DE GRUYTER Claudia Crawford THE BEGINNINGS OF NIETZSCHE‘S THEORY OF LANGUAGE MONOGRAPHIEN UND TEXTE ZUR NIETZSCHE- FORSCHUNG i} cyAnschriften der Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. Exnst Behler Comparative Literature GN-42 University of Washington Seattle, Washington 98195, U.S.A. Prof. Dr, Wolfgang Miiller-Lauter KlopstockstraBe 27, D-1000 Berlin 37 Prof. Dr. Heinz Wenzel HarnackstraBe 16, D-1000 Berlin 33 Redaktion: Johannes Neininger Ithweg 5, D-1000 Berlin 37 Deatsibe Bibliothek Cataloguing in Publication Data Crawford, Claudia: ‘The beginnings of Nietzsche’s theory of language | by Claudia Crawford. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1988 (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung ; Bd. 19) ISBN 3-11-011336-8 NE: GT © Copyright 1988 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 30 Printed in Germany Alle Rechte des Nachdrucks, einschlieBlich des Rechtes der Herstellung von Photokopien und Mikrofilmen, vorbehalten. Satz und Druck: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin 30 Bindearbeiten: Liideritz & Bauer, Berlin 61Table of Contents Acknowledgements vu Preface . 2... 2... 2 ee ee ee eee ee ee IX Key to Abbreviations . 2... ee ee XXII Introduction . . . 1 Theory and Method 2 The Beginnings of Nietesche’s Theory of Language: 1863-1873 11 The Texts... 0 14 I. Eduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious... . 2... 17 IL, Schopenhauer 2... ee L222 Language and Representation 23 Schopenhauer’s Departure from Kant 30 The Subject-Predicate Relationship ......... . 31 Nietzsche’s Transformations of Schopenhauer’s Language Theory... eee 33 WL Kant. eee tee eee 37 IV. Nietzsche: “The deepest philosophical knowledge li lies leendy prepared in language.” .....-...... 41 Grammar... 1 ee ee . 41 Instinct 2 eee 42 V. Schopenhauer and Hartmann: Will, Character, Instinct 51 Schopenhauer’s Will 51 Schopenhauer’s “Unconscious” Will 53, Hartmann’s Criticism of Schopenhauer’s Will. . . . 56 Schopenhauer and Hartmann: Instinct and Character . 58 Nietzsche: Instinct and Character»... 0... vee 61 VI. Lange’s: History of Materialism . 67 We are a Product of our Organization ........ .. 70 Sensory Synthesis 70 Unconscious Inferences. 2... ee 3 Lange’s Thoroughgoing Skepticism ....... 9XX Table of Contents Philosophy is Art... 02.0... 80 Lange’s Critique of Kant... . . . 80 The Figurative Use of Language . . . . 84 Force and Matter: Mere Abstractions . . 85 Force-points . 0... 0. ve 87 Subject and Predicate... 2.0... 89 Natural Science, Darwin, and Teleology 1 VII. “On Schopenhauer”... 2... ee See 95 Predication of the Will 7 Principium individuationis and Origin of the Intellect... . . 100 VIII. “On Teleology” or “Concerning the Concept of the Organic Since Kant” 2... ee 105 Kant’s Teleology .. 2... eee 106 Nietzsche: “On Teleology” .... 0... - 108 Concept of expedience (ability of existence) 110 The alleged impossibility of explaining an organism me- chanically (what does mechanically mean?) . 115 ‘The recognized inexpedience in nature in contradiction to expedience 22.2 eee 117 Organism (the undetermined life concept/the undetermined individual concept) 121 Teleological reflection is examination of forms... .. . 122 Forms (individuals) belong to and are derived from human organization ©... ee 123 Life forcee= 2. ee ee 125 IX. Nietzsche and Hartmann: Unconscious Nature of Language . 128 X. Hartmann’s Worldview of the Unconscious 139 Unconscious Will-Acts ... 2.0.00. - 142 Hartmann’s Criticism of Schopenhauer’s principium individua- tionis . 145 Philosophy of the Unconscious and Human Consciousness 148 Interlude 2. eee eee 151 XI. Nietzsche’s Worldview in Anschauung ......... ae 158 The Term Anschamimg oo... ee ee 158 The Ur-Bine and Anschaumg . 0... 4- 162 Space, Time, Causality... 0.2.0... 164 Conscious Intellect and Anschanung 0... 166 Language and Anschauung 168Will and Loss of I Teleology and Goal of Anschanung Figure 1: XII. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer Space, Time, Causality Identity of the Knowing Subject Will: Unitary or Multiple... 2... Will and Language... Teleology of the Will... 0... XIII. Reconciliatic ‘Table of Contents Action identity . . Anschanung and Language Action . jon of Materialism and Idealism ..........- Language: Instinkt, Wabn, Kunstl o.oo eee XIV. Nietzsche’s and Lies in Gerber’s Language as Unconscious Art... 2... Genesis All Words are from the Beginning Tropes . . The Impossibility of Language to Describe the Essence of Things . Nietzsche’s working methods Appendix A: . Notes on Translation 1. “On the Origins of Language” 2. “On Schopenhauer” . “On Teleology” PY |.“ Anschanung . “Untitled Ni 5, 1. Genealogical 2. Chronology 3. Index of scientific and philosophical names Index of Subjects Index of Names Notes for a Course on “Rhetoric” and “On Truth a Nonmoral Sense”... 2... eee eee Language as Art s of Language... 