intends this princi-
ple to express, with regard to coercible obligations, precisely the conception of
a community of mutually vulnerable agents which he briefly expresses in the
Groundwork.17
The relevant derivation is concerned with property rights. Kant conceives
of possession in general as an agent’s right to use an external object – either
a material thing or another’s agency – as she pleases and irrespective of
whether she is physically ‘holding’ the object.18 He also argues that the possi-
bility of such a right follows from the Universal Principle of Right because
this principle concerns mere agency and agency requires the physical ability
14 See MS 214, MS 218–221, MS 231, MS 239, MS 375 and MS 382 and also R 95–96. Note
that this part of MS is textually corrupt. I follow Ludwig’s (1988) reconstruction of the text.
15 MS 230. See also R 98, TP 290 and MS 231, MS 375, MS 382 and MS 396.
16 For examples of each of these different interpretative approaches, see, respectively,
Murphy (1994), esp. ch. 4, and Rosen (1993); Mulholland (1991), esp. chs. 7–10, and Kersting
(1993), both of which also flirt with ‘social contract’ interpretations; Willaschek (1997),
pp. 205–227, and Willaschek (2002), pp. 67–69 and 75–85, Pogge (2002), pp. 136–146,
Wood (1999), pp. 321–323, and Wood (2002), pp. 5–10; and Guyer (2002), especially pp. 23–
27.
17 This interpretation is also supported, I would suggest, by Kant’s presentation of his
Universal Principle at MS 230, MS 232–233 and MS 237–238, but I will not consider these
passages here.
18 MS 246. See also MS 247–249.
114 Tom Bailey
to use its objects.19 However, Kant provides a more complex argument regard-
ing the possibility of originally acquiring a material thing and it is with this
argument that he appeals to, and illuminates, his conception of a community
of mutually vulnerable agents. This argument proceeds from the Universal
Principle and agency’s requirement of the physical ability to use its objects,
along with a crucial further claim about the possession of a material thing –
namely, that a movable material thing ‘is to be regarded as [an] inherence’ in
its ‘place’, the habitable ground on which it rests. From these premises, Kant
first argues that ‘damage is done’ to an agent’s ‘freedom’ not by another’s
taking of an un-‘held’ material thing as such, but only insofar as this taking
of the thing upsets its ‘place’. He claims that the possibility of originally
acquiring a ‘place’, and so the material thing which rests on it, ‘is thus based
on’ agency’s requirement of the physical ability to use its objects.20 Presuma-
bly, then, Kant’s argument here is that, although the physical ability to use
a material thing is not upset by another agent’s taking the thing as such, it
is upset by the thing’s thus not having a consistent ‘place’ and therefore that,
since agency requires the physical ability to use its objects, the Universal
Principle requires the possibility of originally acquiring a material thing
along with the ‘place’ on which it rests.
In the passages that follow Kant proceeds to further explain this possibility
and to argue for a significant constraint on it. Specifically, he argues that a
human agent can originally acquire a material thing ‘only through the united
choice of all who possess it in common’. This is so, he maintains, ‘on account
of the unity of all places on the earth’s surface as spherical surface: because,
if it were an unending plane, human beings could be so dispersed on it that
they would not come into any community with each other, [and] this [commu-
nity] therefore would not be a necessary result of their existence on the earth’.
He concludes that each ‘place’ on the earth must be considered to be, prior to
any acquisition, possessed in common by human beings and that the original
acquisition of a material thing, along with its ‘place’, is therefore both made
possible and constrained by ‘the uniting of the choice of all who can come
into a practical relation with each other’.21
19 See MS 246 and MS 257 and also MS 247, MS 249–250 and MS 255. Kant refers to the
latter requirement of willing throughout his texts. See, for instance, his distinction of choice
from mere ‘wish’ at G 394 and 435, MAM 122, KU 177n, MS 213, MS 230, MS 246, MS 356–
357 and MS 451–452, ApH 251 and EKU 230n.
20 MS 261, MS 262. Kant also appeals to this requirement in this regard at MS 263 and MS
267 and states his conclusion at MS 261, MS 263 and MS 269–270.
21 MS 262, MS 263. See also MS 264 and MS 267–268.
Although admittedly far from unambiguous, I would suggest that these

remarks can be taken to indicate the following. First, for Kant, it is the finitude
of ‘places’ on the earth’s surface which explains the vulnerability of human
agency to other agents’ taking of material things, in the sense that such taking
upsets the consistency of things’ ‘places’ which the use of objects requires.
Second, Kant takes this vulnerability to entail not only the possibility of origi-
nally acquiring a material thing, but also a substantial constraint on this possi-
bility – namely, that an agent’s original acquisition of a material thing not
upset the required consistency of thing’s ‘places’. In Kant’s terms, it is as if,
precisely because they are vulnerable in this way, human agents constitute a
‘community’ which first possesses each ‘place’ in common and which can
grant the private acquisition of a ‘place’, and thus the private acquisition of
any material thing which rests on it, to a specific agent only if this ensures,
rather than upsets, the required consistency of things’ ‘places’. Furthermore,
Kant holds that human agents’ basic political obligations then follow from the
possibility of possessing external things and originally acquiring material
things, on the grounds that a civil condition is required to secure possession
and to further determine the original acquisition of material things.22
This derivation thus appeals precisely to the conception of ‘realm’, or, bet-
ter, ‘community’, which Kant briefly presents in the Groundwork – namely, the
conception according to which other-regarding obligations among a plurality
of agents must be determined precisely according to the mutual vulnerabilities
of their agencies. Kant’s derivation also makes explicit that, according to this
conception, a ‘community’ is constituted only and precisely according to a
specific mutual vulnerability of agency and therefore extends only and pre-
cisely as far as this vulnerability extends. In the case of our basic political
obligations, Kant identifies a vulnerability, and thus a ‘community’, which
concerns the consistency of material things’ ‘places’ and which, given the ‘fini-
tude’ of ‘places’ on the earth’s surface, extends across the earth’s surface. He
explicitly denies, however, that human agency is generally vulnerable to
agents’ taking of un-‘held’ material things as such and thus effectively denies
that any other material constraint – such as material scarcity or material ine-
quality – is pertinent to the determination of our basic political obligations.
22 See MS 255–257 and MS 264–267. The premise regarding the earth’s surface is similarly
emphasised by Katrin Flikschuh and Kevin Thomson, although both – mistakenly, in my
view – extend it to Kant’s argument for the mere possibility of possession in general. See
Flikschuh (2000), chs. 4–5, and Thomson (2001), pp. 62–78.
116 Tom Bailey
II.2 Power, Ressentiment and Equality: Nietzsche

on Political Community
Nietzsche provides his most extensive account of our political obligations in
the second essay of his On the Genealogy of Morality. He introduces his account
by presenting basic notions of obligation as originating in relationships of
contractual exchange – indeed, he claims that the determination of prices,
contracts and compensation constitutes ‘the oldest and most primitive relation-
ship among persons that there is’ and ‘the most rudimentary form of personal
rights’.23 He proceeds to claim that the ‘first stage’ of justice was reached when
these basic notions of contractual obligation between individuals were ‘trans-
ferred’ onto communities and the relationships between them. He writes,
the budding feeling of exchange, contract, guilt, right, obligation, balance [or compensa-
tion, Ausgleich] […] transferred itself onto the coarsest and earliest communal complexes
(in their relationship to similar complexes), together with the habit of comparing, measur-
ing, calculating power against power. […Thus] one arrived at the grand generalization,
‘every thing has a price; everything can be paid off’ – at the oldest and most naïve moral
canon of justice, at the beginning of all ‘good-naturedness’, all ‘fairness’, all ‘good will’,
all ‘objectivity’ on earth. Justice at this first stage is the good will among those of approxi-
mately equal power to come to terms with one another, to ‘understand’ each other
through a balance [Ausgleich] – and, regarding those of lesser power, to force them to a
balance among themselves (GM II 8).
Thus Nietzsche claims that ‘justice’ in its most primitive sense consists in the
extension of basic contractual notions of obligation to relationships between
communities, such that communities come to ‘balances’ or ‘contracts’ among
themselves according to their relative levels of ‘power’. He then turns to the
relationship between a community and its members and claims that this rela-
tionship too was originally conceived in contractual terms. In this case, he
claims that members were considered to exchange obedience to the community
for the benefits of living in it – for the benefits, that is, of living ‘sheltered,
taken care of, in peace and trust, carefree with regard to certain harms and
hostilities to which the human being outside, the “outlaw” [“Freidlose”], is
exposed’. Here he also emphasises the ‘power’ of the community in claiming
that the greater its ‘power’, the less harshly it will punish those who disobey
it: while a less powerful community excludes the criminal from it, returning
him or her to the status of ‘outlaw’, a more powerful one instead extracts a
payment from the crime, thus allowing the criminal to remain within it.24
23 GM II 8. See also GM II 4–7.

24 GM II 9, GM II 10.
It is perhaps tempting to read this account as reducing ‘justice’ to relations

of forces and interests, such that political obligations are determined by ‘con-
tractual’ exchanges between individuals and groups according to their relative
forces and interests. Such a reading would explain Nietzsche’s deflationary
aims – that is, his insistence that justice is not based on such things as respon-
sibility, preventing harm, equality, retribution or deterrence. It would also
chime well with many general interpretations of his political philosophy. Those
that emphasise individual self-creation or a metaphysics of forces are often
articulated in terms of forces and interests in this sense, while those that
emphasise the cultivation of a higher humanity or culture generally conceive
this, if not in terms of forces or interests, then as something to which the
political realm of forces and interests is external and, at most, a mere means.25
However, Nietzsche introduces his accounts of contractual exchange and
justice at the beginning of the second essay of the Genealogy with an equally
extensive statement of his conception of moral goodness, in stating which he
again refers to an agent’s agency as her ‘power’. He describes agency there as
the ability to clear one’s consciousness of passing experiences and desires, to
reason about actions and to determine one’s actions, even in the distant
future – a ‘sovereign individual’, he writes, is thus able to ‘will’ or ‘promise’.
And it is there that he insists that agency also provides an agent with her
ultimate ‘measure of value’, such that she ‘affirm[s]’ herself and ‘honours’ her
‘equals’ in this ability and ‘despises’ those who are less able in this regard.
Crucially, there Nietzsche also describes an agent’s consciousness of being able
to will as ‘a true consciousness of power and freedom’ and a ‘consciousness of
[…] power over oneself and fate’ and presents this consciousness as explaining
her consideration of this ability as her ultimate ‘measure of value’. Thus, as in
the passage in Daybreak – to which he refers explicitly in the preface to the
Genealogy as anticipating his account of ‘justice’ as ‘a balance between those
25 For examples of the former kind of interpretation, see Warren (1988) and Conway (1997),
and for examples of the latter kind, see Bergmann (1987), Leiter (2002) and Shaw (2007). It
is also perhaps tempting to consider Nietzsche’s account of justice as simply a description
of the development of a primitive notion of ‘justice’, intended to deflate any normative
pretensions whatsoever by revealing their very particular historical, social, or psychological
origins. But, while Nietzsche’s ‘genealogical’ method may often have such radically
deflationary aims, I suggest that his account of the origins of justice is also intended to
have normative force. For at the beginning of GM II 9 he emphasises that the original
conditions he describes are ‘at all times present or again possible’ and in distinguishing his
account from others’ elsewhere in the essay – in particular, from those of the ‘English’ in
GM II 4 and from that of Eugen Dühring in GM II 11 – he tends to use general, present-tense
formulations and to echo those he criticises in treating the historical, social, or psycho-
logical origins of justice as significant for its normative ones.
118 Tom Bailey
of approximately equal power’ – Nietzsche uses ‘power’ to refer, not to force

or the capacity to secure interests, but to agency, or the ability to will, and to
the particular conception of moral goodness that he associates with it.26 This
strongly implies that the references to ‘power’ in the account of justice that
follows may also be read in this way. Indeed, Nietzsche indicates that the
following sections of the essay are intended to explain the development of the
‘sovereign individual’ introduced at the beginning of it and he uses the same
German term for ‘power’, Macht or its derivatives, throughout.27
Rather than reducing ‘justice’ to relations of forces and interests, then,
Nietzsche’s account of justice should be read as determining political commu-
nities and obligations precisely in terms of agents’ mutual vulnerabilities of
agency. While he presents the relationship between a community and its mem-
bers as a ‘contract’ regarding members’ obedience to the community and the
benefits that they receive in return, insofar as it also involves affirming ‘power’
in the sense of agency as the ultimate value this ‘contract’ will determine
members’ obligations precisely according to their mutual vulnerabilities of
agency. That is, duties, rights and punishments are to be ascribed to members
according to the ways in which their agencies are vulnerable to each others’.
Furthermore, since Nietzsche considers agency, and therefore moral signifi-
cance, to vary across agents and over time, obligations considered to demon-
strate greater agency will be ascribed to members that are considered relatively
more able to will, while lesser obligations are ascribed to members considered
relatively less able. And these obligations are to be constantly revised through
the mutual measurement of agency, such that, over time, those who exceed
the obligations ascribed to them by demonstrating greater agency than that to
which these obligations are supposed to correspond will be ascribed more
demanding ones, while those who fail to uphold the obligations ascribed to
them will be attributed with less demanding ones. Nietzsche’s account also
includes communities themselves among the ‘agents’ involved in this determi-
nation of political obligations, such that a community’s obligations to its mem-
bers or to other communities are determined according to the mutual vulnera-
bilities of agency between it, considered as an ‘agent’, and its members or
other community-agents. This underlies, in particular, his claims that a com-
munity with more ‘power’ in this sense will require less of its members, since
they will have less ‘power’ relative to it, and that communities of ‘approxi-
mately equal power’ will establish contractual ‘balances’ of obligations among
26 GM II 1–3, GM Preface/Vorrede 4.
27 See GM II 3 for Nietzsche’s indication of the explanatory role of the following sections.
themselves by ‘comparing, measuring, calculating power against power’ in this

sense.28
Like Kant, then, Nietzsche holds that agents constitute a political ‘commu-
nity’ precisely insofar as their agencies are mutually vulnerable and that it is
according to precisely such vulnerabilities that political obligations are to be
determined. In other words, like Kant, he employs their shared conception of
‘community’ to account for the determination of political obligations. It is
worth noting that this tells against interpreting his political philosophy as ulti-
mately concerned with values that are substantial, rather than formal, with
values that are not historically or socially informed or with values for which
political institutions and activity can be only a mere means to a further moral
end, rather than themselves a realization of such an end. It thus tells against
interpreting Nietzsche’s political philosophy as ultimately concerned with such
values as individual self-creation, force or a higher humanity or culture. For if
Nietzsche conceives of justice as a form of respect for and demonstration of
agency among agents, as I have argued, then he conceives of justice as a value
of quite the opposite kind. That is, first, he conceives of justice as a value
that is formal, rather than substantial, since it leaves to agents the (collective)
determination of exactly how agency is to be respected and demonstrated
among them. Second, he conceives of the value of justice as historically and
socially informed, in that it develops in the particular historical and social
conditions that he describes in accounting for it. And, finally, he conceives of
28 For Nietzsche’s account of ‘justice’, see also the three sections to which GM Preface/
Vorrede 4 refers in this regard, HH 92/MA 92, WS 26 and D 112/M 112, and also WS 22 and
WS 33, BGE 259/JGB 259, GM II 4–7 and GM II 9–11 and KGW VIII/1, 5[82] (Summer 1886-
Autumn 1887). Admittedly, this reading might admit a subordinate role to the reductive one.
For Nietzsche’s stated concern in the sections following those on the ‘sovereign individual’
is to explain this individual’s ability to will and associated conception of moral goodness –
his explanation refers in particular in GM II 3 to the prohibitions, or ‘“I will nots”’, imposed
by primitive societies and in GM II 5 to practices of contractual exchange. Crucially, however,
when he refers to these primitive social relations in GM II 2, as what he calls ‘the morality of
custom’, he emphasises that it is only when freed from them that the sovereign individual is
able to evaluate agents and actions in terms of the ability to will. As he puts it there, a
‘sovereign individual’ is ‘free again from the morality of custom, autonomous and
supermoral (for “autonomous” and “moral” are mutually exclusive)’ and, given this
autonomy, ‘how could he not know what superiority he thus has over all else that may not
promise and vouch for itself […] and how this mastery over himself also necessarily brings
with it mastery over circumstances, over nature and all lesser-willed and more unreliable
creatures?’. This suggests that Nietzsche may be read as giving a deliberately ambivalent, or
two-tied, account of justice: that is, as reducing justice to forces and interests in the case of
primitive societies, under which agency and its affirmation develops, but as conceiving of
justice in terms of the affirmation of agency once agents are freed from primitive societies.
120 Tom Bailey
justice as essentially political, in the sense that political institutions and activ-
ity are not considered a mere means to the achievement of a further moral
good, but rather themselves express and realise the moral goodness of respect
for and demonstration of agency. In these three formal ways, then, the account
of the origins of justice in the second essay of the Genealogy stands in tension
with prevailing general approaches to Nietzsche’s political philosophy.
Nonetheless, while sharing with Kant this conception of political ‘commu-
nity’, Nietzsche’s employment of it differs radically from Kant’s. In particular,
having presented his account of justice in the second essay of the Genealogy
he proceeds to identify two kinds of mutual vulnerability of agency which
differ substantially from that regarding material things’ ‘places’ identified by
Kant and the second of these kinds reflects his un-Kantian insistence on the
variability of agency, and therefore moral significance, across agents and over
time.
The first kind of mutual vulnerability of agency that Nietzsche identifies
derives from what he calls ‘ressentiment’, an individual’s basic feeling that the
natural limits of, or threats to, his agency – ‘his enemies, his accidents, his
misdeeds’, as Nietzsche puts it – ought not to be, such that the agent distin-
guishes and affirms himself against them.29 Nietzsche argues that, since this
feeling directs an agent to seek revenge, rather than justice, for crimes, certain
juridical strategies are required in order to secure justice – he claims, for
instance, that juridical ‘objectivity’ can be protected by treating crimes as
threats to ‘peace and order’ or as ‘wanton acts against the law, as rebellion
against the highest power itself’, rather than as simply injuries against vic-
tims.30
The second kind of mutual vulnerability of agency identified by Nietzsche
concerns a certain kind of ‘bad conscience’. He claims that modern agents’
‘bad conscience’ derives precisely from the fulfilment of political obligations,
since by prohibiting the outer satisfaction of our various and persistent
29 GM I 10. See also GM III 14–15.

30 GM II 11. Here Nietzsche emphasises his rejection of Eugen Dühring’s particular kind of
retributivist theory, which bases justice precisely on ‘ressentiment’. Dühring’s theory is
presented in, for instance, his Der Werth des Lebens: Eine philosophische Betrachtung,
published in 1865, and his Cursus der Philosophie als streng wissenschaftlicher Weltan-
schauung und Lebensgestaltung, published in 1875. Nietzsche’s library includes both of
these texts, along with a number of Dühring’s numerous other publications. In Nietzsche’s
copy, the appendix of Der Werth des Lebens on ‘Die transcendente Befriedigung der Rache’
is particularly well-marked and he made an extensive critical summary of the book in 1875,
to be found at KGW VI/1 9[1] (Summer 1875). For a helpful summary of Dühring’s theory, see
Small (2001), pp. 172–174.
instincts of cruelty these obligations make these instincts ‘turn themselves

inwards’ instead. Each politically obedient agent thus becomes an object for
his or her own instincts of cruelty – in Nietzsche’s terms, each such agent is
forced to ‘create out of himself an adventure, a place of torture, an insecure
and dangerous wilderness’.31 In the Genealogy Nietzsche gives non-political
examples of this, such as ‘selflessness’ and the denial of natural instincts,
but in the only section concerning ‘bad conscience’ in Beyond Good and Evil –
the book of which he intends the Genealogy to provide ‘a supplement and
clarification’, as he indicates on the latter’s title page – he refers to concep-
tions of political obligations as ‘unconditional’ in the sense of holding for any
agent in relevantly similar circumstances.32 This implies that, for Nietzsche,
the fulfilment of political obligations itself can lead to an egalitarian miscon-
ception of them, one that ignores the morally relevant differences between
agents’ capacities of agency which he, unlike Kant, insists on. Indeed, this
insistence on the variability of agency and therefore of moral significance
provides a plausible explanation for his consistent objection to such uncondi-
tionally egalitarian senses of justice in the name of a relative sense of equality
‘among equals’. He expresses this objection in Twilight of the Idols, for
instance, with the exclamation, ‘The doctrine of equality! … But there exists
no more poisonous poison: for it appears to be preached by justice itself,
whereas it is the end of justice … “Equal for equals, unequal for unequals” –
that would be the true voice of justice: and what follows from it, “Never make
unequals equal”’.33
III Vulnerabilities of Agency

The precise meaning and ultimate success of Kant’s and Nietzsche’s arguments
for these basic political obligations are, of course, far from obvious. In particu-
lar, the meaning of a material thing’s ‘place’ and its intended role in Kant’s
argument, along with the nature and supposed implications of the two kinds
of vulnerabilities which Nietzsche mentions, all require substantial further
31 GM II 16. See also GM II 17–18.

32 See GM II 18 and GM II 21 and GM III 20, BGE 199/JGB 199 and also GS 5/FW 5.
33 TI Skirmishes/ GD Streifzüge 48. See also Z II Tarantulas/ZA II Taranteln, BGE 202/JGB
202 and BGE 272/JGB 272, GM II 11, GS 356/FW 356 and GS 377/FW 377, TI Skirmishes/GD
Streifzüge 37, A 43/AC 43 and A 57/AC 57 and KGW VIII/1, 3[13] and KGW VIII/1, 5[107] and
KGW VIII/2, 9[173] and KGW VIII/2, 11[127], KGW VIII/2, 11[142], KGW VIII/2, 11[148] and KGW
VIII/2, 11[156] and the remarks on Kant at KGW VII/2, 25[437].
122 Tom Bailey
examination and support. However, my concern in this paper is not to provide

a thorough critical account of these arguments. Rather, thus far I have been
concerned simply to demonstrate that, and how, Kant and Nietzsche employ a
particular conception of ‘community’ in these arguments. In this, final part of
the paper, I will attempt to further illuminate this conception in its political
aspect and to offer some, albeit speculative, critical consideration of it.
According to Kant’s and Nietzsche’s conception of ‘community’, agents
constitute a ‘community’ only and precisely insofar as their agencies are mutu-
ally vulnerable. Such a ‘community’ is considered to be morally salient on the
grounds that moral goodness consists of a practical attitude of respect for
agency as such and that only mutual vulnerabilities of agency are pertinent to
the determination of the other-regarding requirements of this attitude – that is,
other-regarding moral obligations and rights. This conception and its supposed
moral salience are therefore ultimately concerned with the mutual vulnerabil-
ity of agents’ agencies, rather than with, say, agents’ desires or needs or with
a notion of agents’ ‘flourishing’. Clearly, the employment of this conception
requires that one or more ‘mutual vulnerabilities’ of agency be identified and
explained. Indeed, as Kant’s and Nietzsche’s different conclusions indicate,
this is of crucial importance, insofar as different vulnerabilities have different
implications. However, it might be suspected that the identification of ‘vulnera-
bilities’ is underdetermined, even arbitrary. After all, Kant and Nietzsche them-
selves provide little explanation of their choices of vulnerabilities. Kant, for
instance, provides no explanation of his insistence that only a certain vulnera-
bility regarding material thing’s ‘places’ is pertinent to the determination of
our basic political obligations. He thus fails to explain why he denies the exis-
tence or pertinence of other vulnerabilities – such as vulnerabilities which
might derive from material scarcity or material inequality or vulnerabilities of
the kinds to which Nietzsche appeals.
Without pretending to dispel these suspicions entirely, however, I would
suggest that, according to Kant’s and Nietzsche’s conception of ‘community’,
the identification of a ‘mutual vulnerability of agency’ is subject to three rela-
tively substantial constraints. First, it must appeal to a conception of ‘agency’
which will guide, or at least limit, the identification of vulnerabilities. As I
mentioned above, Kant conceives of ‘agency’ as an invariable ability to act
according to reasons, while Nietzsche conceives of it as a variable ability to
act according to certain non-cognitive states, however rationally-informed. This
presumably explains why Kant claims that agency requires the physical ability
to use its objects, since he consistently distinguishes practical reasoning from
mere ‘wishing’ by this requirement.34 It might also explain Kant’s claim that,
in requiring the physical ability to use its objects, agency also requires a certain
consistency of material things’ ‘places’, were he to hold that the lack of such
consistency somehow upsets or makes impossible practical reasoning.35 Nietz-
sche, on the other hand, need have no such particular concern for the require-
ments of practical reasoning, since he conceives of agency as an ability to act
according to certain non-cognitive states. But he nonetheless considers such
requirements insofar as he, unlike Kant, considers moral obligations them-
selves to be liable to misconception.36 Indeed, his conception of agency
explains why he treats notions of ‘unconditional’ political obligations as such
misconceptions, and thus as threats to the practice of justice. For he considers
the variability of agency to entail that the requirements of respect for agency,
and agents’ motivations in fulfilling them, be sensitive not only to circumstan-
ces, but also to agents’ variable agencies.37
It is also worth noting that although the identification of a ‘mutual vulner-
ability of agency’ must appeal to a conception of ‘agency’, it need not appeal
to a substantial ideal or standard of ‘agency’, such as Nietzsche’s ‘will to
power’ or ‘Übermensch’ or Kant’s ‘good will’ or ‘pure’ moral practical reason
is sometimes considered to express. Nor, furthermore, need it treat ‘agency’ as
merely a given, negative limit on the pursuit of non-moral goodnesses or as a
principle of rationality according to which moral rules are ‘constructed’, as
Kant’s moral formulas have often been interpreted. Rather, the identification
of a ‘mutual vulnerability of agency’ need only identify how a commonplace
ability to act and the corresponding abilities of others are mutually vulnerable.
It can thus avoid the controversies which attach to more substantial accounts
of agency’s moral salience.
Second, the identification of a ‘mutual vulnerability of agency’ is con-
strained by the level of generality of the obligations at issue. In his Metaphysics
of Morals Kant is concerned to determine only the most general moral obliga-
34 See, for example, G 394 and MS 213. Notably, this distinction is implied by Kant’s
argument for this requirement at MS 246, when he argues that to ‘deny the use of agency
with regard to an object of agency […] annihilates these [objects] in a practical respect’. He
also explicitly states and emphasises this distinction when he presents his Universal
Principle of Right at MS 230.
35 This explanation finds some support in Kant’s crucial claim that ‘damage is done’ to an
agent’s ‘freedom’ by the upsetting of a material thing’s ‘place’, at MS 262. For in MS Kant is
concerned with ‘freedom’ as a quality of an agent’s practical reasoning. See, for example,
MS 221, MS 226–227 and MS 230–231.
36 I discuss Kant’s consistent denial of this in Bailey (2004).
37 For some elaboration of this point, see Bailey (2003) and Bailey (forthcoming).
124 Tom Bailey
tions of human agents and he thus admits only considerations applicable to

every human agent.38 His argument for our basic political obligations is an
important instance of this, since it concerns a mutual vulnerability of agency
which, according to Kant, derives from the finitude of ‘places’ on the earth’s
surface and therefore applies to, and entails obligations and rights of, every
human agent. This explains why in this argument Kant does not appeal to
more particular vulnerabilities. Nietzsche, on the other hand, considers the
implications of one general mutual vulnerability of agency, namely, that
regarding ‘ressentiment’, and of one more particular such vulnerability,
namely, that regarding ‘bad conscience’. In considering the latter, he considers
a vulnerability peculiar to modern agents, consequent on the peculiar degree
to which certain of their instincts are externally suppressed. Thus the conclu-
sions which he draws in Beyond Good and Evil about egalitarianism are explic-
itly restricted to modern agents.39
Finally, I would also suggest that the identification of a ‘mutual vulnerabil-
ity of agency’ is constrained precisely by the requirement that a vulnerability
be ‘mutual’. This has three aspects. First, it indicates that the determination
of moral obligations does not concern agency’s vulnerability to anything other
than agency. Agency’s vulnerability to disease or ignorance, for example, is
considered to be pertinent to the determination of moral obligations only inso-
far as it is a condition or medium of agency’s vulnerability to agency. Thus
Kant refers to the finitude of ‘places’ on the earth’s surface only as a condition
of the vulnerability of an agent’s agency to others’ upsetting of these ‘places’.
Second, the requirement that vulnerabilities be ‘mutual’ excludes the vulnera-
bilities of an agent’s agency to itself. Nietzsche does not, for instance, consider
how ‘ressentiment’ might motivate an agent to damage her own agency. Corre-
spondingly, this conception of ‘community’ is not concerned with the determi-
nation of self-regarding obligations. Third, unilateral vulnerabilities of one
agent’s agency to another’s are excluded. That is, a vulnerability of one agent’s
agency to another’s to which there is no corresponding vulnerability of the
other’s agency is not pertinent to the determination of moral obligations
between them. This is clearest in Nietzsche’s insistence on varying degrees of
agency, and therefore moral significance, among agents, such that an agent
which is not vulnerable to another has no obligations to the latter, although
the latter might be vulnerable to him.
These conceptions of community therefore need not be subject to substan-
tial problems regarding the identification of ‘mutual vulnerabilities of agency’.
38 See MS 216–217 and MS 468–469.

39 See, again, BGE 199/JGB 199.
More generally and in conclusion, I suggest that it also offers certain signifi-
cant advantages for the treatment of ‘community’ in political thought. First, it
avoids the worries raised by the common conception of ‘community’, that
employed in ‘communitarian’ theories, and by its common ‘liberal’ or ‘individ-
ualist’ rejection. That is, it treats political obligations as determined neither by
individuals’ membership of a ‘community’ constituted by a shared habitat,
origin, status, history, practice, nor by the concerns of morally isolated individ-
uals.40 Rather, it treats political obligations as possible only insofar as agents
are not morally isolated, yet does so not by appealing to a shared communal
identity, but by referring to the mutual vulnerabilities of their agencies and
certain consequent requirements of respect for agency between them.
The second substantial advantage offered by this conception of commu-
nity is that it indicates how political obligations of extended scope might be
admitted and explained. Political philosophy and political discourse often
treat an individual’s political obligations as limited to the particular state of
which she is a member and thus problematize political obligations between
states and between individuals of different states. According to Kant’s and
Nietzsche’s conception of ‘community’, however, an individual’s political obli-
gations and rights extend precisely as far as her mutual vulnerabilities of
agency with others extend and thus need not be restricted to a particular
state. Indeed, Kant and Nietzsche both explicitly endorse certain basic politi-
cal obligations of extended scope not only when appealing to this conception
in explaining our general political obligations regarding property, ressenti-
ment or equality, but also when affirming certain international and cosmopol-
itan obligations.41
Finally, I would suggest that this conception of ‘community’ is consonant
with many common intuitions regarding our political obligations. This is so not
only with respect to the differences between it, the common, ‘communitarian’
conception and the ‘liberal’ or ‘individualist’ alternative and with respect to its
admittance of political obligations of extended scope. It also resonates with
40 For examples of the ‘communitarian’ and ‘liberal’, or ‘individualist’, options, see, on the
one hand, MacIntyre (1981), Sandel (1982) and Taylor (1979), and Taylor (1985) and, on the
other, Kymlicka (1989) and the articles by Rawls, Rorty and Raz in Mulhall/Swift (eds.)
(1992). Note that Nietzsche effectively dismisses a version of the ‘communitarian’ option in
favour of his own conception of ‘community’ at GM III 18 and makes some related remarks
regarding the ‘contract’ version of the ‘individualist’ option at GM II 17.
41 See, for instance, Kant’s account of obligations between states and between individuals
of different states at MS 311 and MS 343–353 and Nietzsche’s celebrations of a ‘European’
perspective over the perspectives of individual European states at, for example, BGE 208/
JGB 208, BGE 241/JGB 241, BGE 242/JGB 242 and BGE 256/JGB 256 and GM III 26.
126 Tom Bailey
common intuitions regarding the flexibility and complexity of our political

obligations, insofar as it admits that the vulnerabilities, and corresponding
‘communities’, which explain these obligations can be numerous, crosscutting,
changeable, of differing levels of generality and of diverse origins. It thus offers
the prospect of a richer and more dynamic approach to political communities
than those articulated simply in terms of shared identities or individual choice.
To conclude, I hope to have demonstrated that Kant’s and Nietzsche’s con-
ception of ‘community’ is a potentially fruitful one for political thought. It
offers resources for overcoming certain impasses in contemporary thought
about political community as well as for resolving issues about the identifica-
tion of its own central term, the mutual vulnerability of agency. I reserve a
more thorough critical consideration of this conception and of Kant’s and
Nietzsche’s particular employments of it for another occasion.
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Chiara Piazzesi
What We Talk About When We Talk About
Emotions. Nietzsche’s Critique of Moral
Language as the Shaping of a New Ethical
Paradigm *
‘What do any of us really know about love?’ Mel said. ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at
love. […] I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.’
R. Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
The literary allusion contained in the title of this paper is not that difficult to
decrypt. In Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love, four characters (two couples) discuss, in a lazy and alcoholic after-
noon, their ideas, experiences, puzzlement, and deep misunderstandings
about love and love relationships. Towards the end, the conversation is leading
the four “competent speakers”, apparently able to use words in an appropriate
way, to the even more confusing conclusion, that they don’t really know what
they are talking about when they are talking about love (and expressing love
to each others with words such as “love”).1
Nietzsche’s observations on love and language in aphorism 14 of The Gay
Science derive from the same sort of perplexity (what are we talking about?).
Indeed, Nietzsche argues that there is an invisible, mostly overlooked gap
between the linguistic tools we use to indicate affects and the essential fea-
tures of the real phenomena that we call by affect names. Although we do
not probably have nor could reach any privileged access to those “real” fea-
tures, the multiplicity of psychological dispositions and relational attitudes,
which are called for example love, already puts the linguistic unity in a quite
* This paper owes very much to several discussions and critical exchanges with scholars
and colleagues of the international Nietzsche-Forschung. For their critical remarks and their
observations I am particularly grateful to Pietro Gori, Jorge Viesenteiner, Antonio Edmilson
Paschoal, Patrick Wotling, Diego Sanchez Meca, to the members of the Nietzsche Group at
the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná in Curitiba (Brazil), and to the participants to
the XXIX Encontros Nietzsche (São Paulo, Brazil, Sept. 14–152010). Finally, I would like to
express my gratitude to the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald for making this
research and this contribution possible by supporting me through the Käthe-Kluth-
Fellowship 2010, and to Martin Breaugh for helping me revise this paper.
1 The title of the original version of Carver’s story, before the heavy-handed intervention of
his editor Gordon Lish on the manuscript, was even more eloquent: Beginners.
130 Chiara Piazzesi
critical light and leads to a methodological, heuristic suspicion towards lan-

guage itself, as well as towards the psychology supported and structured by
the latter.
The main implication of such a claim – which Nietzsche reaches through
a specific methodological turn in the inquiry on emotions and passions, as
we will see – is, that the names of passions apply to psychological phenom-
ena only in a restricted way: they do not denote what emotions or passions
really are, rather only what and how we think about our emotions and pas-
sions. So they tell us something about our psychological features, but they
do not have the necessary power to supply the scientific foundation of an
epistemic theory of emotions or passions. A second implication is that these
acts attributing a name to an emotional experience, take place in time, that
is to say in history and in a specific culture/society: it is therefore possible
to observe them from a historical, cultural, and comparative point of view.
Nietzsche’s claim is, in this sense, that the history of the features of psycho-
logical language runs parallel to the history of our psychological features
themselves: language provides the tools and the categories through which
our reflection takes place, through which we are able to think about feelings,
passions, psychological and physiological states, and to share that thinking
of with others. Third, from a moral point of view such attributions are not
neutral: they bear moral values and appraisals, which are reinforced at every
occurrence of the reflective comprehension of an emotional experience.
Psychological categories, thus, are moral categories. Finally, in dealing with
such considerations, the Nietzschean philosopher aims at understanding
whether it remains possible to transform, change, liberate human psychology
and emotional experience from the moral burden, that is, to shape a new
form of life by creatively “playing” with language and corresponding psycho-
logical experiences.
Such questions are still at the core of the current philosophical debate
on emotions, on the possibility of a general theory of emotions, on the con-
nection between propositional attitudes regarding emotional experience (i.e.
individual claims about emotions, feelings, passions) and “real” psychologi-
cal phenomena, on the range of our control on (and responsibility for) pas-
sions, and so forth – a debate dealing with problems raised by psychology,
the neurosciences as well as history, sociology, and history of culture. While
some scholars accept our “common sense” understanding of emotions as a
reliable source of knowledge about psychological phenomena, others mani-
fest a certain scepticism concerning the possibility of such a generalization.
By criticizing the program of an inclusive theory of emotions, Paul Griffiths
argues that neither the concept we use to regroup emotions – i.e. “emo-
What We Talk About When We Talk About Emotions 131
tions” – nor the specific concepts indicating single occurrences of “emo-

tions” – such as “fear”, “love”, “hate”, and so on – seem to have a proper
referent. They seem, therefore, not to have any epistemic (scientific) value:
far from being definitions describing and denoting real phenomena, they are
categories belonging to folk psychology, structuring and hence reinforcing
both the usual reflective interpretation tools corresponding to this psychology
(i.e. the way we think about our thinking, feeling, imagining, acting and so
on) and this psychology itself (the way we think, feel, imagine, act and so
on). Thus, Griffiths argues, against the conceptual attitude theory, that the
analysis of what we say when we talk about emotions does not provide
knowledge of “what emotions really are”, but only knowledge of how we are
inclined to talk about our emotional experiences and dispositions. Language
contains and transmits a whole psychological theory, namely a human theory
about human nature and psychology – about the way we feel and have emo-
tions, about what emotions are, how emotions “tell” us something about
ourselves, etc. In addition to this, as A. Rorty has shown (1980b), such a
theory consists in value appraisals, as it contains some criteria to evaluate
the appropriateness of an emotion in a specific situation: giving an emotion
a name, and a “causal history”, we characterise a (present) experience, the
context in which it takes place, the person who is having that experience,
the object of the emotion, and this kind of evaluation cannot occur in a “pri-
vate” way, especially in the case of “higher cognitive emotions” (which differ
from basic “affect programs” in Griffiths classification of emotional phenom-
ena), as love, hate, grief etc.: such an evaluation depends on and refers to a
social and cultural context, i.e. to shared and stabilized criteria of appraising
actions and behaviours, to the values governing that context. As long as they
are a way of taking position and evaluating a certain (social) situation, higher
cognitive emotions already occur in a way that conforms to embodied cultural
criteria, providing individuals with several ways of connecting their feelings
and psychical states to complex chains of actions, communication, meanings,
relations and so forth. (That is also why Griffiths, as we will see, argues for
an interpretation of our higher cognitive emotions as ways of performing
social roles). Insofar as emotions are not only bodily feelings, but rather, as
Goldie claims,2 a “feeling towards” (or “thinking of with feeling”), and hence
a way of connecting feeling with thinking, imagining, remembering, acting,
etc., they depend on several variable categories of perception and evaluation
of situations, positions, persons, possibilities, margins of legitimacy, and so
on. Higher cognitive emotions, as love, have paradigms of appropriateness
2 Goldie (2000), for example p. 58

132 Chiara Piazzesi
which differ from those, for instance, of fear: criteria of appropriateness for
love, hate, grief etc. are strongly influenced by moral values and cultural
features, especially because they perform a specific relational and social
function, and they are not simply affective reactions.3 Emotional life is, in
this sense, a system of high socialized and culturally articulated competen-
ces, rather than a “natural” human feature.4
Such a system of moral and social appraisals and related individual com-
petences, can be found both “crystallized” and “living” in language and words
denoting emotions, which bear cultural values and criteria of moral evalu-
ation, defining margins of legitimate reference to this or that emotion in a
particular context. By providing a certain quality and form of individual experi-
ence and reflexivity, words reinforce common-sense psychology connected to
such values and criteria.
This perspective provides an understanding of our emotional and psychi-
cal life that insists on its historical “contingency” (the fact that our psychologi-
cal features could be or could have been different), its cultural and social
relevance (culture and socialization are embodied in the form of emotional
competences), its linguistic and narrative structure (our understanding of our
psychical life depends on the way we think and we talk about it), its active
character.
In this paper I will argue that a closer consideration of Nietzsche’s psycho-
logical and genealogical inquiry on passions and specifically on love can pro-
vide us with a meaningful philosophical frame for dealing with some crucial
challenges of the current debate on emotions and their features. (1) I will begin
by shortly presenting the context and the claims of The Gay Science 14; then
3 In his unfinished novel La cognizione del dolore (Acquainted with Grief), Carlo Emilio
Gadda gives an impressive representation of how complex and entangled in the individual
biography our emotions are: their tendency to become dispositions does not only imply that
individuals are inclined to have some specific feeling “reactions”, but also that their
thoughts, reasoning, dealings with situations and people are already oriented by their
emotional dispositions, and that the latter are themselves reinforced by thoughts and
reasoning taking a specific direction, which is already conform to the Weltanschauung
connected to such dispositions – and so on. So the basic disposition to anger and ressen-
timent of the main character Gonzalo leads him to suspect every worker in his house of
stealing and trying to cheat him, and this suspicion excites his anger and rage even more,
and so forth. For a discussion of the different aspects of emotional dispositions, see Rorty
(1980b); on the connection between emotions, mood, and traits of character, see Goldie
(2000), esp. ch. 6.
4 Such an account of a “participative” (felt) performance of social identities and roles could
be integrated into Wollheim’s idea of emotional reflexivity and emotional memory as consti-
tutive of personal identity and for the unity of a personal life (1980).
(2) I will try to provide a deeper comprehension of its main questions by con-
necting them to the broader background of Nietzsche’s interest for the features
and the history of passions; third (3), I will examine the specific case of love
as passion, considered as a form of pratique de soi, characterizing Western
European culture; finally (4) I will summarize and sketch some conclusions in
order to examine Nietzsche’s claims with regard to the current philosophical
debate on emotions.
1 Gay Science 14: A Critical Account of Our

Understanding of Love
1.1 An Opening Terminological Clarification
Let me first begin with a terminological distinction and clarification. Most phi-
losophers and neuroscientists presently dealing with emotions use the term
emotions to indicate a mental state, intentionally directed and focusing on an
object (material, formal, intentional, etc.), in which the perception of bodily
changes is accompanied by thoughts, representations, and judgments related
to that object, including an appraisal and therefore characterizing or giving a
peculiar nuance to the attitude of the subject regarding that particular object
or state of affairs.5 So the current taxonomy generally tends to distinguish
emotions from feelings (perceptions of bodily changes), as well as from other
conscious mental states. Generally speaking, the term emotion has nowadays
replaced the traditional terms passion (to be found, for instance, in Descartes)
5 For an exhaustive review of the different theories of emotions, see the entry Emotion by
Ronald de Sousa (2003) in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. In this paper I will not
discuss the specific differences between the several approaches to emotions and to their
definition, rather I will only refer to questions that are relevant with regard to Nietzsche’s
view of emotions and passions. As for the definition of the general features of emotions,
about which most scholars agree, de Sousa summarizes as follows: “emotions are typically
conscious phenomena; yet they typically involve more pervasive bodily manifestations than
other conscious states; they vary along a number of dimensions: intensity, valence, type and
range of intentional objects, etc.; they are reputed to be antagonists of rationality; but also
they play an indispensable role in determining the quality of life; they contribute crucially to
defining our ends and priorities; they play a crucial role in the regulation of social life; they
protect us from an excessively slavish devotion to narrow conceptions of rationality; they
have a central place in moral education and the moral life”.
134 Chiara Piazzesi
and affect (for instance in Spinoza).6 Still using passion and emotion as syno-
nyms, scholars like Robert Solomon aim at rehabilitating passion from the
traditional accusation of being a hindrance to rationality and fundamentally
opposite to the latter. By contrast, since passions and emotions bear judgments
and appraisals of the situation in which the subject finds himself, others –
and not only philosophers: see for example the work of Antonio Damasio –
regard them as indispensable complement to rationality and especially to
rational decision making.
As mentioned, problems arise as soon as one tries to go from a general
definition of emotions as mental states to a more specific description of single
emotions: it becomes obvious, then, that emotions such as fear or surprise
have only a few features in common with emotions such as love, compassion,
or envy. Trying to solve these kinds of difficulties within the framework of a
scientific analysis of emotions, P. Griffiths (1997) strongly pleads in favour of
a clear distinction between affect programs, consisting in more elementary and
to some extent automatic responses to certain states of affairs, and higher
cognitive mental states, that is, emotions bearing a more complex and compre-
hensive appraisal of the relational network connecting the subject to the envi-
ronment in time and space. Moreover, the higher and wider the cognitive
capacity of emotions is, the more strongly emotions depend on social con-
structed criteria, values, judgments, praxis – that is, on the evolution and the
history of a certain society and culture.
Although Nietzsche’s terminology is fluctuating, some stable distinctions
can be made between the words he chooses to denote the psychic phenomena
he refers to. The term “Affekt”, used primarily to indicate what the tradition
called affectus or passio, is privileged by Nietzsche, especially in the later
phase of his dealings with the notion of “will to power” (Wille zur Macht), to
identify an affection having a bodily, physiological dimension, and, precisely
as a physiological phenomenon, also an evaluative function. “Affekte” are in
this sense the basis of interaction among living beings and between living
beings and environment: they are evaluating appraisals of state of affairs,
affirming specific values in a very characteristic way. In order to clarify such
a feature, and providing, with his numerous considerations on the topic, the
best understanding of affectivity in Nietzsche’s thought, Patrick Wotling insists
on the difference between affective and representational value appraisals,
6 See Dixon (2003) for a reconstruction of the terminological shift between passion and
emotion in the philosophical and psychological tradition. Dixon argues as well that the
passions were always considered as somehow intelligent mental states and that their
opposition to reason was never as strong as other scholars, like R. Solomon (1993), claim.
claiming that the former imply a deeper adherence, in the form of a belief, to
the value itself.7 Thus the affects elevate values to the rank of hinge beliefs –
to use Wittgenstein’s formula – and confer them their importance with regard
to individual and social life. According to Wotling, this role of the affects allows
Nietzsche’s philosophy to overcome the primacy of representation.8 Daring a
translation of Nietzsche’s account in a more current terminology, it could be
claimed that “Affekte” focus in a sense on what is called a “formal object”,
that is, they are performative reactions to a certain quality (or “value”) they
attribute to the object they intend. Such a reaction is not only intentional, but
also active, inasmuch as it is the operation of the evaluative activity that gives
the object a “value”.
Affekt becomes in this sense, within the process of gradual definition of
Nietzsche’s psychological theory, the concept indicating the ground phenom-
ena of our physiological and psychological life, the building element of every
more complex and articulated evaluations, appraisals, cognition acts, and so
forth.9 It is therefore not surprising that Nietzsche nevertheless uses the term
7 See Wotling (2008a), p. 298: “La notion de valeur est donc à penser par opposition à la
représentation. Une valeur est plus qu’une simple représentation en ce qu’elle implique une
adhésion ou une croyance, et même une croyance divinisée: investie d’une autorité absolue,
rendue inattaquable, inquestionnable. Elle est en outre, une croyance qui se trouve investie
d’une fonction régulatrice à l’égard de la vie humaine, c’est-à-dire une croyance capable
d’exercer une contrainte, et même une contrainte tyrannique et d’orienter de manière
impérative le rapport à la pratique des membres d’une communauté”.
8 See Wotling (2008a), p. 302: “c’est bien cette affectivité qualifiante qui transforme les
appréciations fondamentales du vivant en véritables croyances, situation d’où résulte, pour
l’enquête philosophique, le dépassement du primat de la représentation”. And Wotling adds
this quite important observation: “l’affect produit de l’évaluation, mais cette dernière fixe ou
modifie en retour le sentiment à l’égard des choses. S’il y a un primat de l’affectivité, c’est
en tant qu’elle est évaluante; s’il y a primat de la valeur, c’est en tant qu’elle travaillée par
l’affectivité, et il est significatif que Nietzsche, si soucieux de modifier nos manières de
pensée, se refuse ici à construire un processus linéaire et univoque qui identifierait un pôle-
cause et un pôle-effet, pour souligner au contraire l’étrange interpénétration de l’axiologie et
de l’affectif” [Wotling (2008a), p. 303]. As we shall see (§4), this continuous evaluation
activity is the basis for the possibility of gradually transforming our form of life by leaving
room for new value appraisals – therefore for a new language. A further, persuasive illust-
ration of the difference between emotion and belief is given by Goldie – following Hume’s
claims – with regard to the emotion of sympathy [Goldie (2000), p. 216 ff.].
9 As is generally known, Nietzsche describes the mental phenomena of thinking and willing
as affective processes, constituted by a multiplicity of instances and concurring forces
coming to a synthesis and becoming conscious in such a form: see BGE 19/JGB 19, in which,
moreover, the term used to indicate the perception of affective states in their physiological
dimension as well is Gefühl. BGE 36/JGB 36 presents the hypothesis of the dynamism of
Wille zur Macht as a basic process generating our primitive Triebleben as well as the world
136 Chiara Piazzesi
“Emotion” as well, mostly meaning the conscious perception of an affective

phenomenon (always involving a physiological change as well),10 and as such
working more or less as a synonym of “Affekt” (a later example can be found
in GM III 15). This terminological variation doesn’t undermine the primacy of
the latter term: “Emotion” is no terminus technicus within Nietzsche’s analysis
of the human psyche, since “Affekt” already includes a reference to a conscious
perception or at least to the awareness of a change occurring in the living
being.
The case of “Passion” (and “Leidenschaft”) is significantly different. In
fact, this can be regarded as the main reason forcing us to the present clarifica-
tion. I would argue that, referring to higher cognitive affects as, for instance,
love, Passion has within Nietzsche’s analysis of psychology a meaning that is
equivalent to the meaning of “emotion” in the current philosophical debate.
When Nietzsche urges, in GS 7/FW 7, to an “Arbeit für Arbeitsame” (a job for
“the industrious”), that is to retrace a history of all species of Passionen, he
mentions for example love, greed (Habsucht), envy, piety (Pietät), cruelty and
(moral) conscience (Gewissen). GS 14/FW 7, that we will discuss below, accom-
plishes a first step of this job, retracing not the history of love (which will be
sketched later by Nietzsche, as I will show in § 3), but rather the linguistic
simplification and falsification which provides consistence to our concept of
love: pointing out such a falsification, Nietzsche not only casts a sceptical light
on what we (believe to) know about love, but also affirms, from a “pragmatic”
point of view, the necessity of the historical work of reconstructing the process
from which such a mystification arises. In addition to this, as we shall see,
love is the passion par excellence (that is, something considered as “natural”),
and it has also been shaped and constructed as this peculiar form of relation-
ship to the self and to the other which characterises European civilization:
amour passion. The capacity of love to become a disposition, to last, to inform
an entire life, is not a “natural” feature, but rather a cultural acquisition: a
result of the moulding process through which passions “spiritualize” them-
selves.11
of our affects and mental states. Finally, BGE 117/JGB 117 summarize some claims of BGE 19/
JGB 19 and interprets the will to master an affect as the will of another, concurring affect.
10 See for example HH 103/MA 103, HH 108/MA 108, HH 138/MA 138, HH 140/MA 140,
where the expression Lust der Emotion recurs. Some occurrences are in the notes classed as
series 23 of the year 1876. For an occurrence somehow related to historical processes and
cultural values, see AOM 324/VM 324.
11 See below, § 3. Nietzsche describes such a process in TI Anti-Nature/GD Widernatur (esp.
§§ 1–3). See also D 27/M 27.
Therefore I would suggest that the range of phenomena that the current
philosophy of emotions indicates with the term “emotion” is denoted by Nietz-
sche, alternatively, by the term “Passion” and by the term “Affekt”. For the
latter term does not only indicate affect programs, but higher cognitive emo-
tions as well, that is more complex emotional, therefore evaluative and cogni-
tive, dispositions, which can also include affective reactions and physiological
changes: TI Improving 2/GD Verbesserer 2 refers to the affect of fear (Furcht),
GM I 10 mentions the affect of contempt (Verachtung), and BGE 192 at once
the affects of fear, love, hate – and laziness; BGE 260/JGB 260 the affects
jealousy, irascibility (Streitsucht), and arrogance (Übermut); GM I 13 revenge
and hate as affects; and EH Wise 6/EH weise 6 refers to a plurality of Ressenti-
ments-Affekte – not to mention the unpublished texts. Notwithstanding this
terminological oscillation, for the aims of the present paper we can restrain
ourselves to pointing out the equivalence of the current use of “emotion” and
the occurrences of “Passion” in Nietzsche’s works, especially in connection to
love. It seems to me that this equivalence legitimates, in a very firm way,
a discussion of Nietzsche’s contribution to the philosophy of emotions, and
especially to the philosophy of love as a higher cognitive emotion.
In addition, “Passion” sometimes also refers to a general state of psycho-
physiological excitation and exaltation (e.g. in the Dionysian state), not further
specified or qualified, which can be reached for instance through love and
devotion (D 403/M 403), or through art (D 217/M 217). However, such a condi-
tion is mostly indicated by Nietzsche with the word “Leidenschaft” (singular),12
further characterised by a use in the plural form to regroup all possible human
passions, regarded as the non-logical, therefore essential components of
human psychology, especially with reference to the tasks of knowledge, itself
gradually viewed by Nietzsche as a passion, that is as a form of life implying
a constant affective disposition and participation.13
12 Just to give a few examples: HH 148/MA 148, HH 227/MA 227, HH 487/MA 487, HH 597/
MA 597, HH 584/MA 584, HH 606/MA 606, HH 629/MA 629, WS 37, WS 222, D 502/M 502,
etc.
13 Concerning the role of passion/passions within the framework of the practice of science,
knowledge, or in connection to culture, see for example HH 31/MA 31, HH 477/MA 477, HH
629/MA 629, HH 637/MA 637. See also Piazzesi (2010a) for a discussion of the dialectics of
passion and “spirit” or “mind” (Geist) within the process of acquiring knowledge and its
ethical dimension in the form of the conflict between love and justice. References to the
expression Leidenschaft der Erkenntnis can be found, for example, in D 197/M 197, D 482/M
482, GS 107/FW 107, GS 249/FW 249, GS 351/FW 351, BGE 210/JGB 210. M. Brusotti (1997)
wrote a very exhaustive monograph on the origins and the formation of the concept Leiden-
schaft der Erkenntnis.
138 Chiara Piazzesi
1.2 The Gay Science 14: Sketching a Psychological Inquiry