2.2 Notes” tes” eee 1 nodes 199 206 208 211 216 219 221 221 226 238 267 291 295 295 298 298 306 312Key to Abbreviations Nietzsche's Works Used KSA Simtliche Werke. Kritische Stndienansgabe. Ed. Giorgio Colli und Maz- zino Montinari. Berlin und Miinchen: Walter de Gruyter und dtv, 1980. KSB Saimtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienansgabe. Ed. Giorgio Colli und Maz- zino Montinari, Berlin und Miinchen: Walter de Gruyter und dtv, 1986. MusA Gesammelte Werke. Musarionausgabe. Miinchen: Musarion Verlag, 1920—1929, BA — Werke und Briefe. Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Miinchen: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1933-1942. Indicated in text as BAW for Werke. GA — Grossoktavausgabe of Nietzsche’s Werke. Leipzig: C. G. Naumann Verlag, 1901—13. Nietzsche's Works Used in English Translation “Untitled Notes” (1863) “Untitled Notes” UN “Zu Schopenhauer” (1867/68) “On Schopenhauer” ZS “Zur Teleologie” (1867/68) “On Teleology” 2T “Vom Ursprung der Sprache” (1869/ “On the Origins of Lan- US 70) guage” “Die dionysische Weltanschauung” “The Dionysian World: = DW (1870) view” “ Anschauung Notes” (1870/71) “ Anschauung Notes” AN “Uber Musik und Wérter” (1871) “On Music and Words” MW Die Geburt der Tragidie (1872) The Birth of Tragedy cT “Notes-Summer 1872—Beginning “The Philosopher” P 1873” “Uber Wahrheit und Liige im ausser- “On Truth and Lies in a WL moralischen Sinne” (1873) Nonmoral Sense”XXIV Key to Abbreviations “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der “On the Uses and Disad- HL Historie fir das Leben” (1874) vantages of History for Life” “Rhetorik” (1872?—74) “Course on Rhetoric” R Menschliches, Allgumenschliches IT Human, All-too-Flaman = MA2 (1880) Part IT Morgenrite (1881) Daybreak M Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) Thus Spoke Zarathustra Zz Die Frobliche Wissenschaft (1882, Part The Gay Science FW V, 1886) Jenseits von Gut und Bise (1886) Beyond Good and Evil JGB ‘Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) The Genealogy of Morals = GM Der Fall Wagner (1888) The Case of Wagner DFW Gétzen-Dammerang (1889) Twilight of the Idols cD Ecce Homo (1908) Ecce Homo BH Die Nachlass-Kompilation, Der Wille Will to Power WM zur Macht (1930) I use my translations of: UN, ZS, ZT, US, AN, and DW. I use Walter Kaufmann’s translations of: GT and DFW (Vintage Books, 1967), FW (Vintage Books, 1974), JGB (Vintage Books, 1966), GM and EH (Vintage Books, 1967), and Z and GD (Portable Nietzsche, Penguin Books, 1954). I use Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale’s translation off WM (Vintage Books, 1968). I use R. J. Hollingdale’s translations of: HL (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), M (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), and MA 2 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986). I use Daniel Breazeale’s translation of: WL and P (Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nistzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870's, Humanities Press, 1979). I use Carole Blair’s translation of: R (Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983). I use the Oscar Levy translation of: MW (The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol. 1, Gordon Press, 1974).Introduction Nietzsche’s writings evince a complex, constantly modified and devel- oping view of language. His view of language is concerned with the possible ofigins and qualities of language, with the interrelationships of power of effect between language and human consciousness and knowledge of the world, It is also very much concerned with the limitations of language. Although what I have chosen to call a theory of language can be abstracted from Nietzsche’s writings, it would be inaccurate to assert that Nictzsche himself organized his thoughts about language in any systematic manner as an independent aspect of his overall philosophizing. Nietzsche does not single out and give specific form and priority to his theory of language, except at what appear to be sporadic intervals in his thinking.' It is the purpose of this work to demonstrate that, although on the surface this appears to be the case, Nietzsche carried with him, from his earliest writings, a passionate interest in language and its workings and a fundamental realization of the significance of certain advantages and disadvantages of language. In discuss- ing Nietzsche’s theory of language throughout this work, I inevitably si- multaneously discuss his ontology and theory of knowledge. Nietzsche’s theory of language is inseparable from his thinking about human knowledge of the world and the creation of a practical philosophy for living in it. When ' Works dealing with language specifically are “On the Origins of Language” (“Vom Ursprung der Sprache,” 1869—70), “Music and Words” (“Ober Musik und Wérter,” 1871), “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (“Uber Wahrheit und Liige im aussermoralischen Sinne,” 1873), and notes for a course on “Rhetoric” (“Rhetorik,” 1874). Many references to language also appear in the unpublished notes of the period during which these essays ate written. The next cleat cut work with language comes in the Genealogy of Morals fourteen years later, which is ultimately an exercise in Nietzsche’s theory of language. Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, again, return to theoretical statements about language, some of which repeat views developed in the early years. Ecce homo, stands as an example of Nietzsche’s theory of language in practice. (See my article: “Exe Homo: Problem of the ‘I am’”. Enlitic, 4:1, 1980.) All other references to language specifically, from the period of Human Al! Too Human up until The Genealogy of Morals, including the Nacblass, while often extremely significant to the overall theory, are scattered. One can generally say that Nietzsche was most overtly concerned with language at the beginning of his thinking and again in the last year or so of his thinking. However, the period in between, of approximately ten years, demonstrates Nietzsche's continuing evaluations of language. See, for example, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On Poets” and “The Song of Melancholy” or Beyond Good and Evil, especially the Preface and “On the Prejudices of Philosophers.”2 Introduction taken together as a changing, but coherent perspective, his beginning theory of language can be seen to provide a rich grounding element for his later philosophical and artistic enterprise. Theory and Method At the outset two questions present themselves in this undertaking: How is theory used; and, why language? I wrote that Nietzsche held a constantly modified and developing view of language, rather than, for example, a system of language, a conception of language. To have used such terms as system or conception would be to deny at the outset the insights which my following of Nietzsche’s work with language yields. Theory is used primarily in its original Greek and Latin sense as “a looking at,” a mental viewing or contemplation. Theory, here, is not to be understood as “a systematic state- ment based upon strongly verified underlying principles,” or as “a mental plan of a way to do something,” two of the primary dictionary definitions. Both of these definitions of theory imply that one has a plan, idea, some principles, into which the field of study is to be subsumed. Theory in the sense “of looking at” simply looks to see what is seen and then a formulation of apparent relationships of certain observed phenomena — in this case, the texts of Nietzsche, — which has been verified to some degree, results. Viewing is a transformation, a transfiguration, and not a prefiguration of that which is to be looked at. To a large extent theory as it is intended here, means speculation, even in some instances, plain old guesswork. The method used in this work does not assume that it is possible or desirable to recreate the “truth” of the moment in which Nietasche himself wrote a text, to suggest with some claim to authority that this and only this was what he thought when he wrote it. Rather, this work is, in the sense of Foucault’s archaeology, a rewriting, that is, Nietzsche’s texts, “as a preserved form of exteriority, are subjected to a regulated transformation. It is not a return to the innermost secret of the origin; it is the systematic description of a discourse-object.”? I have attempted a “regulated transformation” of Nietzsche’s texts on language in the sense which Foucault defines regularity. Archaeological description is concerned with those discursive practices to which the facts of succession must be referred if one is not to establish them in an unsystematic and naive way, that is, in terms of merit. At the level in which they are, the originality/banality opposition is therefore not relevant: 2 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans A. M. Sheridan Smith, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1972. A 139-40.‘Theory and Method 3 between an initial formulation and the sentence, which, years, centuries later, repeats it more or less exactly, it establishes no hierarchy of value; it makes no radical difference. It tries only to establish the regularity of statements ... it designates, for every verbal performance ... the set of conditions in which the enunciative function operates, and which guarantees and defines its existence. ... Thus, archaeology seeks to uncover the regu- larity of a discursive practice. A practice that is in operation ...° This work in regulated transformation, in theory as “a looking at” is pursued in all rigor and attention to detail. The attempt will be to bridge a gap which Bernd Magnus points to in his article “Nietzsche Today: A View from America.” On one side, he writes: “to read Nietzsche as offering theories of knowledge, or morals or ontology — or in this case, language — is itself the product of a tacit conception of philosophy as an enterprise which confronts a reasonably fixed set of issues within timeless constraints,” in other words, within the tradition of logic and analysis which characterizes Western philosophy. Magnus continues: “to give up this picture is essential to understanding Nietzsche’s deconstruction of ‘philosophy’.”