Through a Critique of Language
As mentioned above, GS 14/FW 14 deals with a first representative case of the

inquiry presented in GS 7/FW 7, summarizing most of the features of Daybreak
and Human, All Too Human and introducing the main lines of the “psycholo-
gist’s” work in Beyond Good and Evil and of the genealogical inquiry in On the
Genealogy of Morals: a reconstruction of the psychological features, as cultural
and therefore moral features, which distinguish our form of life, our civiliza-
tion. The leading question, asking how did we become what we are, serves as
a theoretical assumption and practical precondition to formulate and carry out
the pars construens of Nietzsche’s philosophical task – a liberation of our form
of life from absolute moral values, metaphysical beliefs, which means a “soft”
eradication (by shifting and re-shaping) of psychological categories of percep-
tion, appraisal, reflexivity, and self-comprehension coming from and reinforc-
ing such values and beliefs.
Thus, GS 14/FW 14 starts with the very articulated case of love. First of
all, love is an ambiguous concept (Was Alles Liebe genannt wird), that is, it
doesn’t have a clear referent. Secondly, the linguistic opposition between
“love” (Liebe) and “greed” (Habsucht), reflected also by our different sensa-
tions related to each of these two words, is also confused, for it differentiates
two states or phenomena that could actually be one. In fact, love could be
nothing but greed (Habsucht), an “egoistic” and “interested” drive, a desire for
possessing and mastering, for increasing the Machtgefühl, the “feeling of
power” (as described in the previous aphorism, GS 13/FW 13): the only differ-
ence could then be perpetrated by language, reinforcing moral distinctions of
appraisal, which are correspondently deep-rooted in the psychology of individ-
uals using that language as competent speakers. Finally, language concen-
trates and reinforces an idealization process, “creating” something like “love”
as a disinterested, altruistic emotion / disposition – love as an opposite of
egoism.
All these steps of Nietzsche’s criticism, questioning what we (believe to)
know about love when we are talking about love, take place first of all on a
linguistic ground, where the clarity of words/concepts, the (numeral) corre-
spondence of words and facts, and the connection between words, ideas, per-
ceptions of mental states, and reality are discussed. By challenging, through
such a linguistic approach, what we (believe to) know about love, Nietzsche
actually undertakes a dissolution of our categories of self-comprehension, self-
appraisal, and reflexivity, just as he did in D 115/M 115, where he claimed
that words like “love”, “compassion”, “joy”, and “pain” do not describe the
nuances and the processes of our internal life. Moreover, such categories are
grounded on a system of moral appraisals, normally remaining invisible (being
normally non-problematic). By using the words Liebe or Habsucht to identify
our emotions and our actions, we do not just give expression to an objective
observation and recognition of a matter of fact, rather create the reality we are
trying to identify by labeling an experience with specific categories of (moral)
appraisal. Nietzsche’s main claim, within this context, is that such categories
are not necessary, and therefore they could be or have been different. Through
their history, it is possible to retrace the history of some crucial aspects of the
civilization that affirmed and developed such values. As mentioned, Nietzsche,
discussing such (moral) values as contingent systems of evaluation and
appraisal connected to a specific form of culture and life, points out the alli-
ance of language and psychology in reinforcing those values, which are conse-
quently not accessible as such for individuals through an immediate act of
cognition. I am normally not able to appreciate my image of the world as one
possible image of the world: this image is the way I see the world, which is
presupposed – as Wittgenstein claims in On Certainty – in every possibility of
affirming or being sceptical about something.
Moreover, by insisting on the specific sensation connected to each act of
employing a certain expression, for instance “Liebe” or “Habsucht” (“wie ver-
schieden empfinden wir bei jedem dieser Worte!”), and at the same time mak-
ing the “natural” character of this sensation unsure by challenging the related
value attribution (love as a moral, disinterested, altruistic drive), Nietzsche
forces his reader to a peculiar form of suspicion: the reader is led to take
distance from her own self-confidence as a competent speaker, from her trust
in her appraisal of her own emotional experience, consequently to doubt her
categories of self-comprehension and self-appraisal. Insofar as a whole psy-
chology – in the sense of both a psychology and a psychological theory, an
image of what being an individual means and implies – is challenged, the
direct, practical participation of the reader bearing such a “psychological
theory” about herself and human beings is also required. This kind of “inclu-
sive” proceeding is typical of the genealogical method, of which, as I argued
elsewhere,14 GS 14/FW 14 is a kind of pre-figuration.
Let us briefly summarize the implications of Nietzsche’s critical claims in
GS 14/FW 14: by criticizing the reliability of the words – that is, the concepts –
we use to recognise and identify our emotions, understand and communicate
14 For a more exhaustive analysis of GS 14/FW 14, its features and its strategies, see
Piazzesi (2010b) and Piazzesi (2011a). A Portuguese translation is published in: Cadernos
Nietzsche 27, (2010); a condensed German version can be found in Piazzesi (2010c).
140 Chiara Piazzesi
our mental states, Nietzsche induces the reader to that act of self-doubt and
self-suspicion, which is required to accomplish the philosophical task sketched
in GS 7/FW 7: that of becoming aware of, and of interpreting, the history of
the categories of self-comprehension and reflexivity we usually take for
granted. Such categories are recognised as the embodied form of the moral
values system of a specific historical community, that is, on the one hand, as
“non-natural”, but instead as historical and conditioned; on the other hand,
as non-neutral regarding power struggles and competitions in such a social
frame. In GS 14/FW 14, for instance, the words Liebe and Habsucht are
regarded as results of nomination acts coming from different self-affirmation
strategies: those who desire (and not yet possess) give expression to an ideali-
zation of their drives (“love”) – in order to get what they want.15 So the linguis-
tic usage (Sprachgebrauch) is shaped by such strategies, being their principal
instrument of informing (“creating”) realities, and therefore supporting
them.16 And we, though not able to notice it, are the principal actors of these
strategies and “mystifications”, concerning first of all our ideas about our emo-
tions, their meaning and our experience of them. So our psychology is moul-
ded by such inherited, embodied beliefs about things and facts in the world,
which are repeated and reinforced in linguistic usage: what we think about,
say, love, is what we think about ourselves while feeling love, talking about
love to identify our feelings, communicating love, desiring love, and so on.
This means as well, that such concepts/beliefs shape our way of “thinking
of”17 itself while feeling a certain feeling, where this latter is itself “labeled”
by such a “thinking of” and therefore focuses in a certain way on a certain
state of affairs: in this sense, if emotion (Passion for Nietzsche) is a “thinking
of” connected to feelings of physiological changes, then the embodied catego-
ries of judgment and valuing, while informing our thinking about feelings
(drives and perceptions in GS 14/FW 14), shape our emotions too. This is why,
as we shall see in paragraph 4, according to Nietzsche we do need to change
15 FW 14, KSA 3, p. 386: “Habsucht und Liebe: wie verschieden empfinden wir bei jedem
dieser Worte! – und doch könnte es der selbe Trieb sein, zweimal benannt, das eine Mal
verunglimpft vom Standpuncte der bereits Habenden aus, in denen der Trieb etwas zur Ruhe
gekommen ist und die nun für ihre «Habe» fürchten; das andere Mal vorn Standpuncte der
Unbefriedigten, Durstigen aus, und daher verherrlicht als «gut» [GS 14: Greed and love: such
different feelings these terms evoke! And yet it could be the same instinct, named twice:
once disparaged by those who already have, in whom the instinct has somewhat calmed
down and who now fear for what they ‘have’; the other time seen from the standpoint of the
unsatisfied, the thirsty, and therefore glorified as ‘good’]”.
16 A further example can be found in WS 5, with the title Sprachgebrauch und Wirklichkeit.
17 Remember P. Goldie’s definition of emotion as thinking of with feeling.
our ideas and way of talking about our emotions, in order to re-shape our
sensibility and to overcome morality (that is, to overcome “moral sentiments”).
Situated at the very crossing between language usage, history of cultural
features, genealogy of moral evaluations, and related psychological experience
(emotional dispositions transmitted and reinforced by language), the case of
love, and especially of erotic / passionate love, reveals itself as particularly
emblematic: as we shall see, Nietzsche will indeed constantly deal with it.
2 Emotions, Social Construction, and Individual

Psychology
As it is frequently the case in Nietzsche’s work, GS 14/FW 14 is a sort of
philosophical therapeutic performance, by which the reader is led, better,
forced into a form of self-suspicion and critical distance towards her own cat-
egories of self-understanding. Once the “naturalness” of the love emotion is
dissolved, and once its constructed character is brought to the foreground and
offered to conscious appraisal, the “subject” has to reposition herself towards
emotional experience, that is self-experience, and its reliability. This reposition-
ing takes place through a criticism of the “natural” language structuring his
comprehension of every psychological state of affairs. Nietzsche does not aim,
though, at reducing subjective “freedom”, at depriving the subject of self-com-
prehension, but rather at correcting the conditions of the possibility of “free-
dom” and self-experience, of cultivating creativity and self-empowerment. This
kind of disappointing, shocking therapeutic procedure, performed by subtrac-
tion in the form of a language exercise, could provoke either a loving affirma-
tion of liberation or a fit of ressentiment, hate and despair – that is, a (passive)
nihilistic reaction. In this sense the linguistic psychological criticism is per-
formed as a selecting philosophical praxis that could provide the reader with
the tools and with room to create and affirm new values (that is, to practice
new perceptions and affective evaluations). The conditional clause obviously
depends on the reader himself and his capacities – that is, on the singularity of
the reception of philosophical communication,18 a problem of which Nietzsche
becomes more and more aware during his philosophical career.
Nietzsche’s position has much in common with P. E. Griffiths’ discussion of
the endurance of folk psychology and its categories. On the one hand, Griffiths
18 See Piazzesi (2009) for a further discussion of the individual relation to “truth” or
knowledge, as well as of the practical and existential (in a word: therapeutical) effects of
philosophical communication.
142 Chiara Piazzesi
considers the self-referential character of folk psychology as a major cause of

such an endurance (as for every social construct): this implies however a form
of subjective affective attachment as well, a psychological “investment” on the
reliability of those categories and of the language providing reflective self-
comprehension. If the inertial nature of socially constructed psychological cat-
egories prevents disorientation and disappointment, the disclosure of the
socially constructed features of emotions and self-comprehension categories
can cause a strong affective reaction, a denial. Given that emotions are “covert
social constructs”, that is, constructs for which “knowledge of the nature of
the category by those who use the concept would disrupt the process by which
the category is constructed”, it is very likely that “the suggestion that love and
anger are not natural and inevitable parts of human being provokes anger and
denial in a large part of the population”.19 On the other hand, Griffiths criti-
cises the fundamental assumption on which the conceptual analysis of emo-
tions is grounded: dealing strictly with propositional attitudes of competent
speakers talking about their emotional experiences, such a philosophical
method tends to reinforce the self-referential trend of folk psychology. Instead
of focusing on what emotions are, conceptual analysis focuses on what people
(“we”) think about emotions, on what “we” think emotions are (or a specific
emotion is), on how “we” talk about what “we” think about emotions: it oper-
ates therefore with folk psychology categories without looking for a referent in
order to provide a scientific appraisal of their reliability.20
One major consequence of Griffiths’ critique concerns the philosophical
approach to language in dealing with emotions. Although their goal is not a
sort of “correction” of language, the claims exposed above recommend a cer-
tain heuristic suspicion with regards to the “reality status” of concepts and
words denoting emotions and emotional experiences. Such concepts and
words are not clear and unambiguous enough to serve as ground for a scien-
tific theory of emotions. Moreover, they do not provide individuals with a relia-
ble knowledge about what emotions are, psychological reflexivity being in fact
the presupposition (the pre-assumption) of what one aims to find through it.
From the point of view of an “heterogeneous constructivism”,21 emotions are
19 Griffiths (1997), p. 147–148.

20 Cf. Griffiths (1997), p. 42: “In most cases there is no rationale for a propositional attitude
analysis other than it is extensionally adequate to an existing folk category of emotion. The
distinctions between one emotion and another are drawn in terms of their content, but
content distinctions are taken notice of only when they happen to coincide with distinctions
already present in the folk theory”.
21 That is a view according to which emotional phenomena have their basis in biological
processes, reinforced by the local culture. In this context Griffiths follows Ekman’s idea of
display rules “dictating when the effects of affect programs should be suppressed or
seen as “transitory social roles that are interpreted as passions rather than as
actions”,22 therefore words and concepts identifying emotions could be inter-
preted as comprehension and communication “tools”, believed to provide an
objective access to psychic realities, but denoting in fact the more or less
unconscious and non-reflected reference to patterns of social behaviour. Not
only individual emotional experience depends on norms of social display rein-
forcing behavioural patterns, which are in conformity with the norms: those
norms find also expression in the folk psychology categories, that is, in the
language tools used by competent speakers in social contexts. In this sense,
as Griffiths observes, two orders of causal explanation about emotional experi-
ence can be sketched: one connecting, within the framework of reflective indi-
vidual narrative, an emotion to perceived properties of the situation or object;
another focusing on the pattern of behaviour the emotion refers to. Whether
or not common-sense psychology’s categories should be challenged, depends
on the philosophical task one aims to accomplish.23
Another major point follows: at every occurrence, words and concepts denot-
ing emotions do imply a specific prescriptive dimension, that is a moral appraisal
of the situation hic et nunc, of the emotional experience and of the latter’s appro-
priateness in such a social context. Propositional attitudes concerning emotions
are therefore not neutral with regard to moral appraisals and evaluations: the
“choice” (the performance) of a certain pattern of behaviour, together with the
corresponding denoting category of psychic experience, already expresses a self-
positioning of the competent speaker with regards to social norms, self-presenta-
tion strategies, recognition frames, power struggles, competitions, and so forth.
Being emotional patterns and language socially and culturally shaped con-
structs, their occurrences reinforce a certain moral appraisal of the emotions
selves, together with their criteria of appropriateness: nomination acts perform
such evaluations, that is, the system of moral values governing every appraisal.
By developing (and maybe forcing) Griffiths’ claims further, one could say that
the solidity and the endurance of linguistic usages denoting emotions depend on
the solidity of the system of (moral) norms governing social life – and therefore
individual psychology too. As the works of Norbert Elias, Marcel Mauss, Pierre
accompanied by other displays”. Heterogeneous constructivism sees disposition not as

being universal, but rather as being likely to be trans-cultural. See Griffiths (1997), p. 156.
22 Griffiths (1997), p. 148.
23 Discussing Griffiths’ account, for instance, P. Goldie (2000), esp. ch. 4, and R. C. Roberts
(2003), esp. ch. 1, claim that common sense psychological categories should not be
abandoned in favour of scientific definitions of emotions, the former being the ground for
our self-understanding and for the understanding of other individuals in social contexts. I
will discuss Nietzsche’s position on this point in paragraph 4.
144 Chiara Piazzesi
Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Arlie R. Hochschild, and other scholars document,

the incorporation of social norms of emotional display shapes emotional life
itself: consequently, high cognitive emotions systematically imply a moral evalu-
ation of the situation, of the self, of the relation between the two.
It is in this sense that the critique of ordinary language, serving the purpose
of dissolving the superficial reliability of words and concepts, both undermines
the self-referential character of individually articulated folk psychology and of
individual self-assurance. Consequently, philosophical attention is drawn to the
conditions of possibility of a theory of emotions, philosophical positions in this
field commonly being grounded on linguistic usage too (language providing an
illusionary justification for generalization acts). Nietzsche’s observations about
our common understanding of love focus precisely on this point and combine a
general critical account of the scientific status of psychology with a therapeutic
proceeding, involving the reader as subject and competent speaker bearing and
performing the categories of such a psychology. Both the dimensions of philo-
sophical and individual discourse on psychological experience are informed by
social norms, consequently by morality. Given that language usage (Sprachge-
brauch) affirms and reinforces a certain form of life, its status and its value are
connected to the history of such a form of life and can be appreciated only
through a historical observation of the latter’s development.
That is why, in dealing with the exemplary case of love, Nietzsche does
not restrict his critique to such a pars destruens, rather provides a specific
inquiry on the history of love as passion, social praxis, and self-construction
performance in Western European civilization. This second, more relevant
undertaking is necessary in order to evaluate the value of (moral) evaluations
performed by affects and reinforced by linguistic usage, and, eventually, to
transvaluate them.
3 Love as Passion: Genealogy and Features of a

Technique de Soi
Nietzsche’s heuristic ambition of reconstructing the single history – although
a fictive history, that is a genealogy as a model of hypothetical development –
of every single “passion” is clearly based on the assumption that there could
not be a single theory of passions (emotions) abstracting from the value of
each of them in the frame of a specific culture, moral system, set of techniques
of the self and so forth.
I borrow Foucault’s notion of techniques de soi (which is particularly
appropriate in the context of the present analysis of Nietzsche’s account of
love) in order to focus on the active, constitutive reflexive dimension of emo-

tional life, and to provide an understanding of emotional experience as bearing
the traces of the history of Western subjectivity: hence, it is in reflectively
dealing with its own desires, passions, emotions, etc., that Western subjectivity
became what it was in every phase of its evolution, as well as what it presently
is. Learning how to control desires and passions, how to “use pleasures” – as
Foucault shows – , the Western subject constituted himself as subject of desire
and passion: the subject became able to recognise himself as subject of his
own psychic states, to control them and to exercise his own subjectivity in
dealing with them. The history of sexuality as technique of the self is the
history of “(1) the formation of sciences [savoirs] that refer to it, (2) the systems
of power that regulate its practice, (3) the forms within which individuals are
able, are obliged, to recognize themselves as subjects of this sexuality”.24
Focusing on this third aspect, Foucault explains that such a genealogy of sub-
jective experience of sexuality does not mean “une histoire des conceptions
successives du désir”: it is more about
to analyse the practices by which individuals were led to focus their attention on them-
selves, to decipher, recognise, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire, bringing
into play between themselves and themselves a certain relationship that allows them to
discover, in desire, the truth of their being.25
The genealogy of historically shaped self-comprehension and self-government

techniques and linguistic tools is therefore, at the same time, the genealogy of an
entire psychology, of a moral system, of a theory about human nature and psy-
chology. Consequently, a certain account of, say, amour passion in Western Euro-
pean civilization – as a regulated and subjectively governed praxis of desire –
reveals to the historical inquiry the way an emotional experience constituted itself
as a crossing between subjectivation processes, evolution of the individual West-
ern psyche, evolution of social and moral norms, developing of knowledge and
general tools of human self-comprehension in Western civilization.26
This account corresponds entirely to Nietzsche’s idea of a genealogy of
Western subjectivity through the enquiry on moral sentiments, i.e. on incorpo-
rated appraisals and strategies of self-construction and self-presentation, per-
24 Foucault (1985), p. 4
25 Foucault (1985), p. 5.
26 This is also the point of view from which Niklas Luhmann [Luhmann (1982) and Luhmann
(1986)] led his enquiry on Liebe als Passion in Western European society: not only does the
evolution of love as generalized symbolic medium of communication run parallel to the indivi-
dualization process, but both processes have for each other a fundamental constitutive
function.
146 Chiara Piazzesi
forming social norms, these latter being constantly reinforced, vice versa, by
language and by individual behaviour sets. We will now see in which sense,
according to Nietzsche, love as passion became a specific emotional and ethi-
cal disposition, characterizing European subjectivity, by becoming a structured
practice of the self and thus a specific social practice.
When Nietzsche traces passionate (erotic) love back to a sexual drive (Ges-
chlechtstrieb), he doesn’t simply aim, as Schopenhauer did, at discrediting and
dissolving love and being in love as illusions, as self-deceptive frames, the pow-
erful influence of which would vanish once sexual desire were satisfied.27 By
clarifying the status of love as idealization (D 503/M 503; GS 14/FW 14) and
sublimation (BGE 189/JGB 189; TI Morality 3/GD Moral 3) of the sexual drive,
Nietzsche stresses much more the elaboration process, constitutive of Western
subjectivity, through which individual subjects acquired the capacity of govern-
ing, controlling and orienting their own drives and desires. As BGE 189/JGB 189
points out, amour passion represents the main disciplining, shaping form devel-
oped in Western European civilization to control and inform the sexual drive: like
many other regulation norms and customs (for instance, the sequence of work-
days and holidays, or some ancient philosophical doctrine like the Stoa), amour
passion rules the alternation of periods of satisfaction and periods of fasting,
during which, Nietzsche observes, “a drive learns to cower and submit, but also
to keep itself clean and sharp [ein Trieb sich ducken und niederwerfen, aber auch
sich reinigen und schärfen lernt]” (BGE 189/JGB 189). It is therefore not surpris-
ing, according to Nietzsche, that amour passion affirmed itself exactly in the
Christian epoch in Europe under the “pressure” of the latter’s moral doctrine.
Moreover, the analogy between work regulation, (stoic) philosophical discipline,
and amour passion tells us more about Nietzsche’s account of passionate love:
the latter is experienced as passion, which is articulated, though, by a structured
and recognizable set of prescriptions, more or less explicit emotional display
rules, behaviour patterns, and therefore works as a socialized method of self-dis-
ciplining, providing room for reflective self-inquiry, self-knowledge, and self-
governing. In a word, it is also an ethical framework, a technique of self-shaping
and self-transformation (to borrow Foucault’s expression again, a set of tech-
niques de soi).
Such considerations are presented in the section on the “natural history of
morals” of BGE. But Nietzsche goes even further in the section Was ist vornehm?:
27 In GS 14/FW 14 Nietzsche actually uses Schopenhauer’s claim about the dissolution of

passionate love caused by sexual satisfaction to undermine the reliability of linguistic usage
and common ideas, and not strictly to show that love is just sexual desire and doesn’t exist
as such. For further analysis of this point, see Piazzesi (2010b).
exposing the main differences – what Foucault would have called “determina-
tion of the ethical substance”, “mode of subjection”, “forms of ethical work”, and
“telos”28 – between two ethical frameworks, “slave morality” and “master
morality”, paragraph 260 counts “love as passion” (“Liebe als Passion”), among
the ethical practices belonging to “master morality”. In amour passion “an art-
istry and enthusiasm in respect and devotion [die Kunst und Schwärmerei in der
Ehrfurcht, in der Hingebung]”, “symptoms” of an aristocratic way of thinking and
evaluating, find coherent expression. Nietzsche retraces the origins of Liebe als
Passion back to the form of life of the troubadours, “those magnificent, inventive
men of the ‘gai saber’” (BGE 260/JGB 260), to which Europe, Nietzsche writes,
owes much, probably not less than itself.
This reference to gai saber, by explicitly recalling the whole context of The
Gay Science, opens a wider perspective for the interpretation of Nietzsche’s
account of amour passion. In that context passion and love constituted the main
paradigm of knowledge after the dissolution of metaphysical truth: given the
impossibility of a final goal for knowledge such as a universal, absolute and eter-
nal truth, the practice of knowledge converts itself into a passionate commitment
to knowledge as a practice – in every respect analogous to the passionate com-
mitment of amour passion.29 As Marco Brusotti has shown, it is very likely that
a relevant model for Nietzsche’s “passion of knowledge” (“Leidenschaft der Erk-
28 Differences between moral systems may concern 1) the “determination of ethical

substance; that is, the way in which the individual has to constitute this or that part of
himself as the prime material of his moral conduct”; or 2) “the mode of subjection (mode
d’assujettissement); that is […] the way in which the individual establishes his relation to
the rule and recognizes himself as obliged to put it into practice”; or 3) “the forms of
elaboration, of ethical work that one performs on oneself”; finally, they can concern 4) “the
telos of the ethical subject: an action is not only moral in itself,in its singularity; it is also
moral in its circumstancial integration and by virtue of the place it occupies in a pattern of
conduct” [Foucault (1984), p. 27 f.].
29 In a fascinating contribution on the position of love within Nietzsche’s philosophy,
especially with regard to the problem of nihilism, Robert Pippin (2005) pointed out,
following J. Lear’s account of Freudian psychoanalysis, the constitutive character of the
fundamental disproportion between human desire and possibility of satisfaction. Besides all
possible contingent and concrete dissatisfactions, there is in human life, according to
Pippin, “a deeper, categorically different dissatisfaction and so a longing that is not just
such a response to a lack” [Pippin (2005), p. 181]. Nietzsche’s philosophy would be, thus,
the attempt to imagine and offer an alternative to the last man’s nihilistic response to such
a desire: “here ‘alternative’ means not only an engagement we can care about, but one that
also looks like some form of this-wordly dissatisfaction, provoked by some not-being that we
strive to cancel, overcome, a form of self-overcoming without asceticism or transcendence.
We need a picture of striving without the illusion of a determinate, natural lack that we can
fill” [Pippin (2005), p. 187].
148 Chiara Piazzesi
enntnis”) as a new form of knowledge praxis is to be found in Stendhal’s idea of

amour passion,30 which implies an ethical commitment as well as a specific form
of imagination, imagery, representation (Stendhal’s cristallisation), and self-dis-
cipline in handling with the object of the passionate attachment, as well as with
the frustration or deferment of desire. In this sense, passionate love and Leiden-
schaft der Erkenntnis can be seen not only as affective episodes, but rather as
subjectivation and empowerment practices, as forms of active emotional self-
shaping, of positive dealing with frustration,31 of self-challenge and self-disposi-
tion – within whose framework even the idea of the passivity (“being subjected
to”) of the phenomenon one goes through has a constitutive function in the spe-
cific imagery belonging to it. The loving, passionate commitment requires there-
fore a positive ethical work, through which the individual recognises himself as
subject of drives (on a lower level of articulation) and passions, undertakes a sort
“self-government” by actively informing the own actions/reactions, shapes his
own life as an expression of the responsible, conscious disposition to such a pas-
sionate commitment, and so forth.
Nietzsche’s characterization of amour passion as a manifestation of a noble
morality, as Selbstunterwerfung, Hingabe, reverence, devotion, is, thus, not sur-
prising at all. On the contrary, we can see a continuity between GS 14/FW 14
and the aforementioned paragraphs of BGE/JGB and TI/GD, which constitute
the sketch of the announced genealogy of passionate love as a typical Western
European form of subjectivation and ethical self-construction: in a way, the
later texts indirectly answer the question asked in GS 14/FW 14, where Nietz-
sche wonders how selfish and blind drives, aiming at possessing and ruling
the object of “desire”, underwent a process of idealization and sublimation,
becoming the divinized, moralized, “altruistic” emotion that we call love.32 Let
us now consider this kind of genealogy of love as passion.
GS 7/FW 7, as we have already seen, sets the task: not simply a history of
passions, but rather a history of their rationality, of the way they “coloured”
things and Dasein, of the way their evolution as behaviour sets shaped our
psychology – a task based on the assumption of an intrinsic correspondence
between history and psychology, shared by scholars such as Elias, Foucault,
Bourdieu etc. In stating the conditions of such an inquiry, Nietzsche prescribes
for every passion a singular history (neither a “natural” description, nor a
30 See Brusotti (1997), Piazzesi (2010b).

31 See for instance D 429/M 429, as well as GS Preface 3/FW Vorrede 3.
32 In my work on GS 14/FW 14 I have tried to provide an answer to Nietzsche’s heuristic
question, although I only dealt with the text in GS/FW without considering later occurrences
of the problematization of love. Cf. Piazzesi (2010b).
general theory of emotions) through time, civilization, institutions, with regard

to the moral and psychological effects of, say, day planning (work, rest, holi-
day), of shared life frameworks (like in a monastery), of specific forms of life
(artist, scholar, businessman, and so forth). It is not only the case that every
passion has its history: it is also the case that the history of its psychological
features evokes its dependence on social, institutional, environmental condi-
tions of possibility, every passion being the result of the interaction between
human drives and the requirements of social and public life – an interaction
which, being an articulation of subjectivity, is in both directions an active one.
Consequently, GS 14/FW 14 deals with the case of love, which is seen, as
already mentioned, as “room” for self-knowledge, self-government, develop-
ment of reflexivity and imagination, thus generating a specific set of informing
nomination acts and linguistic usages. Based on a rough and relatively myopic
drive, the practice of love is, though, a framework for creativity, communica-
tion, cultural articulation, subjectivation, informed by a powerful display of
value attributions. The articulation and the refinement of passions correspond
in this sense to the refinement of the sensibility and intelligence of Machtgefühl
(feeling of power, GS 13/FW 13).
A further step is taken in BGE 189/JGB 189, which returns to some of the
major points of GS 7/FW 7 (for example, the question of the alternation of
work and rest), discussing – as Norbert Elias will do as well – what we could
call the structures of social regulation of human drives, from which certain
forms of interaction, reflexivity, communication, discourse, and self-compre-
hension (among them, passionate love) are derived. Then BGE 260/JGB 260
clarifies the functional (although not fully intentional) status of such a disci-
pline of drives and desires: amour passion is a form of life devoted to certain
values, a cultural and artistic practice, a commitment to a structured relation
to the object, determining the rank (the value) of the latter, of the subject, and
of their relation itself, as well as a “trajectory” for such a relation. In this
sense, it is an ethical practice that provides a conscious, articulated reflexivity
through “self-subjugation” – according to the criteria of noble morality. While
developing the parallel between erotic love and knowledge, Nietzsche already
considered, in the second book of Gay Science, the role of the (beloved) woman
in men’s (creative) life, that is the role of providing room for idealization and
quest for absolute self-empowerment (GS 59/FW 59, GS 60/FW 60, GS 68/FW
68), and he recommended that such a room be preserved by the careful restric-
tion of the woman’s action to an actio in distans (GS 60/FW 60).33 Thus, the
33 For an accurate analysis of the philosophical context of the second book of GS/FW on
this topic, see Marton (2010).
150 Chiara Piazzesi
aim is not the satisfaction of desire by reaching the desired object, but rather
the cultivation of the self through the commitment to a self-imposed (although
fictionally suffered, according to our representation of passion) pratique/tech-
nique de soi.34 A further example can be found in D 27/M 27, which discusses
the transformation operated on passions by institutions (as, say, marriage) that
elevate them to a higher rank by considering them capable of lasting: by chang-
ing the self-judgment of the individual experiencing a certain passion, such
institutions change the passion as well, that is, the way individuals deal with
(and work on) their emotional experiences. If the desire for possession that
underlies love as binary relation unavoidably reaches its end by reaching pos-
session, the idea, the conviction of not-having-reached-the-entire-possession-
of-the-object-yet enables love to last even after the satisfaction of desire, which
is supposed to dissolve the striving and the tension towards the object (GS
363/FW 363). I am inclined to claim that Nietzsche’s definitions of the amour
passion, the troubadour’s form of life, and of the passion of knowledge as
“masculine” attitudes, should be accounted for by the attribution of such a
feature – the capability of lasting via the idea – to the masculine rather than
the feminine form of love (GS 363/FW 363).
Both BGE 189/JGB 189 and later TI Morality 1–3/GD Moral 1–3 point out
the importance of Christian morality for the articulation of amour passion as
an ethical frame and form of self-practice: moral restrictions to the satisfaction
of drives and desires force self-examination and self-control, thereby increas-
ing self-consciousness – as Foucault will say, subjectivation. In this sense,
by dealing with moral prescriptions, individuals could gradually develop the
capacity to overcome the “letter” of the moral prescription itself, and commit
themselves to themselves – to a self-attributed form of self-government. From
an alienated, “hetero-directed” form of control, aiming at eradicating and
destroying the passions (TI Morality 1/GD Moral 1), Western civilization moved
towards a conscious commitment to a sublimated, still active form of desire,
within which intensity and affirmation are informed by respect, moral dis-
tance, praising and idealization: so that passionate love is the best example
of the acquired power to autonomous self-government and self-empowerment.
This is why, I believe, Nietzsche considers love, i.e. the “spiritualization of
sensuality [Vergeistigung der Sinnlichkeit]”, as a great triumph over Christianity
(TI Morality 3/GD Moral 3). Under the pressure of Christian morality, a typical
34 In this sense it could be argued that Nietzsche doesn’t consider passionate love as a
relationship, rather as a frame of ethical self-government and self-definition. In my opinion,
this is the case, and it is precisely why I have chosen to refer to Foucault’s definition of
technique de soi to illustrate the features of passionate love.
example of rough, “disastrous” and almost “stupid” passion gained intelli-

gence, “spirit”, and keenness – and thus it was able to subtract itself from the
contempt it was condemned to within the Christian moral discourse (see GS
76/FW 76). Since moral systems, as BGE 187/JGB 187 states, are fundamen-
tally “Zeichensprachen der Affekte” (“sign-languages of the affects”), operating
as an arbitrary tyranny against nature (mostly in the sense of “spontaneous”
drives and affects), they gave birth to and “educated” the spirit (Geist): affects
and instincts were moulded by morality, became aware of themselves and then
able to shape themselves in a strategic, intelligent way.
So obedience, constraint, coercion are the origin of every manifestation of
beauty35 – and this is the “natural history” of passionate love as well: the
history of morality goes beyond, so to say “exceeds” morality itself, in the
sense that the effects of moral prescriptions exceed the letter of moral prescrip-
tions themselves – and this “exceeding” is, one could say with a boutade, the
subject, the richness of a sovereign, autonomous and informed emotional life
and reflexivity.36
All these steps of the analysis of passionate love as a form of ethical self-
shaping and self-government (rather than “natural” emotion) are then coher-
ent with the task, the methodology and the aim set in GS 7/FW 7: to follow,
in a “genealogical” way, the evolution of every single passion through “ages,
people”, and depending on the “moral climate” (“nach dem verschiedenen
moralischen Klima”). So, through the analysis of language usage (first of all,
of the names given to psychic phenomena) and of the corresponding value
attributions (embodied as affective patterns as well as propositional attitudes),
Nietzsche aims at providing access to the history of the human psyche in West-
35 JGB 188, KSA 6, pp. 108–109: “Das Wesentliche, «im Himmel und auf Erden», wie es
scheint, ist, nochmals gesagt, dass lange und in Einer Richtung gehorcht werde: dabei
kommt und kam auf die Dauer immer Etwas heraus, dessentwillen es sich lohnt, auf Erden
zu leben, zum Beispiel Tugend, Kunst, Musik, Tanz, Vernunft, Geistigkeit, – irgend etwas
Verklärendes, Raffinirtes, Tolles und Göttliches [BGE 188: what seems to be essential «in
heaven and on earth» is that there be obedience in one direction for a long time. In the long
term, this always brings and has brought about something that makes life on earth worth
living – for instance: virtue, art, music, dance, reason, intellect – something that
transfigures, something refined, fantastic, and divine].”
36 In this sense Nietzsche affirms that “man hat auf das grosse Leben verzichtet, wenn man
auf den Krieg verzichtet [you give up the great life when you give up war]” and that “das
Giftigste gegen die Sinne ist nicht […] von den Asketen [gesagt], sondern von den
unmöglichen Asketen, von Solchen, die es nöthig gehabt hätten, Asketen zu sein… [it is not
the ascetics or the impotent who say the most poisonous things about the senses, it is the
impossible ascetics, people who really should be ascetics…]” (GD Moral resp. 3 and 2/TI
Morality 3 and 2).
152 Chiara Piazzesi
ern European civilization: a history of the becoming of the peculiar form of

subjectivity we have at our disposal.
4 Closing Remarks: Ethical Self-Government and

Emotional Work
Il y a des moments dans la vie où la question de savoir si on peut penser autrement
qu’on ne pense et percevoir autrement qu’on ne voit est indispensable pour continuer à
regarder ou à réfléchir. (M. Foucault, Usage des plaisirs et techniques de soi)
By retracing the history of passions, especially of passionate love, and develop-

ing a critical account of linguistic usages connected to emotional experience,
Nietzsche casts a sceptical light on folk psychology, which undermines its
apparent naturalness.
Folk psychology is structured by moral values, and emotions (passions)
are social constructs, modi of self-presentation that shape corresponding
affects – and vice versa. In GS 14/FW 14 he shows that, for instance, “love”
does not have a single referent: the word cannot provide a reliable, scientific
definition of what love is, it can only draw limits of acknowledgment for indi-
vidual emotional display and relational behaviour. Language patterns and
propositional attitudes (for example, being inclined to use the word “love” to
define one’s emotional/psychical state) are not an objective recognition of
states of affairs, but rather an active work of shaping self-comprehension, stat-
ing specific moral value attributions, setting a certain relation to oneself and
to others, and so forth. These claims, as shown above, anticipate some of the
main accounts of the current philosophical debate on emotions, especially
regarding such questions as whether or not propositional attitudes of compe-
tent speakers constitute a reliable basis for establishing a scientific theory of
emotions, and whether or not such a general theory is possible at all.
By undertaking a genealogical critique, Nietzsche raises issues which oth-
erwise could not be raised through the analysis of propositional attitudes of
competent speakers about (their) emotions. Thus language itself, in its self-
referential character, ought to undergo a critical discussion in order to be
regarded as historical product depending on and reinforcing moral value attri-
butions. In this sense, on the one hand, every emotion’s name possesses a
more prescriptive than descriptive function, setting acknowledgment limits,
plausibility and appropriateness standards, and so on;37 and, on the other

hand, the linguistic performance is accompanied by different emotional experi-
ences, according to the evolution and the transformation of reference values.38
Folk (or common-sense) psychology is therefore significant for Nietzsche’s
philosophical task in several ways. As Robert Solomon argues, focusing on the
question of the role of different emotions in different cultures39 enables to
switch from the traditional problem of the opposition between reason and pas-
sions to a more adequate inquiry on the connection between cultural (and
social) values and appraisals of passions. Nietzsche stresses, though, a further
aspect of the inquiry: by challenging and deconstructing the ordinary language
game about passions, his analysis allows for a dissolution of the illusory onto-
logical connection between the name of a passion (e.g. love) and a certain
state of the human “soul”. The nomination acts, which are at the same time
valuing acts, are, on the one hand, a social praxis, and consequently, on the
other hand, a psychological experience. If in a certain social context, that is
ours, selflessness (Selbstlosigkeit) is promoted and considered as “good”, love
is considered as being selfless (selbstlos) and, hence, as a moral emotion, then
such arbitrary, prescriptive attributions shape our individual psychology, our
individual self-comprehension, as well as the psychology, communication and
criteria of relationships based on love.
It follows that, according to Nietzsche, every “passion” (or, in a more cur-
rent terminology, emotion), as an affective and bodily change in the individual,
has a specific cognitive power (just as every Affekt does), that is, it is an intelli-
gent way of evaluating contexts. Such a cognitive power, being a social compe-
tence that depends on a specific socialization process, is specific as well: not
“natural”, but rather context-bound – a cultural and evolutionary feature that
develops out of a biological predisposition to affective evaluation (“drives”)
and reinforces a system of moral values and arbitrary, though prescriptive,
attributions. Through the concept of will(s)40 to power as an evaluative activity
37 It is noteworthy that contemporary philosophical accounts of love, although mostly

working with propositional attitude analysis and therefore with materials requiring a
carefully descriptive observation, are very often inclined to give normative, prescriptive
definition of what love is, rather than to take into account how competent speakers talk
about love. An exemplary case of such a prescriptive position is found in Harry Frankfurt
(2006).
38 Nietzsche claims that “die moralischen Worte sind in den verschiedensten Zeiten eines
Volkes dieselben: dagegen ist das Gefühl, welches sie begleitet, wenn sie ausgesprochen
werden, immer im Wandel” (NL 1882, KSA 9, 20[3], my emphasis).
39 Cf. Solomon (1998), 286.
40 For a thorough discussion of the problem of an interpretation of “will to power” as
singular or plural (multiple), see Müller-Lauter (1999), p. 25–88.
154 Chiara Piazzesi
informing life, Nietzsche aims at establishing, in his analysis of human psy-

chology and institutions, a theoretical and practical continuity between the
biological (physiological), the evolutionary (which is also civilizational), and
the cultural/social levels. To this interpretation corresponds the main theoreti-
cal shift Nietzsche is exhorting to in this context: from a psychology of superfi-
cial repetition (and reinforcement) of moral prejudices, caught in the self-refer-
ential character of the latter and not able to become aware of their influence,
to a deeper psychology as “morphology and the doctrine of the development of
the will to power” (“Morphologie und Entwicklungslehre des Willens zur Macht”,
BGE 23/JGB 23). Such a psychological inquiry, very close to an evolutionary
psychology, is supposed to be able to cast light on the pre-moral basic feature
of the will to power and consequently on the a-moral origin of every moral
attitude, judgment, and emotion.
It is in this sense that Nietzsche’s investigation on language and psychol-
ogy of passions is a pillar of his philosophical task of overcoming traditional
moral values: a task which doesn’t only consist in questioning moral values,
rather in questioning the way of forming values and “valuing” them. I would
like to conclude by highlighting this last fundamental aspect of Nietzsche’s
critique of psychological language. The deconstruction of the latter’s (as well
as of the corresponding psychology’s) self-referential solidity is indeed the
main precondition of Nietzsche’s philosophical task of transvaluation of val-
ues. By challenging the common usage of language (Sprachgebrauch), Nietz-
sche aims at providing room for a practice of liberation, empowerment, and
creativity. First, the critique forces the competent speaker to a self-distancing
regarding his own psychological and linguistic habits; second, it reveals the
interdependence of psychological categories and moral values; third, it shows
the plasticity of language, words and corresponding attributions; fourth, it
incites a new practice of the self, a creative way of dealing with such plasticity.
Once the correspondence between language, moral and social value attribu-
tions, psychology, and reflexivity is stated, a creative play of shaping new
language practices ensues, which implies shaping individual psychology as
well, while training one’s sensibility for new nuances, affective experiences,
and appraisals. If words are not “informative” about the nuances of our inner
lives (D 115/M 115), undermining the common-sense attributions re-opens
the range of the possibilia, both as linguistic and psychological potentialities.
So new language games are required in order to open new horizons of emo-
tional creativity and reflexivity; but, conversely, affective and psychological
richness is required in order to create new language games; and a certain form
of life, a certain strength and capacity, is necessary in order to destroy custom-
ary linguistic usages and the corresponding Weltanschauung and self-compre-
hension. If creation and destruction belong to one another – as Nietzsche

states in GS 58/FW 5841 – , the subject striving to transvaluate values must
deal first of all with the traumatic experience of self-critique, of self-liberation
from her own categories of self-comprehension, with disorientation and vul-
nerability. That is why Nietzsche’s epistemological position about the dis-
course on emotions is, in this respect, very close to Griffiths’. For the latter
also argues in favour of the “corrective”, “ergonomic” effect of working with a
scientific terminology and gradually abandoning the categories of folk psychol-
ogy. Scholars like Roberts and Goldie claim that, even once the conventional
and constructed character of our common sense categories of thinking and
talking about emotions has been pointed out, “our confidence in our everyday
thought and talk about the emotions need not to be unsettled”, since these
concepts give us “the equipment with which to understand, explain, and pre-
dict what people think, feel, and do”.42 By contrast, the philosophical task
Nietzsche is undertaking – that is, the transvaluation and consequently the
transformation of our current form of life and culture – requires that we leave
room for scientific knowledge to play an heuristic, “educational” function,
thereby undermining our confidence in common-sense Wissen (although far
from granting access to absolute metaphysical truth) and forcing us to a sys-
tematic self-scepticism with regard to our dealings with language, ideas, con-
cepts, and values. Scientific knowledge provides, in this sense, some of the
conditions of possibility of such a new approach to subjectivity and language.
As we have seen, Nietzsche insists regularly on the performative power of
value attribution and linguistic usages as informing human psychology. Thus,
thinking (and speaking) about a passion or an emotion as bad and malicious
means to make it bad and malicious (GS 76/FW 76); in the same way, the
long-term repression of the expression (even of the linguistic expression) of
the passions represses the passions themselves as well, that is, it modifies our
affects and our psychology, and not only their outward forms (GS 47/FW 47).
Nietzsche claims that the articulation and the discipline of emotional display
and expression influence, in a very profound way, the character of emotions,
and inculcate new psychological (ideas, representations, judgments, emotions
on emotions) and physical (feelings) habits and dispositions.43 Consequently,
it becomes clear that the transvaluation of values cannot be a pure theoretical
41 See also GS 301, where Nietzsche opposes the attitude of the “Denken-Empfindenden”,
creating realities by shaping new felt evaluations, to the contemplative attitude, not able to
abandon the conviction of discovering ‘realities’, that already exist as such.
42 Goldie (2000), p. 103
43 Nietzsche’s ideas in this respect correspond to the self-shaping practice that A. R.
Hochschild has defined as emotion work. See Hochschild (1979) and (1983).
156 Chiara Piazzesi
operation, a form of intellectual representation of a new view on things: trans-

valuation is rather a self-transformation of a whole form of life, combining
the emergence of new physiological needs and power with a practice of self-
liberation, self-discipline, self-government. It is a creative capacity, a new dis-
position, meaning a new language practice as well, which struggles to open
new possibilities for expression of affective states, hence for a new affectivity.
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III. On Language, Self-Expression,
and Consciousness
Jaanus Sooväli
The Absence and the Other. Nietzsche and
Derrida Against Husserl 1
I Introduction
In this paper, I would like to focus on a “possibly extravagant conjecture” (GS
354/FW 354) – namely on Nietzsche’s conjecture with regard to the origin of
consciousness, or, as it is specified by Nietzsche in brackets, of what it means
“becoming conscious of something”.2 At first, it is only a conjecture, even a
“possibly extravagant conjecture” which may have something in itself that
could sound insulting “to an older philosopher” (GS 354/FW 354). Indeed,
insults are quite unavoidable here – and first of all I have to be somewhat
insulted. Who or what is this I – who am I? – this “I” in the beginning of
the paper? It is obviously a word with which “whoever is speaker designates
himself”.3 Does this conceptual idea constitute the whole meaning of it or is
it, as Husserl emphasises in his Logical Investigations, only a “function of a
meaning” which, as a function, may indeed contribute something to the mean-
ing itself, but only so that the real and normal meaning of it remains else-
where? Husserl writes that the meaning of the I “can be gleaned only from
the living utterance and from the intuitive circumstances which surround it”.4
If we don’t know who has written this word “I”, then “it is estranged from its
normal sense”.5 Is it really so? Do we not understand the word when we have
no idea who has written it? But Husserl goes even further than that – the
meaning of this word can only be found in solitary speech and it consists in
an immediate idea of one’s own personality.6 What would this mean in regard
1 This paper is a thoroughly revised, altered and improved version of my paper published in
German in Campioni/Piazzesi/Wotling (eds.) (2010) under the title “Die Abwesenheit des Ich
und das Fremde des Bewusstseins: Nietzsche und Derrida gegen Husserl”: Sooväli (2010).
2 It seems that the late Nietzsche is constantly getting more suspicious about the concept
of consciousness, perhaps, among other things, because the German word sein‚ ‘to be’, is
found in the word Bewusstsein, which is translated as “consciousness”. The title of
aphorism 11 of The Gay Science, for example, is also das Bewusstsein, but already there
Nietzsche speaks about Bewusstheit, which could perhaps be translated as “awareness’”. Cf.
NL 1884–85, KSA 11, 30[10], cf. also Kupin (2010).
3 Husserl (2001), p. 219.
4 Husserl (2001), p. 218.
5 Husserl (2001), p. 219.
6 Husserl (2001), p. 219.
162 Jaanus Sooväli
to communication? How does the meaning of the I function in communica-

tion? For the particular speaker, the meaning of this personal pronoun would
consist, also here, in the immediate idea of one’s own personality, but this
idea, for certain reasons which we are going to address in a moment, cannot
probably be so immediate any more. For the others though, the I has in com-
munication only an indicative function – it indicates to the hearer that the
speaker means or intends himself, that he is the immediate object of his own
speech.7 The particular I-presentation, that is to say, the normal sense or
meaning of this word, is concealed or hidden from the hearer. Consequently,
the meaning of the I could only be found in solitary speech where this kind
of dialogue situation is totally interrupted.8 One could still add that in Hus-
serl’s view, all personal pronouns as well as demonstratives function exactly
as the word “I”.
But what is it all about here and what does it have to do with Nietzsche’s
“possibly extravagant conjecture” with regard to consciousness? We would like
to understand this conjecture against a certain background, we would like to
take heed of the “possibly extravagant” in this conjecture; and we are obvi-
ously concerned here with the communication – and with the death of the I.
To be more precise, I want to see how Nietzsche with his extravagant conjec-
ture and Derrida with his criticism of Husserl deconstruct that which is usually
called “subjectivity”, understood as a kind of self-presence of the subject. But
first we have to follow Husserl still a bit further in order to comprehend Der-
rida’s criticism of Husserl (and of subjectivity) in his book Speech and Phenom-
ena and understand the background or backdrop against which the extrava-
gance of Nietzsche’s conjecture first of all may stand out and strike us.
II Presentation and Re-Presentation

In the first of the Logical Investigations (Expression and Meaning) Husserl
points out that the concept of sign includes in itself two quite distinct notions.
He distinguishes between meaningful sign, expression, and an indicative sign,
indication. Indications function in such a way that certain objects or states of
affairs of whose reality someone has actual knowledge are experienced by him
(“though not at all evidently,” as Husserl adds) as motives for surmising or
7 Husserl (2001), p. 219.

8 For Husserl, it is indeed the case that the dialogue – and that is to say also the dialogue
within the I – has to be interrupted in order to make the pure meaning of expression
possible.
believing in the reality of other objects or states of affairs.9 It is important in

that regard that signs in the sense of indications do not normally express any-
thing, that they have neither meaning nor sense,10 “unless they happen to
fulfill a significant as well as an indicative function”.11
Concerning expressions as meaningful signs, as signs which intentionally
want to say something and are loaded with meaning, Husserl states that every
speech or part of speech is actually an expression, though it isn’t at all impor-
tant whether the speech is really spoken or expressed. For Husserl, communi-
cation isn’t essential for expressions since in communication all expressions
would always have to function as indications.12 In communicative speech,
expressions as indications indicate something to the hearer – “they serve the
hearer as signs of the ‘thoughts’ of the speaker”13 – but on the basis of these
indications the latter can only non-evidently and indirectly suppose that the
speaker has such and such sense-giving inner experiences and intentions. Hus-
serl calls this function of linguistic expressions their intimating function.14 But
one has to radically break with this kind of intimation if one wants to discover
the real and genuine sphere of expressions as meaningful signs. This sphere
is solitary life (das einsame Seelenleben).15 Husserl insists first on the idea that
9 Husserl (2001), p. 184.

10 In Logical Investigations, Husserl doesn’t distinguish between meaning (Bedeutung) and
sense (Sinn): “‘Meaning’ is further used by us as synonymous with ‘sense’” [Husserl (2001),
p. 201]; In Ideas I, though, as Derrida also points out, a certain distinction is made:
Bedeutung refers there above all to expressive (linguistic) meaning; Sinn covers even the
pre-expressive stratum of sense. – At this point, we should ask what does “meaning” mean
according to Husserl? First of all, it is something that speech wants to say – what is meant
in speech. Husserl further differentiates between meaning-conferring acts and meaning. Only
through these intentional acts does an expression become meaningful; meaning can only be
constituted in these acts, but cannot be identified with them. Meaning is rather an ideal and
objective content of an expression.
11 Husserl (2001), p. 183.
12 One may notice here that although there is a quite intimate relation between expressions
and intimations, it still has to remain only extrinsic only.
13 Husserl (2001), p. 189.
14 Husserl (2001), p. 189.
15 In relation to “the solitary life”, Derrida (1973) is referring to a certain paradox that affects
phenomenology as a whole: “By a strange paradox, meaning would isolate the concentrated
purity of its ex-pressiveness just at that moment when the relation to a certain outside is
suspended” [Derrida (1973), p. 22]. – However, in relation to this reduction to solitary life, we
must keep in mind that for Husserl, meaning doesn’t belong only to a private sphere of a
subject; according to him, meanings are not something subjective. His theory of ideality and
objectivity of meanings says precisely the contrary – every subject should be able to reach in his
solitary life a pure and objective meaning of a particular expression.
164 Jaanus Sooväli
in solitary life we don’t use actual words but only imagined ones which in
reality do not exist at all, for we are not allowed to confuse imaginative presen-
tations with their imagined objects.16 The words’ non-existence in the imagina-
tion is meant to show that in solitary mental life there can be no indication,
since indication has to be perceived as an existent. Hence, it involves the
reduction of the signifier; what remains is only the ideal form of the latter. In
solitary life, the unity of the word owes nothing to any empirical existence, “it
needs no empirical body but only the ideal and identical form of this body”,17
and only this form will be animated by a meaning. That amounts to another
important distinction for Husserl – a distinction between imagined or repre-
sented (vorgestellte) speech and real communicative speech. Here, as Derrida
claims, one can already recognise a certain “bracketing” of the world, the first
stage of what will later be the phenomenological reduction. One cannot fail to
notice also that this has to do with the identity of the I (of the “subject” or
“subjectivity”), more precisely with the reduction of alterity to the identity of
the I – and therefore also with the problem of metaphysics in general.18
Hence, in order to reach this identity of the I in solitary life, the Other in
communication has to be excluded and the empirical side of the sign has to
be reduced. In real communication, the intentions and mental acts are not
present to the hearer since there one is constantly dependent on a twofold
contaminating mediation, that is, on the physical and empirical side of the
speech, which are the signifier and the realities which this kind of speech
supposedly indicates. Some existing and real signs indicate in the most medi-
ated way other realities which are only probable realities. The presence of the
mental acts, the purity of the meaning-intention cannot be really spoken out
(to the other). But in solitary life, all of this has been eliminated; the telos and
essence of language, as it seems, is purely realised – and that telos, according
to Derrida, is for Husserl precisely the voluntary consciousness as meaning.19
Thus what eventually distinguishes the expression as a meaningful sign from
the indication is precisely the immediate presence of the living present.
But is there no dialogue or communication at all in the solitary mental
life? Husserl of course concedes that even in soliloquy it is possible to conceive
of oneself as speaking and communicating to oneself, for instance if somebody
says “you have gone wrong, you can’t go on like that”. But this is only an
imaginary communication – one only represents oneself as communicating, in
16 Husserl (2001), p. 191.

17 Derrida (1973), p. 41.
18 Tewes (1994), p. 1.
19 Derrida (1973), p. 36.
reality one does not communicate anything – and so it cannot function as

indication of mental acts. For, as Husserl claims, “such indication would there
be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by
us at that very moment”.20 In solitary speech, the subject communicates noth-
ing to himself, he learns nothing about himself, the mental acts are immedi-
ately experienced – the subject is momentarily, in the blink of an eye, identical
with himself. This discourse is obviously about the punctual self-presence of
the mental acts and their contents.
The essential distinctions that Husserl establishes in the beginning of his
first Logical Investigation, particularly the distinction between expression and
indication, control and condition, contain, in Derrida’s view, all the subse-
quent analysis by Husserl. Even in his late work, for instance in The Crisis of
European Sciences (1936), the conceptual presuppositions made in the Investi-
gations are still said to be present and active. So these distinctions concern
the whole phenomenology of Husserl which in spite of all its critical
approaches and renewals still carries on in a very deep and original way the
metaphysical tradition of European philosophy of the presence. Hence, the
whole phenomenological project would in a sense be affected by the decon-
struction of the aforementioned essential distinctions. From the perspective of
a theory of signs, such a deconstruction has been rigorously carried out by
Derrida in his early work Speech and Phenomena; and this criticism somewhat
reminds us of early Wittgenstein’s criticism of later Wittgenstein, of the latter’s
argument against the possibility of a private language.
At this point, Nietzsche’s possibly extravagant conjecture obtrudes itself
upon us once again; it is becoming all the more difficult to hold it back. There
are certainly similarities between Nietzsche’s conjecture and Derrida’s criticism
of Husserl, and perhaps they are not completely accidental since Derrida was
already from an early age well acquainted with Nietzsche’s work. But let us
firstly see how Derrida proceeds in his criticism. First he writes:
The whole theory of signification introduced in this first chapter devoted to essential
distinctions would collapse if the Kundgabe/Kundnahme function could not be reduced
in the sphere of my own lived experiences – in short, if the ideal or absolute solitude of
subjectivity “proper” still needed indications to constitute its own relation to itself.21
The question or problem would consequently be whether the solitary life

breaks with or only internalises the dialogue situation. Or to put it somewhat
differently: Since each person, in speaking of herself, says “I”, the word has
20 Husserl (2001), p. 191.

21 Derrida (1973), p. 42.
166 Jaanus Sooväli
the character of a universally operative indication of this fact.22 Now, does the
word somehow have a different character in solitary speech than in communi-
cation? We have indeed already seen that for Husserl the meaning of the I “as
an immediate idea of one’s own personality” is essentially realised only in
solitary life. Or do things stand differently after all, namely, in the sense of
Derrida’s explanations in Speech and Phenomena “that my death is structurally
necessary to the pronouncing of the I”?23 I – am I dead or still alive?
According to Derrida, even in solitary life (or in other words, in the I)
where the subject is content with imagined or represented (vorgestellt) words
a certain kind of dialogue still goes on. He tries to prove it above all through
the concept of representation. I cannot go into Derrida’s whole criticism of
Husserl; I am just going to emphasise some of the most important points.
Firstly, the distinction between imagined speech and real communicative
speech seems to be somehow suspicious for Derrida. In Husserl’s solitary life,
as we have already seen, the subject doesn’t use real words, real speech, but
only imagined or represented words, imagination of the speech, which doesn’t
exist in reality, he uses only the ideal form of the signifier; and he doesn’t
really speak to himself, he only represents himself (stellt sich vor) as speaking
and communicating. For Derrida, it would follow that for Husserl only the
expression belongs to the order of representation and not the real or spoken
speech or signification in general.24 Obviously, that cannot be the case for
Derrida. The ideality of the form – first according to Husserl – is the name for
the permanence of the same and the possibility of its eternal repetition. A sign
is never something like a unique event; it has to be always repeatable or itera-
ble – through all the possible deformations by empirical usages it still has to
remain repeatable and recognizable as the same.25 A sign has to be on the one
hand an empirical event and on the other hand formal identity.26 Only in this
way can every sign and every speech function at all. Now this repeatability
inevitably implies representations, namely in the sense of Vorstellung as the
locus of ideality in general; in the sense of Vergegenwärtigung as the possibility
of reproductive repetition in general; and finally in the sense of Repräsentation
as substitution (every signifying event is the substitute for the signified as well
as for the ideal form of the signifier).27 Hence, not only the solitary life in
which imagined words are used, but the whole phenomenon of language as
22 Husserl (2001), p. 219.

23 Derrida (1973), p. 96.
24 Derrida (1973), p. 50.
25 Derrida (1973), p. 55.
26 Lawlor (2002), p. 181.
27 Derrida (1973), p. 50.
such always already presupposes infinite representations. But if that is the

case, if the basic structure of language is indeed repeatability, then it is no
longer possible to distinguish between effective (real) and imaginary use of
language. To put it simply, when I really or actually use words, I necessarily
have to make use of the same idealities, the same formal identities as in the
soliloquy. As Derrida emphasises, every sign is originally wrought by fiction.28
Discourse is only the representation of itself.29 For this reason, there is no
criterion on the basis of which one could differentiate between “imaginary”
(as in soliloquy) and real communication (which alludes to indication). But
such a criterion is certainly necessary if one wants to distinguish indication
from expression. And that would ultimately mean that imagined or fictive30
speech is as “real” as real communicative speech – and also the other way
round.
So to the basic structure of the sign belongs the possibility of repetition.
Because of this possibility, “the present presentation of meaning by expression
is haunted by its repetition”.31 Its representation is always possible. But this
possibility of repetition already expropriates the meaning from me, it implies
my absence, even my death. Thus, the meaning is already inscribed into the
field of representation. And that would make impossible any kind of simple
presentation. “As soon as there is a sign,” Bennington writes, “the difference
between first time and repetition, and therefore between presence and non-
presence, has already begun to blur”.32
As we mentioned earlier also Husserl speaks of repetition and ideality. The
progress for Husserl depends on the constitution of ideal truths which can be
repeated infinitely as the same in the presence. Husserl wanted to reconcile
the possibility of repetition and the pure presence of meaning before our eyes33
But precisely repetition, which introduces non-presence and absence, excludes
the simple presentation. This presentation is dependent on re-presentation, re-
turn and re-petition, which rules out the purity Husserl looked for.34 Derrida
28 Derrida (1973), p. 56.

29 Derrida (1973), p. 57.
30 Actually also according to Husserl’s own conception of fantasy or imagination, the
imagined words should refer to real words and real speech. So the difference between
imagined speech and real speech seems to disappear anyway. In relation to that, J.N.
Mohanty (2008), p. 88, writes: “[…] phantasy is a parasitical act – a modified act pointing
back to perception, actual seeing or hearing. Phantasized speaking then, by its essence,
refers back to actual speaking.”
31 Bennington (1999), p. 66.
32 Bennington (1999), p. 68.
33 Cf. Bennington (1999), p. 69.
34 Derrida (1973), p. 52, writes: “We thus come – against Husserl’s express intention – to
make the Vorstellung itself, and as such, depend on the possibility of re-presentation
168 Jaanus Sooväli
also calls this repeatability iterability, implying that repetition is not the repeti-
tion of the same: “The “same” word is always “other” according to the always
different intentional acts which thereby make a word significative”.35
III Auto-Affection and Subjectivity

So the presence of meaning “in the blink of an eye” has been cast into doubt.
But let us ask now what constitutes this self-present subject or subjectivity in
the first place. In solitary mental life I use imagined speech to express myself
to myself; this internal speech is a medium that should retain both the pres-
ence of the meaning intended and the self-presence of the subject. This kind
of internal speech is auto-affection (where the self affects the self); a very
unique kind of auto-affection, because one has the impression that one hears
oneself at the same time when one speaks without having to make use of
anything worldly. This hearing-myself-speak at the moment of speaking seems
to retain my identity with myself; there seems to be an absolute self-proximity.
But since, as Husserl’s own analyses of temporalization imply, the “living now
is constituted only in the state of continuity with retention taken as non-per-
ception”,36 a pure temporal difference comes to divide the subject. Thus when
I speak to myself in my solitary mental life, there is necessarily a gap that
differentiates me into speaker and hearer; differentiates me from myself. But
it is not that auto-affection comes to divide a self-identical subject that has
already been there – on the contrary, it produces the subject as such: “Auto-
affection is not a modality of experience that characterises a being that would
already be itself (autos). It produces sameness as self-relation within self-differ-
ence; it produces sameness as the nonidentical”.37 Thus, auto-affection produ-
ces the subject (sameness) as non-identity. There is no identical conscious
subject that precedes the non-identity; they appear or are produced at the
same time, with one stroke. Marika Enwald has described it so: “Identity (the
area of sameness) is produced such that auto-affection produces the state
where the same separates from itself and produces separation and non-iden-
tity”.38 In short, in auto-affection the “same” (of which we know nothing)
(Vergegenwärtigung). The presence-of-the-present is derived from repetition and not the

reverse.”
35 Derrida (1989), p. 104.
36 Derrida (1973), p. 67.
37 Derrida (1973), p. 82.
38 Enwald (2004), p. 239.
separates itself from itself to become the identical subject as non-identical

(of which we are conscious). This auto-affection is essentially an operation
of différance which introduces a pure difference into self-presence: différance
produces a subject as a “duplicate” of something which has already disap-
peared: “When I hear myself speak, the hearing is the repetition of speaking
that has already disappeared; representation (Vergegenwärtigung) has inter-
vened”.39 And this pure difference includes the possibility of everything Hus-
serl wanted to exclude: “space, the outside, world, the body”.40
Derrida also calls this subject that has been produced in auto-affection a
“trace”,41 the subject is trace of a “subject” that has already disappeared; it
refers to the past which is already gone (and has never been present). In this
sense, subject is always divided, it cannot encounter itself. And for that reason
this something can never be present in consciousness, one can never reflect
about it, one is always already too late to oneself. This trace is also called
protowriting which implies that even on that pre-expressive level which Husserl
wanted to separate from the order of language, everything belonging to lan-
guage (repetition, representation etc.) is already at work. Hence, that which
precedes auto-affection is obviously “outside of consciousness and knowl-
edge”.42
IV The Possibly Extravagant Conjecture

At this point, we have to turn to Nietzsche’s possibly extravagant conjecture.43
The aphorism where this conjecture appears is called “On the genius of the
species” (“Genius der Gattung”). It is certainly a reference to Schopenhauer
who understands by this term some kind of guardian spirit which brings peo-
ple together for reproduction in the interest of the species.44 In other words,
it is a certain unegoistic motivating force which watches over the species by
bringing people together for reproduction. For Nietzsche, what brings human
39 Lawlor (2002), p. 194.

40 Derrida (1973), p. 82.
41 Cf. Derrida (1973), p. 85.
42 Enwald (2004), p. 240.
43 One should take all these words, “possibly” (vielleicht), “extravagant” (ausschweifende)
and “conjecture” (Vermutung), well into account. – There can be something in each of these
words that is (and must remain) foreign to Husserl’s phenomenology.
44 Cf. WWR II, p. 549.
170 Jaanus Sooväli
beings together and unites them is of course not such a metaphysical “guard-
ian spirit” but, as we will see in a moment, consciousness.45
So what does this possibly extravagant conjecture precisely consist in?
According to Nietzsche, we are brought (particularly by physiology and natural
history) to a new beginning of realisation with regard to consciousness. At this
new beginning, one has understood at last that one can “think, feel, will”
and “act” without consciousness; the sort of thinking which is a “becoming
conscious” is only the smallest part of that what one thinks. And precisely for
that reason one is compelled to ask a question which may even sound insulting
to an older philosopher. The question is: “To what end does consciousness
exist at all when it is basically superfluous?” (GS 354/FW 354). Nietzsche’s
extravagant conjecture, which we have already mentioned several times, con-
sists exactly in the answer to this delicate question. This answer is divided into
at least two parts and in such a way that it seems as if Nietzsche is unable to
pronounce the whole conjecture at once, as if he had thought that the reader
would need some time to ruminate on the first part and thus gather some
understanding for the second one.
So let us turn to the first part of the conjecture:
If one is willing to hear my answer and its possibly extravagant conjecture, it seems to
me that the subtlety and strength of consciousness is always related to a person’s (or
animal’s) ability to communicate; and the ability to communicate, in turn, to the need to
communicate (GS 354/FW 354).46
The question that first arises is: what does this “subtlety and strength of con-
sciousness” consist in? Nietzsche himself doesn’t say it explicitly, but he does
give some illuminating hints when he for instance writes that as the most
endangered animal the human being needed help and protection; to get help,
he had to be able to express his neediness; and to express his needs, he first
required consciousness in order “to ‘know’ what distressed him, to ‘know’
what he felt, to ‘know’ what he thought” (GS 354/FW 354). Therefore one
could perhaps say that “the subtlety and strength” refers to the grades in
which one can become conscious of one’s needs, to one’s skillfulness in
observing and knowing the needs of the self. What does Nietzsche’s conjecture
that “the subtlety and strength” of this knowing and observing is related to
the ability to communicate and this in turn to the need to communicate imply?
In the first place, it probably implies the idea that the increase and improve-
45 Cf. Garcia (2010).

46 Cf. NL 1884–85, KSA 11, 30[10], my translation: “The urge to think, the whole awareness
(Bewusstheit), has first occurred on the basis of the urge to communicate oneself”.
ment in the self’s self-knowledge with regard to its needs comes about by way
of mediation through the other. One would like to know oneself better for the
sole reason that one would thus be able to communicate oneself better to the
other; one learns to know oneself better only insofar as one wants to communi-
cate and reveal one’s needs to the other. For reasons that we are going to
address below, one might be led to believe that precisely this wanting to know
oneself necessarily excludes the knowing of the self, the encounter with one-
self.
In any case, Nietzsche’s statement might already entail some damaging
consequences for the whole of Husserl’s phenomenology, in which the purity
of meaning was sought precisely in solitary life, where all kind of communica-
tion has been completely interrupted. But let us read further and approach the
other part of the conjecture, where everything is considerably intensified:
Assuming this observation is correct, I may go on to conjecture that consciousness in
general has developed only under the pressure of the need to communicate; that at the
outset, consciousness was necessary, was useful, only between persons (particularly
between those who commanded and those who obeyed); and that it has developed only
in proportion to that usefulness (GS 354/FW 354).
As we can see, Nietzsche’s point of view seems to be precisely the opposite of

Husserl’s – pure consciousness and the complete self-presence in solitary life
is not only constantly contaminated by communication – somewhat like Der-
rida had demonstrated in his criticism of Husserl – , but consciousness in
general, that is, solitary life, could only develop “under the pressure of the
need to communicate”. The development of consciousness is accordingly
clearly traced back to the needs, and particularly – and that would probably
be even worse from Husserl’s point of view – to the needs of communication.
The sole purpose of consciousness would be to connect persons. And this
function did not belong only to one stage of the development of consciousness;
as becomes clear from the aphorism – it is the “essence” of consciousness:
“Consciousness is really just a net connecting one person with another – only
in this capacity did it have to develop; the solitary and predatory person would
not have needed it” (GS 354/FW 354). It seems to be a quite radical reversal
of perspectives in the tradition of philosophy.
Thus consciousness is from the beginning something social. The human
being needed help and protection, and in order to express himself to others,
in order to make himself understandable as well and easily as possible, he
first had to know himself, to have consciousness of himself.47 Further, Nietz-
47 Cf. Nietzsche’s words from Beyond Good and Evil: “Now, assuming that needs have only
ever brought people together when they could somehow indicate similar requirements and
similar experiences with similar signs, then it follows, on the whole, that the easy communi-
172 Jaanus Sooväli
sche writes that only “conscious thinking takes place in words, that is, in
communication symbols; and this fact discloses the origin of consciousness.
[…] the development of language and the development of consciousness go
hand in hand” (GS 354/FW 354). Hence, the origin of consciousness is lan-
guage. At least in some sense a similar insight appeared from Derrida’s analy-
sis, although he probably would not put it in terms of origin; but he would
say that consciousness is already from the beginning contaminated by what
he calls protowriting.
Nietzsche goes on to say that conscious thinking is only “the shallowest,
worst part” of thinking, “that consciousness actually belongs not to man’s
existence as an individual but rather to the community- and herd-aspects of
his nature […].” And although all our actions are at bottom “incomparably and
utterly personal, unique and boundlessly individual”, as soon as we try to
know ourselves, we “will always bring to consciousness precisely that in our-
selves which is ‘non-individual’, that which is ‘average’ […]” (GS 354/FW 354).
This “incomparably and utterly personal” could probably be related to the
“unconscious virtues”, which Nietzsche believes to be possible (GS 8/FW 8),
and which could threaten the whole treatment of decision in Aristotle’s Nicom-
achean Ethics. But let us ask ourselves whether there is a certain contradiction
here. If it really is physiology that compels us to ask to what end there is
consciousness, and that draws our attention to the fact that conscious thinking
and conscious actions are only a part of thinking and acting and that they are
even the worst, shallowest part of this, how could one, then, understand this
boundless individuality and uniqueness of unconscious actions? Doesn’t phys-
iology precisely dissolve individuality? Are we not, physiologically, quite simi-
lar to each other? But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case; even on the
physiological level the differences may be considerable. Nevertheless, physiol-
ogy is a science which, as every science, operates with general concepts and
cability of needs (which ultimately means having only average and base experiences) must
have been the most forceful of the forces that have controlled people so far” (BGE 268/JGB
268). Interestingly enough, in this aphorism, which is obviously very similar to ours, words
like “consciousness” or “awareness” (Bewusstheit) are completely absent. But even more
important is the fact that since Nietzsche speaks here of “average and base experiences“ as
a prerequisite of understanding, and since “the easy communicability of needs“ is identified
with “having only average and base experiences”, the meaning of words is “reduced” to
psychical acts or experiences in a more or less Husserlian sense. But in aphorism 354 from
The Gay Science, Nietzsche seems rather to say that our experiences (although he doesn’t
use that word there) are at bottom totally individual, and only at the moment when they
become conscious (that is, signs), does generalisation take place. So in this aphorism
(which was written later than the one from BGE/JGB) the psychical acts, experiences,
intentions and so on do not control, at least not exclusively, the meanings of words.
generalisations, and so it cannot possibly discover the boundless individuality

of every person of which Nietzsche speaks. Physiology is a conscious scientific
practice, but precisely in consciousness individuality evaporates. But the point
just seems to be that physiology and natural history only suggest to us the
importance of unconscious activity. The second claim, that this activity is
“incomparably and utterly personal” and boundlessly individual, does not
probably have anything to do with physiology. That is Nietzsche’s own claim.
So Nietzsche states that as soon as we try consciously to understand and
know ourselves, as soon as we reflect upon ourselves, we never really reach
ourselves; what we reach is only the “non-individual”. But is there any other
way to know oneself than through consciousness? Consciousness is already
there as soon as one reflects upon oneself, as soon as one tries to know “what
one is”; consciousness is hidden in every type of self-knowledge; there can be
no self-knowledge without consciousness. Which in turn means that a human
being can never know himself or herself, and this not-knowing-oneself is a
necessity that cannot be eliminated. The human being is always already late to
himself. Trying to understand “myself” (my uniqueness), which really means
reflecting and mirroring myself to myself, produces a copy of me (a reflection
of me) which is already different from my “unique and individual” self. In
Derrida’s terms, one could even say that precisely this reflection of oneself
produces the subjectivity as such. But if the only way to know oneself is
through consciousness, how do we know anything about one’s “boundless
individuality”, how do we know that it exists at all? And what does Nietzsche
mean by that, is it some kind of pre-reflective stage of life? At any rate, we see
also here this crack and gap at work which comes to divide the subject. The
subject is never present to itself; in a certain sense, it is constantly the other
of itself. This crack obviously contests the traditional philosophical idea of the
subject as “a spiritual substance who can study itself in the self-reflection, and
in doing so the subject would always encounter himself”.48 On the contrary,
due to this gap, one never encounters oneself. And this crack would be there
even if there were a kind of self-knowledge without language: this crack would
come to divide the subject as soon as one admits that there is temporalization
in every self-relation. For Nietzsche, though, there is no consciousness without
language (at least not the degree of consciousness available to human beings;
we shall approach this problem in a moment); and it is precisely language
which robs us of our individuality. Also in relation to Derrida we saw above
that the possibility of repetition of a sign necessarily presupposes the possibil-
48 Enwald (2004), p. 238.

174 Jaanus Sooväli
ity of my (individual) absence. Of course once again Nietzsche does not put it
in these terms:
This is what I consider to be true phenomenalism and perspectivism: that due to the
nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is merely
a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities […] that everything which
enters consciousness thereby becomes shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, a sign […]
(GS 354/FW 354).
How should the “nature of animal consciousness” be understood? Does Nietz-

sche, like Schopenhauer, ascribe consciousness to animals? But that can be
tantamount to a certain contradiction. For he said earlier that only conscious
thinking takes place in words and communication symbols, and this fact was
supposed to “disclose the origin of consciousness”. Do animals have language
too, then? At least they do not have it in the rigorous sense of language based
on the use of words and linguistic signs. Is it a contradiction, then? Not neces-
sarily. At the beginning of the aphorism Nietzsche admitted that animals have
at least the ability to communicate (which was in turn related to the need
to communicate) and he related that ability to the subtlety and strength of
consciousness. But the ability to communicate might, perhaps, presuppose
already some kind of pre-language (understood perhaps as “looks, touches
and gestures”, GS 354/FW 354). Human beings, as Nietzsche said, were the
most endangered animals and for that reason they had to develop a better and
higher ability to communicate themselves, that is, they needed a language in
a rigorous sense of the word. So we can understand it in terms of degrees:
animals had a lower ability (and a lower need) to communicate and therefore
also a lower degree of consciousness. Thus when Nietzsche said that the origin
of consciousness can be found in words and communication symbols, then he
perhaps just forgot to add that in this passage he means consciousness in the
high degree which is common to humans as the most endangered animals.
But there is another complexity with regard to this “animal conscious-
ness”. At the beginning of the aphorism Nietzsche said that it is physiology
and natural history (Thiergeschichte) which bring us to the initial realisation
that one can feel, will and act without consciousness. But if in addition to
physiology it is also Thiergeschichte that brings us to this realisation, does this
not indirectly imply that animals do not have consciousness? Did not Nietzsche
just use the expression “animal consciousness” and even emphasised a certain
continuity between animal and “human” consciousness? In spite of that, I do
not see a real contradiction here either. Even if animals in general have,
according to Nietzsche, something like consciousness, there still might be –
that is how Nietzsche might have thought – types of animals (perhaps in the
history and formation of animals) who lacked that which could be rigorously
called consciousness. Or there might be animals that have consciousness in
such a low degree that they can still convince us of, and give us insight into,
the importance of unconscious activities (and the superfluousness of con-
sciousness).49
V Re-turn to the I
But let us go back to the I with which we began this article. In the beginning
of the above quotation, Nietzsche emphasises the word I (“this is what I con-
sider”). First, this is – supposedly – an expression and stressing of individuality
in comparison to others: “I, Friedrich Nietzsche, am the only one to consider
phenomenalism and perspectivism so and so”; “I am the one who I am. Above
all, do not mistake me for anyone else!” (EH Preface 1/EH Vorrede 1).
At first, according to Husserl, this “I” is an indication, that is, it has no
real meaning since, according to him, as we have seen, the complete meaning
of the “I” can only be found in solitary life. Hence, when Nietzsche said it to
himself in his solitary life before writing it down, this word would have had
its full meaning as an immediate idea of his own personality. Is this really so?
Reading this word at the present moment, we do understand it, it is quite
meaningful for us; and the reason for that lies in the simple fact that this “I”
has little to do with the person who has written it down or pronounced it. Or,
in Derrida’s own words: “My death is structurally necessary to the pronouncing
of the I”.50 Only on the basis of the ideality of meaning of the I can one
account for the fact that we understand the word “I” not only when its author
is dead, but also when he is completely fictitious.51
Nietzsche obviously knows quite well that the possibility of his death is
implied as soon as he, wanting to designate himself, says or writes the word
“I”. He is conscious of the fact that there is no consciousness without common
language, and that a subject, as soon as he tries to understand himself as
individually as possible, as soon as he tries to express his individuality, always
brings to consciousness precisely the “non-individual”. From Nietzsche’s point
49 There is still one more question to be asked: why is it due to the nature of animal consci-
ousness that the world we can become conscious of is merely a surface- and sign-world? I
cannot go into this problem here but one possible answer has been given by Constâncio
(2011a) in his article “On Consciousness: Nietzsche’s Departure from Schopenhauer”.
50 Derrida (1973), p. 96.
51 Derrida (1973), p. 96.
176 Jaanus Sooväli
of view, the Husserlian conception of the immediate presence of psychical acts

in consciousness would certainly be quite untenable. But, in spite of this, he
does consciously emphasise the I in the sentence “this is what I consider to be
(…)” Does he attempt to underline his individuality with this emphasis? But
that would be tantamount to a paradox. Or – and this would probably fit better
into the context – does this mean the death of his “I”, of his individuality?
This is of course not the only time he emphasises this word, and one can find
the same emphasis particularly in Ecce Homo where he wants to say: “who I
am” (EH Preface 1/EH Vorrede 1). The possibility of saying “who I am” presup-
poses, as we have seen, the possibility of my death, of my non-being. Does
Nietzsche mean with this emphasis an extreme form of amor fati, that is, of
an eternally recurring affirmation of the death of one’s innermost personality
as soon as one utters the word “I”?
However, there is obviously more to it than that. In Nietzsche’s time, it
was not very common and usual to emphasise this word, just as little as it was
common to tell “why I write such good books” or “why I am so wise” (in
philosophy, it will probably never become common). As he, Friedrich Nietz-
sche, used this word in a new and novel way, he could, in spite of everything,
leave a trace of his individuality or personality into the “system” of language.
Hence, this emphasised “I” is nothing less than a paradox: an affirmation and
emphasis of the death of the proper, as well as an expression of a certain
“individuality” of Nietzsche.
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trans. by G. Bennington, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1973), Speech and Phenomena. And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of
Signs, tranls. by David A. Allison, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1989), Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”: An Introduction, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press.
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of Presence, Meaning, Subject and Method, Diss., Tampere: Tampereen yliopistopaino
Oy Juvenes Print.
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Gattung’ in Jenseits von Gut und Böse 268 und Fröhliche Wissenschaft 354”, in:
Campioni, G./Piazzesi, C./Wotling, P. (eds.), Letture de La Gaia Scienza, Pisa: ETS, pp.
143–156.
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Findlay, New York: Routledge.
Kupin, Alexander (2010), “Die Gefahr des Bewusstseins. Nietzsche über ‘Bewusstheit’ und
‘Sich-Bewusst-Werden’ in FW 11 und FW 354”, in: Campioni, G./Piazzesi, C./Wotling, P.
(eds.), Letture de La Gaia Scienza, Pisa: ETS, pp. 131–142.
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Indiana University Press.
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University Press.
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Nietzsche und Derrida gegen Husserl”, in: Campioni, G./Piazzesi, C./Wotling, P. (eds.),
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Luca Lupo
Drives, Instincts, Language, and
Consciousness in Daybreak 119:
‘Erleben und Erdichten’
I
In a few aphorisms from Book II of Daybreak, Nietzsche constructs a psychol-
ogy that aims to reinforce and consolidate his critique of moral prejudices. The
hypotheses that he sketches in these aphorisms will remain unchanged till the
end of his theoretical activity, although he sometimes formulates and modu-
lates them in a different way. Put very simply, those hypotheses can be stated
as follows. There is really no such thing as an “I” or “ego”. The “ego” is just
a construction and an abstract entity (D 105/M 105). If an ego exists at all,
its complexity escapes our understanding and it can hardly be expressed by
language. The “so-called ‘ego’” is a multiplicity of processes and drives about
which we can have no more than a delusion of real knowledge (D 115/M 115).1
The language and the sensorial organisation that constitute our consciousness
are rough “nets” or “webs” that imprison us and are unable to filter, at the
level of consciousness, the processes and drives that actually occur. Such proc-
esses and drives are, therefore, unknowable (D 115/M 115, D 117/M 117).
The actions that are usually attributed to a “subject” are unknown and
unknowable (D 116/M 116), and the motives that determine them are obscure.
We know that we act but we do not know the motives of our actions – motives
which are in constant conflict amongst themselves below the level of con-
sciousness. This is tantamount to saying that we systematically act without
knowing why we are acting. But if we do not know the motives of our actions,
how can we be entirely responsible for them and say that we act intentionally
(D 129/M 129)? Such questions problematise the concepts of “will”, “inten-
tion”, and “responsibility”, which thereby become radically questionable. As
an alternative to the theoretical idols that are thus made to fall, Nietzsche
proposes the primacy of “chance” (Zufall) as the source of what happens at a
variety of levels (D 119/M 119, D 130/M 130).
1 For an extensive discussion of Nietzsche’s conception of “drive” (Trieb), I allow myself to

refer the reader to my book, Lupo (2006), Le colombe dello scettico, Chapter I. The text that
follows resumes what I have written in Chapters II and III of my book. I dedicate this article
to the memory of Sergio Franzese (1963–2010)
180 Luca Lupo
The whole edifice of morality – conceived of as a science about the actions

of a subject of willing – becomes problematic if one asserts that (i) the “I”
does not exist except in the sense of a complex configuration of drives (D 115/
M 115, D 119/M 119); (ii) the will does not exist and should be substituted
by a pulsional determinism which is psychophysiological in nature; (iii) action
cannot be known because the net of pulsional motives that determine it are
imponderable and incommensurable, so that any efforts to domesticate our
drives are illusory (D 109/M 109).
Aphorism 119 is at the centre of this whole web of aphorisms. I shall try,
first, to give a brief account of its content, and then focus on a few of its most
important points.
The essence (Wesen) of the individual consists in a connected multiplicity
of drives. Due to its extreme complexity this pulsional configuration can only
be known by approximation. Only the roughest, most extreme drives can be
expressed by language. Already in D 115/M 115 Nietzsche had pointed out
how difficult it is to describe the drives in linguistic terms.
Nietzsche does not explain clearly what the drives are supposed to be,
although he makes some efforts to this effect in the notebooks. But here in D
119/M 119 he suddenly focuses on a property that characterises them. What-
ever they really are, one can at least say that they are something that seeks
nutriment (Ernährung). And they find nutriment in the experiences an individ-
ual goes through (i.e., in his or her “lived” experiences, in his or her Erleb-
nisse) – an individual, let us not forget, whose essence consists precisely in
the whole multiplicity of those same drives. “Chance” is here presented as the
determining factor that gives nutriment to the drives. However, chance pro-
motes an unequal development of the drives, so that some will effectively find
nutriment while others will languish. Nietzsche compares the pulsional config-
uration resulting from chance processes of nutrition to a polyp. The drives’
nourishment is “a work of chance” (D 119/M 119): “every moment of our lives
sees some of the polyp-arms of our being grow and others of them wither” –
and “as a consequence of this chance nourishment of the parts, the whole,
fully grown polyp will be something just as accidental as its growth has been”
(D 119/M 119).
Nietzsche now puts forward the hypothesis that when the drives cannot
find nutriment they seek to satisfy their needs by means of imaginary or virtual
gratification. The drives now tend to imagine or invent (erdichten) a substitute
form of gratification. They invent the lived experience (Erlebniss) that they
were unable to find in reality.
Hence the compensating function of the oneiric activity that is carried out
by what Nietzsche calls our “inventive reason” (dichtende Vernunft): the activ-
Drives, Instincts, Language, and Consciousness in Daybreak 119 181
ity whereby the drives “interpret” nervous stimuli and “posit their ‘causes’”,
always “according to their [own] needs” (D 119/M 119, translation modified).2
Nietzsche then ventures the hypothesis that such a tendency to fabricate or
construct imaginary causes in relation to particular nervous stimuli – a con-
struction that aims at the virtual gratification of the drives – does not occur
only in dreams or during sleep, but also in our “waking life” (D 119/M 119).
And so he asks whether there is any “essential difference between waking and
dreaming?” (D 119/M 119). In both psychic states the main activity of the
drives seems indeed to be the fabrication, construction, or “poetical” invention
(Erdichtung) of experiences (Erlebnisse) that nourish them. Since the available
experiences or stimuli are a matter of chance and cannot satisfy the needs of
nourishment of all the drives, the latter cannot but interpret the stimuli so as
to make them offer gratification, reelaborating and adjusting them in ways
that go well beyond their original capacity or adequacy to respond to particular
needs and pulsional demands. If a drive does not manage to make the stimu-
lus/ experience able to satisfy its own need of nourishment, then that drive
interprets the incoming stimulus as if it were adequate to its needs. In other
words, the drive constructs, invents at will, an adequate stimulus.
From this follows the last, and most decisive, hypothesis about the nature
of consciousness – the hypothesis towards which the whole aphorism conver-
ges. It is presented together with other hypotheses in the form of a question,
as the climax of a crescendo effect. The formulation of hypotheses in the form
of questions – I shall come back to this – seems to be part of Nietzsche’s
scepticism, an extreme expansion of the conjectural nature of his thought. It
expresses the intention to leave the philosophical research open to the possi-
bility of finding new horizons of development, in accordance with Nietzsche’s
conception of knowledge as a relentless activity of experimentation. He writes:
[…] but do I have to add that when we are awake our drives likewise do nothing but
interpret nervous stimuli and, according to their needs, posit their ‘causes’? that there is
no essential difference between waking and dreaming? that when we compare very differ-
ent stages of culture we even find that freedom of waking interpretation in the one is in
no way inferior to the freedom exercised in the other while dreaming? that our moral
judgements and evaluations too are only images and fantasies based on a physiological
process unknown to us, a kind of acquired language for designating certain nervous
stimuli? that all our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on
an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text? (D 119/M 119, translation modified).
2 Cf. M 119: “[…] muss ich aber ausführen, dass unsere Triebe im Wachen ebenfalls nichts
Anderes thun, als die Nervenreize interpretiren und nach ihrem Bedürfnisse deren ‘Ursachen’
ansetzen?”.
182 Luca Lupo
This definition of consciousness marks a break between the most “theoretical”

part of the aphorism and the final part, in which Nietzsche gives two concrete
examples that aim to support the arguments presented in the first part.
The first example, which shows how the same experience can be lived in
many different ways depending on the individual that goes through it, aims to
make clear that there actually is an “inventive reason” as described above. We
shall consider the second example more extensively below.
Towards the end of the aphorism, Nietzsche asks rhetorically, “What then
are our experiences (Erlebnisse)?” (D 119/M 119). In view of the arguments
developed along the aphorism, the answer can only confirm the equivalence
between “to live an experience” (Erleben) and “to invent” (Erdichten). This
answer is quite pregnant with implications for the very concept of “reality” as a
whole. For it adumbrates the hypothesis that human beings invent or construct
themselves and their world – and that, in fact, this applies not only to human
beings but to all living organisms, in which a creative force is always at work.
This is a hypothesis that Nietzsche will develop and deepen later, especially
in the notebooks.
Thus a paradoxical circularity is sanctioned: a circularity between what it
means “to live an experience” (Erleben) and “to invent” (Erdichten), such that
“to invent” is tantamount to inventing experiences (Erlebnisse) and “to live an
experience” consists in going through an experience that has been invented.
To this one must add that the author of the experience, the conscious subject,
is in turn an invention that also results from the creative process. And the
inevitable outcome of these acrobatic and dizzying hypotheses put forward by
Nietzsche is an ontological collapse that dissolves all categories of interiority
and exteriority – as for instance subject and object, or author and action. In
the end, it seems, only the concept of creative activity remains standing.
II
An important aspect that emerges from Nietzsche’s reflections in D 119/M 119
concerns the “inventive reason’s” activity. Let us consider how he describes
such an activity.
The inventive reason is committed to produce “inventions, which give
scope and discharge to our drives” (D 119/M 119). Such inventions are further
described as “interpretations” of our nervous stimuli. The inventive reason
“imagines today a cause for the nervous stimuli so very different from the
cause it imagined yesterday, though the stimuli are the same” (D 119/M 119).
But this “inventive reason” (or “the inventive reasoning faculty”, according
to Hollingdale’s translation) is nothing more than a name for a specific and

fundamental activity of the drives. A little bit further in the text, Nietzsche
directly attributes to the drives this activity of interpreting the stimuli and
constructing causes. In fact, the drives “do nothing but interpret nervous stim-
uli and, according to their requirements, posit their ‘causes’” (D 119/M 119).
Judgements and evaluations are just an example of causes that the inventive
reason creates in order to explain certain nervous stimuli: Nietzsche describes
such judgements and evaluations as “only images and fantasies based on a
physiological process unknown to us, a kind of acquired language for designat-
ing certain nervous stimuli” (D 119/M 119).3 Images, fantasies, and “causes”
constructed by the pulsional activity of our inventive reason finally converge
in “consciousness”, an outcome which, as we saw, Nietzsche describes as “a
more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but
felt text” (D 119/M 119).4
If we try to schematise all the stages of the process whereby the inventive
reason produces this outcome, we find that at its basis is the nervous stimulus.
This nervous stimulus, which belongs to the physiological sphere, is then
transformed into – or we could say “translated into” – an image, a fantasy, a
representation or a linguistic expression. Put differently, the stimulus is subject
to a process of metamorphosis. Nietzsche does not explain how this transition
or translation occurs – he just presents it as a hypothesis. His idea is that the
fundamental operation that the inventive reason must accomplish is that of
translating – or, in other words, the operation of providing linguistic media-
tion. And the essential problem this mediation must solve is how to interpret
the stimulus and enable a transition from the physiological to the fully psycho-
logical sphere of representation. Thus the “language” spoken by the nervous
stimulus becomes a verbal or representative language, an image or a word.
The inventive reason deals with hermeneutical problems, and it does this by
undertaking a sort of philology of stimuli in the service of the drives and their
gratification.
However, the inventive reason is always confronted with a problem. This
is the irreducibility between the two spheres that it is supposed to bridge,
the physiological and the logico-representative spheres, which, according to
Nietzsche, are linguistically – but not ontologically – irreducible to one
3 Cf. M 119: “[…] dass auch unsere moralischen Urtheile und Werthschätzungen nur Bilder
und Phantasien über einen uns unbekannten physiologischen Vorgang sind, eine Art
angewöhnter Sprache, gewisse Nervenreize zu bezeichnen […]?”.
4 Cf. M 119: “[…] dass all unser sogenanntes Bewusstsein ein mehr oder weniger phantas-
tischer Commentar über einen ungewussten, vielleicht unwissbaren, aber gefühlten Text
ist?”.
184 Luca Lupo
another. The only possible way to comment on a text one does not know or
which is inaccessible or which is written in a language we do not know is
literally to invent (Erdichten) a commentary. The inventive reason has no alter-
native but to invent the translation of a language it actually does not know.
Hence the paradoxical definition of consciousness as a commentary on an
unknown text. Like the ignorant protagonist of Searle’s Chinese room experi-
ment – who by merely assembling ideograms gives the false impression of
understanding their meaning5 – , thus our consciousness expresses itself
through words and images whose origin it ignores, and whose ultimate mean-
ing has been established elsewhere.
III
D 119/M 119 is dominated by the use of hermeneutical, philological and lin-
guistic images: the oneiric inventions are interpretations of stimuli, judgements
and moral evaluations are a language that designates or uses signs to express
(bezeichnen) certain nervous stimuli, and consciousness is defined as a com-
mentary on an unknown text.
The philological and exegetical metaphor of consciousness as “a more or
less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps, unknowable, but felt text”
(D 119/M 119) has a very precise theoretical value. It underlines the crucial
intertwinement between consciousness and language, which Nietzsche had
already anticipated in D 115/M 115 by using the text metaphor and writing
that “we misread ourselves in this apparently most intelligible of handwriting
on the nature of our self (scheinbar deutlichsten Buchstabenschrift unseres
Selbst)” (D 115/M 115). In addition to highlighting this firm link between
consciousness and language, D 115/M 115 also emphasises that there is a line
of demarcation – which is irreducible from the viewpoint of consciousness –
between our linguistic conscious experience and the ultimately unknown uni-
verse of the drives: “We are none of us that which we appear to be in accord-
ance with the states for which alone we have consciousness and words” (D
115/M 115).
In defining the unconscious as a “text” and consciousness as a “commen-
tary” – and thus in comparing our whole psycho-physiological activity to spe-
cific linguistic practices – Nietzsche interprets the whole psycho-physiological,
or psycho-physical, universe as a linguistic fact. His view includes the hypoth-
5 Cf. Searle (1981).

esis that also in the unconscious part of this universe there is a specific linguis-
tic activity at work, although one which cannot be translated into conscious
terms. But if on the one hand the two languages – the conscious and the
unconscious – are irreducible to one another, on the other hand one should
see all conscious activity as a sign or symptom of unconscious activity, i.e., as
a projection of unconscious activity. Therefore, consciousness and the uncon-
scious are irreducible to one another, but they are also united by the fact that
both should be described as some sort of “linguistic” activity.
I have tried to sketch above the process of metaphorisation that our invent-
ive reason carries out. At the root of this process, there is a nervous stimulus
which is transformed or “translated” into images or words. Once the process
is described in these terms, it becomes clear that what is being described
should not be a novelty to Nietzsche’s readers. For Nietzsche had already
described it in the unpublished essay On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.
There, Nietzsche uses the same explanatory scheme – borrowed from G. Ger-
ber – to describe the process in which language originates.6 A well-known
passage reads as follows: “What is a word? The copy of a nervous stimulation
in sounds” (TL 1, 144/WL 1). And more specifically: “The stimulation of a
nerve is first translated into an image: first metaphor! This image is then imi-
tated by a sound: second metaphor! And each time there is a complete leap
from one sphere into the heart of another, new sphere” (TL 1, 144/WL 1).
Elsewhere Nietzsche speaks of concepts as “the left-over residue of a metaphor”
(TL 1, 147/WL 1), and describes “the illusion produced by the artistic transla-
tion of a nervous stimulus into images” as “if not the mother, at least the
6 In TL, Nietzsche explores the thesis on the origin of words and concepts developed by
Gustav Gerber (1871) in his Die Sprache als Kunst. According to Gerber, words emerge from
the translation of nervous stimuli into images and then into sounds. As a few posthumous
notes from 1884 testify, Nietzsche will come back to this thesis: “First, images – to explain
how images emerge in our spirit. Then, words applied to images. Finally, concepts, which
only become possible when there are words – a subsumption of many images under
something which is not intuitive, but audible (word)” (NL 1884, KSA 11, 25[168], editors’
translation). In addition, Nietzsche also considers the problem of the origin of language from
an evolutionary perspective: “We were already creators of forms long before we created
concepts. The concept emerged only when we subsumed many images by means of a sound:
therefore, when we rubricated the inner optical phenomena with our ear” (NL 1884, KSA 11,
25[463], editors’ translation). Every transition from the stimuli to the images and from the
images to the sounds involves a qualitative leap that makes the successive stages
incommensurable with each other. The outcome of any given stage is an interpretation and,
precisely on account of that, a misunderstanding of the previous stage: the word does not
replicate the images and the images do not replicate the nervous stimuli. On this theme,
see Borsche/Gerratana/Venturelli (1994), Meijers (1988), Crawford (1988).
186 Luca Lupo
grandmother of each and every concept” (TL 1, 147/WL 1). A little bit further
in the text, Nietzsche underlines the decisive fact that “the relation of a nerv-
ous stimulus to the image produced thereby is inherently not a necessary rela-
tionship” and the relation of the former to the latter is not “a relation of strict
causality” (TL 1, 149/WL 1). This confirms the semantic independence of the
interpretive activity from the stimulus which occasions it, as well as the pri-
macy of a “drive to form metaphors” (TL 2, 150/WL 2). And this is highly
evocative of the inventive reason of D 119/M 119: “That drive to form meta-
phors, that fundamental human drive which cannot be left out of consideration
for even a second without also leaving out human beings themselves, is in
truth not defeated, indeed hardly even tamed, by the process whereby a regular
and rigid new world is built from its own sublimated products – concepts – in
order to imprison it in a fortress” (TL 2, 150–151/WL 2).
While in TL the conceptual world is the effect of a free interpretation of
nervous stimuli carried out by the fundamental human drive to create meta-
phors, in D 119/M 119 the whole reality perceived by consciousness both in
dreams and in waking life becomes a construction built by an inventive reason
which is driven by our pulsional life to produce causes on the basis of the
interpretation of nervous stimuli.
There is another aspect that confirms that this is not just a casual asso-
nance between two texts written so far apart in time. In both texts Nietzsche
uses the term “nervous stimulus” (Nervenreiz), and this indicates that we
should in fact establish a more than hypothetical link between D 119/M 119
and TL.7 Moreover, a lexical research confirms that Nietzsche uses the term
Nervenreiz only in these two texts.8
The question of the problematic relationship between sleep and vigil and
the question of consciousness are other themes common to D 119/M 119 and
TL/WL, and these correlations make clear that Nietzsche must have had the
text of TL/WL under his eyes when he wrote D 119/M 119.
In TL/WL, the metaphorical image of consciousness as a Bewusstseinszim-
mer (“a chamber of consciousness”) resting on “the pitiless, the greedy, the
insatiable, the murderous”, of consciousness as a place where man is locked
in, “clinging in dreams, as it were, to the back of a tiger” (TL 1, 142–143/WL
1)9 – this metaphorical image expresses quite well the relationship, which is
7 This link becomes quite clear in Daybreak’s critical apparatus: KGW V/3, p. 680.
8 Or, more precisely still, apart from its occurrence in these two texts, it only seems to
occur in Nietzsche’s notes to his “Lectures on Ancient Rhetoric”, cf. KGW II/4, p. 426.
9 This imagery, with just a few variations, is in fact taken from one of the Five Prefaces to
Five Unwritten Books, cf. KSA 1, p. 760.
more analytically described in D 119/M 119, between the illusoriness of the

world of consciousness (a world consisting of dreams that are created both
with closed and open eyes inside the “chamber of consciousness”) and the
underlying life of the drives, upon which that world of consciousness is
dependent. The wild tiger of TL/WL becomes in D 119/M 119 the polyp at the
mercy of chance. And the metaphorical image of the “chamber of conscious-
ness” in TL/WL recalls another aphorism from Book II of Daybreak, a fact
which confirms again that Nietzsche had his old unpublished text well in mind
while he was working on his new one. I am, of course, referring to D 117/M
117 and its claustrophobic description of man locked within the realm of his
own senses like in a prison. Towards the end of this aphorism another animal
is added to the Nietzschean bestiary, namely when Nietzsche compares the
situation of human beings – who are unable to free themselves from their own
sensorial apparatus – to that of spiders, which are prisoners (but also, let us
not forget, creators) of their own cobwebs: “there is absolutely no escape, no
backway or bypath into the real world! We sit within our net, we spiders, and
whatever we can catch in it, we can catch nothing at all except that which
allows itself to be caught in precisely our net” (D 117/M 117). While in D 117/
M 117 our senses are the threads of the nets that imprison us, in TL these
threads are our representations of space and time: “[…] these we produce
within ourselves and from ourselves with the same necessity as a spider spins;
if we are forced to comprehend all things under these forms alone, then it is
no longer wonderful that what we comprehend in all these things is actually
nothing other than these very forms” (TL 1, 150/WL 1).
IV
Let us now go back to the concept of “inventive reason”. It is no wonder that
Nietzsche will develop and progressively expand his reflection on this con-
cept – and thus in his notebooks from the period 1884–1886 the “inventive
reason” appears as the “creative force” which is the fundamental trait of all
living things, human and non-human. “The whole of the organic world is the
threading together of beings (die Aneinanderfädelung von Wesen)” whose “fun-
damental capacity” (Grundfähigkeit) is “the capacity to create (fashion, fabri-
cate, invent)” (die Fähigkeit zum Schaffen (Gestalten Erfinden Erdichten), NL
1885, KSA 11, 34[247] = WLN, 14–15). All organisms fabricate their own
world around them. They create “little fabricated worlds” (erdichteten kleinen
Welten) because they project “their strength, their desires, their habits outside
themselves, as their external world” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[247] = WLN, 14–
188 Luca Lupo
15) – in the guise of valuations and signs. In their external world organisms
do not deal directly with the originary “chaos” or “hubbub” (Wirrwarr) of the
stimuli, but always already with the simplified elaboration of such a chaos,
that is to say, with valuations and signs: we “filtrate, as it were, what actually
happens (das thatsächliche Geschehen) through a simplifying-apparatus (Sim-
plifications-Apparat)” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[249], editors’ translation).
There is something in us which “is so strong that it governs among all the
activities of our senses, and reduces, regulates, assimilates, etc., for us the
abundance of real perceptions (unconscious ones –), presenting them to our
consciousness only in this trimmed form (Gestalt). This ‘logical’, this ‘artistic’
element is our continual occupation” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[49] = WLN, 3).
We know already “what made this force (Kraft) so sovereign”: “Obviously the
fact that without it, for sheer hubbub (Wirrwarr) of impressions, no living being
would live” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[49] = WLN, 3).
There is a creative force “in us” and “in fact the existing world that is
relevant to us is created by ourselves (von uns geschaffen)” (NL 1884, KSA 11,
26[203], editors’ translation) – and Nietzsche, after writing this, repeats the
expression “by ourselves” (von uns), as if he had suddenly realised that the
use of that pronoun is problematic and had asked himself: “but to whom does
this ‘us’ refer to?”. After this hesitation Nietzsche resumes his thought and
explains: “ – by us, i.e. by all organic beings”. Then he finally decides to
confirm that the world is “a product of the organic process that appears [in all
organic beings] as productively form-giving (produktiv-gestaltend)” (NL 1884,
KSA 11, 26[203], editors’ translation).
“The capacity to live promotes this inventive force (diese dichtende Kraft)”,
i.e., an inventive or “poetic” (dichtende) force that is able to “posit an image,
make it ready, on the basis of just a few indications”, and so that it is also
able to “posit something as permanent (bleibend)” (NL 1884, KSA 11, 25[116],
editors’ translation) precisely where the relentless flux of the impressions
would otherwise never allow a perception of something stable. Due to this
creative drive everything organic is able to judge and act “like an artist”. And
the product of the creative force at work in living beings is reality itself, the
world of conscious experience: “Our ‘external world’ is a product of fantasy,
for the construction of which previous fantasies were used again as habitual
and well-practised activities. Colours, sounds are fantasies, they do not corre-
spond exactly to the mechanistic, real process, but rather to individual states”
(NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[13], editors’ translation). Therefore, “the genesis of
‘things’ is wholly the work of the imaginers, thinkers, willers, inventors – the
very concept of ‘thing’ (Ding) as well as all qualities” (NL 1885–86, KSA 12,
2[152] = WLN, 91). Sensitive beings as “authors” of these processes are also
included among their own creations: “Even the ‘subject’ is something created
in this way, is a ‘thing’ like all the others: a simplification to designate as such
the force which posits, invents, thinks, as distinct from all individual positing,
inventing, thinking. Thus, the capacity is designated, as distinct from all indi-
vidual cases” (NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[152] = WLN, 91).
The creative process emerges here as a form of autopoiesis, whose particu-
lar way of experiencing consists, as we saw, in inventing the experience itself.
It is a form of autopoiesis that is supplied with the peculiar property of perceiv-
ing itself as separated from itself – a property we usually designate with the
word “consciousness”.
V
The autobiographical episode that Nietzsche recounts in the final part of D
119/M 119 exemplifies two kinds of judgements: instinctive and intellectual
judgements.
The drives’ intelligence manifests itself in the activity of judgement. Judge-
ment concerns, first of all, the dynamics of the physiological and organic. The
processes and operations that must occur in order for the organs to function,
i.e. the succession of operations that an organ must accomplish in order for a
particular function to work, depend on a continual activity of judging. In a
certain sense, one can say that when an organ, a kidney for example, performs
its function, it makes operative a whole series of judgements. The “judge-
ments” thus made operative in the organ’s functioning are not propositional,
but they are part of all the chemical processes involved in the very activity of
the organ. The organ’s functionality depends in fact on its capacity to give an
adequate reaction to environmental stimuli, and such a capacity hinges upon
a “judgement”, which Nietzsche defines precisely as “an interpretation of the
stimulus” (Auslegung des Reizes, NL 1880–81, KSA 9, 10[F100], editors’ trans-
lation).
We can conceive of first order judgements, i.e., of judgements resulting
from simple organic processes, by analogy with the judgements of the linguis-
tic, propositional and conscious kind – which, however, are strictly related to
the “organic”, “bodily” judgements. Both kinds of judgement carry out semi-
otic processes of interpretation, both when these processes occur through a
chemical “language” and when they occur through a representative language,
i.e. through language proper. In the light of this conception of judgement, one
can then understand Nietzsche’s conception of “instinct”.
190 Luca Lupo
As Nietzsche writes in one of the few definitions that can be found in the
notebooks:
I speak of instinct when a certain judgement (taste at its lowest level) is incorporated, so
that now it stimulates itself spontaneously and no longer needs to wait for stimul” (NL
1881, KSA 19, 11[164], editors’ translation).10
The activity of judgement becomes spontaneous because it “no longer needs