* On the other side, Magnus characterizes what he understands as a deconstructionist ap- proach to Nietzsche which operates devoid of analysis or argument. These readings “must either stare at his texts in mute silence or use them to see whether they inspire 4s to say anything interesting, to reduce them to mere means in a free-association game, as has been done by some Derridians.”* Theory, in the sense used in this work, falls somewhere in between these two characterizations. Although traditional philosophy and strictly held log- ical analysis is assuredly under attack by Nietzsche, and not only Nietzsche, still for a long time to come, any deconstruction of it is constrained to operate to a large, perhaps lessening, extent within it. Derrida said that, and Magnus also recognizes this constraint. Nietzsche's texts are a paradigmal instance of an attempt to both remain within traditional philosophy, insofar as it is necessary, and yet to offer practices of exploding it. However, theory in the sense of “to look at,” especially with regard to Nietzsche’s theory of language, is also, in some ways, compatible with the idea of “staring at * Ibid, A 144-45. + Bernd Magnus, “Nietzsche Today: A View from America,” in International Studies in Philosophy, Binghamton: State University of New York, XV/2, 1983. NT 102. 5 hid. By selecting these remarks from Magnus’ article, I do not want to create 2 false opinion of his selationship to the deconstructionist perspective. Magnus advocates the useful inter- action and, when effective, merging of the three major research perspectives which he points to in this article: analytical, deconstructionist, and reconstructionist. I merely wish to point to the fact that Magnus has apparently divided deconstructionist interpretation into two categories: salvagable und unsalvagable. The staring at Nietzsche’s texts in mute silence and using Nietesche’s texts as 2 means to free-association and game clearly belonging to the latter.4 Introduction Nietzsche’s texts in mute silence.” For to add language to looking, in itself already transformation, is for Nietzsche, to transform once again the shape of what is seen. To use Nietzsche’s texts “to see whether they inspire as to say anything interesting, to reduce them to mere means in a free-association game,” once again, is not only not far from the Nietzschean enterprise, but central to it. Assuredly Nietzsche wants us to say what we have to say; we cannot do otherwise.* Nietzsche’s ultimate aim may have been to seduce us in all manner of ways to do just that, And certainly the Freudian, and most especially the Nietzschean perspectives should not allow us to scoff at either the idea of free association or game and the logics, assuredly of a different sort, which are attached to them. I would like to take a middle road. Theory, in this work, does attempt to get beyond the truth-oriented texts and methods of traditional philosophy, but from a perspective at least twice removed. I go to Nietzsche's texts in an attempt to see him looking at the problem of language. But this is always, as Nietzsche’s perspectivism reminds us, my looking at his looking, and in this sense, his text will assuredly produce in me something of my own. It is not exactly a free association or a game because a logic is applied and an attempt is made to take my looking as “seriously” as possible. I take the stance of the genealogist, who is primarily a documentarian. The project, in Nietzsche’s words, “is to traverse the enormous distant, and so well hidden land as it actually existed, has actually been lived ... as though with new eyes.”7 On the surface the job of the genealogist is not to act as an original voice, a creator and shaper, rather it is to decipher a hieroglyphics, to practice an art of exegesis, exegesis in Nietzsche’s sense of it as rumination, Rumination is a slow, repetitive, grey activity. Thus, in discovering Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language I work with documents in an effort to see Nietzsche seeing, and to make his seeing available to others. Yet inevitably something of those elements of game and free-association will have their effect. Again, Foucault’s words may come to offer an addendum to what I am attempting to say about the orientation of my method in this work. He characterizes the “truth analysts” in the following way. By analysing the truth of propositions and the relations that unite them, one can define a field of logical nonconteadiction: one will then discover a Nietzsche makes this clear in many places. See, for example “On the Prejudices of Philoso- phers” in Beyond Good and Evil, 6, where Nietzsche attributes the productions of philosophers mote to the prompting of the instincts, to drives other than “the knowledge drive,” and more as “personal confessions of their authors and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir,” than to the production of objective conscious thinking. 7 Nietesche, GM 21, KSA 5: 254.