to wait for stimuli”, and this is possible on account of the incorporation of the
judgement itself. The memory that results from this process of incorporation
contributes in a decisive way to the formation of the instinct. We can speak of
instinct as judgement plus memory, for in fact
[…] memory is the multitude of experiences (Erlebnisse) of all organic life, experiences
that have life, organise themselves, give form to each other, fight among themselves,
simplify themselves, condensate themselves and transform themselves into multiple uni-
ties. There must be an inner process that takes place in the same way as the formation of
concepts out of particular instances: the ground-schema is made to stand out in relief
and underscored over and over again, while the secondary traits are omitted. – So long
as something can still be reversed into a particular fact, it has not yet been melted down:
the most recent experiences are still swimming at the surface. Feelings of sympathy,
antipathy etc. are symptoms which show that unities have already been formed; our so-
called ‘instincts’ are such formations (NL 1884, KSA 11, 26[94], editors’ translation).
Thus, instinct is something that emerges from the stratification, incorporation

and organisation of judgements on the basis of memory. The judgements which
are memorised and from which the instincts are derived are, in their turn, a
product of the drives and their experiences. Hence, instinct seems to be the
progressive consolidation of the drives’ capacity to interact with the external
world and respond to certain pressures exerted by this external world in an
adequate, and apparently automatic, way.
In fact, the automatic nature of instinct and the apparently miraculous
quickness with which our instincts react to stimuli in the most disparate envi-
ronmental situations depend precisely on the consolidated stability of long-
term connections among judgements, and these could only have been made
possible by memory. Our instincts – which manifest themselves as if they were
10 The original text is as follows: “Ich rede von Instinkt, wenn irgend ein Urtheil
(Geschmack in seiner untersten Stufe) einverleibt ist, so daß es jetzt selber spontan sich
regt und nicht mehr auf Reize zu warten braucht”. And it continues as follows: “Es hat sein
Wachsthum für sich und folglich auch seinen nach außen stoßenden Thätigkeits-Sinn.
Zwischenstufe: der Halbinstinkt, der nur auf Reize reagirt und sonst todt ist” (NL 1881, KSA
19, 11[164]).
no more than an immediate capacity to (re)act – owe their immediacy to a

very elaborate activity of incorporation and memorisation of kinds of adequate
response to disparate environmental situations.
Against all appearances, every so-called instinctive judgement is in reality
the most elaborated and mediated type of judgement, because it is an outcome
of the experience that results from the interaction between the organism and
the external world within the deep time of evolution. In a certain sense, para-
doxically instinctive judgements are much more cautious and mediated than
linguistic, representative judgements arising from rational reflection. In
instinctive judgements, what decides and chooses in a given contingent situa-
tion is not the ontogenetic rationality of the single individual – which is
acquired through a linguistic, representative education – but rather the phylo-
genetic “wisdom” accumulated along the long-term evolutionary development.
Precisely in this sense Nietzsche speaks of the “unconscious cunning” (unbe-
wusste Verschlagenheit) that is peculiar to gregarious spirits (BGE 218/JGB
218), and he is able to assert that “instinct is the most intelligent type of
intelligence discovered so far” (BGE 218/JGB 218).
However, although the wisdom of our instincts comes from afar and is
quite ancient, its efficacy is expressed in the immediacy of contingent situa-
tions, whereas our intellectual, conscious, linguistic rationality tends to re-
present the situation it has to face – and so it tends to create a distance, a
separation, between the stimulus and the adequate response.
The life or reality of our drives is always unique and is always organised
as a unity, and yet it has a dual capacity. This dual capacity is precisely what
the autobiographical episode recounted by Nietzsche allows us to see at work.
On the one hand, we see instinct working as the capacity to react immediately
to an unexpected situation; and on the other hand, “reason” working as the
capacity to articulate a “discourse” about an episode which is represented in
our imagination:
One day recently at eleven o’clock in the morning a man suddenly collapsed right in front
of me as if struck by lightning, and all the women in the vicinity screamed aloud; I myself
raised him to his feet and attended to him until he had recovered his speech – during
this time not a muscle of my face moved and I felt nothing, neither fear nor sympathy,
but I did what needed doing and went coolly on my way. Suppose someone had told me
the day before that tomorrow at eleven o’clock in the morning a man would fall down
beside me in this fashion – I would have suffered every kind of anticipatory torment,
would have spent a sleepless night, and at the decisive moment instead of helping the
man would perhaps have done what he did. For in the meantime all possible drives
would have had time to imagine the experience and to comment on it (das Erlebniss sich
vorzustellen und zu commentiren) (D 119/M 119).
192 Luca Lupo
The difference between the two types of judgement, the instinctive and the
intellectual, lies in the fact that “all the judgements of instinct are short-sighted
with regard to the chain of consequences: they counsel on what’s to be done
first”, whereas “the intellect is essentially an apparatus for inhibiting the imme-
diate reaction to the judgement of instinct: it reins in, it considers, it sees the
chain of consequences for longer and further” (NL 1887, KSA 12, 10[167] =
WLN, 202).
Instinct allows the organism to establish occasional and intermittent oper-
ative strategies, in case of need and according to what must be done in the
present moment, whereas the intellect tends to elaborate and make plans for
the future. Intellect and instinct operate, as it were, “in parallel”, although
also in contrast, as we just saw. And this is due to their different timings of
action. While the intellect tends to elaborate a judgement that considers the
long-term effects of an action, instinct, by contrast, functions as a sort of
“working memory”, a sort of organiser of different categories of judgements
that allow the organism to work out short-term strategies for interacting with
the external world.
What intellect and instinct have in common is that they both work “in the
service of the drives”. But, on the other hand, while they are certainly con-
nected to the drives and work in their service, they are also functionally (albeit
not ontologically) distinct from the drives: each one of them operates as an
articulated and well-structured form of expression.
VI
More than ever, the problem of consciousness remains for Nietzsche an open
question. Scepticism and suspicion seem to prevail, as is testified by the dubi-
tative formulations that recurrently accompany his efforts to clarify the prob-
lem.
In D 119/M 119, as we recall, Nietzsche’s hypotheses regarding conscious-
ness are put forward in the form of questions, and he even speaks of conscious-
ness as the “so-called consciousness” – as if to express his scepticism right
from the start and, at the same time, make clear that he is now moving on
shaky ground. As we saw, Nietzsche asks whether he must conclude that “all
our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an
unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text?” (D 119/M 119). The same kind
of prudence implied in this question can also be seen, for example, in a note
from the Winter of 1883–1884, where Nietzsche asks: “Is the whole of con-
scious life perhaps only a reflected image (Spiegelbild)?” (NL 1883–84, KSA
10, 24[16] = WP 676).
Likewise, in a note from 1885, after having asserted that “our conscious
willing, feeling, thinking is in the service of a much more comprehensive will-
ing feeling thinking”, he asks: “ – Really?” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[124] = WLN,
9).
In GS 354/FW 354 – which is the most extensive treatment of the problem
of consciousness in Nietzsche’s published works – the progress of his argumen-
tation is characterised by the recurrent insertion of preambles that cautiously
formulate hypotheses, and not so much by the use of explicitly dubitative
expressions. For example: “If one is willing to hear my answer and its possibly
extravagant conjecture […]” (GS 354/FW 354); or: “Assuming this observation
is correct, I may go on to conjecture […]” (GS 354/FW 354).
In the examples given so far, there is a sort of submissive caution, which
in a posthumous note written in preparation for a few aphorisms of Beyond
Good and Evil becomes an explicit admission of helplessness and failure in
regard to the problem:
How is this consciousness possible? I am very far from devising answers to such questions
(i.e. words and nothing more than that!); just at the right time I come to think of the old
Kant, who once asked the question: ‘How are synthetic judgements a priori possible?’ In
the end, he answered with such a wonderful German profundity: ‘By means of a fac-
ulty’. – How does opium cause sleep? The doctor in Molière answered: on account of the
vis soporifica. There is opium in Kant’s answer about the ‘faculty’ as well, or at least vis
soporifica: how many German ‘philosophers’ have fallen asleep by means of this faculty!
(NL 1884–85, KSA 11, 30[10], editors’ translation).11
Among other things, what emerges from this fragment is that the insurmounta-
ble linguisticity of consciousness is the obstacle that prevents Nietzsche from
solving the problem. Every explanation of what consciousness is must occur
through language, i.e. through the pure mirroring of “words and nothing more
than that!”.
But Nietzsche’s caution in regard to consciousness goes well beyond the
mere use of dubitative formulations. In two important fragments he uses liter-
ary artifices to express it.
In the first one – which is a posthumous note from 1881 – , Nietzsche
inserts his hypotheses in a sort of narrative frame, in a fantasy which opens
and seals the fragment with the image of a flight of doves:
11 The reference to Molière is repeated in BGE 11/JGB 11, which suggests that the note
quoted above was in fact written in preparation for this aphorism.
194 Luca Lupo
As proof that a sceptic occasionally needs to indulge in the unbridled enthusiasm of

fantasy (Schwärmerei), only to recover his calm and come back to the land of the “Per-
haps-and-then-again-Perhaps-not”, I want to narrate the propositions that my doves have
recently brought from the clouds to my home. First: the most usual form of knowledge
(Wissen) is the one that lacks consciousness (Bewußtheit). Consciousness (Bewußtheit)
means ‘knowledge about knowledge’ (Wissen um ein Wissen). Sensation and conscious-
ness (Bewußtheit) have everything in common and may be the same thing (KSA 9. 438,
10[F101], editors’ translation).
Once the theoretical exposition is over, the doves resume their flight: “Well!
Now fly back, dear doves, and give to the clouds what belongs to the clouds!”
(NL 1880–81, KSA 9, 10[F101], editors’ translation).
The second case is the famous fragment from 1885 entitled “Morality and
physiology”, in which Nietzsche presents the hypothesis that the body may
consist of a system of multiple consciousnesses. Here he makes use of mythol-
ogy and actually closes the text with a very peculiar dialogue between Diony-
sos and Ariadne.12 He retrieves the myth of Ariadne in Naxos and imagines
that after having explained his whole theory Dionysos concludes his exposition
by talking with Ariadne:
Prattling in this way, I gave myself up dissolutely to my pedagogic drive, for I was over-
joyed to have someone who could bear to listen to me. However, it was just then that
Ariadne – for this all took place during my first stay on Naxos – could actually bear it no
more: ‘But, sir’, she said, ‘You’re talking pigswill German!‘ – ‘German,’ I answered
untroubled, ‘Simply German! Leave aside the pigswill, my goddess! You underestimate
the difficulty of saying subtle things in German!‘ – ‘Subtle things!’ cried Ariadne, horri-
fied, ‘But that was just positivism! Philosophy of the snout! Conceptual muck and mish-
mash from a hundred philosophies! Whatever next!‘ – all the while toying impatiently
with the famous thread that once guided her Theseus through the labyrinth. – Thus it
came to light that Ariadne was two thousand years behindhand in her philosophical
training (NL 1885, KSA 11, 37[4] = WLN, 30–31).
In this brief banter, Ariadne represents the metaphysical tradition: it is

emblematic, in fact, that the god’s lover is “two thousand years behindhand
in her philosophical training” and objects to the importance the philosopher
gives to the effort of taking into account the results of science, especially of
physiology, i.e., of engaging in a critical examination of them and then using
them to form his own ideas. The exponent of a new philosophical orientation
is indeed Dionysos, who intends to dispense with the guiding thread with
which Ariadne is impatiently toying (sc. the soul) and replace it with the guid-
ing thread of the body.
12 Among the posthumous notes written between 1885 and 1888, there are several sketches
of dialogues in which the characters Ariadne and Dionysos return.
From D 119/M 119 onwards Nietzsche opens up the road to a series of

hypotheses concerning consciousness which he always presents either in cau-
tious and dubitative formulations or in literary frames and mythological refer-
ences in order to avoid falling into the trap of making dogmatic assertions. As
an alternative to dogmatic assertions, he by far prefers prudent conjectures,
especially in dealing with a concept such as consciousness, which is so diffi-
cult to define – all the more so because it has been greatly idealised and
overloaded with meaning by the metaphysical tradition.
Bibliography
Borsche, T./Gerratana, F./Venturelli, A. (eds.) (1994), “Centauren-Geburten”. Wissenschaft,
Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Crawford, Claudia (1988), The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language, Berlin/New
York: de Gruyter.
Lupo, Luca (2006), Le colombe dello scettico. Riflessioni di Nietzsche sulla coscienza negli
anni 1880–1888, Pisa: ETS.
pp. 368–390.
Searle, J.R. (1981), “Minds, Brains, and Programs”, in: Dennett, D./Hofstadter, D.R. (eds.),
The Mind’s I. Fantasies and reflections on Self and Soul, New York: Basic Books.
João Constâncio
Consciousness, Communication, and
Self-Expression. Towards an Interpretation
of Aphorism 354 of Nietzsche’s The Gay
Science
1 Introduction
My aim in this essay is not to present a complete interpretation of aphorism
354 of The Gay Science. Far from it. I shall focus only on what seems to me to
be essential in that aphorism and try to make it as clear as possible.
My first task will be to establish both what the word “consciousness”
(Bewusstsein) means for Nietzsche and what he has to say about what he
means by “consciousness” (section 2). To accomplish this task I shall have
to consider several possible meanings of the word “consciousness” (in con-
temporary terms, these are “phenomenal consciousness”, “access conscious-
ness”, “self-consciousness”, “monitoring consciousness”), and briefly
analyse Nietzsche’s views on such difficult themes as language, conceptuali-
sation, intentionality, and self-reflection. I shall try to show that Nietzsche’s
conception of “communication” and “communication-signs” allows him to
develop a very original – and, I think, very important – view of “conscious-
ness”.
My second task will be to show how Nietzsche tries to describe the uncon-
scious processes that produce consciousness (section 3). Nietzsche’s reflections
and conjectures on this topic are so complicated – and they evolve in such a
complex way in his notebooks – that a whole book should be written about
them. I shall attempt to present no more than a very brief summary of how
Nietzsche sees the unconscious work of our “sensations”, “drives”, “affects”,
and “instincts” in the complex process of producing consciousness. One of my
aims here is to emphasise the role of “schemata” (Schemata) in that process,
because this seems to me to be a very important aspect of Nietzsche’s views,
which is nevertheless usually neglected.
Finally, my third main task will be to discuss Nietzsche’s views on con-
sciousness, unconsciousness, communication, and especially language in view
of what we may call the problem of self-expression (section 4). This will allow
198 João Constâncio
me to make a final – and, I think, important – point about what Nietzsche

calls his “new language” (BGE 4/JGB 4).1
2 Consciousness
2.1 Conceptualisation and Communication-Signs
The main ideas of GS 354/FW 354 are well known, but they are also much more
subtle than they appear to be at first glance, and even on a second and third
glance. Let us consider first the meaning that Nietzsche gives to the very word
“consciousness” (Bewusstsein) in the aphorism. In an important parenthesis he
starts by pointing out that “the problem of consciousness” is more precisely the
problem of “becoming conscious”. “Consciousness” is not an entity, but a proc-
ess that occurs within living organisms, or rather to living organisms. Moreover,
he says this by using a reflexive form (Sich-Bewusst-Werden) that suggests the he
understands “consciousness” as tantamount to “self-consciousness”, i.e. to the
process of becoming consciously aware of oneself. This seems to be confirmed by
the metaphorical image that he then uses to indicate what he means by “con-
sciousness”: the metaphorical image of the “mirror”. He famously writes that
“physiology and evolutionary biology (Thiergeschichte)” have confirmed “Leib-
niz’s precocious suspicion” that we can “do without” consciousness, and that
the reason why we can do this is the following:
[…] we could think, feel, will, remember, and also ‘act’ in every sense of the term, and
yet none of all this would have to ‘enter our consciousness’ (as one says figuratively). All
1 Let me note that I have recently published two long articles which deal with the same
topics that are at stake in the present essay: see Constâncio (2011a), “On Consciousness:
Nietzsche’s Departure from Schopenhauer”, and Constâncio (2011b), “Instinct and Language
in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”. Here I shall, in part, summarise what I have written
before – but I shall essentially complement it by developing and clarifying my interpretation
of GS 354/FW 354. The need to write the additions and clarifications that will follow has
mostly arisen from very fruitful discussions with Mattia Riccardi and Herman Siemens,
whose excellent articles on these matters have come to my attention only after I had written
my own articles. See Siemens (2006), Riccardi (2011) and Riccardi (2012). That need has also
been fostered by further discussions with Luca Lupo (whose book on Nietzsche’s conception
of consciousness remains, in my view, the best thing that has been written about this
subject), with John Richardson (whose conference on the Self in Nietzsche and Heidegger,
delivered in Lisbon in 2011, has prompted me to delve deeper into Nietzsche’s views on self-
consciousness and self-reference), and with Werner Stegmaier (who has kindly let me read
the chapter on GS 354/FW 354 that will appear in his forthcoming book on Book V of the
The Gay Science). See Lupo (2006) and Stegmaier (2012).
Consciousness, Communication, and Self-Expression 199
of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in the mirror; and still today,
the predominant part of our lives actually unfolds without this mirroring – of course all
our thinking, feeling, and willing lives, insulting as it may sound to an older philosopher”
(GS 354/FW 354).2
Thus Nietzsche’s idea seems to be that all animals think, feel, and will, but
only the human animal is able to become aware of the very fact that it thinks,
feels, and wills. Its “consciousness” seems indeed to be identical with its “self-
consciousness”, i.e. with its ability to become aware of its own inner states
and hence of itself – or, in other words, to see itself in the “mirror”.
However, if we take heed of what Nietzsche writes later in the aphorism,
I believe that we must call this interpretation into question. For Nietzsche,
consciousness is not the same as self-consciousness, or at least not the same
as what we usually mean by “self-consciousness”. The main idea of GS 354/
FW 354 is that consciousness has developed out of – and in fact consists in –
a particular type of communication (Mittheilung), or a particular “ability to
communicate” (Mittheilungs-Fähigkeit), and Nietzsche’s conception of this par-
ticular type of communication or ability to communicate is incompatible with
our usual understanding of “self-consciousness”.
I think that this should begin to become clear if we consider the meaning
of the following passage:
[…] our becoming conscious of our sense impressions (Sinneseindrücke) in ourselves, our
power to fix them and as it were place them outside of ourselves, has increased in propor-
tion to the need to convey them to others by means of signs (GS 354/FW 354, translation
modified).
The first sentence seems to confirm that “consciousness” means “self-con-

sciousness”. For it describes the process of becoming conscious as a process
of becoming aware of “inner states”, of “sense impressions in ourselves (bei
uns selbst)”. However, Nietzsche immediately explains this as a power to “fix”
those sense impressions and “as it were place them outside of ourselves” (my
emphasis). Thus the first crucial point here is that Nietzsche does not under-
stand consciousness as an immediate or direct process of becoming aware of
oneself and one’s inner states. If by “self-consciousness” we mean a sort of
2 I have used Josefine Nauckhoff’s translation of the The Gay Science throughout this paper,
but I modified it in several crucial passages. She translates, for example, “Thiergeschichte”
(literally “history of animals”) by “natural history”. “Evolutionary biology” is a rather free
translation, but one which, I think, gives the modern reader a much better idea of what
Nietzsche means by “Thiergeschichte”. See Lupo (2006), p. 185–187. On the metaphorical
image of the “mirror” in Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer), see Constâncio (2011a).
“direct access” to our inner states, an “immediate certainty” of oneself, a Carte-

sian presence of ourselves to ourselves, then Nietzsche is precisely saying that
consciousness is not “self-consciousness” – because there is no “self-con-
sciousness” in this sense (cf. BGE 16/JGB 16, BGE 19/JGB 19). Our conscious
access to so-called “inner states” is always mediated – mediated by a process
whereby our organism develops more or less fixed interpretations of certain
“sense impressions” or “sensations” (Empfindungen) and thus transforms their
insideness into outsideness. This is supposedly a very complex process, of
which Nietzsche tries to make sense of to a considerable length in the Nachlass
and more sketchily in the published writings. I shall deal with this theme in
section 2. The point that we have to consider now is that, according to GS
354/FW 354, the mediation involved in our conscious access to our sensations
is provided, first and foremost, by the development, acquisition and use of
“communication-signs” (Mittheilungszeichen).
By making us feel, will, think, remember and act, our sensations make us
be aware of ourselves and aware of a world (and this is also the case with other
animals). But we only become conscious in the proper (i.e. properly human)
sense of the term when our awareness is supplemented by the use of “communi-
cation-signs”. This is not to say that consciousness is the same as every type of
communication, nor is Nietzsche defending the clearly false thesis that other ani-
mals do not communicate or that animal awareness (i.e., non-conscious aware-
ness) is insufficient for communication. What he asserts is rather that when a
very specific animal – the animal man – is able “to convey [its sense impressions]
to others by means of signs” (my emphasis), a new type of communication and a
new type of awareness arise, namely the type of communicative awareness
which we should call “consciousness”. Put differently, consciousness, as Nietz-
sche asserts many times (e.g. D 125/M 125, GS 354/FW 354, EH Clever 9/EH
klug 9), is just the “surface” of our organism’s activity as a sensitive and interpre-
tative organism, and this surface consists in communication through signs.
Nietzsche writes:
[…] man, like every living creature, is constantly thinking but does not know it; the think-
ing that becomes conscious is only the smallest part of it, let’s say the shallowest, worst
part – for only conscious thinking takes place in words, that is, in communication-signs
(GS 354/FW 354, translation modified).
This very important passage suggests that Nietzsche thinks that all “communi-
cation-signs” are “words”, and that consciousness is in fact the same as lan-
guage. As he puts it, “the development of language and the development of
consciousness (not of reason but strictly of the way in which we become con-
scious of reason) go hand in hand” (GS 354/FW 354). However, in the next
sentence he immediately makes clear that his view is subtler than that. He
writes: “One might add that not only language serves as a bridge between
persons, but also look, touch, and gesture” (GS 354/FW 354).
Certain looks, touches, and gestures can also function as “communication-
signs”. Again, this is not to say that all looks, touches, and gestures are
“signs”, but only that, like words, certain looks, touches, and gestures enable
a type of communication that hinges upon the human ability to “fix” sense
impressions and “place them outside of ourselves”. But what exactly is this
ability? What is a “sign” and why does the use of signs mark the difference
between consciousness and unconsciousness (or simple awareness)?
As I have tried to show in my previous work on this subject, the key for
understanding Nietzsche’s concept of “sign” is to see it as part of Nietzsche’s
views on conceptualisation. For Nietzsche, “signs” (Zeichen) are, first of all,
abbreviations. A sign represents or stands for something else although not as
a copy of something else – and least of all as an adequate copy of it – , but
rather as a simplified, abridged, abbreviated stand-in for it. This abbreviated
stand-in functions as a sort of fixed tool that allows us to quickly refer to or
designate that which it stands for (zu be-zeichnen). Thus in speaking of words
in terms of “signs” Nietzsche writes that “the history of language is the history
of a process of abbreviation” (BGE 268/JGB 286). Most importantly, Nietzsche
believes that concepts emerge from signs, and what we usually call “reason”
(for instance, what Schopenhauer calls “reason”) is essentially our ability to
develop abstract thoughts on the basis of signs and concepts. As Nietzsche
explicitly writes in a posthumous note from 1884–1885: “First signs (Zeichen),
then concepts (Begriffe), finally ‘reason’ (Vernunft) in the usual sense” (NL
1884–85, KSA 11, 30[10], my translation).
Very much like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche conceives of concepts as generali-
sations or general representations, i.e. representations that differ from “intui-
tions” (Anschauungen) because they do not represent particulars or singularities,
but rather a feature or mark that can be thought of as applicable to particulars
or, more precisely, as suitable to multiple sensations. As Nietzsche had already
argued in On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense (1873), “every concept comes
into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent” (TL, 145/WL 1),
that is, by representing different sensations in terms of the same, general feature
or mark. Already in Leibniz and Kant conceptualisation is described as a process
of selecting “marks” (notae, Merkmale) which are then transformed into general
representations (notiones communes). Like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche empha-
sises the fact that this process is always a process of simplification – of “non-
determination of the particular” (Nichtbestimmung des Einzelnen, WWR I §9, 42
and WWV I §9, 50), as Schopenhauer puts it. To form a concept is to form a repre-
sentation which is based upon our sensations, but which abbreviates their con-
tents, that is, a representation which is abstracted from our sensations, but
which no longer contains their richness and uniqueness. As a general and
abstract representation, a “concept” allows us to refer to or to designate our sen-
sations without experiencing them again and, particularly, without having to
take heed of their richness and uniqueness.3
Thus we see that, for Nietzsche, our concepts – our thoughts as conceptual
representations – are themselves “signs”. He writes in the Nachlass: “A
thought, no less than a word, is only a sign: we cannot speak of a congruence
between a thought and the real (NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[253], my translation)”.4
Nietzsche’s idea is that such empirical “signs” as words, looks, touches,
and gestures are the means by which we form abstract “signs” – i.e. “con-
cepts”. But if signs are abbreviations that merely indicate or designate some-
thing without copying it, and if, moreover, all our conscious thoughts consist
in signs and sign-relations, then it is indeed true that “we cannot speak of a
congruence between a thought and the real”. In the realm of conscious
thought, our so-called “representation” of reality – or the “world” as it “enters
our consciousness” – is no more than a simplified, abbreviated, abridged ver-
sion of our sensations, and not an “adequate” representation or copy of a
hypothetical “thing-in-itself” (see the end of GS 354/FW 354). This is what
Nietzsche calls his “true phenomenalism and perspectivism” – namely, the
conception of “the world of which we can become conscious” as being “merely
a surface- and sign-world, a world turned into generalities” (GS 354/FW 354).
However, there is still a lot to be explained about this “true phenomenal-
ism and perspectivism”. First, we still have to understand why Nietzsche sug-
gests in GS 354/FW 354 that all “signs” are “communication-signs”. In my
view, there are two explanations for this. The first one is the evolutionary story
that Nietzsche recounts in GS 354/FW 354. Put simply, even if we could not
exclude in principle that there might be non-communicational signs (let us
call them solipsistic- or private-language-signs), the fact is that human signs
have been naturally selected for their value as tools or vehicles for communica-
tion – so that within the deep time of evolution all signs produced by human
organisms have become communication-signs. Human organisms can neither
create nor use other types of signs than communication-signs, and conse-
quently words, concepts, and other signs (e.g. gestural signs) are always com-
munication-signs.
3 Cf., for example, BGE 268/JGB 268. For a more extensive analysis of Nietzsche’s views on
concepts and their relation to Leibniz, Kant and especially Schopenhauer’s views, see
Constâncio (2011a).
4 On this topic, see the ground-breaking article by Stegmaier (2000), p. 50 ff.; see also
Simon (1972), Simon (1984), Stingelin (1993), Constâncio (2011a), p. 31 ff.
The second explanation is based on the idea, as I have put it elsewhere,

that “for a concept to have meaning, it must differentiate itself from other
concepts, and therefore understanding a concept is tantamount to understand-
ing its relation to other concepts”.5 If concepts emerge from signs – and if
concepts are in fact signs expressed by other signs – , then every sign presup-
poses a context. A sign is impossible outside of a multiplicity or constellation
of other signs. But the contexts where human signs occur are always already
social contexts. Human signs belong to the social milieu of communication
and the Cartesian tradition is utterly wrong in speaking of words and concepts
as emerging from a sort of solipsistic cocoon. Consequently, all human signs
are produced by man as a “social animal” (GS 354/FW 354) – they are indeed
“communication-signs”.
Both explanations allow us to see that although Nietzsche does not reduce
consciousness to language and recognises the existence of empirical signs that
are not words, it is also the case that he emphasises the role of language. As
we saw, he does write that “the development of language and the development
of consciousness (not of reason but strictly of the way in which we become
conscious of reason) go hand in hand”. In a posthumous note from 1886–
1887, he adds:
we cease to think when we no longer want to think within the constraints of language, we
just manage to reach the suspicion that there might be a boundary here.
Thinking rationally is interpreting according to a schema we cannot cast away (NL 1886–
87, KSA 12, 5[22] = WLN, 110, translation modified).
This “schema” is of course the structure of language, to which Nietzsche usu-

ally calls “grammar”. We shall see below that such a “schema” is not at all
the only “schema” involved in the activity of thinking, and I shall also try to
briefly indicate what Nietzsche means when he distinguishes “reason” from
“the way in which we become conscious of reason”. But at this point, what is
important to underline is that the social milieu of communication – the realm
of human consciousness and conscious reasoning – is essentially linguistic.6
By saying “essentially” I intend to suggest that there are at least three qualifica-
tions that should be made to the assertion that according to Nietzsche the
“surface- and sign-world” of human consciousness is linguistic. The first one
5 Constâncio (2011a), pp. 30–31. See also Simon (1984) pp. 20 and 26, Abel (2001), pp. 22–
27, Katsafanas (2005), pp. 2–4. Nietzsche indicates that concepts have this sort of
“systemic” nature, for example, in BGE 20/JGB 20.
6 See Abel (2001), p. 22 ff.
has just been mentioned: not all empirical signs are linguistic – even if, as we
now see, all non-linguistic signs belong in a way to the social and linguistic
milieu of conceptual communication. The second qualification is that when
Nietzsche writes that “rational thinking” ceases when we abandon “the con-
straints of language”, he is also suggesting that many times we abandon the
“constraints of language”. Not all conscious thinking is “rational” and not all
conscious thinking is clearly articulated in propositions. Many of our conceptu-
alisations are so indeterminate that we cannot find words for them, and often
we do not need words for them. Such conceptualisations are not truly inde-
pendent from language as a communicational phenomenon, and they never
belong to a truly “private language”. But they should perhaps be described as
the fringes that extend beyond the more or less determinate concepts and
conceptions that are fixed by words and propositions.7 The third qualification
is that, to a great extent, philosophy is for Nietzsche a fight against the “con-
straints of language” – an attempt to think beyond the most ingrained, and
essentially metaphysical, structure of language. That is not to say that he wants
to make a leap to an impossible realm of conscious thinking outside of lan-
guage. His aim is rather to create a “new language” (BGE 4/JGB 4) that enlarges
the horizons of our common way of thinking and frees us from metaphysics.8
With this, we are now in a position to answer the decisive questions raised
above: what does it mean that consciousness should be defined as the human
ability to “fix” sense impressions and “place them outside of ourselves”? Why
does the use communication-signs enable the transition from unconsciousness
(or simple awareness) to consciousness? Why is consciousness, in the end, the
same as communication through signs?
2.2 Intentionality, Self-Consciousness, and Communality
The human organism’s ability to transform the insideness of its sensations into
an outsideness is usually called intentionality. When, for example, my retina
is affected by a new sense impression, my brain allows me to see not the retina
being affected by a new sense impression, but an object outside of myself. My
“consciousness” is first of all this ability to extend beyond myself, to orient
myself towards the horizon or circle of my sensations (e.g. towards the visual
horizon produced by my retina) in such a way that that horizon appears to me
7 See Constâncio (2011b), p. 99.

8 See section 4 below. See Constâncio (2011b), pp. 82, 91, 110–114, a (2011), pp. 195–199.
See also Céline Denat’s essay in this volume.
as if it were independent of my sense organs, as if it stood outside my body

and had nothing to do with an inner state of my body. Although, as Nietzsche
explains in Daybreak, I cannot but live imprisoned within my sensations –
within a “concentric circle” which is “peculiar” to my body and has my body
as its “mid-point” (D 117/M 117) – , my consciousness makes me experience
such a “concentric circle” as an “outside”.
Furthermore, we need concepts in order to become conscious of something
outside of ourselves. I need the concept “bird” in order to see a bird as a bird;
I need the concept “office” in order to see the space around me as an office.
Otherwise I shall be merely aware of sense impressions – or, to put it differ-
ently, merely aware of an “image” (Bild) which I do not really differentiate
from myself, or which I place neither inside nor outside of myself. My aware-
ness rises to the level of consciousness only when I manage to use general
representations (or “generalities”) to “fix” an interpretation of my sense
impressions, e.g. when I manage to interpret an image within my visual hori-
zon as “a bird”, or conceptualise the sensorial horizon where I am now moving
as “an office”. This is because (as Schopenhauer had already tried to show)
conceiving of generalities is tantamount to rising to the level of abstraction.
By becoming able to interpret my sense impressions in terms of (more or less
determinate and more or less linguistic) concepts, I immediately become able
to gain distance from my sense impressions. This distance – the distance of
abstraction – is also called “reflection” (e.g. by Schopenhauer). The ability to
think abstractly or in terms of concepts is not just the ability to develop one’s
thoughts further without having to wait for new stimuli. It is first of all the
ability to “reflect” on stimuli or sense impressions by relating them to concepts
or subsuming them under concepts. As Nietzsche clearly saw, such an ability
is that which allows us to overcome our (otherwise absolute) immersion in our
sense impressions and “place them outside of ourselves”.
In fact, it allows us to become conscious not only of such things as birds
and offices, but also of those sense impressions that are (or can be described
as being) inner states of our bodies in the strictest sense of the word “inner”.9
9 However, it should be noted that Nietzsche deliberately avoids making a clear distinction
between affections or sensations that, as it were, create a circle or horizon around our body
(e.g. the visual horizon, where a sensation of “green” is given) and such affections or
sensations as pleasure and pain, i.e. he rejects the Kantian distinction between “objective”
and “subjective” sensation (KU §3). The stimulus or sense impression of which we become
conscious by means of the concept “green” (i.e., the allegedly “objective sensation” of
green) is always part of an all-encompassing affection (or a being-affected) which should be
described as a “feeling” and a phenomenal state of awareness. Every sensation
(Empfindung) is an inner state or part of an inner state which is fundamentally affective.
I only become properly conscious, for example, of my pain when I interpret a

certain feeling in terms of the (more or less determinate) concept “pain”, i.e.
when a minimal distance of abstraction allows me to feel what I feel as being
“pain”. Nietzsche writes, for example, in The Gay Science 127, “that a violent
stimulus is experienced as pleasure or pain is a matter of the interpreting intel-
lect, which, to be sure, generally works without our being conscious of it (uns
unbewußt); and one and the same stimulus can be interpreted as pleasure or
pain” (GS 127/FW 127). The activity of the “interpreting intellect” is mostly
unconscious (uns unbewußt), but it creates consciousness: its outcome is the
emergence of the concepts in terms of which we become conscious of our
feelings.10
But if, as we saw, every concept (or “generality” or “abstraction”) emerges
from and depends on the development of empirical signs, and if every empiri-
cal sign is in fact a communication-sign – so that every concept is in fact a
communication-concept – , then what Nietzsche is saying is that consciousness
results from the use of communication-signs and consists in awareness supple-
mented by the kind of conceptualisation that can only occur within the social
and linguistic milieu of communication.
When he writes that consciousness “has increased in proportion to the
need to convey [our sense impressions] to others by means of signs”, he is not
just saying that communication has fostered the development of subtler and
more complex concepts. He is saying that, but he is also making the much
more radical point that “reflection” is immanent to communication or, in other
words, that there is an inescapably public dimension in human “intentionality”.
No matter how isolated we are or feel, our conscious thinking is always based
on our immersion in the milieu of communication, all our concepts refer back
to social contexts and public meanings, all our conscious thoughts are implic-
itly related to a drive to communicate and in fact they all keep us more or less
implicitly connected to others at all times.11
Quite often, Nietzsche suggests that the feeling (Empfindung) that encompasses perceptual
fields is always either one of pleasure or pain: cf. Siemens (2006), p. 147.
10 As Nietzsche explains in Daybreak 115 and elsewhere, this also implies that we never
become conscious of the greatest part of our feelings – but only of the most “extreme
outbursts” of feeling – , and even when a feeling is intense and “crude” enough to become
conscious, we only become conscious of its “surface” and hence our interpretation of it in
terms of a word and a concept is actually a falsification and a misunderstanding of what it
“truly” is. See also D 119/M 119 and Luca Lupo’s essay in this volume.
11 According to Nietzsche, we should recognise that even at the highest levels of
abstraction (e.g. in mathematics or in any other science) every new thought is driven by a
drive to simplify reality and make it familiar and understandable – and hence a drive that
implicitly aims at more efficient communication: cf., for example, NL 1884, KSA 11, 26[227]
with BGE 21/JGB 21 and Stegmaier (2000), pp. 61–62, Constâncio (2011a), p. 34.
Thus Nietzsche’s definition of “consciousness” in GS 354/FW 354 should

not come as a surprise: “Consciousness is really just a net connecting one
person with another” (GS 354/FW 354). For Nietzsche “consciousness” in the
proper or human sense of the word is not something that individual human
organisms produce, so to speak, spontaneously by themselves alone. As a “con-
necting-net” (Verbindungsnetz), consciousness is fundamentally relational and
communal. Put differently, Nietzsche’s view of consciousness implies a radical
“connectivism” according to which consciousness is a “systemic” event that
only arises within social spaces. It emerges from a multiplicity of connections
that are social, and not merely organic and individual. Or, to put it in yet
another way, conscious thoughts that occur within an individual human organ-
ism are really just part of – or a link within – a social milieu of sign-communica-
tion, and this milieu is, in turn, just part of – or a link within – an even larger
milieu of communication which includes non-conscious communication.
This primacy that Nietzsche gives to communication implies that although
he sees conceptualisation and intentionality as part of what we should mean
by consciousness, he also modifies the traditional understanding of conceptu-
alisation and intentionality by conceiving of them as elements of the broader
phenomenon of sign-communication. But what to say about “self-conscious-
ness”? Is it not another element of what we should mean by “consciousness”?
The conceptions of “abstraction” and “reflection” presented above suggest
that there should be some connection between self-consciousness and what
Nietzsche calls “consciousness”. If, as I have argued, there is a similarity
between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s understanding of conceptualisation,
we should also consider the fact that the latter’s conception of “reflection”
implies that as a human being I differ from other animals because I have the
ability to interpret myself in terms of the concept “I” and thus distinguish
myself from all of that which I interpret as “not-I” (e.g. “bird” or “office”). For
Schopenhauer, human consciousness (which he distinguishes from the simpler
“animal consciousness” or awareness) is self-consciousness. He suggests that
we must always think first of ourselves in terms of the concept “I” – i.e. become
self-conscious – in order to become conscious of something else (or someone
else). This applies to feelings also. I only become truly conscious of pain when
I am able to feel it as “mine” or, to put it differently, when the distance of
abstraction allows me to feel my pain as belonging to that which I understand
conceptually as being “I”.12
In a forthcoming paper Mattia Riccardi claims that in GS 354/FW 354 (but
not always) “consciousness” also means “self-consciousness”.13 The first point
12 See, for example, WWR I §8, §18, WWR II §20–22.

13 Cf. Riccardi (2012).
of his argument is that in GS 354/FW 354 Nietzsche uses the word “conscious-
ness” to designate an exclusively human phenomenon (a point with which I
am entirely in agreement). The second point is that Nietzsche believes that
becoming conscious is the same as becoming able to articulate reflexive propo-
sitions of the type “I think that p”, “I want that p” and “I feel that p”. Such
propositions make each of us self-conscious as an “I” – an “I” which is then
(falsely) supposed to be the “bearer” and the “authentic originator” of our
beliefs, intentions, and volitions.
However, it seems to me that Nietzsche clearly denies that this is the case.
In BGE 17/JGB 17 and BGE 54/JGB 54, he argues that it is only our “grammar”
that deceives us into thinking that every thought must have an “I” as its condi-
tion. He famously writes that “a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, and not when
‘I’ want” (BGE 17/JGB 17), i.e. thoughts emerge from the depths of our organ-
isms to their surfaces without being “conditioned” by an “I”.14 Thus, as Kant
was the first to argue (or at least Nietzsche believes that Kant argued), “‘think’
is the condition and ‘I’ is the conditioned” (BGE 54/FW 54), that is, the activity
of thinking precedes and causes the concept “I”, and not the reverse. For Ric-
cardi’s claim to hold, Nietzsche’s idea would have to be that every thought to
come to the surface before the emergence of the concept “I” would have to be
unconscious or, which is the same, that the first concept to be produced by
the activity of thinking would have to be the concept “I”. But this is clearly
not what he means. First, because when Nietzsche speaks of thoughts that
“come” to us without being conditioned by an “I” he is obviously referring to
thoughts that emerge to the surface of consciousness. Second, because he
explicitly writes that the concept “I” is just a “synthetic concept” (BGE 19/FW
19). The “I” is a concept that connects other concepts to each other, i.e. a
concept that emerges at the surface of consciousness just like any other con-
cept, but then connects all our conscious thoughts to each other as if they
belonged to the same entity (or to the same “bearer” and “authentic origina-
tor”). Therefore, Nietzsche believes that it is possible for a person to become
truly conscious of something before becoming conscious of herself as an “I”.
It happens all the time that I place a sense impression outside of myself with-
out thinking of myself as an “I” (e.g. I say “there is a fire out there” without
thinking or saying “I believe that there is a fire out there”). And children, for
14 Wittgenstein seems to express the same idea in a very graphic and interesting way:
“Thoughts rise to the surface slowly, like bubbles” [Wittgenstein (1998), 72e]. On the
metaphorical image of consciousness as a surface in Nietzsche, see Constâncio (2011a), and
GS 354/FW 354, D 125/M 125, EH Clever 9/EH klug 9, and also, for example, NL 1883, KSA
10, 12[33], NL 1883–84, KSA 10, 24[16], NL 1884, KSA 11, 26[92] and 26[94], NL 1885–86,
KSA 12, 1[61].
example, seem to recognise lots of objects in terms of concepts (e.g. they point
with their fingers and say “ball”, “bird”, “car”) before they develop a “theory
of mind” and acquire the concept “I”.
On the other hand, the reference to Kant is very important in this context,
and it shows that self-consciousness is in some sense involved in what Nietz-
sche calls “consciousness”. For it is at least very likely that when Nietzsche
refers to Kant in BGE 54/JGB 54 he is alluding to the famous paragraph of the
Critique of Pure Reason where Kant asserts that, “The I think must be able to
accompany all my representations” (CPR §16, B 131–132). This can be inter-
preted (and Nietzsche seems to interpret it) as meaning that it is not the case
that every conscious thought is a proposition where I say “I”, but it is indeed
the case that every conscious thought is at least implicitly self-reflexive. When
I consciously think that “there is a fire out there” I usually do not consciously
think or say (unless I have doubts) that “I believe that there is a fire out there”,
but I am certainly aware that I am now seeing that there is a fire out there, I
am also certainly aware (without necessarily becoming conscious of it) that my
body is at some distance from the fire, and I may be also very well aware that
the fire is dangerous to me. In other words, my conscious thoughts and the
proposition that I utter are really just a surface of what I am unconsciously
thinking, feeling, willing, remembering and doing – and hence they will
always implicitly refer back to what I am unconsciously thinking, feeling, will-
ing, remembering and doing. Therefore, if I have already acquired the concept
“I”, all of my conscious thoughts will involve an at least potential self-con-
sciousness. Whenever I am conscious that “there is a fire out there”, I am also
able to think of myself by means of the concept “I” and say something like “I
think I am in danger now and I think I should get out of here”. Becoming
conscious of something does not necessarily imply self-consciousness, but it
necessarily implies an at least potential self-consciousness based upon an
actual self-awareness.
Thus Nietzsche’s views on human consciousness (or consciousness in the
proper sense of the word) differ from Schopenhauer’s. First because, as we just
saw, he believes that conceptualisation and intentionality – or reflection and
the distance of abstraction – do not necessarily imply self-consciousness (or
only a pre-conscious self-awareness). Second, and most importantly, because
he thinks that self-consciousness, no less than conceptualisation and inten-
tionality, is immanent to sign-communication. It occurs as just one more
element of (and in fact just a potential element of) the “connecting-net” which
is “consciousness” in the proper sense of the word.
However, it could perhaps still be objected to all this that so far I have
omitted a great deal of what Nietzsche writes in GS 354/FW 354, and that I
have, above all, omitted a particular passage that suggest that he actually gives
a sort of primacy to self-consciousness. As is well known, Nietzsche puts for-
ward a “extravagant conjecture” in order to answer the question: “To what end
does consciousness exist at all when it is basically superfluous?”, and that
conjecture is that “consciousness in general has developed under the pressure
of the need to communicate” (GS 354/FW 354). He explains this by writing the
following:
[…] as the most endangered animal, [man] needed help and protection, he needed his
equals; he had to express his neediness and be able to make himself understood – and
to do so, he first needed ‘consciousness’, i.e. even to ‘know’ what distressed him, to
‘know’ how he felt, to ‘know’ what he thought (GS 354/FW 354).
This important passage accords with the metaphorical image of consciousness

as a “mirror”, as well as with a posthumous note where Nietzsche defines
“consciousness” (Bewußtheit) as a “Wissen um ein Wissen” (NL 1880, KSA 9,
10[F101]), i.e. as a reflexive “knowledge” (Wissen) about what one already
“knows” unconsciously.15 But the novelty in the passage just quoted seems to
be that consciousness is, more specifically, our reflexive knowledge about our
needs – a “mirroring” of our needs that is tantamount to “knowledge” about
ourselves. Should we not reconsider the thesis that for Nietzsche consciousness
is simply the same as self-consciousness? Isn’t the whole point of GS 354/FW
354 that consciousness is not really “superfluous” – and has instead been
naturally selected and preserved in the evolution of our species – because it
has allowed human beings to communicate their needs through communica-
tion-signs and this has been possible because consciousness is self-conscious-
ness? Or, put differently, isn’t the whole point of GS 354/FW 354 that con-
sciousness has satisfied man’s need to communicate because consciousness is
self-consciousness and self-consciousness allows human beings to know about
their everyday needs and thus to coordinate their behaviour and live safely in
society?
15 In explaining this definition Nietzsche explicitly states that “the most usual form of
knowing [Wissen] is the one without consciousness (Bewußtheit)” (NL 1880, KSA 9, 10[F101]).
It should also be mentioned that in this posthumous note Nietzsche uses the term
Empfindung in the sense of conscious perception, and not in the sense which is, I believe,
most common in his writings, i.e. that of an at first unconscious feeling or sensation. As
Herman Siemens explains in Siemens (2006), p. 148: “There is a striking equivocation in
Nietzsche’s use of the term [Empfindung]. Often it is used for a conscious state or feature of
consciousness, as in common usage; but it can also be used for the unconscious operations
and activities, which precede and condition our conscious states”.
In view of what we saw before, this is only half-true, and several clarifying
remarks are needed here. The first remark is that Nietzsche’s point is indeed
that the evolutionary value of consciousness lies in the fact that it “has allowed
human beings to communicate their needs through communication-signs” –
but this does not entail that all communication through communication-signs
is communication of “needs”. Nietzsche explicitly makes the point that in the
course of human evolution and history the development of the ability to com-
municate social needs by means of signs has eventually produced a “surplus”
(ein Ueberschuss). He writes: “where need and distress have for a long time
forced people to communicate, to understand each other swiftly and subtly,
there finally exists a surplus of this power and art of expression, a faculty, so
to speak, which has slowly accumulated and now waits for an heir to spend
it lavishly” (GS 354/FW 354).
Moreover, the fact that the evolutionary value of sign-communication
resides in a better and swifter communication of needs does not even entail
that whenever a person communicates her needs she is driven by the aim of
fostering her social bonds with others by communicating social needs. Nietz-
sche explicitly points out that “the individual who is a master at expressing
his needs” (for example, an artist, “as well as the orators, preachers, writers”)
will usually be the one who is less “dependent on others in his needs” (GS
354/FW 354).
Most importantly, if we take heed of what I tried to show above, I believe
that it will quickly become apparent that Nietzsche does not think that “self-
consciousness” is a necessary condition (and even less a sufficient condition)
for the communication of needs by means of signs. In order to communicate
a need by means of a sign, I have to be able to see myself “in the mirror” –
but what this means is only that I have to be able to develop an intentional
state by conceptualising part of what I am unconsciously thinking, feeling,
willing, remembering, and doing. As we saw, I must be aware of myself (or
have a “sense of self”) in order to do this (and perhaps I shall become more
aware of myself by doing it), but I do not have to be conscious of myself in
order to do it. The reflexivity involved in “knowing that we know” (“Wissen
um ein Wissen”) depends on a process of conceptualisation which does not
necessarily imply that I conceptualise myself as an “I”. It only implies that I
conceptualise a (usually very small) part of what I am unconsciously thinking,
feeling, willing, remembering and doing.16 And this allows me to introduce a
whole series of new, and very important, points.
16 As Nietzsche puts it in a note from 1885: “Ultimately we have a double brain: we

encompass in the word ‘consciousness’ our capacity itself to will, feel and think something
of our own willing, feeling and thinking” (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[87] = WLN, 6). See also, for
The first one results from the anti-Cartesian nature of Nietzsche’s concep-
tion of self-consciousness. As mentioned above, self-consciousness is always
mediated by concepts and since concepts originate in communication-signs,
they always have a public dimension. Hence even when I conceptualise myself
as an “I”, it is not necessarily the case that I conceptualise myself as a “mind”,
or as a “conscious I” inside my body, or even as “a body with inner states”.
In most cases, when I become truly conscious of myself, I conceptualise myself
as “professor”, “son”, “friend”, or any other social role (or “mask”, in Nietz-
sche’s language). In such moments, I usually become conscious of myself as
having my own thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc., and this certainly implies
that I distinguish these thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc. from those of other
people. A so-called “theory of mind” is indeed involved in my self-understand-
ing when I become self-conscious. But this happens in different degrees of
clarity – and, above all, in no way does it imply that I necessarily interpret my
innermost identity as that of a “thinking being” or “mind”.
In fact, the more I interpret myself as a conscious “I”, or as a “subject”,
an “atomon” and a “substance” with direct and even absolute causal power
over my thoughts and actions – and, additionally, the more I project this con-
ception of the alleged causal power of my consciousness onto the world and
interpret the world in terms of mechanistic causal relations – , the more I
simplify and falsify my representation of myself and the world, that is, the
more I live in a “surface- and sign-world”, in a world which is essentially the
product of a “vast and thorough corruption, falsification, superficialisation,
and generalisation” (GS 354/FW 354).17 I cannot pursue this specific point
here, and I shall only add – lest unnecessary doubts and worries be raised –
that Nietzsche rejects the mechanistic picture of the world for being based on
metaphysical assumptions that should be replaced with the richer and more
complex “hypothesis” of the “will to power” (BGE 36/JGB 36), and not because
he favours any sort of magical or superstitious picture of the world.18
example, NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[46] =WLN, 2 for the idea that our conscious “willing, feeling
and thinking” is just an “outcome”(Endphänomenon) of unconscious processes and in fact
just the “surface” and a partial view of an unconscious “willing, feeling and thinking”.
Nietzsche reaffirms this idea quite often in his notebooks: cf., for example, NL 1885,
KSA 11, 34[86], NL 1885, 11, 34[124], NL 1885, 11, 37[4], NL 1885, 11, 38[8], NL 1885, 11,
40[37].
17 One of the most interesting aspects of Mattia Riccardi’s forthcoming paper on consci-
ousness is precisely the thesis that according to Nietzsche consciousness (as self-consci-
ousness) falsifies by creating the idea that every person is a conscious “I” with causal power
over her thoughts and body. See Riccardi (2012,).
18 On Nietzsche’s rejection of mechanicism, see Abel (1998), pp. 82–95 and pp. 129–132.
On the “simplifying”, “fictitious” and “falsifying” nature of such metaphysical assumptions
What must be emphasised in the present context is that in defending the

view that consciousness promotes our self-understanding in terms of a false
conception of an “I” – or that our propositional self-consciousness depends
on a fictitious metaphysical structure or grammar which prompts us to under-
stand ourselves as (free) “subjects” – Nietzsche does not by any means wish to
suggest that, at the level of consciousness, we are forever sentenced to interpret
ourselves in terms of that conception of an “I” or “subject”. To a great extent,
this is because human consciousness is “reflexive” in a double sense. It
enables us to “know” about what we at first “know” only unconsciously –
but it also enables us to “know” about what we “know” consciously. Human
consciousness involves the ability to become conscious of consciousness and,
most importantly, the ability to criticise my conscious ways of interpreting
what I am – particularly, to criticise my self-understanding as a “mind” or a
conscious “I”. A considerable part of Nietzsche’s conjectures and reflections
on the problem of consciousness are precisely an effort – a conscious effort –
to criticise our self-understanding as Cartesian “subjects”, as the “I” that is
designated in such self-conscious propositions as “I want that p”, “I think that
p”, “I feel that p”, and so on.
In fact, Nietzsche’s critique of the “overestimation and misapprehension
of consciousness” (GS 11/FW 11)19 should be seen as being not only an effort
to do away with the idea that a person is essentially an “I” (or that conscious-
ness is the “kernel of man” and the “unity of the organism”, GS 11/FW 11),
but also – and more radically – to do away with the metaphysical conception
of consciousness as a “substance”. This is why he asserts that we should recog-
nise that there are different degrees of consciousness (e.g. D 115/M 115) and
that consciousness is merely an intermittent phenomenon (e.g. GS 11/FW
11).20 But, most importantly, that is also the reason why he tries to develop
an “adualistic” conception of consciousness, a “continuum model” which
describes the emergence of consciousness as the final outcome and surface of
a dynamic multiplicity of organic processes, or, in other words, of dynamic
or “categories” as “substance”, “cause”, “effect”, “unity”, “identity” etc., see Constâncio

(2011b), pp. 83–85and pp.88–95.
19 See also NL 1883–84, KSA 10, 24[2], NL 1888, KSA 13, 14[146].
20 Werner Stegmaier argues that by using the term Bewußtheit (instead of the more
common term Bewußtsein) in several passages (e.g. in GS 11/FW 11), Nietzsche wants to
emphasise that consciousness is just a state and process – and in fact an intermittent state
and a process that comes in different degrees – , instead of a substance. See Stegmaier
(2012, forthcoming), Constâncio (2011a), p. 4 ff., and also Jaanus Sooväli and Andrea
Bertino’s essays in this volume.
relations among drives, affects, and instincts (e.g. GS 333/FW 333, BGE 36/
JGB 36).21
Before moving on to the next section, it may be helpful for many readers
that I try to sum up what we have seen so far about Nietzsche’s views on
consciousness by expressing them in the terms of contemporary philosophy of
mind.
First, Nietzsche recognises that there is what people nowadays call “phe-
nomenal consciousness”, i.e. that our first-personal experience of perceiving a
certain property or feeling what it is like to be in a given embodied state is an
event – a “fact” which no third-personal description (even if it be a scientific
description) is able to describe satisfactorily (i.e., at best the third-personal
description complements the first-personal experience, but the latter cannot
be simply reduced to the former, as Schopenhauer had already argued).22 How-
ever, if my interpretation of GS 354/FW 354 is correct, then Nietzsche also
believes that “phenomenal consciousness” is not yet “consciousness” in the
proper sense of the word (or is not yet “consciousness” as exclusively experi-
enced by humans). By itself, “phenomenal consciousness” is no more than
simple “awareness” or merely animal perception, and hence it is no more than
the un-conscious “knowledge” (Wissen) that allows us to “think, feel, will,
remember and even act” without being conscious of any of that. Consciousness
in the proper sense of the word happens when we humans develop communi-
cation-signs that allow us to interpret sense impressions (i.e. phenomenal
states) in terms of concepts. Hence, “consciousness” is always “access con-
sciousness” – but “access consciousness” as a becoming conscious of phenom-
enal states by means of conceptualisation. In opposition to most views on
“access consciousness”, I think Nietzsche would argue, against many contem-
porary philosophers (and against the dominant use of the expression “access
consciousness”), that there is no “access consciousness” which is not a devel-
opment and a surface of pre-conscious or un-conscious phenomenal states.
Or, in other words, he would argue that “access consciousness” is always first-
personal and continuous with first-personal affective states (which is a point
to be developed in the next section). Further, this type of “access conscious-
ness” is fundamentally self-reflexive. “Access consciousness” is not necessarily
a form of “self-consciousness”, but it is always an at least potential form of
“self-consciousness” and an actual form of self-awareness. In addition, it is
always an at least potential form of “monitoring consciousness”. It allows for
21 On Nietzsche’s “adualism” and his “continuum model”, see Abel (2001), Lupo (2006) and
Constâncio (2011a).
22 Cf. Constâncio (2011a), p. 5 and p. 10.
“higher order” thoughts (i.e. thoughts about thoughts), and particularly for
higher order thoughts which are critical of our first order thoughts (e.g. of our
self-understanding as being essentially a conscious “I”). However, the most
distinctive feature of Nietzsche’s view of consciousness is the idea that “access
consciousness”, “self-consciousness”, and “monitoring consciousness” are
never merely individual events. Instead, they are always functions of a “con-
necting-net” (Verbindungsnetz) which binds a community together within a
social space of “communication”. This explains the un-substantial and inter-
mittent nature of consciousness. Although we are constantly thinking, feeling,
willing, remembering and acting – although our “phenomenal awareness” is
always active – , we are not always exposed to contexts that give rise to “access
consciousness”, “self-consciousness”, and “monitoring consciousness”.
One more note on this. Nietzsche certainly tries to clarify what we mean
and should mean by the word and the concept “consciousness”. But he sees
“consciousness” as precisely just a word and a concept that have arisen within
the realm of consciousness. Most likely, he would see today’s effort to deter-
mine what consciousness is as a meaningless pre-critical (or pre-Kantian)
effort to speak of consciousness as a “thing-in-itself”. In other words, although
Nietzsche could play (and I think he should play) an important role in our
contemporary debate about what we mean by the word “consciousness”, he is
totally opposed to the idea that we should try to answer metaphysical questions
about consciousness (e.g. whether the fact that there is phenomenal conscious-
ness implies that there are “mental properties” which can never be explained
by science, or whether, on the contrary, we should reduce all “mental proper-
ties” to “physical properties”). Like Schopenhauer, he sees physiology as a
relevant third-personal description of what we mean by such words as con-
sciousness and unconsciousness, and like Schopenhauer, he thinks that that
description should be complemented by a first-personal description of what it
means to become conscious of something. But, unlike Schopenhauer, he does
not believe that it makes sense to expect a metaphysics to arise from our best
account of what we mean by the word “consciousness”. His “positive” views
on consciousness have the status of conjectures and reflections that aim at
debunking our metaphysical discourse on consciousness as a “substance”
(either as a physical or a non-physical “substance”), and in fact they imply
that it is senseless to expect any argument to reach a decision about the onto-
logical status of “mental properties”. 23
23 Cf. Constâncio (2011a), pp. 19, pp. 25–27 and pp. 40–41. See more on Nietzsche’s
rejection of metaphysics and ontology below.
3 Sensations, Schemata, and Our ‘Triebleben’

In this section I shall try to delve into Nietzsche’s conjectures and reflections
on how language, conceptualisation, and consciousness emerge from the
unconscious life of our drives, affects, and instincts. The need to do this arises
when we think again about what Nietzsche means by “sign” (Zeichen). So far
I have spoken of signs as abbreviations and simplifications that stand in for
something by merely indicating its presence and not by copying or adequately
representing it. Two points should now be emphasised. The first one is that,
according to Nietzsche, the realm of consciousness is through and through a
realm of “signs”. When he writes that the world as we apprehend it through
our consciousness is “merely a surface- and sign-world”, he means that at the
level of consciousness all we know about reality – including our own reality –
amounts to no more than “signs” (i.e. “abbreviations”, “simplifications”, “indi-
cations”) of what there is (including what we are). The second point is that
“signs” are always “surfaces” and “symptoms” of unconscious processes. For
example, the communication-sign “bird” is a “surface” and a “symptom” of
unconscious processes that have ultimately led to the formation of that sign,
i.e., that have made me interpret certain sense impressions in terms of the word
and the concept “bird” and then use that word and that concept “abstractly” or
without necessarily applying them to particular sense impressions. Nietzsche
describes such unconscious processes as our “Triebleben”, our “pulsional” life,
the subterranean life of our drives, affects, and instincts. The communication-
sign “I”, for example, is just a “surface” and a “symptom” of unconscious,
subterranean movements of my pulsional life that have led me to understand
myself in terms of what is merely indicated or designated by the “vast and
thorough corruption, falsification, superficialization and generalization” which
is involved in the word and the concept “I”. When Nietzsche writes that our
conscious thoughts are “only a certain behaviour of the drives towards one
another” (GS 333/FW 333), and that “thinking is only a relation between these
drives” (BGE 36/JGB 36), he is saying that all our conscious thoughts are signs,
surfaces, or symptoms of dynamic relations that occur in the unconscious
depths of our pulsional life.
Within Nietzsche’s mature and published writings, the main place to look
for his views on this topic is in Beyond Good and Evil. In aphorism 268, Nietz-
sche writes:
Words are acoustic signs [or “sound-signs”, Tonzeichen] for concepts; concepts, though,
are more or less determinate pictorial signs [or “image-signs”, Bildzeichen] for sensations
that occur together and recur frequently, for groups of sensations (BGE 268/JGB 286).
To a great extent, this only repeats what we already know. But it adds some-
thing new: the assertion that a concept is a sign which in some way involves
an “image” (Bild). As Mattia Riccardi has rightly pointed out,24 this should be
interpreted in connection with aphorism 192 of Beyond Good and Evil:
[we never] see a tree precisely and completely, with respect to leaves, branches, colours,
and shape. We find it so much easier to imagine [zu phantasieren] an approximate tree
instead. Even in the middle of the strangest experiences we do the same thing: we invent
[wir erdichten uns] most of the experience and can barely be forced not to assume the
role of ‘inventors‘ [Erfinder] when we look into any sort of event. What all this amounts
to is: we are, from the bottom up and across the ages, used to lying. Or, to put the point
more virtuously, more hypocritically and, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of
an artist [Künstler] than one knows” (BGE 192/JGB 192, translation modified).25
The main idea that we need to emphasise here is that for Nietzsche our con-
cepts are “image-signs” (BGE 268/JGB 286) because they are always based on
a particular type of un-conscious or pre-conscious “images”. “Images” of this
type are simplifications of our sense impressions and, most importantly, they
are already generalisations, “general” representations. Our concept “tree” is
not simply based on certain sense impressions and “groups of sensations”,
but also on how our organism manages to elaborate and simplify those sensa-
tions (or even one single sensation) by imagining or fantasising “an approxi-
mate tree”, i.e. by creating a not yet conscious image of “a tree in general”.
It is at least very likely that in defending this idea Nietzsche is taking sides
with Kant against Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer, all representa-
tions are either “intuitions” (Anschauungen), i.e. immediate representations of
particulars, or “concepts” (Begriffe), i.e. abstract or general representations
(e.g. WWR I §3). Accordingly, he denies that Kant has any right to speak of
“schemata” as if there could be a third type of representations “midway
between” our intuitions and our concepts.26 A “schema” (Schema) is for Kant
a representation which is secretly, unconsciously formed by our “productive
imagination” and which “provides a concept with its image” (CPR B 180/A
140), or, as Hannah Arendt has so simply put it, it is a “general image”.27 This
image is “intuitive” because it is built upon certain intuitions – and thus it is
still precisely just an “image” (Bild), an immediate and singular representation
which depends on our sensibility – but it is also, in a way, “conceptual”,
24 Riccardi (2012).
25 I have made use of Kaufmann’s translation to help me correct several imprecisions in
Judith Norman’s translation.
26 For Schopenhauer’s dismissal of Kantian schematism, cf. WWR I Appendix, 449 ff.
27 Cf. Arendt (1992), p. 81.
because it is already a sort of “sketch” of a concept. The schema “tree” is

exactly what Nietzsche calls the image of “an approximate tree”, that is, no
longer just an image of a particular tree, but rather an image of the very “rule”
that we apply when we use (or that we will apply when we get to use) the
general representation or concept “tree”. A concept is meaningful – and not
“empty” – if it refers to such an image, i.e. if it refers to intuitions via such an
image. This image is what allows the concept to function as a mark or feature
that we, as it were, project onto our sensations and then perceive as if it were
an intrinsic, real mark or feature of what is given in our sensations (e.g.,
according to Kant, we are able to perceive causal relations in space and time
not only because we organise our sensations in terms of space- and time-
relations, but also because we project the concept of causality onto our sensa-
tions by first building a “schema” of causality on the basis of our “pure intui-
tions” of space and time).28 In the Nachlass Nietzsche speaks freely of “sche-
mata” in this Kantian sense, i.e. in the sense of unconscious pre-conditions of
the formation of concepts.29 He writes, for example, that “we cannot do any-
thing without first sketching a free image of it” and “this image is very general,
a schema (Schema)” (NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[18], my translation). This does not
mean that we always form conscious thoughts before acting, but rather that
we always form unconscious “general images” before acting and before trans-
forming those “general images” into proper “sound-signs” and “image-signs”,
i.e. before fixing them by developing words and concepts that allow us to have
conscious thoughts (e.g. so-called “intentions”).
Thus we first have “sensations” and “sense impressions”, then we build
“schemata” or “general-images”, and only on that basis do we begin to cross
the threshold into the realm of consciousness by developing or acquiring “com-
munication-signs” – mostly “words” as “sound-signs” (BGE 268/JGB 286), but
also other communication-signs based on “look, touch, and gesture” (GS 354/
FW 354). These communication-signs stabilise our reference to schemata and
28 See the whole schematism chapter in the CPR: B 176/A 137 – B 187 / A 147.
29 E.g. NL 1881, KSA 9, 11[18], NL 1884, KSA 11, 26[94], Nl 1885, KSA 11, 34[249], NL 1995,
11, 36[26], NL 1885, 11, 38[2], NL 1885, 11, 41[11], NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 5[22], NL 1887, 12,
9[97], NL 1887–88, KSA 13, 11[113], NL 1888, KSA 13, 14[152], NL 1888, KSA 13, 14[153], NL
1888, KSA 13, 15[90]. In regard to this point, the difference between Mattia Riccardi’s
interpretation and mine is only terminological. Instead of characterising the approximate
image of a tree mentioned in BGE 192/JGB 192 as a “schema”, Riccardi describes it as an
“unconscious concept”. This makes the same substantial point that I have tried to make. But
the terminological point is also important. I cannot find any instance of Nietzsche using the
word “concept” (Begriff) in the sense of a non-conscious representation, whereas his use of
the words “schema” and “schemata” usually implies that he is referring to products of
unconscious or pre-conscious processes upon which our conscious concepts are based.
they immediately give rise to “image-signs” or “concepts” that “fix” certain

interpretations of our sense impressions and “place them outside of ourselves”.
The abstract use of concepts finally gives rise to “‘reason’ in the usual sense”
(NL 1884–85, KSA 11, 30[10]), i.e. to full propositions and arguments.
This is fundamentally the same view that Nietzsche expresses already in
the unpublished essay from 1873, On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.
Here Nietzsche claims that what we call “knowledge” starts with a “nerve stim-
ulation” which is “translated into an image: first metaphor! The image is then
imitated by a sound: second metaphor” (TL, 144/WL). Concepts arise because
“each word immediately becomes a concept” (TL, 145/WL), i.e. because the
“sound”, the “second metaphor” – the second transposition from one “sphere”
to another – immediately creates a general representation or “concept”. Thus
the “chamber of consciousness” (TL, 142/WL) comes into being, and it “distin-
guishes human beings from animals” (TL, 146/WL), only because the two
“metaphors” provide concepts with schemata, i.e. because we have “the ability
to sublimate sensuous metaphors into a schema, in other words, to dissolve
an image into a concept” (TL, 146/WL).30
However, it should also be made clear that Nietzsche’s “schematism” is
radically opposed to Kant’s in at least one very important point – one which
is clearly stated in the passage from BGE 192/JGB 192 quoted above. Against
Kant, Nietzsche stresses the arbitrary, entirely contingent nature of our sche-
mata, as well as the conventional nature of the linguistic concepts and signs
to which they eventually give rise. Or, put differently, Nietzsche draws the
natural consequence from Kant’s thesis that schemata are products of the sub-
terranean activities of the imagination. Schemata and then words and concepts
are something which our organisms unconsciously and involuntarily invent, cre-
ate, fabulate, fictionalise in their social interaction – something which springs,
first, from the “artistic” imagination of our physiology and, second, from our
spirit’s ability to create signs within the social milieu of communication. Thus,
Nietzsche writes: “we are, from the bottom up and across the ages, used to
lying”, and “one is much more of an artist [Künstler] than one knows” (BGE
192/JGB 192). Human beings and peoples that invent schemata, signs, and
concepts are “Abstraktions-Künstler”, “artists of abstraction” (NL 1886–87,
KSA 12, 6[11] = WLN, 124). In fact, as Nietzsche makes very clear, we are all
“inventors” (Erfinder) – unconscious and involuntary inventors of our own
experiences (Erlebnisse).31
30 Cf. Céline Denat, Luis Santiago Guervós, Luís Sousa and Luca Lupo’s essays in this
volume.
31 On this topic, see Luca Lupo’s essay in this volume.
But if this is so – if this is “unconscious and involuntary” – , then we must

conclude that we are driven to invent our own experiences or, to put it differ-
ently, that our un-conscious thinking, feeling, willing, remembering and acting
is at least to some extent dominated by a drive to invent, an “artistic” drive to
elaborate on or “lie” about our sensations and sense impressions. In Daybreak
Nietzsche calls this “force” or drive a dichtende Vernunft, a “poetic”, “inventing
reason”, that is, a “reason” which is not “reason in the usual sense”, but rather
an unconscious “reason” which explains the “intelligence” or “smartness”
(Klugheit) of our drives, affects, and instincts.32 In a note from 1885 Nietzsche
even describes that force or drive as a “sense” (Sinn). He writes:
before something being ‘thought’, it must have already been invented [or fabulated,
erdichtet]; the form-giving sense is more original than the ‘thinking’ sense (NL 1885, KSA
11, 40[17], my translation).
And so we arrive at two fundamental ideas. Firstly, the idea that the “form”
that the world has for us is primarily the “form” that results from a whole
series of unconscious processes whereby we elaborate on our sensory stimuli
and invent “general images” or “schemata”. These “schemata” are then the
basis upon which we elaborate and invent our concepts and create the “sur-
face- and sign-world” of consciousness. Secondly, all this unconscious activity
that produces consciousness is an activity of our drives.
In order to support this second idea, Nietzsche tries to identify a multiplic-
ity of fundamental drives: for example, a “selecting drive” or a “drive for sim-
plification” which is active from the most elemental level of sensation to the
level of consciousness and reason; a “causal drive” (Ursachentrieb) which
makes our experiences appear as if they were the causes of our conscious
thoughts and not as what they are, i.e. not as effects of our unconscious elabo-
32 On this “inventing force” and “inventive reason”, see Luca Lupo’s essay in this volume,
and see also Lupo (2006), pp. 141–149, Constâncio (2011a), pp. 32–36, Constâncio (2011b),
pp. 94–95. As early as 1874 Nietzsche speaks of a “Kunstkraft”, an “artistic force”, which is
at work in us below the level of consciousness: cf. KSA 7, 19[49], KSA 7, 19[67]. In TL/WL,
this “artistic force” is called the “drive to form metaphors, that fundamental drive which
cannot be left out of consideration for even a second without also leaving our human beings
themselves” (TL, 150–151/WL). Cf. Schlimgen (1999), pp. 70–76, Constâncio (2011a), p. 33.
On the “intelligence” of our drives, affects, and instincts, see for example BGE 218 and
Constâncio (2011a), p. 19 ff. Note also that now it should be clear why in GS 354/FW 354
Nietzsche distinguishes between “reason” and “the way in which we become conscious of
reason”. “Reason” is first of all an unconscious activity – namely, the “smart” activity of the
drives – and “reason in the usual sense” is just the conscious surface of that activity, its
“becoming conscious”.
ration of stimuli; thirdly, a drive to make familiar and understandable that

which is at first unfamiliar and frighteningly incomprehensible; and finally,
the very drive to communicate, which fosters the creation of schemata, commu-
nication-signs and concepts as tools for a more efficacious communication
within a community.33
These fundamental drives (or instincts) are never truly independent from
other drives (or instincts), like the sexual drive, the herd-instinct, the drive for
security, the drive for compassion, or the instinct of cruelty. Moreover, all of
those fundamental drives should be described as organic, instinctive responses
to the ways in which we are affected by stimuli, which means that they are
affections or affects. Hence, Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil 192:
“[…] affects like fear, love, and hate, as well as passive affects of laziness, will
be dominant during even the ‘simplest’ processes of sensibility” (BGE 192/JGB
192).
Even the activities of our senses – “even the ‘simplest’ processes of sensi-
bility” – are affective. But the point here is not only that all our sensations
(Empfindungen) are “feelings” (e.g. that the sensation “green” is always already
part of what it feels like to perceive something green in a given context). The
point is also that all our sensations, as Herman Siemens has put it, are them-
selves “creative or poetic (‘erdichtend’)”.34 Firstly, because our senses, far from
being simply passive, are a “simplifying apparatus” (NL 1885, KSA 11,
34[46] = WLN, 2) – and so even the “simplest” sensorial stimuli are always
already products of processes of simplification. Secondly, and most impor-
tantly, as affective responses to stimuli, the drives are part of the very event
to which we call “sensation” (Empfindung). They create the contents of our
sensation by elaborating further on nervous stimuli, they invent the schemata
upon which we build not only our concepts but actually our whole “experi-
ence” (Erlebnis, Erfahrung) of an event.
Let us consider, for example, the activity of our “drive for causality” (Ursa-
chentrieb).35 According to Nietzsche, our dreaming is a seeking and positing
of the causes or grounds of the stimuli that affect our nervous system while
we sleep (HH 13/MA 13, D 119/M 119, TI Errors 4–5/GD Irrthümer 4–5).
Hence, if we analyse our dreams, we realise that a “drive for causality” is
always at work in them. But we realise more than that. In our dreams we take
certain effects of our dreaming activity for causes of the contents of our dreams.
For example, a sound that is affecting our ears while we sleep causes us to
33 Constâncio (2011a), pp. 32–35.

34 Siemens (2006), p. 152.
35 See Lupo (2006), pp. 28–29, pp. 42–54 and p. 59, Constâncio (2011a), pp. 32–34.
dream of a cannon firing a cannon ball. In the dream we interpret this “story”
(sc. “there is a cannon firing a cannon ball”) not as an effect of the original
stimulus but rather as if it were the cause of that stimulus, i.e. the cause of
our hearing that which we take to be the sound of a cannon ball being fired.
The original stimulus may have been an actual sound of a cannon ball being
fired, but the point is that we have in any case transformed an effect into a
cause – because we are, as it were, programmed to seek for “causes”. Likewise,
the so-called “external world” as apprehended by consciousness is in fact just
an effect that we take for a cause because we are driven to look for causes.
Nietzsche writes:
The inversion of time: we believe that the external world is the cause of its effect upon
us, but we are the ones who have transformed its actual and unconscious effect into an
external world: the world as it stands before us is already our work, and this work is now
affecting us back. Such a work needs time before it is ready, but this time is very short
(NL 1884, KSA 11, 26[44], my translation).
Nietzsche’s idea is, of course, that our “work” in creating an external world is
so quick that our conscious thoughts are never on time to realise that (a) before
they happen our senses create a “concentric circle” around our body (which
in fact includes our body as an object of perception, an object that we can see,
touch, etc.), (b) that that “concentric circle” is already a “simplification”
worked out by our senses, (c) that that “simplification” is further simplified
by our invention of “schemata”, (d) that consciousness, just like our senses
(and our imagination), is a “simplifying apparatus” (NL 1885, KSA 11,
34[46] = WLN, 2, BGE 24/JGB 24, BGE 230/JGB 230) and so the world “out
there” is just a “world of generalities” based upon our schemata, “merely a
surface- and sign-world” (GS 354/FW 354). Consciousness does not catch
either the senses, or the imagination, or itself in the act of creating a world.
Thus the “drive for causality” has time to contribute to the whole process of
“placing our senses impressions outside of ourselves”, i.e., of making us think
of the “little fabricated worlds around us” (cf. NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[247] =
WLN, 14–15) as if they were not effects of sensations, perceptions, imaginings,
and conscious thoughts, but simply the cause of our sensations, perceptions,
imaginings, and conscious thoughts.36
36 Note that when Nietzsche explains the whole point about the “drive for causality”, he
tends to blur the distinction between waking and dreaming (cf. HH 13/MA 13, D 119/M 119,
TI Errors 4/GD Irrthümer 4). In fact, he seems to distinguish waking and dreaming by no
more than two criteria, which may seem quite weak for many of us: (a) while dreaming, we
are, so to speak, less open to new stimuli, so that we are affected by a lesser number of
stimuli than while awake; (b) while dreaming, we experience a lesser degree of consci-
ousness, that is, we may be unconscious for most of our sleep, but we are not totally
Moreover, since this whole process is pulsional and affective, it is also

evaluative. We are not driven to find “causes” because we need to “know” how
things are “in themselves”, but rather because we need to see them as “famil-
iar”, as “known”, as “understandable” for us – ultimately because we need to
not be frightened by things (TI Errors 5/GD Irrthümer 5). Thus the “drive for
causality”, together with other drives, creates values and, most importantly,
projects them onto the “world”. Or, more precisely, all our schemata, commu-
nication-signs and concepts are fundamentally evaluative, and hence our “sur-
face- and sign-world” is through and through a world of evaluations – of evalu-
ations that refer back to our “sensations” (Empfindungen). The latter are
irrevocably individual, but they also have a cultural and historic dimension:
they are both “idiosyncratic” and, at least to some extent, “inherited”.37
This being so, it is no wonder that Nietzsche admits that he has his own
kind of “idealism” (“Meine Art von ‘Idealismus’”, NL 1882, KSA 9, 21[3]), an
“idealism” (in quotation marks) which results from the belief that every sensa-
tion “contains an evaluation (Werthschätzung)” and every evaluation “fanta-
sises and invents (phantasirt und erfindet)”.38 But is it not common knowledge
that Nietzsche is an anti-idealist (e.g. BGE 15/JGB 15, BGE 39/JGB 39, BGE
210/JGB 210, GS 372/FW 372, TI Ancients 2/GD Alten 2)? Or is Nietzsche an
“idealist” after all?
This is not an easy question. However, I shall content myself with pointing
out that Nietzsche has at least two very good reasons to put his “idealism” in
quotation marks. The first one is that – as we saw – he completely rejects the
solipsistic point of view. Consciousness has a public dimension, it can only
occur in communication-contexts. A third-personal (e.g. scientific) description
of what we are is as valid – and as imperfect – as our first-personal description
unconscious while dreaming. If there is an unconscious, it lies behind the surface or screen
which is the dream as such – just like when we are awake. Given Nietzsche’s conception of
consciousness in GS 354/FW 354, this entails that even while dreaming we are still
“communicating” in some sense or in some degree (we are still under the influence of our
“need to communicate” and we are still part of the “net” that “connects one person with
another”).
37 See Siemens (2006), pp. 149–151. Cf., for example, KSA 9, 11[242], my translation: “but
sensation (Empfindung) is idiosyncrasy”, and KSA 9, 14[8], my translation: “As a language is
the primordial poem of a people, so is the whole intuitive world of sensation the primordial
poem of mankind, and also the animals have already begun to poetise. We inherit all of that
at once, as if it were reality itself”. For the individual, idiosyncratic nature of sensation,
Siemens refers further to KSA 12, 6[14], and see also KSA 9, 21[3]; for their cultural and
historical dimension, he refers further to AOM 223/VM 223 and GS 54/FW 54.
38 See Siemens (2006), p. 153.
of ourselves. It does not make sense to say that we are truly “imprisoned” in
the “chamber of consciousness”, as if we could only speak of ourselves.
The second reason is that Nietzsche also rejects the fundamental distinc-
tion which defines, for example, Kant and Schopenhauer’s philosophies as
“idealistic”, namely the distinction between “phenomena” and a “thing-in-
itself”, or between a “phenomenal world” and a “true world” (e.g. BGE 16/
JGB 16, GS 354/FW 354, GM III. 12, TI Fable/GD Fabel). As he writes in a
posthumous note from 1887:
the opposite of this phenomenal world is not the ‘true world’ but the formless, unformula-
table world of the chaos of sensations – thus, a different kind of phenomenal world, one
not ‘knowable’ by us (NL 1887, KSA 12, 9[106] = WLN, 161).39
The phenomenal world is the “surface- and sign-world” of consciousness – it

is always already, as Nietzsche stresses in this same posthumous note, the
“trimmed” and “logicised” world, the “world of generalities”, that emerges
within the social milieu of communication (NL 1887, KSA 12, 9[106] = WLN,
161) – , and this world is indeed a “falsification” of the real (e.g. GS 354/FW
354, BGE 24/JGB 24, BGE 34/JGB 34). However, it is not a “falsification” of a
“true world” beyond itself, but only a “falsification” of the “chaos of sensa-
tions”. The “real” that is “falsified” is this “chaos of sensations”. Put differ-
ently, the phenomenal world, as a “surface” and a “sign”, is a “falsification”
only because it is a “simplification” of the activities of our senses, our drives,
and our imagination. Hence it is a “fiction”, but it is not an “illusion” in the
Platonic or Schopenhauerian sense of the word, that is, it is not a false copy
of intrinsic properties that things might have in themselves. That idea – the
idea of “illusion”, of the world as a “cave” or a “veil of Maya”, as well as the
very idea of “intrinsic properties” (and unconditional, absolute “intelligibil-
ity”) – presupposes that we have the right to speak of “things” and then of a
“thing-in-itself” as if that were more than a human conceptualisation, more
than a “reification” of concepts that we have created from within the social
milieu of communication. As Nietzsche writes, “It was we who created ‘thing-
ness’ in the first place” (NL 1887, KSA 12, 9[106] = WLN, 161). This thesis (or,
perhaps, this hypothesis) allows Nietzsche to take two very important steps: (a)
first, to assert that the very activity of our senses, drives, and thoughts – all
our unconscious and conscious “thinking, feeling, willing, remembering, act-
ing”, or our “creating, logicising, trimming, falsifying” – is “the best guaran-
teed reality” (NL 188, KSA 12, 9[106] = WLN, 161); (b) second, to assert that
such a reality is continuous with, or simply a part of, “nature”, i.e. part of the
39 See Mattia Riccardi’s excellent handling of this point: Riccardi (2012).

whole “chaos” of possible sensations – and not a “copy” or “image” cut off
from a “true reality” with intrinsic properties.40
4 Self-Expression
I have argued above that in GS 354/FW 354 Nietzsche does not mean to say
that every case of communication by means of signs is communication of
“needs”, because the development of that kind of communication over time
has by itself created the possibility of expressing more than just “needs”. It
has produced a “surplus” (ein Ueberschuss). I have also argued that Nietzsche
does also not mean to say that every case of communication of needs by means
of signs occurs for the sake of strengthening social bonds. Artists, for example,
will tend to use language, as well as other forms of sign-communication, to
express more individual needs, different needs – and to express them “lav-
ishly”, i.e. simply in order to express themselves and not necessarily in order
to seek support or help from others or to achieve a feeling of “belonging”.
It is easy to see the problems that these assertions raise, and very difficult
to solve them. The whole theme of Nietzsche’s views on communication as
self-expression remains, to a great extent, open and unexplored. In this respect
I shall also content myself with sketching a few remarks.
The first problem to be considered is that since all our words and concepts
should be traced back to the unconscious drives and affects that invent our
experiences, it is very hard to escape the conclusion that all our conscious
thoughts express needs. Does this mean that we are back to the thesis that all
40 Thus the posthumous note NL 1887, KSA 12, 9[106] = WLN, 161 ends with the
“hypothesis that there are only subjects – that ‘object’ is only a kind of effect of subject
upon subject… a mode of the subject”. This is entirely different from the hypothesis that
there is only one subject, and in fact it means that (a) “subjectivity” is real, (b) reality is a
“chaos” with no intrinsic properties, i.e. a “chaos” where “things” or “objects” only come
into being as a result of conceptualisations that arise from relations among “subjects”. But
two further remarks should be added to this. Firstly, in spite of such posthumous notes as
this one, Nietzsche tends to avoid speaking in terms of “subjects” and “objects”, so that he
writes in The Gay Science 354 that he is never concerned with “the opposition between
subject and object”: “I leave that distinction to those epistemologists who have got tangled
up in the snares of grammar (of folk metaphysics)” (GS 354/FW 354). Secondly, the
“hypothesis of the will to power” (cf. BGE 36/JGB 36) is precisely Nietzsche’s attempt to
express the “hypothesis that there are only subjects” in a critical, non-metaphysical (non-
“grammatical”) way. But I cannot go into these points here. For the critical and non-
metaphysical status of Nietzsche’s hypothesis of the will to power, as well as for his
conception of reality as “chaos”, see Stegmaier (1992), pp. 306–330.
our conscious thoughts are a becoming conscious of our needs and hence of
ourselves? Was my interpretation of Nietzsche’s mention of a “surplus” too
rash? On the other hand, what could support, for example, the assertion that
a mathematical proposition like “7+5=12” expresses a “need”?
Here I think we have to distinguish between direct and indirect expression
of needs. When I say, for example, “give me water!”, I directly express a need.
When I say “7+5=12” I express the (mathematical) fact that if I add 7 to 5 the
result is 12. However, by saying this I also express a need, or even a multiplic-
ity of needs, indirectly. The whole of mathematics, according to Nietzsche,
results from human needs and hence from human drives: from a need and a
drive to simplify the chaos of sensations, a need and a drive to make the world
we live in understandable and familiar, a need and a drive to speed up and
facilitate communication among humans.41 When I say “7+5=12”, I do not
become conscious of any of those needs, nor do I communicate those needs to
myself or to others – but my saying it expresses those needs, that is, my saying
it is “a sign and a symptom” of those needs, just like, for example, my con-
scious intention of acting in a certain way is always “a sign and a symptom”
of unconscious needs, drives, affects, and instincts – and thus it involuntarily
expresses these unconscious motivations even when it is no more than a ration-
alisation which actually hides their actual meaning from me (cf. BGE 32/JGB
32, BGE 187/JGB 187).
But there is a second, more fundamental problem – one which Nietzsche
himself presents as fundamental in GS 354/FW 354, and to which he alludes
in the very title of GS 354/FW 354 (“On ‘the genius of the species’”).42 Given
that consciousness depends on concepts, and given that our concepts are “gen-
eralities” which have an intrinsic public dimension because they emerge from
communication-signs, it seems that whenever we try to become conscious of
our individual needs and understand what we are as individuals by means of
conscious thoughts, we cannot avoid failing. Put differently, it seems that by
using language even great artists and philosophers cannot achieve more than
a social “interpretation of their states” – an interpretation which is “the work
of others” or which they have “learnt” from others (KSA 9, 6[350], my transla-
tion). Nietzsche writes in GS 354/FW 354:
My idea is clearly that consciousness actually belongs not to man’s existence as an indi-
vidual but rather to the community- and herd-aspects of his nature; that accordingly, it
41 See footnote 11 above.

42 The “genius of the species” is, of course, the term Schopenhauer uses to describe the
sexual instinct as an instinct that works in the service of the species and not in the best
interest of its specimen: cf. WWR II §44.
is finely developed only in relation to its usefulness to community or herd; and that
consequently each of us, even with the best will in the world to understand ourselves as
individually as possible, ‘to know ourselves’, will always bring to consciousness precisely
that in ourselves which is ‘non-individual’, that which is ‘average’; that due to the nature
of consciousness – to the ‘genius of the species’ governing it – our thoughts themselves
are continually as it were outvoted and translated back into the herd perspective (GS 354/
FW 354).43
Consciousness (particularly in its linguistic dimension) is the true “genius of

the species” – the “genius” that makes us act as no more than “specimens”,
the “blind force” that deprives us of our individuality and transforms us into
“functions of the herd” (GS 116/FW 116). In trying to “know myself” I shall
tend to find new ways of conceptualising myself, and I shall tend to become
more and more conscious of myself, but no matter how subtle, non-conde-
scending and complex my new ways of conceptualising myself will be, my self-
consciousness will unavoidably remain a misunderstanding of myself. It will
always remain a social, non-individual interpretation of myself, a “herd per-
spective” about myself. Nietzsche writes:
The sign-inventing person is also the one who becomes ever more acutely conscious of
himself; only as a social animal did man learn to become conscious of himself – he is
still doing it, and he is doing it more and more (GS 354/FW 354, translation modified).
Thus Nietzsche seems to be saying that we should try to become less and less
conscious of ourselves in order to achieve a better understanding of ourselves.
But is this a meaningful assertion? And, most importantly, is that what Nietz-
sche himself does as a writer and a philosopher? Is that what Nietzsche is
doing while writing about consciousness and language in GS 354/FW 354?
Nietzsche writes about consciousness and language from a critical point
of view: he uses his consciousness and language to monitor his consciousness
and language, to criticise the metaphysical prejudices embedded in conscious-
ness and language, to investigate whether all conscious thoughts and words
are in the end just “signs and symptoms” of the unconscious needs, drives,
affects, and instincts that play the most decisive role in the “invention” of our
experiences. This is part of his way of philosophising, part of his “psychology”
and “genealogy”, particularly of his self-genealogy. Moreover, his critical
stance is not simply destructive. His “revaluation of all values” creates “new
values”. It forces him to create new schemata, new words and new concepts
which posit a new understanding of himself and the human being. He is like
43 BGE 268/JGB 268 expresses the same idea, although mostly about language and not
about consciousness in general; see also BGE 296/JGB 296.
a spider that in deconstructing an old cobweb is already constructing a new

one, or cannot avoid constructing a new one. More than anyone else, Nietzsche
is a “sign-inventing person” who has become very “acutely conscious of him-
self” – to the point of claiming that he has developed “a new language” (BGE
4/JGB 4).
The key for understanding what Nietzsche is trying to say in GS 354/FW
354 is, I think, precisely his conception of this “new language”. Nietzsche’s
“new language” – which is fundamentally the language of “genealogy” – is,
first of all, a language that assumes that words “may be the horizons of our
knowledge, but they are not ‘truths’” (NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 5[3] = WLN, 106).
It is, so to speak, a monitoring language that sees words and concepts as just
words and concepts – so that it avoids any ontological or metaphysical asser-
tions about realities designated by words and concepts, i.e. any assertion about
“truths” in either the ontological or the metaphysical sense of the term.44 As
Nietzsche himself explains in a posthumous note, his new language never
asserts anything about what something “is”, only about what a word and a
concept “mean”, and thus it is in fact just a “critique of concepts” – one which
assumes that the “meaning” of our concepts (and words) lies in the history of
their use and hence is tantamount to “a real ‘history of the genesis of thinking’”
(NL 1885, KSA 11, 40[27] = WLN, 44; cf. GM II 12–13). There is no doubt
that in abandoning the assumption of a “congruence between a thought and
the real” and in conceiving of words and concepts as “signs” of our uncon-
scious needs, drives, affects, and instincts, Nietzsche is still forced to speak of
“the real”: “The real is some sort of movement of the drives (Triebbewegung)”
(NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[253]). But he is fully aware that such words and concepts
as “drive”, “affect”, “sign” or “real” are no more than words and concepts and
that the “meanings” those words and concepts have in his writings are just
the end-result of a long history of public uses within different contexts of sign-
communication.
The point that I want to make on this basis is that it is indeed the case
that Nietzsche believes that every form of consciousness, including self-con-
sciousness, is always a way of misunderstanding oneself in terms of social and
non-individual words and concepts – but, on the other hand, he also believes
(a) that all forms of conscious communication are forms of indirect self-expres-
44 See Nietzsche’s rejection of the whole idea of an adequatio intellectus et rei, for
example, in the following posthumous note: “The demand for an adequate mode of
expression is nonsensical: it’s of the essence of a language, of a means of expression, to
express only a relation… The concept of ‘truth’ is absurd… the whole realm of ‘true’, ‘false’
refers only to relations between entities, not to the ‘in-itself’” (NL 1888, KSA 13, 14[122] =
WLN, 258). Cf. Stegmaier (1985), Wotling (2006), Constâncio (2011b), p. 110 ff.
sion – and, most importantly, (b) that there are forms of self-expression which
are better than others. This is perhaps easier to understand if we recall that in
his Zarathustra Nietzsche distinguishes between the “I” (Ich) – i.e. the “I of
consciousness”, the synthetic concept of an “I” – and the “Self” (Selbst) – i.e.
the “body” as a multiplicity of unconscious needs, drives, affects, and instincts
(Z I Despisers/ZA I Verächtern). All my conscious thoughts are self-expressive
because they express “the real”, the “movement of the drives”, my “Self” (and
not just my “I”). When I say “7+5=12”, or “there is a fire out there”, or when
I communicate a need by saying, for example, “I need to get out of here” or
“give me water!”, or when I become properly self-conscious by saying, for
example, “I think I am in danger now”, or when I self-consciously define
myself by saying, for example, “I think that I am a conscious mind” – in
all these cases I “falsify” my experience, but I also express something of my
experience. What I say is part of an action that shows or expresses my being
(or my “Self”) at a deeper level than just that of consciousness, even if involun-
tarily or unintentionally (cf. BGE 32/JGB 32, BGE 187/JGB 187). Nietzsche’s
new language allows him to become conscious of this. His consciousness of the
superficiality and falsity of consciousness, and especially his consciousness of
the radical inadequacy of consciousness for expressing his individuality,
prompts him to use his new language as a means of finding better forms of
self-expression.
In order to achieve this end Nietzsche obviously needs to develop better
descriptions of himself and the human being. But he needs much more than
that, and he aims at much more than that. First, he needs to “incorporate” his
knowledge, his “truths” (e.g. GS 11/FW 11, GS 110/FW 110) – and he needs
to do this in a way that expands his “Self” by creating new, different, more
individual “needs” (e.g. a “bodily” or “instinctive” need to “affirm life”, or to
“overcome nihilism”, or to get rid of the “herd perspective”). Secondly, and
most importantly, he needs to act in ways that show or express better his new
“Self”. And this he does. For he acts by writing – and in writing he uses his
new language as a means of showing or performatively expressing his new
needs, drives, affects, and instincts in ways that go well beyond a conscious
and linguistic self-description.
For many of his readers, this is an end to which he has undoubtedly suc-
ceeded in achieving.
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Maria João Mayer Branco
The Spinning of Masks. Nietzsche’s Praise
of Language
To Hugo and all our hats.
The things we have words for are also the things we have already left behind. There is a
grain of contempt in all speech. Language, it seems, was invented only for average, medi-
ocre, communicable things. People vulgarize themselves when they speak a language. –
Excerpts from a morality for the deaf-mutes and other philosophers.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man 26
Throughout his work, Nietzsche never ceased to express his distrust of lan-
guage, which he sometimes classified as a lie, falsity, error or illusion. This
view suggests a scorn for words and their inadequacy in relation to what they
intend to say. Stating that language “vulgarizes” (TI Skirmishes 26/GD Streif-
züge 26), that it only “immortalises” “tired and worn-out things” (BGE 296/
JGB 296), that words “lie in our way” (D 47/M 47), Nietzsche seems to indicate
that language is only an impediment, a “hindrance” (D 47/M 47) from which
we must free ourselves. What I will attempt to show here is that this is not the
case. Nietzsche’s philosophy does not seek merely to indicate the limits of
language, let alone to serve as an incitement to silence. In arguing that lan-
guage possesses “dangers to spiritual freedom” (WS 55) which must be con-
fronted rather than avoided, Nietzsche recognised the existence of a power in
words and analysed the exerting of this power on human beings. Moreover, in
his philosophy this dangerous power is transformed into a problem to which
silence cannot provide a response, since to remain silent would be to succumb
to fear. What I will therefore argue is that Nietzsche’s distrust of language
is not an apology for silence but a warning, an imperative addressed to all
philosophers, particularly the new philosophers (BGE 2/JGB 2), the philoso-
phers of the future whom he calls the “fearless ones” (GS V/FW V). In effect,
for Nietzsche the philosopher is the creator of a “new language” (BGE 4/JGB
4) and is the one for whom “all of being’s words and word shrines burst open”
because “all being wants to become word” (Z III The Homecoming/ZA III Heim-
kehr). However, this neither means that everything is language nor that silence
is impossible. On the contrary, what should become clear is the sense in which
it can be considered, as Nietzsche considered, that everything speaks (NL
1883, KSA 10, 7[62]), that even the stillest hours speak and tell us that we
have to speak (Z II Hour/ZA II Stunde).
I will begin by stating the series of difficulties raised by language so that
I may then put forward the hypothesis that philosophy has a sort of positive
234 Maria João Mayer Branco
relationship with it. Since it must incorporate the criticisms that Nietzsche
makes of language, this hypothesis could be stated as follows: to be suspicious
of words involves a way of loving them.
I. “Where Words are Lacking”

Nietzsche identified several problems raised by language. The first of them is
that words are abusive generalisations that do not restore singularities. Nietz-
sche analysed this difficulty, which he called an “overlooking what is individ-
ual (das Uebersehen des Individuellen)” (TL 1/WL 1, KSA 1, p. 880) in the
essay On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense, demonstrating that words fix
in general abstractions the incommensurable (and ultimately inexpressible)
multiplicity of what exists, taking what is different to be identical. By unifying
distinct and irreducible things in identical terms, language “lies” because it
fails to do justice to each singularity. In other words, language does violence
to the individual to the extent that it suppresses it while naming it with words
that apply to several cases, i.e. that are general. Nietzsche kept insisting that
“words really exist only for superlative degrees” of things (D 115/M 115) and
that the unity of the word does not ensure the unity of the thing that it denotes
(HH I 14/MA I 14 and BGE 19/JGB 19). However, taken in its “extra-moral”
sense, the thesis that we lie when we speak implies that it could be no other
way. The lie consists not in failing to tell the truth out of self-interest but in
the inevitable and unintentional omission of the infinite multiplicity that does
not fit into any linguistic term. To lie is, thus, to forget what is left out. More-
over, Nietzsche believes that this forgetting is not a weakness but a strength,
a “power of forgetting (die Kraft zu vergessen)” or “plastic power (die plastische
Kraft)” (UM II 1/UB II 1) that makes it possible to abstract from perception a
multiplicity which is not only incommensurable but also in a continual state
of becoming. The power of forgetting is therefore not the power that negates
that multiplicity-in-a-state-of-becoming which is reality, but a “horizon” (UM
II 1/UB II 1), a limit from which we can contemplate this multiplicity without
also being devoured by it but also without being able to conclusively define it.
Forgetting is the condition of utterability. And its price is the lie, the inade-
quacy, the lack of coincidence between what is said and that which cannot to
be fixed.1
1 For Nietzsche’s rejection of the thesis that the relationship between language and reality
is one of “adequacy” or “correspondence”, see Céline Denat’s essay in this volume.
Thus, according to Nietzsche, the relationship between language and real-

ity is not a relationship of adequacy but a creative relationship, involving the
creation of “errors” or “falsities”. Words do not restore things and, if they
are “hindrances”, obstacles, they are also deviations, transferences, the non-
coincidence between what is and what is said. For Nietzsche, however, this
must not be understood only as a failure, as the impossibility of language to
express things or as a declaration of the ultimate unutterability of what is. In
fact, what Nietzsche’s philosophy shows us is that there is no “truth” beyond
linguistic articulation. What exists are precisely the deviations, errors or lies
that we create and truth is just another instance of them, that is, just another
word, another abstraction that, by “overlooking what is individual”, does vio-
lence to the multiplicity of singularities which compose the world. Moreover,
the word “truth” has done violence to philosophy, condemning it to a “dog-
matic” way of thinking (BGE Preface/JGB Vorrede), with extreme consequen-
ces. I will return to this point later.
Let us consider the second difficulty. Language does not only prevent the
apprehension of what is singular, the unique aspect of each individual, but
also makes it difficult or impossible for human individuality to express itself.
Nietzsche argues that it was the need to communicate quickly in dangerous
situations that led to the development of language among human beings (GS
354/FW 354, BGE 268/JGB 286). But although this same need stimulates com-
munication, it also prevents the expression of what is unique because in
moments of danger words serve “the easy communicability”, i.e. a quick
“understanding” that presupposes “similar experiences” in different individu-
als (BGE 268/JGB 286). In other words, by expressing what is “similar” or
“common” (“base”, gemein – JGB 268), words “falsify and corrupt” what Nietz-
sche refers to as the most “personal” aspect of ourselves (NL 1885–86, KSA
12, 1[202], my translation). Thus, to the extent that words only denote what
is common (since they are born from the need to “communicate” and make
“understandable” man’s states of need as a gregarious, social, communitarian
being – GS 354/FW 354), what is singular is “left behind” (TI Skirmishes 26/
GD Streifzüge 26). This applies to individual experiences, as well as to the
possibility of expressing them, and Nietzsche calls the process by which the
individual is turned into a generality a “making average” or “base”:
[…] all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and make stupid; words
depersonalise (entpersönlicht); words make the exceptional (das Ungemeine) base
(gemein) (NL 1887, KSA 12, 10[60] = WP 810, modified).
Since “all our actions are incomparably and utterly personal, unique, and
boundlessly individual”, their linguistic translation always consists in a falsifi-
cation that generalises them and allows us to know only that “which is ‘non-
individual’”, only that “which is ‘average’” or ordinary (GS 354/FW 354). This
difficulty is faced by “each of us” (GS 354/FW 354) and, in a very particular
way, by the philosopher.
What thereby emerges is a tension between the general (the “vulgar”, or
“base”) and the singular which is not resolved by shifting backwards to a point
before or behind language. It seems that this shift backwards is characteristic
of the “morality for the deaf-mutes and other philosophers” from which Nietz-
sche excludes himself, but not without identifying a third difficulty to be added
to those already mentioned. Language is not just a moving away or deviation
from things. By corrupting singularities and falsifying what is unique it creates
reality, or rather, it creates illusions which are later taken to be truths. Insisting
on the discrepancy between language and reality, between language and truth,
Nietzsche highlights the absence of neutrality that is characteristic of it: words
are human creations with a history and a context and prejudices are inexplic-
itly sedimented in them to which we cease to be alert with the passing of time.
Since “every word” is “a prejudice” (WS 55), we forget that we invented words
on the basis of particular experiences and perspectives and use them as if
language restored things to us in a neutral way. For Nietzsche, however, recog-
nising this fallacy is not a question of rejecting words but of creating a new
relationship with them, a type of approximation that, as I will try to show,
paradoxically involves distance.
In Daybreak 115, Nietzsche argues that “language and the prejudices upon
which language is based are a manifold hindrance to us” because “where
words are lacking, we are accustomed to abandon exact observation”. We live
in the reality created by language; we live in the linguistic illusions that we
no longer perceive as such because we cling to them, because they allow us
to abstract and thereby deal with the incommensurable and unstable move-
ment of things. However, this supposed mastery of the world becomes a habit
and comes to entangle us, Nietzsche says, in a “net”. The fact that we are
immersed in language means that the words form a net which traps us and
limits “exact observation”, that is to say, which limits thought and knowledge.
Words therefore give us one power just as they take another away from us and,
in this respect, language is effectively analogous to habit, which also entangles
us in a “net” that we have created and from which it is difficult to escape (D
117/M 117). To illustrate this situation and the dangers that it involves, Nietz-
sche resorts to the following image: the linguistic net is like the web of a spider
which has got stuck in the threads that it has woven itself. If “everything
habitual draws around us an ever firmer net of spider-webs” and “we ourselves
are sitting in the middle as the spider who has caught himself and has to live
on his own blood” (HH I 427/MA I 427), it represents a mortal danger for us.
And this is the same danger that is represented by words: that of being trapped
and devoured by something that we ourselves have created. The problem is
thus to know how can we protect ourselves from it given that we need language
and habits in order to live. How is human life possible without communication
and without the stability that habit provides, the stability that allows us to
predict our experiences and make them calculable?
II. The Tear

The danger that Nietzsche alludes to with the image of the spider’s web is that
of a type of stability that becomes definitive and progressively comes to resem-
ble rigor mortis. This risk was described in TL as a process of petrification,
fixation or paralysation of instinctive vitality: “the rigid and regular web of
concepts” (TL 2, 151/WL 2) becomes “the burial site of perceptions” (TL 2,
150/WL 2). The consequence of the need to forget that is required for the
creation of words can be a paralysation of the creative force (which is the
instinct for metaphor) when this force is fixed in rigid forms that are taken to
be definitive. On the other hand, the image of the spider-web indicates, right
from the start, an empty lifeless space occupied by an animal that feeds itself
by killing others. But the fact that the spider ends up eating its own blood
implies something even worse: that living beings are no longer attracted to its
web and that the spider ends up feeding only on itself, that is to say, on its
own death.
Nietzsche considered philosophy to be both a favoured victim of this dan-
ger and a potential liberator from it. The former case is discussed in Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, in which Nietzsche characterises Parmenidean
philosophy and its concept of being as a way of thinking that emerges from a
“total lack of blood” (PTAG 11, p. 81/PHG 11). Parmenides represents the
philosopher who is a victim of his own conceptual creation, or rather, of a
concept that is so general and so abstract that its creator ceases to be “an
investigator into any of the world’s parts”, i.e. an investigator into the singulari-
ties I mentioned earlier, and comes to believe that truth lives “only in the
palest, most abstracted generalities, in the empty husks of the most indetermi-
nate terms, as though in a house of cobwebs” (PTAG 10, p. 80/PHG 10). The
result is an aberrant and devastating scenario:
And beside such truth now sits our philosopher, likewise as bloodless as his abstractions,
in the spun out fabric of his formulas. A spider at least wants blood from its victims. The
Parmenidean philosopher hates most of all the blood of his victims, the blood of the
empirical reality which was sacrificed and shed by him (PTAG 10, p. 80/PHG 10).
This is the danger against which Nietzsche’s philosophy seeks to fight. It is not
a question of rejecting language and the webs of habit but of preventing the
philosopher from becoming trapped in them, risking his life and “spiritual
freedom” (WS 55). As a “free spirit”, the philosopher “hates all habituation
and rules, everything enduring and definitive, that is why he sorrowfully again
and again rends apart the net that surrounds him” (HH I 427/MA I 427). But
just as tearing apart the web of language does not correspond to a life of
silence, tearing apart the web of habit does not mean seeking “a life entirely
without habits, a life that continually demanded improvisation” which would
be “intolerable, truly terrible” as an “exile” and a “Siberia” (GS 295/FW 295).
Tearing apart the web of habit means finding a point of view from within it,
which is not possible when we are completely entangled. It is a question of
being able to see what envelops us and to do this it is necessary to create a
space, a point on the web from which it becomes visible. This point does not
lie outside what we aim to see because outside of it there is nothing (since, as
Nietzsche writes, in the world there is no inside and no outside – HH I 15/MA
I 15). Or rather, in this tear other threads will inevitably grow and the web
will never disappear.
The point of view that liberates from being trapped is therefore immanent
in what traps it but somehow manages to break free and see. For Nietzsche,
this breaking free occurs as a result of an estrangement from what is familiar,
a distancing, a force that goes against what we are used to and also against
what is habitual among philosophers. The latter have always sought to famili-
arise “something unfamiliar” because it “is comforting, reassuring, satisfying,
and produces a feeling of power as well. Unfamiliar things are dangerous,
anxiety-provoking, upsetting, – the primary instinct is to get rid of these pain-
ful states” (TI Errors 5/GD Irrthümer 5). Nietzsche’s proposal therefore involves
recognising that what is most habitual is “what we are used to, and what we
are used to is the most difficult to ‘know’ – that is, to view as a problem, to
see as strange, as distant, as ‘outside us’” (GS 355/FW 355).2 In other words,
it is a question of establishing a distance from the habit that “makes […] our
hand more witty and our wit less handy” (GS 247/FW 247). This distance,
however, does not absolutely dispense with habits. On the contrary, it enables
the creation of another kind of habits, to which Nietzsche calls “brief” (GS
295/FW 295). Nietzsche explains that such brief habits, while possessing a
2 With regard to the problem of habit and this text in particular, see Stegmaier (2011a).
“faith in eternity”, emerge, “nourish” the philosopher’s days and then “one
day [their] time is up”: they part from him “not as something that now disgusts
me but peacefully and sated with me, as I with it”. However, their departure
is not followed by an absence of habits because in their place “already the
new waits at the door” (GS 295/FW 295).
Brief habits are those which Nietzsche claims to “love”, indicating the pos-
sibility of transforming a hindrance to the freedom of spirit into something
benevolent and favourable, i.e. valuable and worthy of our appreciation. How-
ever, in order for this love to exist it is necessary to maintain a degree of
estrangement and separation of the sort that prevents total adhesion, a famili-
arity or proximity that could turn us into its victims. In other words, the condi-
tion for this love is a certain degree of distance, a distance that Nietzsche
believes to be a condition of vitality (which applies as much to habit as it
does to words) to the extent that identification, coincidence, paralyses the
relationship and deforms the parts of which it is composed, as shown by the
image of the spider that feeds on itself. Such an identification leads to atrophy
rather than to expansion, growth or broadening. For Nietzsche, this atrophy is
an aberration corresponding to that represented in a sinister variation of the
image of the spider devouring itself, the figure of “the conscientious of spirit”
in Z IV Leech/ZA IV Blutegel.
III. Skin, Mask and Individuation

We can now begin to understand that the process of distancing, the tearing of
the web of language that creates “grammatical habits” (BGE 17/JGB 17) and
traps thought is not a simple destruction of what is enveloping us. Just as brief
habits emerge and allow us to live, sating themselves and sating us without
destroying us, and giving rise to other habits without becoming fixed (or fixing
us) definitively, the tearing of the linguistic web can also only happen because
another “waits at the door”, or, as Nietzsche writes, “grows” (GS 58/FW 58).
Nietzsche illustrates this idea with the image of a change of skin, a change
that obeys a logic of regeneration and not of simple destruction (or silencing).
It is a logic of “critique” in which the negation or breaking free occurs due to
the affirmation of something else:
When we criticize (…) it is, at least very often, proof that there are living, active forces
within us shedding skin. We negate and have to negate because something in us wants
to live and affirm itself, something we might not yet know or see (GS 307/FW 307).
The skin that is continually regenerated makes itself in its continual differen-
tiation, in that process to which philosophy has given the name of becoming.
It is in its incessant becoming, in the continual growth and continual separa-
tion from itself that the skin becomes what it is. To change skin is therefore to
be, which means that the being is not a hidden essence that lies inert at the
bottom of, or behind, the surface. Rather, that permanence or sameness to
which philosophy is used to call “being” or “essence” is the surface itself, skin
deep. Skin is appearance, “a product of we know not what forces and drives,
a sort of sedimentation (Ablagerung) which is constantly dissolving itself bit
by bit and then reconstructing itself again” (NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[339], my trans-
lation). In other words, we do not know its origin, and, in a certain sense, we
cannot consider ourselves to be its origin unless we transform ourselves into
the spider that eats itself.
Words also belong to the plane of the surface, and to this extent they are
appearances rather than essences. And since Nietzsche’s philosophy proposes
that this is the only domain to which we have access – our reality – we can
then understand what it means to say that we are entangled in language and
that to destroy language would be to destroy the entire world (TI Fable/GD
Fabel). As with the skin, we are not the origin or the cause of words. As we
have seen above, they are never individual and express only what is common,
what is communicable, what is understood by many and born from many expe-
riences over time (BGE 268/JGB 286). Nietzsche stresses that even unique
philosophical concepts “do not grow up on their own, but rather grow in refer-
ence and relation to each other” (BGE 20/JGB 20). And since words do not
merely have multiple origins but also always denote “something complicated”
(BGE 19/JGB 19) that cannot be reduced to any type of simple and atomic
ultimate reality (BGE 12/JGB 12), we return to the problem of individuality
that has already been mentioned.3
In fact, the belief that everything is multiple or non-identical may call into
question the notion of “individual” as an irreducible singularity that no word
can restore.4 But if this is the case, Nietzsche seems to have fallen into the
trap that he criticises, because “individual” corresponds to a generic word that
applies to the most varied cases, to an “Uebersehen” (an “overlooking”) of that
which it aims to denote. The use of the term “individual” shows precisely that
it is not possible to escape from the net of words that entraps us and, at the
same time, to continue to want to express singularities. And Nietzsche’s solu-
3 On language and individuation (in Nietzsche and Humboldt), see Jaanus Sooväli and
Andrea Bertino’s essays in this volume.
4 See Simon (1999).
tion to this problem is analogous to that which he proposes as a way of resolv-

ing our entanglement in webs of habit, namely, to seek a point of view in
which the familiar becomes strange or distant and to apply it to the notion of
individual. An unusual, not yet vulgarised, view of this concept would allow
a new understanding of individuality, a strange understanding that would
invert the common meaning of the notion of individual and consider it as its
opposite, that is to say, as a multiplicity. The same goes for the term “soul”.
Nietzsche suggests that this word, previously understood as an atomic entity,
should express a “subject-multiplicity” (BGE 12/JGB 12). Such a suggestion
implies that a distanced view of the philosophical notion of soul does not
eliminate it, but rather allows for a new understanding to emerge or grow
which is, however, not an absolute novelty. It does not reject the point from
which it sets out. Just as the concept of “brief habits” does not definitively
reject the notion of habit and the criticism of language does not lead to silence,
Nietzsche also argues that “there is absolutely no need to give up ‘the soul’
itself, and relinquish one of the oldest and most venerable hypotheses” (BGE
12/JGB 12) in order to allow “new versions and sophistications of the soul
hypothesis” (BGE 12/JGB 12). It is thus that Nietzsche considers that the
hypothesis of what we call individual corresponds to the opposite of what we
usually understand by this word, that is to say, to an inversion of the meaning
that has become fixed for the notion of individual. Accordingly, the “individ-
ual” is understood as an equivalent, not to a unit that is identical to itself, but
to a multiplicity of differences.5 The novelty therefore lies in an understanding
of individuality as a non-coincidence with itself and a non-permanence, that
is to say, as what Nietzsche described as a constant change of skin, or, keeping
with the terms surface and appearance, a constant growth of “masks”.
Like skin, the mask “grows” around each profound spirit, and grows “con-
stantly” (BGE 40/JGB 40). Moreover, the growth of the mask is the “growth”
of the spirit, which, rather than being reduced to a unity, is a “multiplicity of
masks” (BGE 230/JGB 230). On the other hand, if “every word is a prejudice”
(WS 55), “every word is also a mask”, as Nietzsche argues in BGE 289, where
he discusses hiding and dissimulation. The mask disguises and protects
because it separates (BGE 270/JGB 270, BGE 284/JGB 284) and he who masks
himself distances himself by erecting a boundary around himself which sepa-
rates him from others, from what is common. But since the mask, like the
word, is not neutral and transparent, in separating, in becoming individual-
ised, it communicates, it speaks.6 Language also hides (and forgets) but does
5 On difference and identity, see the discussion of the concept of “I” in Sooväli’s contri-
bution to this volume.
6 See Hamacher (1986).
not hide anything particular or essential that could be reached by means of a

non-linguistic form of communication (by means, that is, of some kind of silent
adequacy or authenticity). Language hides what it reveals, that which only it
can show, because it is a medium, something which impedes direct access but,
at the same time, connects (a “net”). In this respect, language separates what
it binds together, i.e. each individual from others and the individual from him-
self. If the individual is that which is not common, that which is distinct and
separate, his relation to himself, his self-knowledge, is possible only as a par-
ticular kind of linguistically mediated knowledge, i.e. as knowledge of “a sur-
face- and sign-world” (GS 354/FW 354). Therefore, self-knowledge is not
access to the complete set of determinations that define us, it does not restore
a unicum out of a sum of identifiable parts. If something like self-knowledge
could ever be constituted, it would consist of the plurality of masks in which
the individual and his spirit “grow”, that is to say, in which they live and
appear. For this reason, Nietzsche responds to the problem of how it is possible
to know something that can only appear when it is hidden by stating that
behind each mask there is another mask (BGE 279/JGB 279) that no knowl-
edge can anticipate.
A new comprehension of the notion of individuation would understand it
to be a process of becoming, a continual differentiation that escapes being
fixed and escapes the determinations which it nevertheless cannot fail to gen-
erate. Hence Nietzsche’s distrust of the possibility of consummate self-knowl-
edge, the “unconquerable distrust in the possibility of self-knowledge” and “a
kind of revulsion against believing anything definite about myself” (BGE 281/
JGB 281):
And, ultimately, what do we know about ourselves? And what the spirit that leads us
wants to be called? (It is a question of names.) And how many spirits we are hiding? (BGE
227/JGB 227).
But if the individual differentiates himself in order to become what he is, if he

does not correspond to a particular and inexpressible essence or substance,
then what is individual in an individual is precisely his indetermination, that
which is not yet fixed (BGE 62/JGB 62) and which not even he can completely
determine. This is why Nietzsche underlines the importance of the only thing
that breaks down determination, rules and the stability of habits, namely the
importance of chance, whose hand “tears through” the “spider-web” of our
life, through the predictability of our experiences (D 130/M 130). Chance is
indetermination, something that is neither deliberated, nor chosen, nor pre-
dictable. And if the mask is the individual’s way of being – of his becoming –
it is because the mask is not something that someone chooses to wear, but is
free not to, but something that “grows” around him whether he likes it or not.
This is why Nietzsche writes that “the best mask that we wear is our own
face” (NL 1883, KSA 10, 13[3], my translation). The mask grows because it is
impossible for each of us to conclusively define himself, the individual there-
fore being that which takes place between the masks and not a sum of determi-
nations that could be the object of discursive knowledge, of some kind of
Wissen. Furthermore, masks are what permits the individual’s relationship
with himself, a relationship that is not one of identity, unity or coincidence
but a movement of continual separation and estrangement. So, if “each is
furthest from himself” (GM Preface 1/GM Vorrede 1), each is also continually
experiencing his own becoming, i.e. continually being affected by his becom-
ing. In other words, individuation happens by means of an affection, by an
experience of being touched or moved that presupposes, to some extent, a lack
of control, a lack of knowledge over what exerts its power over us. Nietzsche
calls this experience “pathos of distance” (BGE 257/JGB 257).
IV. Pereat Ego. “Our Redlichkeit”

The pathos of distance is not a form of knowledge, but an “affect”. Differing
from the modern concept of “consciousness” (Bewusstsein),7 it consists not of
a Wissen, but of a new kind of “conscience” (Gewissen). According to Nietz-
sche, just as there is another mask behind the mask, there is also another
“conscience behind your ‘conscience’”: an “intellectual conscience” (intellectu-
alles Gewissen) or “honesty” (Redlichkeit) (GS 335/FW 335).8 With these terms,
Nietzsche does not intend to indicate a sense of self in which identity and
unity are reified. What is at stake is not so much the determination of the
contents of a self-limited subjectivity than the movement or tear mentioned
above, by virtue of which a space is opened up that regenerates (Nietzsche’s
term is “overcomes”) the determinations. Following what has been said, his
understanding of conscience could be defined as a knowledge without a sub-
ject,9 or as the requirement for the possibility of individuation. Nietzsche calls
it “new expansions of distance within the soul itself” (BGE 257/JGB 257) or
the ability to recognise differences “inside the same person even within a sin-
gle soul” (BGE 260/JGB 260).
7 On consciousness (Bewusstsein), see Luca Lupo and João Constâncio’s essays in this
volume.
8 See Wotling (2002).
9 See Nancy (1990).
Considered as a sign of nobility, i.e. as the opposite of “vulgarity”, Redlich-

keit is a virtue for Nietzsche. And as a virtue it is still very young, lacking in
awareness of itself, still poorly understood, “still in process of becoming” (D
456/M 456). Redlichkeit is the virtue that characterises free spirits (BGE 227/
JGB 227), and it is the name of the “thinker’s innermost experience” (AOM
26/VM 26), the pathos of distance. Nietzsche argues that this virtue must be
exercised against an old vice, the “‘vice of the intellectual’ (Wissenden)”, which
is the “immeasurable pride”, the “arrogance” present in the old “demand for
truth” (AOM 26/VM 26). This vice is particularly evident in modern philoso-
phers and is revealed in the fact that, in the “secret struggle with idea-persons”
(heimlichen Kampfe mit Gedanken-Personen) in which thoughts are like “indi-
viduals” (Individuen) they prefer “the true to the untrue” because “in the realm
of thought, power and fame are hard to maintain if erected on the basis of
error or lies” (AOM 26/VM 26). Nietzsche’s idea is that, in aspiring to the truth,
what was in play for the thinker was a desire not to spoil his reputation, since
“the feeling that such a building could at some time or other fall down is
humiliating to the self-conceit (Selbstbewusstsein) of its architect” (AOM 26/
VM 26). The vice of arrogance is defined by Nietzsche as taking oneself “more
seriously than the rest of the world” and its motto is “pereat mundus, dum ego
salvus sum!” (AOM 26/VM 26). In transforming his work into “his ego” (AOM
26/VM 26), the proud thinker falls into his own trap: the mask stops growing,
becomes a “mortuary mask” (GS 54/FW 54), and the world is threatened.
Unlike the intellectual conscience, modern self-consciousness is more bound
to the lie that it created (i.e. more bound to itself) than to the freedom of
shedding skin and of affirming reality as multiplicity and change. By contrast,
the new virtue of Redlichkeit (which Nietzsche describes as a “strange phenom-
enon”, that is, as something with which we are not yet familiar with, as some-
thing which is still unusual) allows the thinker to relate to his own thoughts
and words, not as things of his with which he identifies, but as if they were
“persons”, “individuals with whom one has to struggle, to whom one has to
ally oneself, whom one has to tend, protect and nourish”, in other words, as
masks that grow, with their own life, without having been chosen. At the root
of the intellectual conscience is therefore a degree of strangeness, a distance
that allows us to be “afraid of our own ideas (Gedanken), concepts, words, but
also [to] honour ourselves in them”. Moreover, it also allows us to “involuntar-
ily ascribe to them the capacity to instruct, despise, praise and censure us,
that we thus traffic with them as with free intelligent persons, with independ-
ent powers, as equals with equals” (AOM 26/VM 26).
On the other hand, in spite of being “intellectual”, Nietzsche’s Redlichkeit
is born of a pathos, an affect that should be active “every day”:
To what extent the thinker loves his enemy. – Never keep back or bury in silence that
which can be thought against your thoughts! Give it praise! It is among the foremost
requirements of honesty of thought. Every day you must conduct your campaign also
against yourself. A victory and a conquered fortress are no longer your concern, your
concern is truth – but your defeat is no longer your concern, either! (D 370/M 370).
Intellectual honesty is thus a sort of auto-affection, the virtue of the free spirit
who carries out a campaign against himself and that is the “extent [to which]
the thinker loves his enemy”, that is to say, the extent to which he loves him-
self (D 370/M 370). But even more decisively Redlichkeit is the name for “the
exercise of recognising more properties in one thing”, which makes possible
“the knowledge of things in their multiplicity” (NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[235], my
translation). Nevertheless, this virtue does not drag us towards the unstable
whirlpool of becoming, since in it “the perception of what is strange goes very
far and yet is still accompanied by pleasure (Genuß)” (NL 1880, KSA 9, 6[67],
my translation). Put differently, it allows us not to fear what is unknown, what
is strange and unfamiliar, and to take pleasure in it. Only distance, the pathos
of distance, makes it possible to take pleasure in appearances, to feel “respect
for ‘masks’” (BGE 270/JGB 270), to love the errors or illusions of which the
human universe is woven (and which are effectively its truth). However, only
“the most spiritual man”, the only one who “has seen now and then behind the
masks and knows how to see”, is able to understand “how much everything is
a mask” – and to do so “in high spirits (in bester Laune)” (NL 1885, KSA 11,
34[180], my translation). The most spiritual man, the free spirit, is the one
who is able to consider the problem of truth arising from appearances and
from the becoming of appearances without this reality of continuous change
leading him to despair. The most spiritual point of view is the most redlich
point of view, for which everything is a mask or appearance. According to
Nietzsche, it allows us to be “in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and
the whole marvellous uncertainty and ambiguity (Vieldeutigkeit) of existence”
and tremble “with the craving and rapture of questioning” (GS 2/FW 2).
So habit is brief, the individual is multiple, truth is appearance, becoming
is lasting, the word is a mask. It is in this context that Nietzsche’s philosophy,
while being suspicious of language, opens up to the possibility of loving words.
This possibility belongs to the “highly spiritual, spiritualized people”, for
whom “the great suspicion” transforms life into a “problem” (GS Preface 3/FW
Vorrede 3). However, such men do not necessarily become “sullen” because,
as Nietzsche writes, “love of life is still possible”. The suspicion therefore does
not necessarily negate either the possibility of love or that of “a new happi-
ness” (GS Preface 3/FW Vorrede 3). In fact, it is a question of loving “differ-
ently”, as in “the love for a woman who gives us doubts” (GS Preface 3/FW
Vorrede 3). How then does this suspicion operate, and what type of love and
pleasure can arouse the “attraction of everything problematic” (GS Preface 3/
FW Vorrede 3)? In other words, how can that which delights us raise suspi-
cions? What type of positive response can be given to a distrust, a problem, a
difficulty or an obstacle that blocks our path? Does the delight not envelop us
in a friendly, benevolent atmosphere? Does it not suspend our reservations,
inspiring our attachment?
V. Idolatry and Ideophilia. The Case of Plato

I initially discussed the power that language exerts on men and I described it
as an act of violence, bound to the process of corruption and injustice that
words carry out on what is most singular and on the impossibility of their
restoring the truth. The image of the web and the spider that eats itself has
shown the dangers that language poses for the philosopher, dangers that
threaten the very life of philosophy. Nietzsche makes use of another term to
describe the dangerous and even mortal power that words exert on philoso-
phers and to which Parmenides succumbed: he calls it a power of “seduction”
(BGE, Preface/JGB Vorrede and BGE 16/JGB 16). In Twilight of the Idols, Nietz-
sche returns to the example of the Eleatics and discusses the “seduction”
exerted by the concept of being on its creators (TI Reason 5/GD Vernunft 5).
Words seduce philosophers with such force that “an invisible spell” takes them
prisoner: “they will each start out anew, only to end up revolving in the same
orbit once again” (BGE 20/JGB 20). This reasoning is the inverse of that of the
change of skin described above: here there is no regeneration, no space for
novelty and growth because the action is centripetal and exerts an attraction
towards a single and always identical centre that devours everything around
it. The seducer captures the seduced and comes to be the whole of his world,
annihilating everything else and making it invisible. Caught in the net of fasci-
nation, in the web in which the word entangles him, it is as if the philosopher
were hypnotised, paralysed, left without any freedom of movement, with no
space between him and that which seduces him.
The violence of this action prevents any resistance and the executioner is
treated as an idol to which the philosopher sacrifices himself. But Nietzsche
teaches us that sacrifice can also be understood in an unusual way, from an
extra-moral point of view. Accordingly, he inverts the usual meaning of this
word and reveals that it indicates the opposite of the meaning that has become
common. By sacrificing himself, the victim, wants something in return and
gets it: “he gave up here in order to have more there, perhaps in order to be
more in general, or just to feel like ‘more’” (BGE 220/JGB 220). Thus, contrary
to what we have become used to thinking, sacrificial acts are in fact linked to
the growth of a feeling of strength, the intensification of power, that which
Nietzsche describes as “intoxication” (Rausch), through which the sacrificed
feels joined to the powerful being to which he sacrifices himself, whether it be
a man or a god (D 215/M 215). From this perspective, the logic of sacrifice
consists of identifying with the power that the executioner exerts over the
victim, and this seems to be what is in play in the philosopher’s unredlich,
idolatrous and dishonest relationship with language. But when this is the case,
the victim will himself be transformed into the executioner and the roles will
be reversed: sharing in the fascination that has captured him and sacrificing
himself, he also sacrifices his abductor. In other words, the difference and
distance between the seducer and the seduced, between the sacrificer and the
sacrificed, ceases to exist, and both dissolve their individuality in a common
whole, in a net that does not tear. It can therefore be understood that as “lords
of concept idolatry”, philosophers “kill and stuff the things they worship” and
“become mortal dangers to everything they worship” (TI Reason 1/GD Vernunft
1). When he sacrifices himself to the words that he creates, the philosopher’s
gain stems from the vice which Nietzsche calls pride and which is the search
for a reification of the self and of a self that is not an intellectual conscience
but an “I” (TI Reason 5/GD Vernunft 5). The seduction is therefore turned
against the seducer, which loses its power of attraction. Once this point has
been reached, the power is extinguished since there is no more nourishment:
the spider is forced to feed on its own blood and goes from being powerful
and seductive to being a “mummy”, a “mummified concept” (TI Reason 1/GD
Vernunft 1). The web withers instead of growing, the power wanes and the
conditions no longer exist for the continuation of the intoxication of the erotic
game.
The opposite of this vicious process was found by Nietzsche in Platonic
philosophy, to which, as he did to the word “individual”, he gives a strange
meaning, very different from what we are used to associating with the name
of Plato. In Twilight of the Idols, Plato represents the philosopher whose “erotic
rapture” gave rise to the birth of a “philosophical erotics”, “an erotic contest”
which is in every respect the opposite of the “hermit’s conceptual cobweb-
weaving”, such as that of Spinoza (TI Skirmishes 23/GD Streifzüge 23). In
Daybreak, Nietzsche described the “drunkenness” (Rausch) that took over the
souls of the Greek philosophers when they played “at the rigorous and sober
game of concept, generalisation, refutation, limitation” comparing it to the
musical inebriation of the “ancient rigorous and sober contrapuntal compos-
ers”.10 The intoxication was then due to a “new taste” that stood out to the
extent that “they sang and stammered of dialectics, the ‘divine art’, as though
in a delirium of love” (D 544/M 544). Among the Greeks, and particularly in
Platonic thought, multiplicity delighted, seduced and awoke in the philosopher
the desire to dominate the plurality of things, the vitality of appearances.11
Hence, if Plato taught moderation and limits, it was precisely because in them
the individual found a unique expression of what defined him and because in
this way appearances were “saved”. In other words, the search for the generic,
the typical (idea or form) as the cause of multiplicity and change regenerated
them, imbuing them with more life and value. By contrast, Nietzsche adds,
moderns are “accustomed” (D 544/M 544) to the logical, abstract, and concep-
tual thought that, for the Greeks, and particularly Plato, constituted a novelty
and an adventure of the spirit. Transformed into habit, into custom, dialec-
tics – once a living form of thought – lost its seductive power, its charm, and
now became familiar and ordinary. If “the drive that takes its pleasure and
force in grasping the typical”, the drive that contains “an overwhelming of
the abundance of what lives”, was “the Greek taste of the best period”, “real
modernity” is distinguished, Nietzsche writes, by the “sense of and pleasure
in nuance (…), in what is not general” (NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 7[7] = WLN,
132). Already sated, already used to generic and abstract concepts of thought,
the moderns must therefore create a new relationship between type and
nuance, between the generic and the singular, between words and reality in a
state of becoming.
Nietzsche’s philosophy describes precisely the possibility of this new rela-
tionship with language in which the impulse that seduces is not the creation
of the typical, the identification of different cases, but the distinction of differ-
ences, singularities, and the infinite possibilities of differentiation. According
to Nietzsche, only this will allow thought to regain the vitality that the Platonic
dialectic possessed. And that is the meaning of Nietzsche’s “inversion of Plato-
nism”: the “goal” is no longer “true being”, i.e. the idea or essence, but rather
“appearance”, i.e. the nuance (cf. NL 1870–71, KSA 7, 7[156], my transla-
tion).12 Thus a posthumous note from 1886–87 speaks of an inversion of the
10 I cannot develop here the relation between the notions of “intoxication” (Rausch) and
“sobriety” (Nüchternheit) and so I limit myself to recall Nietzsche’s words in GS 57 on this
topic. On the relationship between intoxication and the “profound affinity of thought with
love”, as well as with the “most distant” and “most strange” in Plato and Nietzsche, see
Stiegler (2005), p. 149 ff.
11 This interpretation of the relationship between Nietzsche and Plato is proposed by Günter
Figal (2001), in particular, chap. 5, “Neue Erfindung des vernünftigen Denken”, pp. 140–158.
12 See Figal (2001), pp. 157–158.
inversion by which Plato overturned the values of reality and appearance.

Nietzsche begins by defining Plato as an “artist” who believes that “the more
a thing, a man, is sublimated, diluted, evaporated, the more valuable it
becomes. This is Platonism” (NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 7[2], my translation). How-
ever, Plato “was capable of one more audacity in his inversion: he measured
the degree of reality by the degree of value and said: the more ‘idea’, the more
being. He inverted the concept of ‘reality’ and said: ‘what you take for real, is
an error, and the closer we come to the ‘idea’, <the closer we come to> truth’”
(NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 7[2], my translation). Nietzsche calls this inversion “the
greatest rechristening” (NL 1886–87, KSA 12, 7[2], my translation), thereby
indicating that a “new language” also arose from Platonic philosophy. Plato
transformed what was most ordinary, widely known and familiar – appearan-
ces – into what was strangest, most remote and most distant – ideas: “In the
end Plato, as the artist that he was, preferred appearance to being: therefore
the lie and invention to truth, the unreal to the real” (NL 1886–87, KSA 12,
7[2], my translation).
For Nietzsche, the philosopher is an artist to the extent that he lives in a
“world turned upside down (eine verkehrte Welt)” and “feels what all non-
artists call ‘form’ to be content, to be ‘the matter itself’”: content therefore
becomes “something merely formal – including our life” (NL 1887–88, KSA
13, 11[3] = WLN, 207). Forms, appearances, masks and surfaces, the skin that
continually regenerates itself, all of this is “certainly not the opposite of some
essence”, but “the active and living itself, which goes so far in its self-mockery
that it makes me feel that here there is appearance (…) and nothing else” (GS
54/FW 54). For this reason, it is much more important to know “the name,
and appearance” of things than to know what they are, since everything that
is an “error” has “slowly grown onto and into the thing”: “what started as
appearance in the end nearly always becomes essence and effectively acts as
its essence” (GS 58/FW 58). So content is form, the name is the thing, the
error or lie is the truth: Nietzsche inverts Platonism out of love for life (and
philosophy), arguing that “whoever cannot lie does not know what truth is”
because “powerlessness to lie is by no means love for the truth” (Z IV Men/ZA
IV Menschen).
VI. Actio in Distans

What, then, will the new philosopher’s love be like? What amorous relation-
ship does he establish with “all great problems” (which demand “great love”,
die grosse Liebe – GS 345/FW 354)? What type of lover could he be if he
demands suspicion and distance from the loved one? And how is this love
manifested in relation to language?
Suspicion and distance do not imply abandonment; they do not imply a
definitive distancing or absence. They still presume conviviality, watchfulness,
care, perhaps even a certain type of intimacy, although it can never be
fusional, sacrificial. The love that Nietzsche has in mind is therefore neither a
demand for asceticism, deprivation and silence, nor that tyrannical, dogmatic
violence that negates the relationship by aiming to consummate it. In The Gay
Science Nietzsche also refers to another variation of this latter type of love,
and defines it as the adolescent love that is typical of “Egyptian youths” (GS
Preface 4/FW Vorrede 4). In it Nietzsche sees a “will to truth, to ‘truth at any
price’” that acts in accordance with the idea that in nudity, in the stripping
away all of the veils, the loved object is reached (GS Preface 4/FW Vorrede
4).13 Nietzsche counters this idea and the logic of fusing with and searching
for a hidden essence, concealed behind the masks, with another concept of
love that does not “seek to abolish”, that does not “deny” the parts involved,
but rejoices “at the fact that another lives, feels and acts in a way different
from and opposite to ours” (AOM 75/VM 75).14 It is a love that presupposes
an “unblendable multiplicity in one person”, which it stimulates “even in the
same person”, “even”, Nietzsche states, in “self-love” (AOM 75/VM 75). Such
distance is what allows the lover to become his opposite, that is to say, to
become a “seducer” (Versucher), and this is precisely the “name not lacking
in dangers” with which Nietzsche risks “christening” the “new philosophers”
(BGE 42/JGB 42).
Being “seducers” their relationship with words proves to be decisive. In
fact, if “it is not enough to prove something” and “one has also to seduce or
elevate people to it” (D 330/M 330), a mask is needed “also in order to seduce”
(NL 1882–83, KSA 10, 1[20]). And since, as seen before, words are masks, the
relation of the new philosophers with them must be of the type described in
AOM 75/VM 75. It must involve not only the dynamic of opposites between
13 This idea is analogous to Roland Barthes’s description of strip-tease as a “rêve de

collègien”, a dream where there is no “tear” (“déchirure”), but only a “hope to see” and a
“progressive discloser” (“dévoilement progréssif”). Its opposite is “l’intermittence”: “c’est
l’intermittence (…) qui est érotique: celle de la peau que scintille entre deux pièces, entre
deux bords (…) c’est ce scintillement même qui séduit, ou encore: la mise en scêne d’une
apparition-disparition”. Barthes (1973), pp. 19–20.
14 On Nietzsche’s understanding of love, especially on his interpretation of “l’amour
passion” and its relationship with distance, suspicion and doubt, see Piazzesi’s essay in
this volume as well as her “Greed and Love: Genealogy, Dissolution, and Therapeutical
Effects of a Linguistic Distinction in FW 14” see Piazzesi (2011).
the different parts, between lover and beloved, but also the growth of that
dynamic through a continuous expansion whose condition of possibility is the
regeneration and becoming of those parts. In this form of love there is neither
an identification nor a total inversion of roles. Rather, there is a reciprocal
and continued action that supposes that the differences in the poles of the
relationship will be maintained and even enhanced. For this reason, the new
philosophers will be seducers to the extent that they will not provoke any
unconditional adhesion, i.e. sacrifice, violence or idolatry. If, in Twilight of the
Idols, Nietzsche speaks again of “Egypticity” to characterise the type of idola-
trous relationship that philosophers have with words (TI Reason 1/GD Vernunft
1), in The Gay Science he declares that “one will hardly find us again on the
paths of those Egyptian youths” (GS Preface 4/FW Vorrede 4). If “truth is a
woman” (GS Preface 4/FW Vorrede 4, BGE Preface/JGB Vorrede, BGE 220/JGB
220), “we should not do violence to her” because “we no longer believe that
truth remains truth when one pulls off the veil” and “we consider it a matter
of decency not to wish to see everything naked” (BGE 220/JGB 220).
What seems, then, to be at stake here is a kind of love that stops “bravely
at the surface, the fold, the skin” (GS Preface 4/FW Vorrede 4) instead of identi-
fying with them. By understanding their words as masks that seduce, neither
fusing with them nor dispensing with them, the new philosophers must be
able to keep a distance from them while at the same time they feel their seduc-
tive power. Put differently, their intellectual conscience requires that they
engage with their words “as with free intelligent persons, with independent
powers, as equals with equals” (AOM 26/VS 26). We could perhaps state their
motto to be: “pereat ego, dum mundum salvus est”. And after what has been
said, this “pereat” must not be understood as a sacrificial death but as some-
thing of the order of a petite mort, i.e. of the pleasure taken in words (and
texts, to keep in mind Barthes’s essay). A philosophical love of words would
then become the salvation of the world understood as appearances in a state
of becoming, that is to say, understood as the growth of masks and skins
which are never crystallised, never definitive, in a lavish squandering that
continues to shed skin. As thoughts “grow” in philosophers (GM Preface 2/GM
Vorrede 2), so words keep growing from them inasmuch as they continue to
be loved, allowing the thinker to continue to be alive. None of his words abso-
lutely determines or fixes him and his thoughts (BGE 296/JGB 296) because
none of them is absolutely “his”. The free spirit is not an ego but an “open
well (offnen Brunnen)” (GS 378/FW 378) that is renewed at each instant.
If philosophers wish to “remain riddles in some respect” (BGE 42/JGB 42)
and assume the risk of “being misunderstood, misjudged, misidentified,
defamed, misheard, and ignored” (GS 371/FW 371), it is because, instead of
paralysing the reader and withering away, victims of an idolatrous love, they
wish to “keep growing, changing, shedding old hides” (GS 371/FW 371). Such
growth presupposes keeping alive the seductive power, exerting it without
exhausting it, maintaining it active by extending the web as far as possible
and promoting the life of what constantly nourishes it. Nietzsche calls this
action an “action at a distance”, which is what defines “the magic and the
most powerful effect of women” (GS 60/FW 60) and also “the fundamental
fact”, the new name that he gives to reality, “the will to power” (NL 1885,
KSA 11, 34[247] = WLN, 15). By resisting idolatry, the “incomprehensible
ones” (GS 371/FW 371) will seduce men with a “new language”, one which
will “sound most foreign” (BGE 4/JGB 4) because in it distance will be the
creator of the affect.
Therefore, in spite of the criticisms that he makes of language, Nietzsche
does not defend mutism, the impotent silence that rejects words and refuses
to speak (and to write). The fact that words seduce means that they obey the
“law of double relation (Gesetz der doppelten Relation)” (NL 1882, KSA 10,
1[109], my translation);15 put differently, it means that, as a lover and a sedu-
cer, the free spirit does not write for himself. Acting at a distance, his words
grow from love – from love in relation to “the person with whom [they] wish
to communicate”, for only then will their style “live” (NL 1882, KSA 10,
1[109], my translation).16 The new philosophers will therefore be “worship-
pers of shapes, tones, words” (GS Preface 4/FW Vorrede 4).
Bibliography
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15 On this posthumous note, titled “Zum Lehre vom Stil” and written for Lou Andreas-
Salomé, see Fornari’s essay in this volume.
16 On the relationship between style and seduction in Nietzsche, see Simonis (2002), and
also Stegmaier (2011b), pp. 98–113.
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IV. On Language, Self-Expression, and Style
Bartholomew Ryan
The Rise and Fall of Zarathustra’s Star
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”
Z I, Prologue 5/ZA I Vorrede 5
“[…] of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality ever moving
wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison
with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of
infinitesimal brevity”1
Given that Zarathustra is after all the prophet for the ‘religion of light’ Zoroas-
trianism, it is the star at a first glance that is his beacon and guide. The star
has been the beacon and guide in many key moments in our Western cultural
memory from finding the birthplace of Christ to the science of Copernicus and
Galileo, for venturous sailors on the vast ocean of space, time and the imagina-
tion from Homer’s Odysseus to Melville’s Ishmael, to the great poetic visions
from Dante to Trakl. So why should such an iconoclast as Nietzsche be inter-
ested in such a heavy-laden word and over-used symbol for divinity and truth?
And in what ways does he use the word in his published works, and does he
manage to transform not only the word but how we, as readers, today might
understand it? These are questions that I will attempt to answer. Remarkably,
very little has been written explicitly on the subject of the stars and Nietzsche.2
Stepping out into the forbidding space of the stars in connection with Nietz-
sche’s writing, most specifically Thus Spoke Zarathustra and its winking cur-
tain raiser and closer The Gay Science, I divide this paper into three parts.
Firstly, I explore what a star might be for us and for Nietzsche and how it
connects to both chaos and cosmos; secondly, I introduce briefly how, for
1 Joyce, Ulysses (2008), p. 651.

2 Many writings on Nietzsche on various subjects implicitly refer to the stars and
astronomy, but do not solely engage with stars and Nietzsche. There are a few exceptions.
So far, I have found Wolfram Groddeck’s (1989) article “‘Oh Himmel über Mir’: Zur
kosmischen Wendung in Nietzsches Poetologie”. Javier Ibáñez-Noé (1999) also comes close
to the problem of the stars in Nietzsche’s work in his article: “World and Creation: On
Nietzsche’s Perspectivism”. Martin Heidegger in volume three of his published lectures on
Nietzsche (1936–1940) delves into the concept of chaos in Nietzsche’s work, and the word
“star” appears in his later “poetic” writing, but this inspiration and Kehre can also have
been initiated by his lifelong reading of poets such as Hölderlin, Rilke, Goethe and
especially Georg Trakl whose use of the word Stern is abundant throughout his visionary
poetry.
258 Bartholomew Ryan
Nietzsche, a renewed way of thinking, new use of language and new ways of
interpreting and seeing words such as “star” is striven for by going through
all the places where star is mentioned in his writings outside the Zarathustra
text; and finally, I point to how Thus Spoke Zarathustra – a book obsessed
with the stars – approaches, appropriates and deconstructs the language of
the stars, which, like ourselves, are not fixed but ever-changing. On a final
note before we begin, it is cautiously hoped that this paper acts as a prelude
and humble opening to potential further exploration of Nietzsche in his use of
the word star.
I. What Is a Star?
“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel
and stare”3
A star contains such a wide variety of connotations and allusions that still
leave us gasping for more despite our excessive use of the word over the last
few thousand years. Stars are, from one aspect, luminous cosmic bodies, mas-
sive balls of plasma held together by gravity. The star that affects us most is
the Sun. Without the Sun everything on this planet dies. Nietzsche begins his
early radical critique of language and truth in his 1873 essay “On Truth and
Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” by dramatically opening with an image of our
utter dependence on the great star – the Sun:
In some remote corner of the universe, flickering in the light of the countless solar systems
into which it had been poured, there was once a planet [Gestirn] on which clever animals
invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and most mendacious minute in the ‘history
of the world’; but a minute was all it was. After nature had drawn just a few more breaths
the planet [Gestirn] froze and the clever animals had to die (TL, 141/WL).4
3 This quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first book called Nature published in 1836. See:
Emerson (2000), p. 5.
4 It might be interesting to compare this opening passage with Schopenhauer’s opening
sentence in Volume II of his magnum opus: “In endless space countless luminous spheres,
round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and
covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and
knowing things: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a
precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in
boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable
similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in
beginningless and endless time. Here there is nothing permanent but matter alone, and the
recurrence of the same varied organic forms by means of certain ways and channels that
This is the first significant and one of the most memorable moments where
Nietzsche situates us in the solar system and presents the Earth as a celestial
body – a Gestirn. And before we become too optimistic of our intellectual
powers, Nietzsche here highlights how fleeting our existence is. It is also the
most famous moment on which Nietzsche reflects on the vastness of space and
uses it as a terrifying image to show how conceited we humans can be in our
self-congratulatory stance on knowledge and consciousness. He is also moving
beyond Schopenhauer at this moment because the former still has hope in
modern philosophy in Berkeley and Kant to take us out of this conundrum
and reliance on ancient Indian texts to find a much earlier and alternative
metaphysics. Of course, Nietzsche is using the frame of the fable, and the
thesis of the essay itself is to present the truth in its many forms as a fable.
Nietzsche reminds the reader that the “truth” of what we know very often
becomes petrified and we forget very quickly that this “truth” might have been
an idea, a story or a creative moment that turned into a doctrine. Beginning
the essay in the storytelling tradition with “In some remote corner of the uni-
verse” and “there once was a”, Nietzsche very quickly invites to us our fragile
place in the larger scheme of things. This particular planet, Earth, on which
we reside, revolves around the great star, our energy, the Sun.
Following Nietzsche the philologist, we must remind ourselves that the
word planet comes from the Greek word planetai meaning “wandering stars”,
from planasthai (“to wander”). As wanderers and only having ever lived (that
we are aware of) on this particular wandering star, we humans are still very
young and short-sighted. The German word for star is Stern, which traces back
to either Old English or Old German in its metamorphosis from steorra to
stjarne to stjerne to star to ster to Stern. Dante called them stelle5 and each of
the three great parts of his Divine Comedy ended with the word star.6 These
were the fixed stars that guided him to Paradise, the source of his desire and
love of the muse of poetry, of Beatrice, and ultimately of God. These are no
longer the stars that Nietzsche is seeking though he will sometimes present
inevitably exist as they do. All that empirical science can teach is only the more precise
nature and rule of these events” (WWR II §1, p. 3).
5 The etymological relation between stars and desire come from Latin. Stars in Latin is
“sidera” and the verb to desire in Latin is “desidĕro”, “de-siderare” means literally “to be
away or separated from the stars”. My thanks to Laura Scuriatti and Gianfranco Ravasi for
disclosing this point to me.
6 Dante, Inferno XXXIV: “e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stele” (and we emerged to see –
once more- the stars); Purgatorio XXXIII: “puro e disposto a salire alle stelle” (pure and
prepared to clime unto the stars); Paradiso XXXIII: “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle”
(“the Love that moves the sun and the other stars”).
the star as Dante wrote of them, sometimes with irreverence, sometimes with
sentimentality and nostalgia, and sometimes with merciless parody. We will
see examples of these different approaches in part three of this investigation.
In German, Stern is distinguished from Gestirn, which can be translated as
“heavenly body”, so it is Stern to which we will remain focused. In the opening
passage of “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, Nietzsche refers to the
Sun as a Gestirn, perhaps both showing that it is a special star but also parody-
ing what we consider special in this biting opening paragraph. The wandering
star itself can be a dying planet, a new planet or something that is yet to come.
It is also the last visible thing for us, and thus representing the final reach of
our capacities and the limits of our knowledge. Stars are born and stars die,
and they pour light into the black void. Perhaps, for Nietzsche, God is meta-
phorically simply a star whose light has gone out, as well as being the conjec-
ture that has had its day.7 Unlike the Platonic or Judeo-Christian conception
and belief, Nietzsche’s star combines cosmos with chaos – not only as creator
and destroyer, but as utter indifference and endlessness also. As John D. Cap-
uto puts it: “His is a philosophy of stars dancing in endless cosmic nights
without a care for us care-filled beings below, of stars twinkling in a void
indifferent to the fate of us mortals below”.8
Where then can we find evidence of this combination of cosmos and
chaos? There are indications of this throughout his writing and there is already
one example from the opening of “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”.
Always with Nietzsche’s stars, they allude not only to cosmology and universe,
or more appropriately the ‘multiverse’ (multiple possible universes) or simply
cosmos, but also to our very use of language and intellect, such that we are
always, like the stars, creators and destroyers. This is Caputo’s fear in that
everything around us, in the cosmos of stars, is accompanied by indifference
and endlessness. But this fear overlooks that fact that in this humbling
thought, we are always striving and, even more significantly, we want to live.
This is also Zarathustra’s message and own revelation in the face of dried-up
ideas. As one scientist wrote, “Many passengers would rather have stayed at
home” on discovering the increasing possibility of an infinity of stars.9 The
connection between star and chaos comes to light in Zarathustra’s Prologue:
“One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star”. Here we
7 Z II Isles/ZA II Inseln: “God is a conjecture […]”. Paul S. Loeb in his excellent book on
Zarathustra emphasises that Zarathustra’s attack on the idea of an unmoving, permanent
God is vital because this idea goes against Zarathustra’s striving towards revealing circular
time and joyous transience. Loeb (2010), p. 174.
8 Caputo (1993), p. 16.
9 Sagan (1994), p. 19.
have a number of Nietzschean motifs in a single line, and with the chaos
and cosmos combined.10 Although Nietzsche has tried to leave Schopenhauer
behind, his influence is still strong as they are both attracted to the same
source. Schopenhauer begins the second book of The World as Will and Repre-
sentation with the motto: “He dwells in us, not in the nether world, not in the
starry heaven. The spirit living within us fashions all this”.11 In the twentieth
century, Heidegger describes Nietzsche’s chaos as “the name for bodying life,
life as bodying writ large […] chaos is what urges, flows, and is animated,
whose order is concealed, whose law we do not decry straightaway”.12 Heideg-
ger rightly connects Nietzsche’s understanding of art and understanding of
chaos by quoting from Nietzsche’s notebooks: “An excess and overflow of blos-
soming bodily being into the world of images and desires”.13 Chaos is, as
Heidegger writes, “the concealment of unmastered richness”.14 However, the
dancing star, or our creation and activity of creation, is the mastered richness.
Added to this prelude and postscript to Nietzsche, it also makes it easier to
understand the statement of chaos within us giving birth to a dancing star
from Zarathustra by quoting one of the last paragraphs from The Gay Science
leading up to the first mention of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s published works:
Parable. – Those thinkers in whom all stars move in cyclic orbits are not the most pro-
found. Whoever looks into himself as into vast space and carries galaxies in himself, also
knows how irregular all galaxies are; they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence
(GS 322/FW 322).15
What we can see here is Nietzsche’s contempt for those who toil to create an
all-encompassing system in philosophy or history, and he ultimately carries a
disdain for order for the sake of order. Like his predecessor Heinrich von Kleist,
10 Another writer who appropriated, destroyed and recreated symbols from Western culture,
history and religion and in doing so revolutionised the literary novel was James Joyce. Most
especially in his two last works Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, he comes close to Nietzsche in
his celebration of cyclic time, truth as forms of illusion and metaphor, forms of eternal
recurrence in reference to metempsychosis and repetition as transformation, ending Ulysses
with the word “Yes”, and melting chaos into cosmos. At one point in Finnegans Wake, Joyce
writes: “the chaosmos of Alle” (Joyce (1992), p. 118).
11 WWR I, p. 93. The quote is from Agrippa von Nettescheim (Epist. V, 14.): “Non habitat,
non tartara, sed nec sidera coeli: Spiritus in nobis qui viget, illa facit.”
12 Heidegger (1984b), p. 80.
13 Heidegger (1984a), p. 81. The Nietzsche quote is from the posthumous compilation The
Will to Power, note 802: see NL 1887, KSA 12, 9[102].
14 Heidegger (1984a), p. 80.
15 I have used Kaufmann’s translations of The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
throughout this paper.
Nietzsche does not want to shy away from the gebrechliche Einrichtung der
Welt16 that he believes to be concealed by our man-made systems. Instead we
must learn and strive to become more honest and dignified human beings
entering, confronting and continually surviving the “chaos and labyrinth of
existence”. The chaos is also found within rather than in external concepts
that have been given or taught to us. It is this chaos with which we can poten-
tially transform into an honest, passionate, outward existence or to be crea-
tive – which “giving birth to a dancing star” encompasses both. Again despite
Caputo’s fear of the merciless nihilism of Nietzsche’s starry void, the latter
again uses metaphor to show that one need not be consumed by the chaos
but, on the contrary, Nietzsche warns himself and the reader of maintaining
one’s honesty and dignity.17
The two references to chaos and stars in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke
Zarathustra are clothed in the parable, and the star in both cases represents
that which is both the creative force and also the result of acknowledging and
struggling through the chaos. One long passage called “Let us beware” (Hüten
wir uns!, GS 109/FW 109) at the beginning of Book Three of The Gay Science
reveals Nietzsche’s view of the world as chaos, our interpretation of the stars,
and a pointer to the eternal recurrence in – what I call – the “book of stars”
(Thus Spoke Zarathustra) that follows. He warns very clearly before Zarathustra
takes the stage of “positing generally and everywhere anything as elegant as
the cyclical movements of neighbouring stars”. In the same passage, he
declares that “the total character of the world […] is in all eternity chaos”, and
that “there are no purposes” and “there is no accident”. There is neither one
nor the other, but only necessities. He goes further to write: “[…] there is
nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses.” What
we can do, however, with this chaos is give birth to the elusive dancing star.
Zarathustra’s “Speeches” (Reden) “The Dancing Song” and “The Other Dancing
Song” are an encouragement for the heavy Zarathustra to withstand the “spirit
of gravity” that is the devil18 and instead “dance”, which is an invitation to
vitality and power – that is Life. In the second dancing speech, it is here that
Zarathustra, through speaking with “Life”, first expresses his eleven lines that
16 “[…] the fragile structure of the world” from Heinrich von Kleist’s The Marquise of O--,
see Kleist (1978), p. 93. See also GS 109/FW 109: “a lack of order” (der fehlenden Ordnung).
17 In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes in a famous aphorism: “He who fights with
monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze
long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you” (BGE 146/JGB 146). I have used Douglas
Smith’s translation of Beyond Good and Evil throughout this paper.
18 Z II Song/ZA II Tanzlied: “[…] the devil is the spirit of gravity […]”
climaxes with all joy wanting deep, deep eternity19 and which is repeated in
the penultimate speech of Book Four. Again in The Gay Science, Nietzsche has
already expressed that we dance in the face of the “abysmal thought”: “Let us
dance like troubadours / between holy men and whores / between god and
world beneath” (GS To the Mistral/PV Mistral).20 Saying yes to Life is to dance.
As mentioned briefly above already, the star is strongly connected to our
muse of creativity, the impulse and result of inspiration. As massive balls of
plasma, the star is like the great flame, and the flame is something that rises, is
immune to gravity, and although this is slightly different to an actual star there
is a connection when Nietzsche passionately but with a sense of humour declares
in Ecce Homo that he does not speak with words but instead fires lightning
bolts,21 he is revealing the creative power, and the star itself is a manifestation
of this as burning brightly in the dark void of space. The last two poems before
Book One of The Gay Science depict the flame of creativity and the star respec-
tively. The first, “Ecce Homo”,22 treats the flame as creativity, and as one who
consumes oneself and thereby glows, like the containing of the chaos in oneself
to give birth to the dancing star. This is not a fixed star, but a star that is moving
and, in Nietzsche’s case, not only that which moves but which dances implying
a form of delight and affirmation for the universe.23 Also, in connection to crea-
tivity, there is a similar metaphor that also helps confirm this interpretation
when Zarathustra writes: “My wisdom has long gathered like a cloud; it is
becoming stiller and darker. Thus does every wisdom that is yet to give birth to
lightning bolts”.24 The final poem, “Star Morals” (Sternen-moral),25 leads us to
more ambiguous territory pointing the way to the second part of this exploration.
19 Z III Song/ZA III Tanzlied.

20 There is even the possibility or at least attempt to “dance star-dances” in the speech
that follows “The Other Dancing Song”. See Z III Seals 3/ZA III Siegel.
21 EH UM 3/EH UB: “What I am today, where I am today – at a height where I have stopped
speaking with words and now speak with lightning-bolts [Blitzen]” (translation modified).
22 GS Joke, Cunning, and Revenge/FWS 62, KSA 6, p. 367: “Yes, I know from where I
came! / Ever hungry like a flame / I consume myself and glow. / Light grows all that I
conceive, / Ashes everything I leave: / Flame I am assuredly.” (“Ja! Ich weiss, woher ich
stamme! / Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme / Glühe und versehr ich mich / Licht wird alles,
was ich fasse, / Kohle alles, was ich lasse: / Flamme bin ich sicherlich!”)
23 There are also echoes of Heraclitus in Nietzsche’s thought but this will not be dealt with
here: “Heraclitus says, you know, that all things move and nothing remains still, and he
likens the universe to the current of a river” (Plato, Cratylus 402a).
24 Z IV Men 7/ZA IV Menschen 7.
25 GS Joke, Cunning, and Revenge/FWS 63, KSA 6, p. 367: “Called a star’s orbit to pursue, /
What is the darkness, star, to you? / Roll on in bliss, traverse this age – / Its misery far from
you and strange. / Let farthest world your light secure./ Pity is sin you must abjure. / But
one command is yours: be pure!”
This can be confusing, to have a star moral after wading through reminding our-
selves what a star is literally, to it being represented as the power within the cos-
mos, and its direct connection to chaos. But this also indicates Nietzsche’s
ambiguous and ironic treatment of the stars that runs alongside his most pas-
sionate and serious moments in trying to reveal the idea of the eternal recur-
rence. This is something that Nietzsche scholars still to this day overlook or dis-
miss – that it is the double entendre of Zarathustra’s stars and the visionary story
of Zarathustra as a whole in that it is Nietzsche’s most serious and yet most comic
and ironic moment at one and the same time, and this is vital to the whole per-
formance of the text. The opening three lines from “Star Morals” reveal Nietz-
sche’s question and answer: “Called a star’s orbit to pursue, / What is the dark-
ness, star, to you? / Roll on in bliss, traverse this age – ”. This typical Nietzsche
motif that is presented in Zarathustra that once one accepts the void and rejects
the concept of all systems and of all truths, and one can still be affirmative and
embrace one’s existence, then one has triumphed. This is what allows Nietzsche
to dramatically imply that before him all great thinkers failed to embrace this
realisation. Of course, we can very easily question this standpoint and declara-
tion and give examples from some thinkers before Nietzsche who have also
embraced this thought, but what is important here is that its meaning is to
embrace one’s star which will then burn brightly and will also inevitably burn
out. If there is to be a morality in the traditional meaning of the word it is to be
self-giving without evaluation in every direction like a light from a star. The final
words of Book Five of The Gay Science (written and published after Thus Spoke
Zarathustra) attend to this moral in “To the Mistral. A Dancing Song”: “And for-
ever to attest / such great joy, take its bequest, take this wreath with you up
there! / Toss it higher, further, gladder, / storm up on the heavens’ ladder, / hang
it up – upon a star” (GS Mistral/PV Mistral).
II. Transforming the Language of Philosophy

“Such works are mirrors: when an ape looks in, no apostle looks out”26
After part one, we might be lured into thinking with justification that this
conception and placing of the stars in Nietzsche’s writing allows for only an
aesthetic existence in the Kierkegaardian sense of the term: living life accord-
26 Lichtenberg (1800–06), p. 479 (translated from: “Solche Werke sind Spiegel: wenn ein
Affe hinein guckt, kann kein Apostel heraus sehen”).
ing to one’s impulse, ceasing and embracing only possibility without any con-
sequences, celebrating the solitude and superiority over everything and
becoming a divine being shifting through this short, bittersweet experience of
the world. This also is Caputo’s worry, and he concludes his very Kierkegaar-
dian text, in some ways a transformed version of Fear and Trembling, by para-
phrasing a line from The Birth of Tragedy: “Life is justified not as an aesthetic
phenomenon but as a quasi-ethical one”.27 Whether or not Caputo intends it,
this is still in line with a Nietzschean approach to life. And this approach might
be found in the use of the word Stern to redeem philosophy and to continue
to transform our approach to language.28 I propose, in this investigation of the
stars, that Nietzsche does this in two ways. First, Nietzsche subverts Kant’s
comment on stars and a whole host of modern philosophers to transform what
we take for granted when using the word “star”; and second, he creates an
example of this subversion and a new form by the performance of Zarathustra
and the language that is created around this “star book”. Zarathustra thus
becomes that star through his creation and his subversion of language.
One of the most quoted sentences of Western philosophy is from Kant’s
conclusion in the Critique of Practical Reason and it goes as follows:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more
often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral
law within me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though
they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see
them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence
(CPrR A 289).29
27 Caputo (1993), p. 248. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes, “[…] for it is only as an
aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (BT 5/GT 5). In
fairness to Caputo, he does combine Nietzsche and Kierkegaard’s careful and deconstructive
use of language in his excellent book Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and
the Hermeneutic Project, cf. Caputo (1987).
28 This is different from Martin Heidegger’s quest to reboot philosophy by asking the
question of what Being is, attempting to find a way to think in the age of technology, and to
let language “speak” again. Although Heidegger is heavily indebted to Nietzsche on these
three projects that are all interlinked, the former does move in a different direction
especially in his use of the word Stern in his own attempt to write a kind of poetry.
Heidegger (1975), p. 4, writes: “To head towards a star – this only” and “To think is to
confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky”.
This star is static and external in contrast to Nietzsche’s all-dancing, shifting, deceptive star
born out of chaos.
29 See also Groddeck (1989), p. 490, where he begins his article with this passage by Kant
and points to the cosmic turn in Nietzsche’s writing or “Poetologie” as Groddeck calls it.
While the first half of this passage is the more famous, it is the second half
which offers us the key to Kant’s project here which we philosophers have
been taught and studied since – through our own consciousness we see and
associate the “starry heavens” and the “moral law”. It is fitting for this inves-
tigation that Kant calls his project a Copernican revolution by assuming that
the objects conform to our subjective cognition.30 For Nietzsche, this might
be anthropomorphic folly, but he also does not refrain from showing his
ambiguous regard for Copernicus who has led us rolling “faster and faster
away from the centre […] towards nothingness”.31 The Marxist critic, Georg
Lukács also comes to this conclusion in the wake of Kant by writing: “Kant’s
starry firmament now shines only in the dark night of pure cognition, it no
longer lights any solitary wanderer’s path (for to be a man in the new world
is to be solitary)”.32 Kant’s “starry heavens” above him still hold an ambigu-
ity but nonetheless still contains a hope for the transcendental realm, while
in making his Copernican move leads us to darkness which propels both
Nietzsche and Lukács to strive to find new meaning in the modern world.
Lukács, shortly after his statement above, joins the Bolsheviks; Nietzsche
chooses a path of ruthless critique of all forms of truth and the possibility
of the mystical eternal recurrence through Zarathustra. Is then Nietzsche’s
star a very different star than Kant’s – who would be frightened by the mys-
tery of the eternal recurrence, hints of Eastern philosophy, the darkness of
Tao, and Heidegger’s later Gelassenheit? That said, Kant also makes it clear
that the limits of the mind lead to our limited perception of the world and
things in the world.33 Nietzsche, taking up the destructive element of Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason and encouraged by Schopenhauer’s development of
Kant’s noumenon into the Will, writes this aphorism in Beyond Good and
Evil: “The sage as astronomer. – As long as you still feel the stars as being
something ‘over you’ you still lack the eye of the man of knowledge” (BGE
71/JGB 71).
30 Kant, CPrR, Preface to the second edition, B xvi: “Hence let us once try whether we do
not get further with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform
to our cognition […] This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he
did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that
the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have
greater success if he made the observer revolve and let the stars at rest.”
31 GM III 25. I have used Douglas Smith’s translation of the Genealogy of Morals throughout
this paper.
32 Lukács (1971), p. 36.
33 See, for example, Kant, CPR A 256-B 312.
In the wake of Kant and the history of philosophy,34 Nietzsche presents

this “star” as something within us, and as already said above, that something
within in us is chaos, and this chaos is confirmed also in the cosmos. This has
been read as a very dangerous idea – ethically – for a long time, but what is
most important here is that Nietzsche in bringing up the star in the various
places (especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) in his writing, in order to trans-
form this word, literally in the wake of Kant, and to create an affirmative phi-
losophy after Schopenhauer who saw himself as completing Kant’s project,
and pursuing life while ignoring morality. The enlightenment of Kant and the
‘wild years of philosophy’35 have ultimately led to Lukács’“dark night of cogni-
tion” and this is the impetus for Nietzsche to transform the language of the
stars through use of irony, fable, performance, creative philology, psychology
and back again to philosophy which embraces seeking, critique and wisdom
and not some academic career. A generation before Lukács, Nietzsche was
always interested in the wanderers of the night, starting with Dionysus in The
Birth of Tragedy and soon after with his ominous image in the opening para-
graph in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” quoted above. A very
vivid passage from Nietzsche’s notes in 1885 (and which was also published
as the last passage in the controversial Will to Power publication by his sister)
returns to the very ominous picture of the world and the universe without light
and without guidance (NL 1885, KSA 11, 38[12]).36 Thus begins Zarathustra’s
Untergang.37
But before beginning the final part of this paper, let us look at the different
places where the word “star” appears and how this might help to support the
34 See TI Fable/GD Fabel to see Nietzsche’s fascinating history of philosophy in one page
where he describes Plato’s idea as “I, Plato, am the truth” and Kant’s scepticism as “At
bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and scepticism. The idea has become elusive,
pale, Nordic, Königsbergian”.
35 This is the title that a biographer of German philosophers, Rüdiger Safranski, gives to his
philosophical biography of Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy .
In the preface, Safranski writes: “This book looks back to a vanished world, when
philosophy was once more, perhaps for the last time, in magnificent flower. The ‘wild years
of philosophy’: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, the philosophy of the Romantic movement, Hegel,
Feuerbach, young Marx. Such exciting and excited ideas never existed before. The reason
was the discovery of the ego; whether it took on the role of the spirit, of morality, of nature,
of the body, or of the proletariat, it produced a euphoric mood which gave rise to the most
extravagant hopes. Man was claiming back for himself ‘the riches squandered to heaven’”
[Safranski (1991), p. 1].
36 See NL 1885, KSA 11, 38[12] = WP 1067.
37 Z Prologue/ZA I Vorrede. On Zarathustra’s Untergang, Heidegger (1984b), p. 59, writes:
“‘Untergang’ here means two things: first, transition as departure; second, descent as
acknowledgement of the abyss”.
thesis that the star is part of Nietzsche’s project of transforming philosophy

and our use of language. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, we witness
the use of star as the creative spark, as the “mysterious star” (BT 22/GT 22) –
in line with the connection made with the flame and light in the first part of
his paper, although the word Nietzsche uses is still Gestirn and not Stern. In
Untimely Meditations (1873–1876) the “star” as Gestirn is used two times in
relation to the constellation of life and history and twice in relation to genius
in the essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life”.38 It is also
used twice as Stern in relation to inspiration in the essay “Richard Wagner in
Bayreuth”,39 and once as Stern in “Schopenhauer as Educator”, which points
to Nietzsche’s future use of the stars as something that are distant from us but
yet reveal our humble and cataclysmic place in the nihilistic cosmos.40 In
Human, All Too Human, “star” as Stern is mentioned twice, in the same pas-
sage, though only in parenthesis in quoting Goethe and in his admiration of
Shakespeare as “star of the most distant heights”, and followed by quoting a
line by Goethe – “the stars, these we do not desire” (HH I 162/MA I 162).
“Star” as Stern is mentioned twice and once as Gestirn in Daybreak (1881),
moving away from the metaphor for genius and instead is brought up as a
planet.41
The Gay Science is, next to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the book that deals
most explicitly with the stars. In fact, beginning and ending with reference to
the stars, this text acts as a companion piece and prelude to Zarathustra’s
journey.42 Stars are mentioned six times in the Prelude,43 which is made up
38 UM II 4/UB II 4 and UM II 7/UB II 7.

39 UM IV 2/UB IV 2 and UM IV 8/UB IV 8.
40 UM III 3/UB III 3: “Schopenhauer […] namely the leader who leads us from the depths of
sceptical gloom or criticizing renunciation up to the heights of tragic contemplation, to the
nocturnal sky and its stars extended endlessly above us, and who was himself the first to
take his path.”
41 D 45/M 45: “Perhaps, if one day an alliance has been established with the inhabitants of
other stars for the purpose of knowledge, and knowledge has been communicated from star
to star for a few millennia: perhaps enthusiasm for knowledge may then rise to such a high
watermark!”; D 49/M 49: “The becoming drags the has-been along behind it: why should an
exception to this eternal spectacle be made on behalf of some little star or for any little
species upon it! Away with such sentimentalities!”; D 548/M 548: “[…] being is still, in
precisely the greatest thing that demands reverence, invisible like a too distant star [Gestirn]
[…]”
42 Nietzsche actually calls The Gay Science and Daybreak as the commentary to Thus Spoke
Zarathustra in a letter to his friend Franz Overbeck, April 7, 1884.
43 The full title of the prelude is: “Joke, Cunning and Revenge: A Prelude in German
Rhymes”, which shows Nietzsche’s and later Zarathustra’s intermingling of whimsy, irony
and earnestness.
of a collection of poems44 – two of which have star in the poem’s title. The
first is “The Egoism of the Stars” (Sternen-Egoismus), and it goes as follows:
“If I did not, a rolling cask, / Keep turning endlessly, I ask, / How would I
keep from burning when / I run after the blazing sun?”45 The second title
closes the prelude of poems with “Star Morals” (already mentioned above),
presenting a quasi-mystical morality of giving in all directions as the light from
the star does. This seems to be the moral of Nietzsche’s “noble soul” put for-
ward in Beyond Good and Evil. Section 265 helps to understand what “Star
Morals” means from the beginning of The Gay Science, as Nietzsche calls his
“noble soul” a star, and “every star is such an egoist” (BGE 265/JGB 265) –
giving as it takes. To clarify further in the same section, Nietzsche writes on
the “noble soul” qua star: “[…] it honours itself in them and in the rights it
concedes them […] The noble soul gives as it takes, out of the passionate and
sensitive instinct of requital which lies in its depths.” The crux of the matter
is however – and this is a key to Nietzsche’s thought – that it takes time for
us to receive from the noble soul as indeed it takes time for the light of the
star to reach us. We don’t even know the star is dead by the time the light hits
us. This again is the paradoxical flavour in Nietzsche and most particularly
Zarathustra’s thought – in that great ideas are already dead by the time they
reach us, and hence there is such a striving for the philosopher and seeker to
find new stars not only out there but in order to transform, even revolutionise,
the state of things, to find stars from within oneself. Nietzsche’s madman, after
declaring the death of God, concludes that “the light of the stars [Gestirne]
requires time” (GS 125/FW 125). This is reiterated in Beyond Good and Evil
even more emphatically: “The light of the furthest stars comes to men last;
and before it has arrived man denies that there are – stars there” (BGE 285/
JGB 285).
At the same time, to find new stars is exactly what Beyond Good and Evil,
the critical work, is warning us against, after finishing his star book Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. For Nietzsche, this happens all too often with the “religious
nature” in the insatiable yearning for new stars, images and enigmas (BGE 57/
JGB 57). This, as we shall see, is what Zarathustra is trying to both overcome
and transform. And yet, even though it is a quintessential book of critique,
Beyond Good and Evil, like The Gay Science, concludes with the poetic form
and contains a question pointing to the stars yet again: “For you have I pre-
44 In all, “star” is mentioned six times in the Prelude of The Gay Science in sections GS 29/
FW 29, GS 30/FW 30, GS 39/FW 39, GS 40/FW 40, GS 48/FW 48 and GS 63/FW 63.
45 FWS 29, KSA 3, 359: “Rollt’ ich mich rundes Rollefass / Nicht um mich selbst ohn’
Unterlass, / Wie hielt’ ich’s aus, ohne anzubrennen, / Der heissen Sonne nachzurennen?”
pared my table in the highest height – who lives so near the stars as I, or who
so near the depths of the abyss?” (BGE 203/JGB 203).
Also in The Gay Science, there is a theme in the use of the star that reveals
the distance between humans that is sometimes necessary – for friendship,
neighbours, and support for solitude.46 The poems “The Neighbour” (“I do not
love my neighbour near, / but wish he were high up and far. / How else could
he become my star?”),47 “Without Envy” (“He does not see you, / he sees only
stars”),48 and the passage on “Star Friendship” (GS 279/FW 279)49 which
comes later in Book Four all deal with this juxtaposition of stars and relation-
ships. I will not delve into this use of star but only to say that it connects to
the star of Zarathustra in the eternal recurrence in seeing friendships long past
and broken come again. Before turning to the star book of Zarathustra, Nietz-
sche helps set the stage with a few other starry passages from The Gay Science.
Halfway through the book, Nietzsche declares: “We have left the land and have
embarked” (GS 124/FW 124). Like Dante, Nietzsche has reached his mezzo del
cammino and echoes Dante who before entering Paradise declared: “The
waters I take were never sailed before”.50 Both feel they are entering infinity,
but two different kinds of infinity. Nietzsche writes of the “perspective charac-
ter of existence” and “our new infinite” that “may include infinite interpreta-
tions” (GS 374/FW 374) in the final book of The Gay Science which was added
after publishing Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche makes it plain his project
for philosophy and the malleable use of language two paragraphs before the
“Parable”: “What I want is more; I am no seeker. I want to create my own sun
for myself” (GS 320/FW 320). The “greatest weight” – that is the heaviness of
existence – might be overcome by Zarathustra’s discovery of the eternal recur-
46 In this first section of poems, there is a reference to “the Dog Star” (FWS 39, KSA 3,
p. 362) and the Sun (KSA 3, p. 364), which I refrain from commenting on in the main section
of this article as they repeat themes to a lesser extent than the other examples I have given.
Also, in another poem, “Against the Laws” (“Gegen die Gesetze”), the stars are represen-
tative of that which is finished or no longer responding: “As of today, the stars, the sun, /
Cockcrow and shadows are all done; / What ever used to tell the time / Is mute and deaf
and blind” (FWS 48, KSA 3, 364 / GS, p. 61: “Von heut an hört der Sterne Lauf, / Sonn’,
Hahnenschrei und Schatten auf, / Und was mir je die Zeit verkünd’t, / Das ist jetzt stumm
und taub und blind”).
47 FWS 30, KSA 3, p. 359: “Nah hab’ den Nächsten ich nicht gerne: / Fort mit ihm in die
Höh’ und Ferne! / Wie würd’ er sonst zu meinem Sterne? –”
48 FWS 40, KSA 3, p. 362: “Er sieht euch nicht! – er sieht nur Sterne, Sterne!”
49 As an aside, distraught and lonely, Nietzsche also wrote his star book Thus Spoke
Zarathustra in the aftermath of his failed attempt to get closer to Lou Salomé and according
to legend had said upon meeting her: “What star have we both come from to meet here?”
50 Dante, Paradiso Canto II: “L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse”.
rence, and the fourth book closes with the first mention of Zarathustra in his
published works which is repeated word for word in the prologue of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. The Gay Science closes for the final time in the Appendix
of Book Five with the author triumphantly tossing one’s wreath upon a star.51
Finally then, Nietzsche is indeed seeking to be upon a star, to be a star, and
give birth to a dancing star. Incipit Zarathustra.52
III. Zarathustra’s Stars

“Come! Come! Let us wander now! The hour has come: let us wander into the night!”
Z IV Sleepwalker 2/ZA IV Nachtwandler 2.
Throughout the whole of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there is constant reference

to dawn, dusk, midnight, and noon. These are all related to the great Sun star
enabling everything to live on this planet, and the times of the day to the
rising, setting, absence of, and moment when the Sun is highest in the sky. Its
absence allows us to see the other stars which are the limits of our vision and
our knowledge. Zarathustra’s first and last speeches of the book begin at dawn
and are directed to the Sun with “You great star”. Throughout his body of
work, we can already see this allusion to rising and falling in the titles alone
such as The Birth of Tragedy, Daybreak, Twilight of the Idols, and The Fall of
Wagner. The epigraph of Daybreak bears an Indian inscription: “There are so
many daybreaks that have not yet dawned”;53 and Nietzsche places his
thought with the light of the stars reaching us long after they have burnt out.
As a philosophy for the future, a philosophy whose light has not reached us
yet, witness the subtitle of Beyond Good and Evil, the first lines of The Anti-
christ or declaring to being born posthumously in The Antichrist as well as in
Ecce Homo.54
51 See GS Mistral/PV Mistral.

52 With his first mention of Zarathustra, Nietzsche gives the paragraph the title “Incipit
tragoedia” (GS 342/FW 342). Elsewhere, in the closing line of TI Fable/GD Fabel, Nietzsche
writes “INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA” in capital letters to declare (as the great star – the Sun – is
at the highest point of the sky from the Earth’s perspective) the beginning of something new
and the end of the great error of Western philosophy in its depiction of truth.
53 M Inschrift, KSA 3, p. 9: “Es giebt so viele Morgenröthen, die noch nicht geleuchtet
haben – Rigveda”.
54 BGE, Title, KSA 5, p. 9: “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”; A Preface/AC Vorrede:
“This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps not one of them is living yet. Maybe they will
be the readers who understand my Zarathustra […] Only the day after tomorrow belongs to
me. Some are born posthumously […] New eyes for what is most distant”; EH Books 1/EH
Bücher 1: “My time has not yet come, some are born posthumously.”
Zarathustra is the text that attempts to reveal this star in its use of lan-
guage – that ventures to go beyond (or prelude) Western philosophy. It is
understandable that it is often ignored or not taken seriously as a result. In
this article, I have wanted simply to bring up Nietzsche’s use of the stars,
how this challenges our conception of philosophical language, and finally that
Zarathustra’s special “star book” is a manifestation of what Nietzsche is
attempting to express. In light of this interpretation, Paul S. Loeb, in his recent
book The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, calls his project a “performative
understanding” and “performative reading” of Zarathustra which is in tune
with my suggestion that Zarathustra is the performative moment in Nietzsche’s
œuvre.55 Through the difficult task of articulating the eternal recurrence
through language, it is the actual performance, narrative and speeches of Zara-
thustra with constant reference to the stars that ambitiously attempt to reveal
its secret. In the section when the eternal recurrence is first explicitly
expounded, Zarathustra asks: “Are not words and sounds rainbows and illu-
sive bridges between things which are eternally apart?” (Z III Convalescent 2/
ZA III Genesende).
Now before moving on through the text itself, returning to the beginning
and end of Zarathustra with “you great star” reveals the circularity of Zarathus-
tra’s narrative: the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end like so
much of the Eastern visions. With the endless repetitions, Zarathustra’s jour-
ney is such that it is only towards the end of Book Three in “The Convalescent”
chapter (the great noon event) that he realises in his most “abysmal thought”56
the riddle of the universe not only the eternal recurrence but the joyous accept-
ance of this secret. It is after this revelation that he melts into the ocean from
the star that he has become. He already anticipated this in the prologue of
allowing the chaos to give birth to a dancing star. Contrary to what many
commentators have written, the fourth and final book is not detrimental to the
narrative of the book; rather it affirms the revelation of the eternal recurrence
55 Loeb (2010), p. 6 and p. 9. Loeb also writes, Loeb (2010), p. 6: “Just as the lives and
actions of Zarathustra are meant to dramatize what Nietzsche thinks is the deeper reality of
eternal repetition […] it is the narrative course of the book’s drama that actually shows,
manifests, and enacts this thought.”
56 For mention of “abysmal thought” (abgründlicher Gedanke), see especially: Z III Bliss/ZA
III Seligkeit, Z III Convalescent/ZA III Genesende. I concur with Loeb (2010) when he writes:
“Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought concerns the eternal recurrence of existence in the
specific sense that this entails the eternal recurrence even of the smallest human” Loeb
then quotes from Nietzsche himself: “But I confess that my deepest objection to ‘eternal
recurrence’, my truly most abysmal thought, is always mother and sister” (EH wise 3/EH
weise 3). See Loeb (2010), p. 102.
that a new book should begin as a white haired Zarathustra finds himself
outside his cave once more. Perhaps Zarathustra was already dead before the
book began, perhaps he died at the end of Book Three, or perhaps he didn’t
die at all; what is important to understand here is that all three could have
happened and the reader can start with whichever book he or she so chooses,
as the narrative and life of Zarathustra is intertwined and moves in circles,
and like the stars, is constantly wandering, for change alone endures and yet
the change brings us back to a transformed beginning. Let us see if this can
be supported by going through the text now.
The Prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains six mentions of the star
and Zarathustra’s first speech begins with “you great star” and “you overrich
star”. At the beginning of this star book, Zarathustra compares himself to the
“great star” in that he too must go under (Untergang): “For that I must descend
to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and still
bring light to the underworld” (Z Prologue 1/ZA I Vorrede 1). A few pages on,
Zarathustra declares that he loves those who do not first seek behind the stars
but who descend to the earth, thus again inverting the play with the stars –
in that it is from within that the star is born. But this is something for the
future, or to come, a redemptive messianic quality that Zarathustra on his
journey is trying to figure out: “What is a star? Thus asks the last man, and
he blinks” (Z Prologue 5/ZA I Vorrede). But Zarathustra is still a nightwalker
and the narrator of the text informs the reader that Zarathustra trusts the light
of the stars (Z Prologue 8/ZA I Vorrede 8), as he makes his way down into the
world. Divided into four parts, stars are mentioned six times in Part One, four
times in Part Two, twelve times in Part Three, and just twice in Part Four.
There is the abiding dichotomy and conflict in the use of the star – that of the
star of Kant and Christianity and that of the star that comes from the chaos
from within. In Part One, the stars refer to the former and Zarathustra warns
us against the temptation of viewing them as such as he is as much prone to
do himself in his longing and need for a creator, a metaphysics, and a way to
give meaning to life.57
57 The word star appears in connection to the saints: “They wanted to escape their own
misery, and the stars were too far for them” (Z I Tree/ZA I Baum); “You aspire to the free
heights, your soul thirsts for the stars” (Z I Tree/ZA I Baum). In the section “On the Way of
the Creator” [The word is Schaffenden, which does not have religious connotations but
signifies more as artificer, builder and which also pertain to the artist], the star is
mentioned three times. There is an attempt to control them: “Can you compel the very stars
to revolve around you?”; the star as something that is created: “Terrible it is to be alone
with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus is a star thrown out into the void and
into the icy breath of solitude”; pertaining to someone solitary and great: “Injustice and
filth they throw after the lonely one: but my brother, if you would be a star, you must not
In Part Two, the star is mentioned four times. The first relays to the star
in the “madman” passage of The Gay Science regarding the light of the star
reaching us long after the star has died: “And like a dying star is every work
of your virtue: its light is always still on its way and wanders – and when will
it no longer be on its way?” (Z II Virtuous/ZA II Tugendhaften). Old habits die
hard. In the beautifully evocative “The Night Song”, Zarathustra concedes to
the allure of the stars: “And even you would I bless, you little sparkling stars
and glowworms up there, and be overjoyed with your gifts of light.” (Z II Song/
ZA II Tanzlied). The third mention is of one who “piously and silently […]
passes over carpets of stars” (Z II Immaculate/ZA II Erkentniss). Instead Zara-
thustra wants to be a star, and like the sun to “love life” and “all deep seas”;
in other words, to confront and challenge all stars and forever reach new
heights going so low. The final mention in Book Two is simply a nod from a
disciple in the “Soothsayer” speech: “New stars you have let me see, and new
wonders of the night” (Z II, The Soothsayer/ZA II Wahrsager). This concludes
and prepares the reader for the high point of Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Book
Three, and understanding, becoming, and dying as a star.
The first four speeches of Book Three implicitly offer an account of the
new star that will melt into the ocean just before the revelation of the eternal
recurrence at the end of the same book. Book Three begins with “The Wan-
derer” (and Zarathustra is the wandering star) continuing to “On the Vision
and the Riddle” heralding in Zarathustra as “star-crusher” and facing the
“spirit of gravity”. The third speech, “On Involuntary Bliss”, brings up again
the light of the star; and “Before Sunrise” alludes to the concealing and reveal-
ing of the stars. It is vital that Book Three begins with “The Wanderer” in
connection to presenting Zarathustra as the star book. As with the great poets
of time gone by, the wanderer is guided and inspired by the stars.58 From the
shine less for them because of that”; and finally, it alludes to the manifestation of the
potential power in a woman (at least for Zarathustra): “Let the radiance of a star shine
through your love! Let your hope be: May I give birth to the overman!” (Z I Women/ZA I
Weiblein).
58 The 20th century expressionist and visionary poet Georg Trakl, deeply influenced by The
Spoke Zarathustra, was obsessed with the conflation and collapse of the wanderer and the
stars. Trakl’s poetry becomes a petrification of Nietzsche’s brutal cosmic vision. In Georg
Trakl (2001), Poems and Prose, see for example in his poems: “Helian” (p. 31: “white stars”;
p. 33: “the gold of his stars”; p. 37 “the stars have gone out”), “Grodek” (p. 127: “Under the
golden bough of night and stars”), “In an Old Family Album” (p. 13: “Shuddering under
autumn stars”), “De Profundis” (p. 15: “dust of stars”), “Psalm I” (p. 19: “she plays with his
stars”), “In the Village” (p. 25: “drinks milk and stars”), “To the Boy Elis” (p. 45: “The final
gold of vanished stars”), “Elis” (p. 47: “signs and stars”), “Hohenburg” (p. 47: “He who
sounds aloud is embraced with crimson arms by his star”), “Sebastian in Dream” (p. 51:
“the silver voices of stars”), “In Spring” (pp. 3: “star and night”), and the prose poem
opening lines of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is clear that Zarathustra is a wan-

derer, and from then on he never stops moving albeit with a few rests along
the never ending way. His “way” is both up to the heights (to the sun and the
glittering stars) and to the depths (the chaos within that gives birth to a star
and the starry, shimmering depths of the mysterious ocean). All this amounts
to is the journey to the unknown to find the new, as Baudelaire (born over
twenty years before Nietzsche) famously put it: “Au fond de l’Inconnu pour
trouver du nouveau!”59 By beginning Book Three with the “The Wanderer”
speech, the intention is made for the journey to be completed in the rise and
fall of the star before beginning again in Book Four. The first four words (“It
was about midnight”) cause us to imagine that the stars are abundant in the
night sky, and indeed the narrator confirms this image a few paragraphs later:
“But the night was cold at this height, and clear and starry bright”. The wan-
derer as star is both going over (Übergang) and under (Untergang).60 It is after
all “out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height”. It is at
midnight and midday where the Sun is at its lowest and its highest, and it is
also why Zarathustra calls himself a mountain climber in order to reach great
heights and great depths from the peaks to the valleys: “[…] hence you must
climb over yourself – upward, up until even your stars are under you. Indeed,
to look down upon myself and even upon my stars, that alone I should call
my peak; that has remained for me as my ultimate peak” (Z III Wanderer/ZA
III Wanderer). Zarathustra, all the way through his journey to giving birth to
the dancing star, must overcome or at least come to terms with the “spirit of
gravity” (dem Geist der Schwere).61 This gravity is heaviness and weight, even
“Revelation and Perdition” (Offenbarung und Untergang, p. 129: “Flicker into life, you stars
in my arched brows” and “the mighty canopy of stars”; p. 131: “the blue sky was high above
me and full of stars”).
59 Baudelaire (1997), p. 351: “to the depths of the unknown to find the new” (translation
modified). Compare Byron, Zarathustra and Joyce – these wandering yeasayers’ reflections
respectively: “But there are wanderers o’er Eternity / Whose bark drives on and on, and
anchored ne’er shall be” (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, (1812–1818), Canto 3, LXX); “I am a
wanderer and a mountain climber, he said to his heart; I do not like the plains, and it seems
I cannot sit still for long. And whatever may yet come to me as destiny and experience will
include some wandering and mountain climbing: in the end, one experiences oneself” (Z III
Wanderer/ZA III Wanderer); Joyce (2008), p. 204: “Every life is many days, day after day. We
walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives,
widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves”.
60 See for example in Nietzsche’s wordplay in depicting what is potentially great in man:
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is
that he is a going over [Übergang] and a going under [Untergang]” (Z I Prologue 4/ZA I
Vorrede).
61 For example, see Z II Isles/ZA II Inseln, Z III Gravity/ZA III Schwere.
paralysis from giving flight to the free spirit and the dancing star. Even the
myth of the star can encapsulate us into its sphere as a petrified truth that we
must liberate ourselves from (“O my brothers, so far there have been only
illusions about stars and the future”, Z III Gravity/ZA III Schwere). As with
giving birth to a star, Zarathustra is also a “star-crusher” (Z III Riddle/ZA III
Räthsel). He must inevitably bow down to the law of gravity as well as combat
the great illusion and allure of stars in previous truth touchstones of philoso-
phies and religions. It is eternal recurrence and the metaphor of the star that
comes from chaos and melts into the sea what will free Zarathustra from the
dreaded spirit of gravity. It is this poetic and allegorical language that also
helps Nietzsche to overcome the language of the stars and the conceit of truth
in language. As I already mentioned, in the speech that reveals the eternal
recurrence, Zarathustra had asked: “Are not words and sounds rainbows and
illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?” (Z III Convalescent/
ZA III Genesende). And thus in the climax of the book, one must even learn
how to “dance star-dances” (Z III Seals/ZA III Siegel) until finally the star
bursts – over-ripe like the over-rich sun at the beginning of the book when
Zarathustra first stepped out of the cave and spoke to the great star.
The speech called “Of the Old and New Tables” is by far the longest chap-
ter in the book, and it is here where Zarathustra yearns and feels he is ready
to melt like the Sun onto the sea. In a way it is his death wish: “[…] I want to
go under; dying, I want to give them my richest gift. From the sun I learned
this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaust-
ible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars” (Z
III Tablets 3/ZA III Tafeln 3). At the end of this long speech, he repeats his
desire that is both the end and a new beginning:
That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon: as ready and ripe as glowing
bronze, clouds pregnant with lightning, and swelling milk udders – ready for myself and
my most hidden will: a bow lusting for its arrow, an arrow lusting for its star – a star
ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, enraptured by annihilating sun arrows – a
sun itself and an inexorable solar will, ready to annihilate in victory! (Z III Tablets 3/ZA
III Tafeln 3).
This paragraph condenses a lot of what I have put forward so far regarding
Zarathustra’s star – one that comes from within, one that is triumphant in
defeat, one that is an exhilarating, cosmic repetition that keeps John D. Caputo
sleepless and propelled to work, and one that dances into nothingness. When
one releases and gives all, one must begin anew. Has Zarathustra died? Zara-
thustra’s last wish to be scattered into countless pieces or to dismember like a
collapsing star is fulfilled, in a vision not unlike this one: “[…] the sun flung
spangles, dancing coins”.62 This death is a thought about time as is usually

the case when thinking and gazing at the stars. God has died, man is dying,
either too late or too early the news comes to us, and as Zarathustra’s animals
tell him the hourglass turns over again and again regardless. Following Loeb’s
performative reading, Book Three reaches its rising climax with “The Old and
New Tablets”, “The Convalescent”, “The Other Dancing Song” (with Zarathus-
tra working through his first rendition of his song of eternity which will be
sung again in the penultimate speech of Book Four) and “The Seven Seals”
before starting again in the curious and often maligned Book Four. Zarathus-
tra’s will has become a self-declared “solar will” in the climax of Book Three
and a celebration of the dancing and collapsing star.
The word star is only mentioned twice in Book Four of Thus Spoke Zara-
thustra, and the book itself is of least interest to many of the Nietzsche scholars
in the last seventy years. By adding on Book Four to the overall text, many
scholars have been left perplexed and ultimately dismissive adding more fuel
to the fire to the perspective that the book as a whole is a “gorgeous disaster”
and “unreadable”.63 Perhaps at the end of the day Nietzsche would be pleased
with this reaction. It is the readers of the book that have failed even though
the description as “gorgeous disaster” is apt. The book is both “gorgeous” and
a “disaster”: gorgeous in the way the German language is used and the variety
of ideas that are expressed in various allegorical and startling ways; and disas-
trous in its apocalyptic tone, the celebration of chaos and the breakdown of
truth as we may think we know it, and the oblique quality of being able to
start with any of the books after the Prologue. That said however, there is an
ordering in the four books. In tune with circularity, repetition and eternal
recurrence, the last speech of the whole book (“The Sign”) starts with the same
three words that began the Prologue (“You great star”). Thus Spoke Zarathustra
is indeed a commodius vicus of recirculation64 – coming back to itself with no
real beginning or end, a vicious circle, a carnival and circus that goes to play
and war with language with its puns and metaphors, a book of disasters to be
62 Joyce (2008), p.36. That other fictional seeker being Stephen Dedalus. Like Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra, Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man and Ulysses is a quasi-self-portrait with a heightened self-importance, yearning, and
superiority, but Joyce brings the parody further tapping into his sense of the Irish comic
tradition.
63 Bloom (1994), p. 261 and p. 422.
64 This is the opening line from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake [1939], a work of abounding eternal
recurrence in which the final line could well be the first and the first line of the book starts
in mid-sentence: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”
faced again and again with the mystery of the star both above and within us.
In the intermezzo that finds itself at the end of the book, Zarathustra, with his
now white hair, steps out once more from his cave into the shine of the sun.
He encounters many of the characters and ideas that he has hitherto met but
this time with more parody and buffoonery. Over half of the “speeches” of
Book Four notably don’t end with the refrain of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
which is another indicator that this book is different than the other three.65
But at the end of the whole book, after eighty chapters, Zarathustra once again
calls out to “the great star” and the last line of the last speech presents Zara-
thustra as the sun and/or star: “Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he left his cave,
glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains” (Z
IV Sign/ZA IV Zeichen). To remind us in case we have forgotten, in the second
longest chapter of the whole book, “On the Higher Man”, Zarathustra gives a
line that is analogous to “giving birth to the dancing star” from the Prologue:
“My wisdom has long gathered like a cloud; it is becoming stiller and darker.
Thus does every wisdom that is yet to give birth to lightning bolts” (Z IV Men
7/ZA IV Menschen 7). And later in the same “speech”, Zarathustra mentions
the star for the first time in Book Four: “Man’s greatest distance and depth
and what in him is lofty to the stars [Sternen-Höchstes], his tremendous
strength – are not all these frothing against each other in your pot?”(Z IV Men
15/ZA IV Menschen 15). Here however the star collapses through Zarathustra
warning of conceitedness, flying too high, and the problem of philosophers
that forget to learn to laugh at themselves. Stars are to be inspiring and to be
created but also to be laughed at. The folly and seriousness of our endeavour
should be side by side even as Zarathustra becomes “the dancer” and “the
light” always trying to fly but accompanied by laughter (Z IV Men 18/ZA IV
Menschen 18).
On a final note, as we come to the end of this exploration of the rise and
collapse of Zarathustra’s star, and to bring us full circle to the first line of this
article of the star being a beacon/guide, it is worth mentioning two lines of a
poem from Nietzsche’s Dionysos-Dithyramben which points to the interrelation-
ship between the stars and the ocean. Dionysos-Dithyramben is a collection of
nine poems compiled in his last productive year of which three of them end
up in Book Four of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.66 The particular poem is called
65 The “speeches” that have no reference to the refrain in Book Four are Z IV Sacrifice/ZA
IV Honig-Opfer, Z IV The Ugliest Human Being/ZA IV der hässliche Mensch, Z IV Beggar/ZA
IV Bettler, Z IV Welcome/ZA IV Begrüssung - Z IV Awakening/ZA IV Erweckung, Z IV The
Sleepwalker Song/ZA IV Nachtwandler-Lied.
66 In Z III Virtue/ZA III Tugend, Z III Longing/ZA III Sehnsucht, Z III Seals/ZA III Siegeln
(respectively: “Ariadne’s Lament” (Klage der Ariadne), “Only a Fool! Only a Poet!” (Nur Narr!
Nur Dichter!), and “Among the Daughters of the Wilderness” (Unter Töchtern der Wüste)).
“Das Feuerzeichen” – literally translated as “fire sign” which can also be trans-
lated as “The Beacon”. The last verse begins with these two lines: “Lost mari-
ners! Wreckage of ancient stars / You seas of the future! Unexplored sky!”67
Nietzsche feels that he has indeed torn down the ancient stars and created
power for new ones. As star gazer and destroyer, Nietzsche, returning to his
own name, is also a seafarer and lost mariner venturing over treacherous and
unchartered waters across oceans and the cosmos and chaos of ideas. This
article has been an exploration of Nietzsche’s use of stars through literary-
philosophical writing most especially through the prism of Thus Spoke Zara-
thustra through attempting to find out what a star is, how it relates to the
transformation of the language of philosophy and how both these enquiries
are manifested in the star book of Zarathustra. Throughout the book of stars,
there are constant allusions to the depths of the ocean as a mirror to the
heights of the stars in the continuation of Übergang and Untergang. In prepar-
ing us for the journey, in his most joyous book The Gay Science, Nietzsche
writes passages with titles such as “Embark!” and “In the horizon of the infi-
nite”, and towards the end of Book Five after Thus Spoke Zarathustra a poem
is inserted called “Towards New Seas”. Throughout Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
the ocean reflecting the galaxies of stars appears again and again. There seems
also to be a very close relationship between the two.68 The ocean and star
remain unexplored both externally and internally and always lie ahead of us
as indifferently cruel, rich and inspirational, and we as philosophers and seek-
ers must constantly awaken ourselves to this astonishing reality. The ocean
and galaxy of stars dwell out there and within us as we journey on to critique
and create the various forms of expression available to us. In perhaps the
quintessential novel of tormented wandering and sailing into the infinite, one
of the omniscient interjections in the narrative of Moby Dick reflects:
The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not
drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange
shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the
miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless,
ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that
out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the
treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s
insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to
67 DD, KSA 6, p 394: “Verschlagne Schiffer! Trümmer alter Sterne! / Ihr Meere der Zukunft!
Unausgeforschte Himmel!” (my translation above).
68 See, for example: Z II Sublime/ZA II Erhabenen, Z II Education/ZA II Bildung and Z II
Immaculate/ZA II Erkentniss, Z IV Honey Sacrifice/ZA IV Honig-Opfer, Z IV At Noon/ZA IV
Mittags.
that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels
then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.69
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69 Melville (1994), pp. 396–397.

Maria Cristina Fornari
‘And so I Will Tell Myself the Story
of my Life’. Nietzsche in His
Last Letters (1885–1889)
Mihi ipsi scripsi! (Nietzsche)
One can only talk to someone from within a situation. (Bourdieu)
Nietzsche did not like unauthorised private thoughts being made public: essen-
tially, he regarded publishing a philosopher’s notes as like spying on him in
his dressing gown. We know how exacting he was with publishers and printers
over the typeface and the editing of his writings; he was terrified that the
fourth part of his Zarathustra might fall into the hands of the wrong readers.
In short, he had a morbid care for his intellectual legacy that, admittedly, has
often been ignored, at least with the publication of the critical edition of the
Nachlass and the detailed, not to say painstaking, analysis of the events in his
personal and intellectual life. But what about his letters? – described variously
as “an essential part of a biography open to criticism”,1 and as private medita-
tions in which “two opposing needs coexist: that of secrecy and that of extreme
publicity and potentially unlimited openness, which is proper to writing in a
broad sense”,2 can we legitimately regard them as a vehicle for understanding
and interpretation? Although letters are inevitably tainted by their context, it
is now generally accepted that they cannot be thought of as “parasitic” on the
works of their author, but are an “integral part of his machine for writing or
expression” (Deleuze-Guattari). It is not a question of interpolating or interpret-
ing the genesis and contents of the works with the pressure of biographical
elements, so much as using the letters as a sort of hermeneutic scheme, the
better to understand an author’s representation of himself, the underlying
intentions of his works, and to grasp their stylistic elements and argumentative
resources, which the works inevitably transform.
This is even truer in the case of Nietzsche and the letters of the last four
years of his productive life. The solitude and lack of understanding he suffered
from; the stocktaking on his philosophical activity and the prospect of a Wir-
kung, an effect on the future; the publishing and editorial problems with his
1 P. Manganaro (1983), p. 19. [Unless otherwise indicated, all translations by R. Bates in

collaboration with the authoress].
2 B. Sebaste (1998), p. 7.
282 Maria Cristina Fornari
last works; the different stylistic registers adopted for his various correspond-
ents, not to mention the drafts that were never dispatched and perhaps deliber-
ately never given final form: the mine of more or less voluntary mémoires in
the letters really do complete our picture of Nietzsche – with the legitimacy
that comes from a letter being, at bottom, closely related to dialogue3 – as long
as we recognise that the strong “personalization” of Nietzsche’s philosophy,
especially in the final period, in no way detracts from the lucidity, coherence
and objective, economic and political effectiveness of his thought.4
To say nothing of the wealth of information the letters provide about
events, people and contemporary trends – Montinari had already indicated
their enormous interest in this respect in the preface to his critical edition of
the Briefwechsel – , Nietzsche’s letters seem particularly interesting not only
in their psychological implications (he was in any case aware of how much of
what is “inexpressible” emerges from the promptings of correspondence)5 but
above all in their role as a counterpoint to the drafting and publication of the
works.
Particularly in the years under consideration, in his communications with
friends and publishers he speaks of his writings developing according to a
system that was there from the start and that, above all, had its own “difficult-
to-grasp” continuity; his “urgent involvement in the task” gradually unfolds in
his relations with correspondents until the change brought about by his new
contacts in the Turin period, whom he saw as mediators of a decisive action
on humanity. Though the tone here is excited and sometimes close to raving,
we can still glimpse well-founded intuitions of new possibilities.6
3 Cf. HH I 374/MA I 374: “The dialogue is the perfect conversation, because everything one
of the parties says acquires its particular colour, its sound, its accompanying gestures
strictly with reference to the other to whom he is speaking, and thus resembles a
correspondence in which the forms of expression vary according to whom the correspondent
is writing to”.
4 For an overall consideration of Nietzsche’s letters see R. Müller-Buck (2000) and R. Müller-
Buck (1998). For the early period: R. Stockmar (2005).
5 “From my own experience of letters I know how, after receiving one, we do something
silly – and also show a lack of tact, if we display sympathy too quickly, intervening in this
natural ‘discharge’” (Bf. an H. Köselitz, 23.07.1885, KGB III/3, Bf. 613). “Every written word is
ambiguous, equivocal, requiring a comment made by glances and hand-clasps. How many
silly things we do when we write what we want! How many stupid letters I have now written!
Long live the wisdom of my eyes, which more and more transforms me into a taciturn animal
from that writing animal I was!” (Bf. an E. (Förster-)Nietzsche, 05.07.1885, KGB III/3, Bf. 611).
See also WS 261, NL 1878, KSA 8, 28[56]: “Against friends writing letters. As soon as we
write letters we start going wrong.”
6 Cf. G. Campioni (2008), pp. 11–12: “The letters are irreplaceable and striking documents of
this last period, in absolute continuity – rare in Nietzsche – with the fulminating notes and
‘And so I Will Tell Myself the Story of my Life’ 283
The letters are, then, almost a commentary, which, alongside the Nachlass,
accompanies the drafting of the Werke, explaining the underlying reasons for
their composition and the intentions of their author; and also the course of
the life lived, the Erlebnis that alone, Nietzsche claims, went into the composi-
tion of his writings, and whose sharing remains the one appropriate premise
for understanding them.7
“In no other writer could thought be transformed so completely into expe-
rience. No other life was ever so fully devoted to the aim of producing all his
inner self in his thought. His thinking was not distinct from his actual life and
its events, as usually happens: it was rather the one, real event in the life of
this solitary”, wrote Lou Salomé in her intellectual biography of the philoso-
pher whom she regarded as “the first great stylist of his time”.8 A short-circuit
between thought, writing and life (“I write only what I have lived [erlebt]” [Bf.
an Ernst Schmeitzner, beginning of September 1882, KGB II/1, Bf. 296]9),
where Erlebnis is not only a hermeneutic device, “not only an accessory cir-
cumstance, but more essentially the content and object of the text”.10
The unfolding of this sort of autobiography, the need to construct a “plau-
sible identity that is in principle autonomous, unique and irreplaceable, not
communicable if not by choice”,11 is one of the main thematic centres of the
writings of that fatal year 1888, in particular the prodigious Ecce Homo. One sees there an
extreme attempt to abandon the lair of the sick bête philosophe, to put his past life ad acta
and present himself to the world […]. There is no longer a demarcation line: the terrifying
‘vehemence of internal waverings’ attacks and fuses philosophy and life in a growing
euphoria”. Campioni’s essay contains an exhaustive and penetrating commentary on the
letters of the final period in Turin.
7 Cf. NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[86]: “To understand each other it is not enough just to use the
same words; we need to use the same words for the same kind of inner experiences – and
we need to have these in common. […] I say this to explain why it is hard to understand
writings like mine; in me experiences, evaluations and inner needs are different”. For a
useful analysis of this hermeneutic theory, see M. Brusotti (1997), p. 14 ff.
8 Lou Andreas-Salomé (1999). Nietzsche wrote for Lou a «Zur Lehre vom Stil» (NL 1882, KSA
10, 1[109]) in which, among other things, he theorised what he called a “law of the dual
relation”, which he applies masterfully in the letters: “The style must be suited to you
regarding a specific person with whom you want to communicate. (Law of the dual
relation)”. The letters to Overbeck are very important in this respect, as they are the most
open and least “censored” by Nietzsche himself.
9 Similarly: “I forget what I have lived (that is to say, my ‘thoughts’)!” (Bf. an H. Köselitz,
18.12.1881, KGB III/1, Bf. 180).
10 M. Brusotti (1997), p. 17.
11 There is an interesting analysis by Franco Gallo, who includes Nietzsche among the “few
great, complete experimenters” of décadence. According to Gallo’s hermeneutic theory, the
impossibility for them of a traditional dimension of social relations opened to radical
innovations in the style of individual existence, which were worked out “in forms of
letters of the last four years. In these we can partly trace a hermeneutics that
Nietzsche applies to himself: looking back over the experience of his past writ-
ings, with the aim of making himself understandable for action on the present,
he sketches a personal development of which he can only become aware him-
self with hindsight. The letters to the publisher Fritzsch, to convince him to
reprint volumes that had not yet had any real response from the public, were
perhaps an opportunity for Nietzsche to clarify to himself the coherence of the
journey undertaken and the need to present it to the world, as the precipitate
of what, now it had been absorbed and overcome, could become an object of
philosophical reflection:12 “My writings speak only of my overcomings: ‘I’ am
in them, together with everything that was inimical to me, ego ipsissimus,
indeed, if yet a prouder expression is permitted, ego ipsissimum. One will
divine that I already have a great deal – beneath me…”, he wrote in the Preface
to the second volume of Human, All Too Human, the mature fruit of this period.
They were years of “fata and facta”, often painful, to which, as was his
custom, Nietzsche tried to oppose “remoteness, distance, healing”. Alongside
the at times prophetic, at times almost exalted tones in the letters of the last
four years, we often find a disenchanted and melancholy register, with which
he traces his personal and intellectual solitude. The incomprehension of mem-
bers of his family, including his sister’s marriage to the anti-Semite Bernard
Förster,13 the attacks of illness, the deafening silence that met, for example,
subjective originality, creativity, and diversity taken to the point of absolute singularity of
the person”. In particular, the Dionysiac philosophy in late Nietzsche was offered as an
“alternative anthropological aspiration”, “moving from unconventionality on a local scale, so
to speak, to the most absolute diversification of taste, nourishment and moral evaluation”
[Gallo (2007), pp. 48, 53].
12 “You will have noticed that Human, All Too Human, Daybreak and The Gay Science do not
have a preface. I had good reasons for taking a vow of silence after composing these works,
I was still too close, too ‘inside’ and I practically did not realize what had happened to me.
Now that I am able to explain fully and more clearly the characteristics of these works and
what makes them unique and to what point they inaugurate a new literary genre for
Germany (the prelude to a self-education and a moral culture that so far has been missing
for the Germans) I would willingly decide to compose these retrospective prefaces with
hindsight. My writings represent a constant development, and I shall not be alone in living
this experience and destiny – I am only the first, a generation that is forming will
understand for itself what I have lived through and will have the refinement of taste
necessary to savour my books. The preface might clarify what is necessary in the course of
this development: as a result there would be the advantage that those who have once tasted
my writings, would have to swallow them all” (Bf. an E. W. Fritzsch, 07.08.1886, KGB III/3,
Bf. 730).
13 “I have never asked of you, as is right, that you [understand] something of the position
that, as a philosopher, I have assumed towards my time; yet, if you had had a grain of
instinctive affection, you might have been able to stop me placing you poles apart from me”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra,14 everything conspired to feed his “long-lasting state

of dejection and décadence”, but also to convince him of his superiority over
his age, though it had not yet been perceived due to the inexorable dynamic
of the (non-)reception of the works and personality of the man of genius in
the modern world:
Considering the matter with the greatest coolness: there will be very few people in Europe
with a culture sufficiently vast and deep to be able to perceive what is new, unexpected
and profoundly radical in my writings, but above all I have had no proof so far, and I
can hardly even believe, that there might be someone able to guess and feel what I feel,
the passion, from which such a way of thinking erupts. – This is my solitude (Bf. an R.
von Seydlitz, 25.10.1886, KGB III/3, Bf. 767).
I do not know a single person who knows something – or who at least has shown me
that he knows it – of what is behind all these works, behind my most strange and real
destiny (Bf. to E. (Förster-)Nietzsche, 26.01.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 794).15
As well as confirming the aspect of incomprehensibility as a hard-to-classify

sign of the superior man (see, for example, GS 371/FW 371), Nietzsche wanted
to prove his mission as being a destiny, founded in a coherent state of being,
as witnessed by his long familiarity with solitude and sickness, and immedi-
ately poured into his writings, an essential proof of the extraordinary Lebens-
form that he himself represented. Hence the need for a “recapitulation” – evi-
dent in the letters from 1885 onwards – or a retrospective reading of his
previous works, not only to discover in them a preordained internal coherence,
but also to reorganise them in the light of the new philosophic ideas that
followed from them.
(Entwurf an E. (Förster-)Nietzsche, end of December 1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 968). The drafts to
his sister have a bitter and distant tone that Nietzsche was not able to maintain in the
letters he sent.
14 On Zarathustra see, for example, C. Fuchs, 17.06.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 863; Entwurf an F.
Overbeck, 21.07.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1067 and Nietzsche’s protests in EH CW 4/EH WA 4.
15 Bf. an F. Overbeck, 14.04.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 831: “This winter I looked around, and
scanned European literature high and low so as to be able to claim now that my
philosophical position is far and away the most independent, although I feel myself as the
heir of various millennia: present-day Europe does not yet have any presentiment of the
terrible decisions around which my whole being wheels, and of the wheel of problems to
which I am bound – and of the fact that with me a catastrophe is brewing whose name I
know but I shall not speak it”. Bf. an R. von Seydlitz, 12.02.1888, KGB III/6, Bf. 496:
“Between ourselves […] it’s not impossible that I am the first philosopher of this age,
perhaps even something more, something decisive and fatal, bestriding two millennia. Such
a singular position, one pays for it constantly – through a segregation that grows all the
time, more and more gelid, more and more cutting”.
Rethinking the underlying problems, which, without my wanting it, is the fulcrum of my
summer up in the mountains of Engadina, takes me back every time, despite the most
daring assaults from the “sceptic” inside me, to the same decisions: they are already
there, though hidden and still obscure, in my Birth of Tragedy, and everything I have
added in the meantime has grown alongside and inside it and become a part of it (Bf.
An F. Overbeck, 13.07.1885, KGB III/3, Bf. 612).
One day someone may be found who will discover that from Human, All Too Human
onwards I have simply acted on my promises. And it’s true that what I now call truth is
something terrible and repellent: and I need much art to gradually persuade people to
completely overturn their highest scales of values (Bf. an Unbekannt, probably August
1885, KGB III/3, Bf. 617).
Nietzsche is pursuing a task that weighs on him “with the weight of ten thousand
kilos” (“my formula for it is ‘transvaluation of all values’” [Bf. an R. von Seydlitz,
12.02.1888, KGB III/6, Bf. 496]): before tackling it, he must solve and take leave
of his previous works, which are both the summa and the launching pad of his
future philosophy. The letters of the early period justify this ambitious project.
From the planned new edition of his writings his editors had reluctantly agreed
to; to the conception of his most recent works as aimed at launching and explain-
ing his “daredevil son” Zarathustra; to On the Genealogy of Morals conceived as
the final stage of his “preliminary adventure”;16 and, last but not least, the busi-
ness of the “Prefaces” of 1886, seen as a genuine philosophical autobiography:
everything plays its part in closing a phase, in a desire for narrative (re)construc-
tion of his identity – otherwise regarded as impossible17 – through the succession
of his works, whose apotheosis was undoubtedly represented by Ecce Homo (sig-
nificantly: How To Become What You Are).
The printing of my book has reached the third and last part; the book will be called ‘On
the Genealogy of Morals. A polemical work’. With this all the essential indications have
now been supplied for taking provisional bearings on me: from the preface of the Birth
of Tragedy to the preface of the above book a sort of ‘history of evolution’ has been traced.
But nothing is more disgusting than having to comment on oneself; but as there is not
16 “With this writing (which contains three dissertations) my preliminary activity has
reached its end: at bottom, really just in time, as was written in the programme of my life,
despite the terrible obstacles and counterwinds: but everything works to the advantage of
the brave” (Bf. an F. Overbeck, 17.09.1887, KGB III/3, Bf. 913). But Nietzsche would later
regard Twilight of the Idols too as “a very bold and rigorous synthesis of [his] main
philosophical heterodoxies”, such as “to serve as initiation and to reawaken the appetite”
pending his greater work, the planned Transvaluation of all values (Bf. an H. Köselitz,
12.09.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1105).
17 There is a useful treatment of the subject of the possibility of knowing and constructing
oneself in the light of a new idea of subjectivity in C. Piazzesi (2007).
the least prospect of someone else being able to relieve me of this task I have gritted my
teeth, made the best of it and, I hope, not so ‘bad a job’ of it either (Bf. an M. von Salis,
14.09.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 908).18
Nietzsche projects himself beyond the present generation with a view to a

posthumous condition of life: the communication of his philosophy entrusted
to his works – and whose urgency is revealed in the correspondence – aims to
set up an insurmountable polemical distance from his contemporaries, but at
the same time leaves the door open for possible interaction, not so much with
a “public” (whose presence Nietzsche always declared to be inessential and
pernicious),19 as with those longed-for “disciples” able to understand its expe-
rience. It was an operation of genuine “education” in his philosophical prem-
ises (Nietzsche specifically refers to the need for “eine Menge erzieherischer
Prämissen zu geben” [Bf. an F. Overbeck, 12.10.1886, KGB III/3, Bf. 761]),
while remaining aware of how unlikely his architecture of thoughts was to
reach even the most cultivated spirits of his age. The few interlocutors Nietz-
sche recognised as adequate included Bruno Bauer, Taine, Strindberg and
Burckhardt: for the rest, physical solitude and intellectual isolation, which
were certainly exhausting, but were also the first, inevitable condition for fol-
lowing one’s fatum.20
18 “… I absolutely want to free myself of all this and be no longer disturbed by what belongs to
the past. I have wasted the whole year: well, salvavi animam, it was a matter of conscience, but
now I’ve had enough! – Now I need, for long long years, deep calm: as I must proceed to setting
out my whole philosophical system” (Bf. an E. W. Fritzsch, end of December 1886, KGB III/3, Bf.
784). “This winter is doing me good, like an intermezzo and a backward glance. It’s incredible!
In the last 15 years I have marked out a whole literary opus and then ‘polished’ it with prefaces
and additions, until I consider it as quite separate from me – and I can even laugh about it, as in
the end I laugh at any literary activity. All in all, I have spent the most miserable years of my life
on it” (Bf. an F. Overbeck, 23.02.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 804).
19 “Don’t misunderstand me: the last thing I want is ‘fame’, ‘newspaper chatter’ and ‘the
veneration of pupils’; I have seen all too well what it all means nowadays. In the middle of
all that I would feel still lonelier than now and perhaps my contempt for men would increase
terribly” (Entwurf an F. Nietzsche und E. (Förster-)Nietzsche, beginning of September 1885,
KGB III/3, Bf. 628).
20 Bf. an F. Overbeck, 14.04.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 831: “I’ve been here on the Lago maggiore
since 3 April […] Against my will, I confess that my dear old Sils-Maria should be shelved,
like Nice: in both these places I lack the fundamental requirement, solitude, deep,
undisturbed peace, living apart, extraneousness, and without these conditions I cannot sink
into my problems (as, between ourselves, I am a man of depth in the most terrible sense;
and without this subterranean work I can no longer stand life). […] The problems that hang
over me and which I no longer try to flee (I paid dearly for my deviations! like, e.g. my
philology), which literally give me no respite day and night – take their cruel revenge for any
wrong relation (with people, places, books). I whisper it to you, as how could I suppose that
the strange premises of my creation can be understood on their own?”.
I haven’t found myself with more friends: life has shown me more and more clearly how
fulfillingly my duty is tied to the terrible condition of solitude. It is hard to feel what I
feel. I almost always start from the premise of being grossly misunderstood even by those
I know, and am deeply grateful for any interpretative subtlety, even for the good will of
subtlety (Bf. an E. Rohde, 23.02.1886, KGB III/3, Bf. 673).
If only I could give you some idea of my sense of solitude! I have no one either among
the living or among the dead with whom I have any affinity. This gives me an indescriba-
ble sense of horror; and only practice in enduring this sensation and its gradual develop-
ment from early childhood enable me to understand why I have not yet sunk to the
bottom. For the rest, I can see clearly before me the task for which I live – as a factum of
indescribable sadness, yet transfigured by my awareness that there is something great
inside it, if ever there was something great in the task of a mortal man (Bf. an F. Overbeck,
05.08.1886, KGB III/3, Bf. 729).21
Behind this fatality was a kind of personal providence, which had nothing to
do with any god or divinity, but was rather a “practical and theoretical skill
in interpreting and arranging events” (GS 277/FW 277), in the light of which
each of us has to make something of himself. The wonderful harmony that
arises from the sounds of our instrument, “a harmony that sounds too good
for us to dare to give credit to ourselves” (GS 277/FW 277), is the meeting of
chance with the capacity to express to the full the uniqueness of one’s condi-
tion – as Nietzsche reveals to Paul Deussen on his birthday: “I have such a
high idea of your active, brave existence, that it makes little sense to express
particular wishes. Things will not exercise any sway over those who must
impress their will on things; in the end fortuitous events conform to our truest
needs. I have often marvelled at how little power even the cruellest destiny
has over a will. Or rather: I tell myself how much the will itself must be destiny
so as to be always able once again to get the upper hand against destiny, ὑπὲρ
μόρον – ” (Bf. an P. Deussen, 03.01.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 969).22
Necessity, ineluctability, extreme seriousness: these seem to be the key
words in Nietzsche’s journey towards a sort of exemplary Selbstbildung: but
21 Bf. an F. Overbeck, 03.02.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 984: “I am very busy too; and the outlines
of an unquestionably huge task before me are emerging more and more clearly from the
mist. Meanwhile there have been dark hours, there have been whole days and nights when I
no longer knew how to go on living and black despair seized me, such as I had never felt
before. Yet I know I cannot slip away, either by going back, or to right or left: I have
absolutely no choice. […] The prolonged absence for years of human affection that might
really bring relief and heal, the absurd isolation that makes any residue of a relation with
others only a source of humiliation: all this is the worst that can happen and has only one
raison d’être, that of being necessary”.
22 Homer’s expression refers to Aegisthus who, in seducing Clytemnestra, thrusts himself
hyper moron, “beyond fate” (Odyssey, I, vv. 34–35).
the very vastness of the task and the terrible nature of the “truth” discovered
(“the problems I raise are new, my psychological horizon is so dauntingly vast”
[Bf. an C. Fuchs, 14.12.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 963]) impose forms of defence and
comfort. And so seriousness spills over into gaiety, in the “supreme mischie-
vousness of one who suffers hard and continually makes fun of an ideal”.23
The ironic, airy, almost sarcastic tone, that “esprit gaillard” that Nietzsche took
over from his French models – Montaigne, La Bruyère, but also that “most
profound clown” Galiani – and that is accentuated in the letters of the final
period, may be a highly personal philosophical therapy in the face of every-
thing that obsesses and oppresses him,24 but it is also the counterbalance of
a new theoretical position, the “away from all suns” that had opened with the
death of God.
There is a misunderstanding in gaiety that cannot be eliminated; but those who take part
in it can be happy about it in the end for that very reason. We who take refuge in happi-
ness, we who need every kind of south and the indomitable plenitude of sun […] do we
not seem to possess a knowledge that makes us afraid? Which we do not want to be
alone with? A knowledge whose touch makes us tremble, at whose whisper we turn pale?
[…] Our gaiety – is it not a flight from some incurable certainty? […] we seem to be gay
because we are enormously sad. We are not serious, we know the abyss, and that is
why we protect ourselves from any seriousness […] Stay bravely by our side, mocking
lightheartedness; cool us, oh wind who have hurried across glaciers: we no longer want
to take anything to heart, we want to pray to the mask (NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[33])
Not only in the works, but also in the late letters, the theme of the mask
certainly plays a central role: concealment, “putting on a brave face”, is a
weapon Nietzsche openly used to keep the world and his acquaintances at
bay.25 But it was not only a question of skill in moulding and dissimulating:
this mask – which has no corresponding true face – is more a mimetic and
projective capacity, activating that “dionysiac theatricality” that is the key fea-
ture of Nietzsche’s late philosophy. This phenomenon of communicative pleni-
tude26 is also translated into the search for a new style, suited to the new
23 NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[164].

24 See V. Vivarelli (2002). For Gallo (2007), p. 62, cynicism coincides with “the pragmatic
self-referential quality of irony and a non-cognitive distancing from one’s theoretical assump-
tions”.
25 See, for example, NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[12], but also the tough letter to his mother of
10 October 1887: “if my first work The Birth of Tragedy had met with any understanding, it
should have struck people with fear, and made them cross themselves. But then I was living
hidden under a beautiful veil and honoured by those horned beasts, the Germans, as if I
were one of them. But no longer. I shall certainly be ‘discovered’ in France a few years
before I am in my own country” (Bf. An F. Nietzsche, 10.10.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 924).
26 See G. Campioni (2008), p. 24.
theoretical horizon. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (“For what still remains for me to
say comme poète-prophete, I must use a different form from that used till now”
[Bf. An H. Köselitz, 14.03.1885, KGB III/3, Bf. 580]), On the Genealogy of Mor-
als (“a new linguistic gesture for arguments that are new from any point of
view”)27 or, more clearly, that mèlange of styles that would be Twilight of the
Idols and Ecce Homo, may correspond to the attempt to give voice to a philoso-
phy that is no longer firmly anchored to the “truth” and can only bear witness
to a recognised pluralism of perspectives.28
My writings are difficult because rarer and more unusual states of mine prevail over
normal ones. I am not boasting about this, but that is how it is. I search for signs of
similar emotional situations that are not yet understood and often hardly understandable;
my inventive capacity seems to me to be revealed in this. […] Is it not perhaps true that
a work’s intention must always create first of all the law of its style? I require that when
this intention changes, the whole stylistic procedure must change too (Bf. an J. V. Wid-
mann, 04.02 1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 985, my italics).
Even with the provision, that it is not for us to change our expressive means
and that “the demand for an adequate expressive form is nonsensical” (NL
1888, KSA 13, 14[122] = WLN, 258), Nietzsche was certainly seeking precisely
that form. And if “the communication of his inner Erlebnisse, which are inter-
subjectively accessible only through language, is problematic on account of
the fact that their intimate nature remains extra-linguistic”,29 it is no accident
that Nietzsche struggled to communicate in a normal manner this “still not
understood, and often hardly understandable, emotional situation”, which
probably coincides with the concrete, embodied advent of vital plenitude of
27 Bf. an C. Spitteler, 10.02.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 988. In this important letter Nietzsche
replies to the critic’s judgments on his works, which is “rash” or wrong from a formal point
of view, insisting that the stylistic question is not the essential one: “He does not expound
or see anything but aesthetic questions: not a word about my problems – or about me”. See
too the letter to J. V. Widmann of 4 February 1888: “For his own good reasons, he touches
on almost nothing but the formal aspect: he simply leaves aside the real story that is
behind the thought, the passion, the catastrophe, the movement towards an end, towards a
fatality: – I cannot praise enough this attitude, which conceals a genuine delicacy” (Bf. an
J. V. Widmann, 04.02.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 985).
28 According to the now classic reading of A. Nehamas (1985) this generates two sets of
paradoxes, the first made up of the content of the writings, including the theory of perspec-
tivism; the second, from the corpus of the writings, which, as the projection of a perspective
themselves, call into question the possibility of interpreting Nietzsche’s ideas. Nehamas
and, in a different way, Derrida (1978) suggest that style was Nietzsche’s response to the
systematic negation of the self, which was replaced by a constant process of literary produc-
tivity.
29 M. Brusotti (1997), p. 14.
the Dionysiac and, along with it, full recognition of the inaccessibility of the
“true”:
Dionysiac. What wretched timidity, to speak as a scholar of something I might have spo-
ken of as ‘experienced’ [erlebt]. And what does the ‘aesthetic’ matter to someone who
must make poetry! (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[17]).
If words are only signs exposed to misunderstanding, yet those familiar with
Nietzsche’s thought know that they are signs that reveal a status, a configura-
tion of forces in play: each page of his philosophy might be read (as Jean Pierre
Faye suggests)30 as the narrative of a range of drives, we might say a sort of
non-argumentative self-validation of the configuration of drives (in Nietzschean
language: of the will to power) that gave life to his philosophy.31 It is no
surprise, then, that Nietzsche “now dramatizes himself, taking to an extreme
the art of gesture, making his very writing a ‘gesture’, and often defining him-
self as the jester of eternity and of destiny”.32
Dear and worthy friend, you chose an excellent moment to write me such a letter. For
now, almost without wanting to, but obeying an inexorable necessity, I am settling my
accounts with people and things and putting ad acta all my ‘so far’. Almost everything I
do right now consists in drawing a line under it. For all the last few years the vehemence
of my inner waverings has been terrifying; now I have to make a transition to a new and
higher form, I need above all a new estrangement, a still greater depersonalization. What
is essential in this process is who and what still remains for me (Bf. an C. Fuchs,
14.12.1887, KGB III/5, Bf. 963).33
Unlike the play-actor of decadence, characterised by the disintegration and

exhaustion of his vital force, Dionysian theatricality is the sign of a “bursting
of energies that is expressed in games of forms and rhythms, in the joy of
destruction and recomposition”,34 which not even the supposed freedom of
space of traditional artistic creation can contain. As we have said, one might
30 J. P. Faye (1998). Faye also refers to a “communicational irony of a technique, with the
aim of letting the different perspectives foster knowledge”. Klossowski too speaks of a
conspiracy of the impulses that inhabit the body against the principle of identity (i.e. the
conscience), culminating in delirium as a value, in which the principle of personal identity is
abolished. Cf. Klossowski (1969).
31 Unless we want to ignore Frédéric Cossutta’s warning that “In effect, we should always
be able to relate the form and process of reasoning to the philosophical theories they are
part of and that determine them”. See Cossutta (1989).
32 G. Campioni (2008), p. 23.
33 But with the caution of which Nietzsche speaks in BGE 207/JGB 207. See too NL 1885–
86, KSA 12, 1[202].
34 G. Campioni (2008), p. 23.
try to read in this sense too the stylistic experimentation in late Nietzsche, in
particular the experience of the polymorphic Twilight of the Idols: a bold, high-
spirited misdeed that presents in rigorous and elegant form (“perhaps even
more ingenious”) all his philosophical heterodoxy “hidden behind much grace
and spite”.35 Gradually, in the letters of the late period, narrative figures, theat-
rical characters and perspective views take on life in what Faye again describes
as “the theatre of shadows staged by his thought”.36 Nietzsche was not afraid
to assume “all the names of history”, leaving off now any mask that had held
him back till then on the boundary of the principium individuationis. As Campi-
oni observes, it is a jubilant dissolution that carries with it the tragic mimesis
of plenitude,37 until the last, famous letter signed with his name, which
alarmed the sedate Jakob Burckhardt:
Dear Professor, in the end I would much rather have been a professor in Basle than God;
but I did not dare drive my private egoism to the point of failing to create the world on
his account… (Bf. an J. Burckhardt, 06.01.1889, KGB III/5, Bf. 1256).
35 See letters to C. Fuchs 9 September (Bf. an C. Fuchs, 09.09.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1104), to
H. Köselitz, 12 September (Bf. an H. Köselitz, 12.09.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1105) and to F.
Overbeck, 14 September 1888 (Bf. an F. Overbeck, 14.09.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 11 15) and
passim. See also a letter to F. Avenarius, 10 December 1888: “This year, when I am weighed
down by a huge task, the Transvaluation of all values, and I must literally carry the destiny
of men on my shoulders, one of the ways I demonstrate my strength is by being a jester,
satyr or, if you prefer, ‘essayist’ – succeed in being it, as I was in the Case of Wagner. The
fact that the deepest spirit must necessarily also be the most frivolous, is almost the
formula of my philosophy…” (Bf. an F. Avenarius, 10.12.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1183). F. Gallo
(2004), pp. 29–30: “So it will be an essentially dissembling, ironic language, functional to a
larvatus prodeo, that will find no moment of full lyric integration in the real in dithyrambic
effusions, precisely because, from the start, he theorizes that dithyrambic ecstasy as
incommunicable and exceptional; and at the same time it will be a festive language, to the
extent that its power will be multiplied by contact with the deep emotional forces that are
the origin and point of return of true knowledge […] the feast of language is no more and no
less than the indefinite wealth of its versatility, its capacity to be practised ad libitum. This
radical fable thus has the sense of replacing the traditional language of the inner life and
self-knowledge”.
36 J. P. Faye (1998), p. 74: “Portrait of Nietzsche as Antichrist, as Free Spirit, as Immoralist,
as Dionysian philosopher… One thinks of Rembrandt’s self-portraits where he wears a
plumed hat or a strange beret […] Or again, of Artaud’s pencil-sketched self-portraits. The
self-portraits of Friedrich Nietzsche are at once the stories he tells his friends; and also
objects for reflection in the next centuries – which ‘cut history in two’”.
37 G. Campioni (2008), pp. 30–31. For J. Dugnoille (2005), p. 74, assuming different names
is the result of a deflagration of identity and a desire for a perpetual beyond oneself, making
Nietzsche, “perhaps excessively anonymous”, “literally no longer anyone”.
And so the letters illuminate a theoretical, critical and autobiographical jour-

ney, the outcome of which is certainly not the planned and abandoned Wille
zur Macht, but the works of 1888, and, in particular, Ecce Homo. To judge by
the letters, the initial aim of Ecce Homo was to provide clarity, to clear the
ground of misunderstandings prior to (again) the Transvaluation,38 but in
Nietzsche’s imagination – which had also expanded as a result of the unaccus-
tomed and unexpected approval he received in this last period – it was at once
transformed into a cynical presentation to the world (“with a cynicism that
will go down in history” [Bf. an G. Brandes, 20.11.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1134]),
for which, true to his loved models, he chose the cheerful and fatal form of
the pamphlet.39
Ecce Homo and the final letters have extraordinary parallels: Nietzsche
arrogantly expounds private events to the world, transforming them into para-
digmatic moments of his life. From his dual nature, “décadent and beginning
at the same time”, from which he rescues the essential value of sickness for
his formation (sickness gave him an eye and an ear for health and for the
nuances in knowledge),40 to his first admirers – the names of Taine, Bourget,
Brandes and Strindberg pass from the intimacy of the letters to the full light
of the printed page, magnified and in some ways misrepresented in their
38 “On my birthday I have again begun something that seems to work and is progressing
well. It is called Ecce Homo. Or How to become what we are. It is a daring account of myself
and my writings: with it I have not only wanted to present myself before the terrible, solitary
act of the Transvaluation […] However, I speak of myself with all possible psychological
‘guile’ and serenity – I have absolutely no desire to present myself to men as a prophet, a
monster, and a moral scarecrow. The book might be useful in this sense too: it might
prevent me being confused with my opposite” (Bf. An H. Köselitz, 30.10.1888, KGB III/5, Bf.
1137, see EH Prologue 2/EH Vorrede 2). The work, “of the first importance, presents psycho-
logical and even biographical views of myself and my writings: it manages to capture me
completely in one go” (to F. Overbeck, 13 November 1888). “The last chapter has the
disturbing title: “Why I am a destiny”. And that this is true is shown so powerfully, that in
the end people remain immobile before me like ‘larvas’ and an ‘excited soul’…” (Bf. an H.
Köselitz, 13.11.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1142).
39 In this case too I turn to F. Gallo (2007), p. 60, who sees in the pamphlet “the only
‘serious’ form possible for writing about oneself” and in particular, in Ecce Homo, a “writing
that can only display polemically the author’s monumental identity, consigned to the
stylistic perfection of his works and the radical coherence of an ethic, a metaphysic, and a
politics that were unprecedented, but cannot be the narrative reconstruction of how his
personal identity was determined”.
40 G. Campioni, (2008), p. 21: “Physiology is the premise of writing: being ‘as summa
summarum’ healthy made Zarathustra possible”. See NL 1888, KSA 13, 22[28], thinking of
Ecce Homo: “To make use of my sickness: a relief from great tension…”.
approval41 – and his detractors, who become paradigmatic of how difficult the
originality of Nietzsche’s philosophical writing was.42 He discloses and at the
same time symbolically transfigures events and places (particularly his beloved
Turin, whose autumn seemed to him “an endlessly prolonged Claude Lorrain”
[EH TI 3/EH GD 3]),43 down to minor occurrences of daily life; while an “inci-
sive image” in a review in Berne characterizing Beyond Good and Evil becomes
for Nietzsche his most famous and sharp self-celebrating phrase: “I’m not a
man, I’m dynamite”.44
The unusual productive energy of this last period was rewarded with new
interlocutors appearing on the scene – in particular Georg Brandes and August
Strindberg.45 The prospect of acting concretely on human destiny through the
41 EH books 2/EH Bücher 2: “… I have readers everywhere – all sought-after minds, proven
characters, educated to high positions and high duties; I even have some real geniuses
among my readers. In Vienna, In St Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenaghen, in Paris and
in New York”. These references are decipherable from the letters.
42 See in particular the chapter EH books 1/EH Bücher 1, in which Nietzsche sets down the
misunderstandings about him by Spitteler and Widmann. See also TI Skirmishes 37/GD
Streifzüge 37. Or, in the section of EH TI 2/EH GD 2, Nietzsche repeats the enthusiastic
remarks Köselitz had used in the letter of 25 October 1888 (cf. Bf. von H. Köselitz,
25.10.1888, KGB III/6, Bf. 594).
43 This judgment emerges various times in the letters.
44 J. V. Widmann, in the review “Bund” of 16–17 September 1886, had compared Nietzsche’s
dangerous book to the dynamite then being used to dig the St Gothard tunnel. Nietzsche,
delighted with this comparison, repeating it at least a dozen times in the letters, first (from
20 September to 3 November) as information, then more and more enthusiastically, as self-
praise: “Nothing that exists will remain standing, I am more dynamite than man”;
“everything has been blown up – I am the most terrifying dynamite in the whole world” (Bf.
an P. Deussen, 26.11.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1159 and Bf. an G. Brandes, beginning of December
1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 1170). See EH Destiny 1/EH Schicksal 1.
45 See the letter from G. Brandes of 26 November 1887 (Bf. von G. Brandes, 26.11.1887,
KGB III/6, Bf. 500): “A new and original spirit breathes on me from your writings. I don’t yet
fully understand what I have read; I can’t always understand what you’re getting at. But
many things coincide with my own thoughts and sympathies, the contempt for ascetic ideals
and the profound aversion for democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. […] You
are one of the few people I would like to meet”. In his reply (Bf. an G. Brandes, 02.12.1887,
KGB III/5, Bf. 960) Nietzsche comments: “The expression ‘aristocratic radicalism’, which you
use, is very apt. If I may say so, they are the most intelligent words that I have read about
me so far”. It was Brandes who acted as go-between with “the Swedish genius”: “The crazy
Swede is called August Strindberg […] He thinks you’re wonderful, above all because he
thinks he has found in you the same hatred for women that he has. And so, in his view, you
are ‘modern’ (ironically). When he read about my spring lessons [on Nietzsche] in the
newspapers, he said: this Nietzsche is astonishing, it’s as if I had written many of his things
myself” (Bf. von G. Brandes, 16.11.1888, KGB III/6, Bf. 606). Nietzsche exchanged both
letters and books with Strindberg.
publication of the Transvaluation (which Nietzsche regarded as achieved with

The Antichrist) and above all crossing the border of that Germany that had
often shown itself unfit to understand his affirmative and anti-idealistic phi-
losophy, drove Nietzsche, in an excess of trust, to imagine possible translators
in Giosué Carducci, Ruggiero Bonghi, Jean Bourdeau (arbitrarily elected to emi-
nence in French culture), in “his poet” August Strindberg (“my next works will
not sell in thousands, but in tens of thousands, and … will appear at the same
time in French, English and German”: to A. Heusler, 30 December 1888). The
madness is incipient and the last, short messages of January 1889 are disturb-
ing and painful. But in Nietzsche’s hostility towards the Reich and the reigning
family, in his (never denied) aloofness from German obtuseness and the sup-
porters of anti-Semitism, even in the obsessive presence of Dionysus, who,
together with “The Crucified”, signs the last so-called “mad notes”, one can
intuit thematic continuity with the arguments of the man who, effectively and
with far-seeing lucidity, set out to become “a capital event in the crisis of value
judgments” (Bf. an G. Brandes, 19.02.1888, KGB III/5, Bf. 997).46
We are unlikely to be able to use traditional hermeneutic and speculative
means to tackle the phase that starts with the drafting of Ecce Homo and ends
in madness, and whose roots lay in his daily life and thinking. Nietzsche is
here trying something that is perhaps already beyond the scope of representa-
tive thought: as Roberto Calasso puts it, he seems to have wanted to show
visibly the transition “from radical speculation that still respected formal con-
ventions, to an unprecedented practice, which will always remain his most
mysterious point”.47 The analysis of the path of knowledge advanced so far as
to leave intact only the universe of signs: the world wants to be spoken in
46 According to Piazzesi (2007), passim, the transvaluation of values was not a simple
theoretical modification, aimed at replacing old values with new, but was, “so to speak, an
ethical work, as it is achieved through the transformation of experience of oneself, and so
through a new psychology – which, in Nietzsche’s anti-dualist perspective, means a new
physiology”. Not so much abstraction and intellectual projection as reality, “it is not a
potential theoretical state that becomes real by virtue of an effort of will to make it real.
Possibility is already the direction of a becoming, that is to say, the real (and conditioned)
fertility of the “Stück fatum” that each person is”. On the level of self-perception, we need
to work at encouraging, so to speak, our own fatality, while “personality is not only a fact, it
is a destination that could easily remain unexplored, ignored, misunderstood, without the
ethical work of genuinely taking responsibility for what this means”. These indications,
which are closely linked to the theory of the will to power (“The theory of the will to power
is not, on this view, a pure, representative theory: it is the performative help that sustains
the birth of a new experience of oneself”) seem valuable for the reading I am suggesting of
the letters of this period.
47 R. Calasso (1983), p. 170.
another tongue. Nietzsche abandoned philosophy – and the conscious world,

the theatre of falsification – with a brusque gesture: “Now, he is a sea of power,
where each epistemological gesture, the gesture of a fictitious subject, becomes
a wild wave in the midst of the immensity of the others”.48
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Contributors
Tom Bailey, John Cabot University (Italy)
Andrea Christian Bertino, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität in Greifswald (Germany)
Maria João Mayer Branco, Universidade Nova de Lisboa/ FCSH/ IFL (Portugal)
João Constâncio, Universidade Nova de Lisboa/ FCSH/ IFL (Portugal)
Céline Denat, Université de Reims (France)
Maria Cristina Fornari, Università del Salento (Italy)
Luis Enrique Santiago Guervós, Universidad de Málaga (Spain)
Luca Lupo, Università della Calabria (Italy)
Chiara Piazzesi, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität in Greifswald (Germany)
Bartholomew Ryan, Universidade Nova de Lisboa/ FCSH/ IFL (Portugal)
Jaanus Sooväli, University of Tartu (Estonia)
Luís Sousa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa/ IFL (Portugal)
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Name Index
Arendt, H. 217 Homer 93, 257, 288
Agrippa von Nettesheim 261 Humboldt, A. von 6, 91–105, 240
Andreas-Salomé, Lou 253, 270, 283 Hume, D. 55, 135
Apel, K.-O. 70 Husserl, E. 7, 161–177
Aristotle 17, 20, 28, 30, 33, 34, 172
Jaspers, K. 79
Balzac, H. de 77 Jean Paul 32
Barthes, R. 250, 251 Joyce, J. 257, 261, 275, 277
Baudelaire, C. 77, 275
Berkeley, G. 259 Kant, I. 2, 6, 18, 19, 40–41, 44, 45, 56,
Boscovich, R. 77 57, 58, 66, 78, 107–127, 193, 201,
Bourdieu, P. 144, 148, 281 202, 205, 208, 209, 215, 217–219,
Bourget, P. 293 224, 259, 265–267, 273
Brandes, G. 293, 294, 295 Kierkegaard, S. 265
Burckhardt, J. 287, 292 Kleist, H. von 261, 262
Byron 275
La Bruyère, J. de 289
Carver, R. 129 Lange, F. A. 77
Leibniz, G. W. 16, 92, 110, 201, 202
Dante 257, 259, 260, 270 Levinas, E. 6, 91, 101–105
Darwin, C. 77 Lichtenberg, G. C. 265
Deleuze, G. 281 Locke, J. 16, 93
Derrida, J. 7, 39, 71, 85, 161–177, 290 Lukács, G. 266, 267
Descartes, R. 133, 203, 212, 213 Luhmann, N. 145
Dühring, E. 117, 120
MacIntyre, A. 125
Elias, N. 143, 148, 149 Marx, K. 267
Emerson, R. W. 258 Melville, H. 257, 280
Molière 193
Fichte, J. G. 267 Montaigne, M. 289
Foucault, M. 144–145, 146, 147, 148, 150,
152 Parmenides 2, 237, 246,
Plato 2, 16, 17, 51, 60, 224, 246–249,
Gadamer, H.-G. 70 260, 263, 267
Galiani, F. 289 Rawls, J. 126
Gerber, G. 32, 71–72, 73–74, 77, 99, 185 Rembrandt 292
Goethe, J. W. 257, 268, Ricoeur, P. 34, 73
Rilke, R. M. 257
Haeckel, E. von 77 Rorty, R. 84
Hartmann, E. von 66, 67 Rousseau, J. J. 67, 110
Hegel, G. W. F. 267 Roux, W. 77, 83
Heidegger, M. 70, 76, 80, 85, 86, 198,
257, 261, 265, 266, 267 Sandel, M. 125
Heraclitus 263 Schelling, F. W. J. 67–68, 267
Herder, J.G. 98, 99 Schopenhauer, A. 2, 5, 40–61, 67, 71, 77,
Hölderlin 257 146, 169, 174, 177, 198, 199, 201–
308 Name Index
202, 205, 207, 209, 214, 215, 217, Thucydides 25–26

224, 226, 258, 259, 261, 266, 267, Trakl, G. 257, 274
268
Searle, J.R. 184 Virchow, R. C. 77
Spinoza, B. 2, 134, 247
Stendhal 77, 148 Wagner, R. 77, 78
Strindberg, A. 287, 293, 294, 295 Wittgenstein, L. 135, 139, 165, 208
Taine, H. A. 287, 293 Zöllner, C. F. 72

Taylor, C. 125
Subject Index
Actio in distans (see also Pathos of Chaos of sensations (see also Hubbub of the
distance) 9, 249–252 stimuli) 59, 224–226
The ‘aesthetic’ 5, 51, 52, 54, 63–69, 72, Christianity 146, 150, 151, 260, 273
73, 76, 78–82, 85, 264–265. 290, 291 Civilization 21, 63, 136, 139, 144, 145,
Aesthetics 65, 73, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 85 146, 149, 150, 152, 154
Adequacy (see also Correspondence) 5, 14, Communication 6, 7, 8, 43, 65, 68, 72, 91,
18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 31, 35, 48–49, 54, 92, 95–104, 131, 139, 140, 141, 143,
58–60, 68, 201, 202, 216, 228, 234, 145, 149, 153, 162–167, 170–174,
235, 242, 290 198–229, 235, 237, 241, 242, 252,
Affects / affections 4, 5, 7, 23, 28, 32, 41, 268, 283
42, 64, 83, 129, 131–137, 141, 144, Community 6, 8, 104–126, 140, 172, 215,
148, 151–156, 168–169, 197, 204– 221, 226, 227
205, 214, 216, 220–229, 243–245, Conceptual language (see also Concepts and
252. 284, 287 Conceptualisation) 15, 22, 24, 36, 51,
Affirmation of Life 3–4, 71, 263 65, 68, 71–76, 82, 85, 100
Analogy 27, 72, 189
Concepts (see also Conceptualisation) 1, 2,
Anthropomorphisms 47, 53, 58, 89, 266
3, 8, 17, 23, 24, 36, 42, 43, 44, 52,
Appearance (Schein) 3, 8–9, 19, 24, 25,
53, 55, 56, 58, 64, 67, 69, 70–76, 84,
36, 70, 240, 241, 245, 248–249, 251
85, 92, 99–100, 130–131, 138, 139,
Apollo / Apollonian 73, 79
140, 142, 143, 144, 173, 185–186,
Art / Artists 16, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27, 33, 47,
190, 197–229, 238, 240, 244, 247,
56–57, 63–82, 84, 188, 149, 185, 188,
248
211, 217, 219, 220, 225, 226, 249,
Conceptualisation / formation of concepts 2,
273, 291
8, 41, 42, 67–68, 75, 79, 84, 85, 52,
Artistic / creative drive (see also Art / Artists,
53, 56, 58, 64, 70–76, 92, 185, 190,
Artistic Force, and Drives) 67, 188
197–229,
Artistic / creative force (see also Drives,
Conscience 8, 95, 120, 121, 124, 136,
Force, and Creation) 69, 75, 80, 220
243–244, 247, 251, 287, 291
Atomism 212, 240, 241
Auto-affection 102, 168–169, 245 Consciousness 4, 7–9, 43, 51, 55, 64, 66–
autobiography 9, 189, 191, 283–296 68, 72, 74, 91–105, 109, 117, 150,
Autonomy 6, 97, 101–104, 108–109, 119, 161–162, 164, 169, 170–176, 179–
150, 151 195, 197–229, 243, 259
Continuum 213, 214
Bewusstheit 93, 94, 161, 170, 172, 194, Connectivism 207
210, 213 Correspondence (see also Adequacy) 5, 21,
Bilderrede 5, 14, 32, 83 41, 49, 51–52, 57, 58–60, 69, 75, 83,
Body 5–6, 15, 21, 27, 31, 41, 42, 51, 56, 234, 242, 289
63–86, 92, 96, 101, 164, 169, 194, Cosmos 9, 257, 260, 261, 267, 268, 279
205, 209, 212, 222, 229, 267, 291 Creation / creativity 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 14, 20,
21, 22, 25–26, 27–28, 50, 53, 54, 56,
Causality 1, 40, 42, 44, 45, 49, 51, 52, 53, 57, 59, 60, 63–84, 101, 111, 117–119,
73, 85, 109, 186, 218, 220, 221–223, 130, 138, 140, 141, 149, 154–156,
240 182, 187–189, 212, 215, 217, 222,
Chaos 9, 26, 188, 257–280 224, 229, 235, 257, 259, 260, 261,
310 Subject Index
262, 263, 265, 267, 268, 284, 287, Erdichten 8, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 187,
291 217, 220, 221
Critique (of language, morality, and Erleben 8, 179, 180, 181, 182, 190, 191,
metaphysics) 2–4, 5, 7, 8–9, 17, 22– 219, 221, 283, 290, 291
23, 24, 39, 46, 47, 48, 63, 65, 66, 68, Error 15, 93, 109, 233, 235, 244, 245,
70, 71, 73, 85, 129–130, 132–141, 249, 271
144, 152, 154, 155, 179, 192–195, Essence 3, 19, 20, 49, 58, 69, 71, 86, 125,
215, 227–228, 239, 258, 266, 267, 164, 171, 180, 240, 242, 248, 249,
269, 279, 281, 293 250
Culture 21, 22, 28, 78, 101, 117, 119, 130, Evaluations / valuations / revaluations 2, 3,
132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 142, 144, 7, 47, 81, 94, 119, 131, 134, 135,
153, 155, 181, 261 137, 139, 141, 143, 144, 147, 153,
155, 181, 183, 184, 188, 223, 227,
Dance 68, 151, 262, 263, 276, 278 283, 284
Death of the Subject or I 162, 176 Evolution (see also Development) 93, 134,
Décadence / decadence 63, 78, 80–81, 145, 148, 151, 154, 185, 191, 198,
283, 285, 291 199, 202, 210, 211, 286
Deconstruction 2, 3, 9, 71, 78, 85, 96, 97, Expression (see also Self-expression and
153, 154, 162, 165, 228, 258, 265 Performance) 7–8, 18, 23, 24, 31, 38,
Development (see also Evolution) 1, 2, 3, 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 63, 68,
21–22, 48, 66, 91–99, 101, 103, 104,
70, 69, 73, 77, 78, 82, 83, 91, 92,
154, 171, 172, 191, 200, 203, 206,
100, 103, 108, 120, 129, 148, 156,
211, 225, 235, 236, 237, 238, 284
161–171, 175–176, 178, 183, 184,
Dissimulation 48, 56, 241, 289
192, 203, 210, 211, 225–229, 235,
Dionysus / Dionysian 79, 81, 85, 137, 194,
240, 248, 281, 282, 288, 290
267, 284, 289, 291, 292, 295
Dogmatism 8, 14, 22, 58–59, 192–195,
Falsification 59, 136, 206, 212, 216, 224,
250
229, 235, 236, 296
Drives (Triebe) 5, 7, 8, 28, 32, 46–48, 50,
Fictions 5, 7, 69, 71, 75, 81, 83, 144, 167,
56, 64–80, 82–83, 92, 96, 109, 138,
175, 212–213, 219, 224, 296
139, 140, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151,
Folk psychology (see also Psychology) 7,
163, 179–195, 197, 198, 214, 216,
131–132, 141–144, 152–155
220–229, 240, 248, 291
Drive for causality see Ursachentrieb Force (Kraft), inventive / poetic / artistic /
Drive for illusion 46–47, 69, 220 rhetoric force 5, 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 20,
Drive for truth (see also Will to truth) 46– 21, 28, 31, 63, 66, 69, 75, 80, 182,
48, 50 187, 188, 189, 220, 237, 262, 292
Drive to form metaphors 47, 56, 73, 75, Forgetfulness 35, 48, 53, 55, 56, 68, 70,
186, 220, 237 71, 75, 94, 234, 236, 237, 241
Freedom 6, 15, 21, 25, 26, 91, 113, 114,
Egoism / altruism 101, 111, 138, 139, 148, 117, 123, 141, 233, 238, 239, 244,
169, 269, 292 246
Emotions (see also Affects) 6, 7, 20, 129–
156, 290, 292 Genealogy (see also Self-genealogy) 3, 7,
Equals / equality 4, 6, 111–112, 116–120, 35, 47, 50, 70, 84, 116, 117, 120,
121, 125, 210, 244, 251 121, 122, 123, 132, 138, 139, 141,
Empfindung 19, 74, 155, 200, 205, 206, 144–146, 148, 151, 152, 227, 228,
210, 221, 223 286, 290
Subject Index 311
Genius of the species 92, 169–170, 226– Intoxication (Rausch) 79–82, 247, 248
227 Intuition 42, 43, 44, 49, 52, 53, 54, 57,
God 1, 2, 4, 21, 65, 259, 260, 263, 269, 58, 67, 75, 125–126, 161, 185, 201,
277, 279–280, 288, 289, 292 217–218, 223
Grammar 2, 3, 6, 15, 23, 30, 49, 65, 78, Irony 76, 77, 84, 264, 267, 268, 289, 292,
84, 91, 92, 93, 203, 208, 225, 239 294
Habit 8, 55–56, 236–237, 238–239, 241, Judgement(s) (see also Instinctive

242, 245 judgements) 1, 8, 16, 18, 23, 43, 50,
Herd / Herd-perspective / Herd-instinct 66, 64, 80, 81, 82, 93, 109, 133, 134,
96, 100, 104, 172, 221, 226, 227, 229 140, 150, 154, 155, 189–192, 193,
Honesty (see also Probity and 295
Redlichkeit) 8, 14, 24, 243, 245, 247,
262 Knowledge (see also Lover of knowledge) 1,
Hubbub of the stimuli 188 4, 5, 17, 19, 22, 27, 30–31, 36, 39–
60, 69, 70, 75, 77, 79, 93, 99, 100,
I (of consciousness) (see also Self) 6, 7, 130–131, 137, 141, 142, 145–151,
91–104, 161–176, 179–180, 205–209, 155, 162–163, 171, 179, 181, 194,
211–214, 229, 241 210, 214, 219, 228, 229, 236, 243,
Idealism 5, 39–61, 81, 101 245, 259, 260, 266, 268, 271, 289,
Idealisation 138, 140, 146, 148, 150, 195, 291, 292, 293, 295
223, 224, 295
Illusion 1, 14, 34, 35, 36, 46, 47, 48, 55–
Limits of Language 4–5, 11ff.
56, 57, 60, 69, 72, 84, 85, 94, 104,
Love of knowledge 4
144, 146, 180, 185, 187, 224, 233,
Logic 53, 64
236, 245, 261, 276
Love 4, 9, 80, 112, 129, 131, 132–153,
Image (Bild) 13–14, 17, 18–20, 24, 30, 31,
221, 239, 245, 246, 248–252, 259,
32, 36, 51, 52, 55, 71, 74, 75, 83,
270, 273, 274, 275
183, 205, 216–217
Love as passion 133, 136, 144–151
Incorporation / Assimilation 26, 27, 91, 53,
94, 96, 100, 103, 144, 145, 188, 190,
Mask 3, 8, 9, 212, 233, 239, 241–245,
191, 229
Individual / Individuality 2, 6, 43, 52, 58, 249–252, 289, 292
75, 82, 95–97, 98, 100–101, 104, 107, Memory 43, 132, 190, 192
116, 117, 119–120, 125, 126, 139, Metaphysics 2, 3, 4, 6, 17, 39, 45, 46, 57,
141–148, 150, 153, 154, 171–176, 65, 68, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 79, 82, 83,
180, 182, 188–189, 191, 207, 212, 84, 86, 96, 97, 117, 138, 147, 155,
215, 223, 225–229, 234–236, 239– 164, 165, 194–195, 204, 212, 213,
248, 283, 292 215, 225, 227, 228, 259, 266, 273,
Intentionality 8, 50, 163, 168, 204–211 293
Instinct(s) 4, 6, 8, 63, 64–66, 68, 73, 76, Metaphor 4, 5, 6, 9, 13–37, 39, 48–53, 55,
77, 78, 80, 93, 95, 96, 100, 111, 121, 56, 58, 59, 64, 67, 69, 71–77, 83–85,
124, 140, 151, 179, 189–192, 197, 184–187, 198, 219, 220, 237, 261,
214, 216, 220, 221, 226, 227, 228, 262, 277
229, 237, 238, 269, 284 Modernity 6, 26, 28, 29–30, 64, 92–93,
Instinctive judgements 8, 189–192 120, 124, 243, 244, 248, 259, 265,
Interpretation 19, 23, 24, 32, 36, 64, 69, 294
70, 79, 80, 182, 184, 186, 189, 200, Morality 4, 6, 7, 21, 68, 77, 91–104, 107–
206, 219, 226, 227, 281 127, 129–156, 179, 180, 181, 184,
312 Subject Index
194, 233, 234, 236, 246, 263–267, Probity (See Honesty and Redlichkeit) 5,
269, 284, 292, 293 14, 15, 25
Music 68 Psychology 3, 7, 27, 129–156, 179, 227,
267, 295
Natural selection 54, 202, 210
Need / Needs (see also Need to Reason 42–43, 44, 53–54, 85, 180, 182–
communicate) 9, 23, 27, 44, 54, 66, 184, 186, 187, 200, 201, 203–204,
69, 81, 91, 92, 95, 96, 101, 103, 108, 219, 220
110, 111, 112, 122, 156, 170–172, Redlichkeit (see Honesty and Probity) 8,
174, 180–181, 199, 204, 206, 210, 243–247
211, 223, 225–229, 235, 237, 281, Rhetoric 5, 13–33, 51, 70, 71, 74
283–289, 291, 295
Need to communicate (see also Needs / Scepticism 5, 46, 47, 69, 84, 130, 155,
Need) 92, 170–172, 174, 210, 211, 181, 192, 267
235 Schema / Schemata / Schematism 190, 197,
Nets of language (see also Spider / 203, 216–223, 227
cobwebs) 2–10, 14, 22, 55, 63, 82, Self (see also I) 96, 99, 101–104, 171,
179, 187, 236, 238, 240, 242, 247 173, 174, 229
New Language 3, 5, 8, 13–27, 36, 76–78, Self-affirmation 108, 109, 117, 119, 120,
198, 204, 228–229, 233, 249, 252, 140, 150
258 Self-consciousness 94, 98, 100, 150, 197–
Nihilism 65, 75, 78, 80, 141, 147, 229, 200, 204–209, 211–214, 229, 244
262, 268 Self-creation 117, 119
Self-expression 4, 7–9, 197, 225–229,
Organism 8, 32, 41, 56, 66–67, 76, 77, 79, 235, 248, 281–296
81, 82, 83, 93, 96, 182, 187–192, Self-genealogy 227
198, 200, 202, 204, 207, 213, 217, Self-inquiry 146
219, 221 Self-knowledge 146, 149, 171, 173, 227,
Origin of Language 3, 33, 43, 48, 52–53, 242, 292
63, 66, 67, 68, 77, 98, 107, 172, 184, Self-government 145, 148–152, 156
187, 240, 292 Self-reflection / self-reflivity 8, 93, 94–98,
173, 197, 198, 210, 214
Pathos of distance 243, 244, 245 Sensation 1, 19, 41, 42–44, 49–54, 59,
Performance 9, 27, 33, 34, 35, 98, 131, 74, 139, 194, 197, 200–205, 210,
135, 229, 141, 143, 144, 153, 155, 216–226
265, 268, 272, 277, 295 Senses 1, 41, 42, 51, 80, 151, 187, 188,
Perception 5, 41–44, 49–54, 59–60, 73, 221–224
131, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141, 167, Sickness (of man and language) 64, 65
188, 206, 210, 212, 214, 222, 234, Signs 43, 103, 161–169, 172, 173, 174,
237, 245, 266 184, 185, 188, 290, 291, 295–296
Perspectivism 73, 74, 83, 85, 174, 175, Sign-Language 151
202, 257, 290 Silence 72, 86, 233, 238, 245, 250, 252
Philosophy of Mind 214–215 Simplification 15, 23–25, 36, 59, 80, 136,
Philosophy of the Emotions (see emotions) 188–190, 201–202, 206, 212, 216–
Pictorial language 13, 15, 17, 19, 30–36, 217, 221–222, 224, 226
63, 74–75, 83 Socialisation 48, 55, 102, 132, 153
Platonism 248–249 Soul 15, 21, 27, 70, 74, 79, 92, 93, 153,
Private language 96–97, 102, 202, 204 194, 241, 243, 269, 273
Subject Index 313
Sovereignty / Sovereign individual 64, 97, 167, 228, 229, 235, 237, 244, 245,
101, 104, 108, 110, 111, 118, 119, 259, 261, 266, 267, 271, 276, 277,
151 286, 289, 290
Spider / cobwebs (see also Nets of
language) 1–3, 8, 56, 187, 228, 236, Umwelt 8
237, 239, 240, 242, 246, 247 Unconscious 2, 7–8, 19, 20, 63, 64, 66–
Sprachnot 83, 86 68, 75, 92, 94, 96, 98, 143, 172, 171,
Subject 7, 23, 27, 40–41, 45, 49, 51, 52, 177, 184–185, 188, 191, 197, 201,
54, 56, 69–70, 72, 73, 75, 83, 91, 93, 204, 206, 208–215–229
98–104, 133–134, 141, 144–152, Ursachentrieb 220, 221–223
161–176, 179–180, 182, 189, 212,
213, 225, 241, 296 Verbindungsnetz 100, 171, 207, 209, 215,
Sublimation 78, 79 223
Star / Stars 9, 257–280
Stimuli / nervous stimulations 19, 30–32, Will to Power 3, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 123,
49–56, 59, 74, 75, 76, 181, 182, 183, 134, 136, 153, 154, 212, 225, 252,
184–186, 188–190, 205, 206, 220, 291, 295
221, 222, 235, 250 Wills to Power 153
Style 9–10, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27 Will to Truth 250
Words 1, 3, 7, 8, 14, 15, 18–21, 23–24,
Thing-in-itself 5, 18–19, 31, 39–61, 68, 28–33, 43, 49, 50–56, 68, 70, 72, 78,
69, 74, 202, 215, 224–225 83, 85, 97, 98, 103, 129, 132, 134,
Triebleben (‘pulsional life’) 6, 64, 77, 180, 138, 139, 142–144, 152, 154, 183–
183, 186, 216, 223 185, 193, 200–206, 215–219, 225–
Truth 1, 3, 4, 5, 14–16, 20, 22, 39, 43, 46, 228, 233–252, 272, 276, 282, 283,
48, 55, 57–60, 66, 141, 147, 155, 291

(Nietzsche Today) João Constâncio, Maria João Mayer Branco - As The Spider Spins - Essays On Nietzsche's Critique and Use of Language (2012, de Gruyter)

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As the Spider Spins

Essays on Nietzsche’s Critique and Use of Language

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Typesetting: Meta Systems GmbH, Wustermark

João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco

I. On Metaphor and the Limits of Language

Luis Enrique de Santiago Guervós

II. On Language, Emotion, and Morality

III. On Language, Self-Expression, and Consciousness

Maria João Mayer Branco

IV. On Language, Self-Expression, and Style

Maria Cristina Fornari

Complete Bibliography 298

Name Index 307

Subject Index 309

References to published or titled texts by Nietzsche follow the standard abbre-

Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In German

AC Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christenthum

GT Die Geburt der Tragödie

Abbreviations Of Nietzsche’s Works In English

Abbreviations Of Works By Other Authors

ApH Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hin-

MS Kant, I. (1955–1966), “Die Metaphysik der Sitten”, in: Gesam-

However, one of the main pillars of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the belief

language and knowledge and hence to his conception of language as meta-

develops the anti-metaphysical metaphor of our “pulsional life” (Triebleben)6

Chiara Piazzesi’s essay discusses the emotional and moral dimension of

and instincts as a “text” and consciousness and language as a “commentary”

“appearance” (Schein). Nietzsche’s love of appearances, Branco claims,

1 Blondel (1991), p. 18. See also Blondel (1984).

3 “Es bleibt eine Bilderrede” [editors’ translation].

Rhetoric as a Force Inherent to Language

14 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, I, p. 9 (KGW II/4, p. 419).

18 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p. 21 (KGW II/4, p. 425), translation modified.

development (…) of the artistic means already found in language”; in other

of language, as well as the particular modes of thought which are “embedded”

A “New Language”: Learning how to “Use

35 See BGE 21/JGB 21, GM I 13.

37 See again BGE 20/JGB 20.

be understood as a rule-less creation of a totally new language. As the example

40 Cf. ZB II; see also UM I 11.

44 See Z I Despisers/ZA I Verächtern and BGE 23/JGB 23.

complexity of what we call “thinking”. By enunciating in multiple ways new

The Metaphor as a Transposition Process

“there is as little distinction between actual words and tropes as there is

Recalling the principal tropes we are used to distinguish, Nietzsche defines

Metaphor is to be understood as a displacement of the meaning of a word,

48 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, III, p 25 (KGW II/4, p. 427), translation modified.

The metaphor is not, in itself, an “image”, nor is it an element amongst other

52 “Description of Ancient Rhetoric”, VII, p. 53 (KGW II/4, p. 443).

53 Clark (1990), pp. 69–70.

constitute at least one point of reference, a real ground, against which he

55 See BGE 15/JGB 15.

background of the Nietzschean refusal to take a merely theoretical stance with

65 Ricœur (1975), p. 25, editors’ translation.

Conclusion: “To Speak in Images – and Without

66 We take this example from Reed (1978), p. 159.

In this article I will compare Nietzsche’s analysis of the concepts of “knowl-

way to an actual overcoming of transcendental idealism – that is, of the dis-

1 Schopenhauer’s Transcendental Idealism

4 See FR, 49–50, WWR I, 4, WWR I, 14–15.