‘Theory and Method 5 systematicity; one will rise from the visible body of sentences to that pure, ideal architecture that the ambiguities of grammar, and the overloading of words with meanings have probably concealed as much as expressed. Foucault then suggests an alternative: But one can adopt the contrary course, and, by following the thread of analogies and symbols, rediscover a thematic that is more imaginary than discursive, more affective than rational, and less close to the concept than to desire; its force animates the most opposed figures, but only to melt them at once into a slowly transformable unity; what one then discovers is a plastic continuity, the movement of a meaning that is embodied in various representations, images, and metaphors.* In taking a “middle road,” I not only intend to bring together such approaches to reading Nietzsche as the analytical, though non-truth oriented, or the approach of free association and play, but also to emphasize the dynamics of exegesis at work not only in my own method, but especially in Nietzsche’s practice of reading and writing. The middle road is intended to be just that, travelling in the middle of texts, the texts of Nietzsche, and the texts which contributed to their genesis. The “event” of reading a text, or any other act of exegesis, according to Nietzsche, is our essential act. Exegesis “occurs when a group of phenomena are selected and united by an interpreting being.”® Jaspers quotes Nietzsche: “Perhaps it is scarcely possible ... to read a text as text, without permitting any interpretation to commingle with it.”'© Perhaps it is even true that “ail our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown and possibly unknowable but felt text. ... After all, what are our experiences? Much more that which we read into them than what they contain!”" Thus, the word theory as it is used here, in the sense of a regulated transformation, implies a process of “looking at” in the sense of exegesis, in its sense as rumination, and again in its sense as an interpreting activity, both rigorous and fantastical at the same time. How do I propose to trace the single thread of Nietzsche's theory of language in a manner which bridges the gaps mentioned, which aftempis to be as “faithful” as possible to Nietzsche’s optics of language, while retaining acritical distance? By bringing to my aid Nietzsche’s own method of pursuing such circuitous pathways, one already mentioned above — the method of genealogy. By contrasting and blending the genealogical and critical aspects * Foucault, A 149—50. ° Karl Jaspers, Nietgsche, trans. Charles Wallraff and Frederick Schmitz, Chicago: Henry Regnery, Co., 1965. JN 288. © Tbid., JN 289. " Tbid., JN 290.6 Introduction of my study. Genealogical study concerns “the effective formation of dis- course, whether within the limits of control, or outside of them,” in other words, genealogical analysis follows the formation of discourse, at once scattered, discontinuous and regular. Criticism “analyses the process of rare- faction, consolidation and unification in discourse.” The genealogical method does not lend itself to a neat breaking up of Nietzsche’s thinking into major periods, and the placing of them under structuring labels. This approach is a vestige of historical simplification, To some extent, aside from the prejudice of historical thinking, this has been a result of the state and availability of Nietzsche’s texts themselves. Now, however, with the publication of the new Colli-Montinari Critical Edition of Nietzsche’s works, as Breazeale says: “One of the most fertile fields of Nietzsche research is opened up. This concerns the evolution and development of Nietzsche’s thought, as well as the influences upon and sources of the same.”? In retracing the genealogy of Nietzsche’s theory of language, I follow the evolution of an area of thought as it develops out of specific influences and transformations of those influences. However, I wish to emphasize that evolution or development in my genealogical method, as opposed to a strictly historical development of “logical” sequence and structuring labels, is applied in Nietzsche’s sense of it where: ‘The “evolution” of a thing, a custom, an organ is by no means its progressus toward a goal, even less a logical progressus by the shortest route and with the smallest expenditure of force — but a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subduing, plus the resistances they encounter, the attempts at transformation for the purpose of defense and reaction, and the results of successful counteractions. The form is fluid, but the “meaning” is even more so."* It seems reasonable to agree that the more of Nietzsche’s “text” which is made available to us in its chronological completeness, the more able we are to assess the strands of his thinking. Rather than neat breaks in his thinking, the painstaking work of genealogical analysis reveals a winding, circuitous path, a forward and backwards movement, with however, enough consist- encies, common terms, and reformulations of terms to allow an effective direction to emerge. In a genealogical sense, the entire history of a “thing”, an organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose ” Foucault, A 233 © Daniel Breazeale, “We Alexandrians,” in International Studies in Philosophy, Bingharnton: State Iniversity of New York, XV/2, 1983. WA 50. ™ Nietzsche, GM 77-78, KSA 5: 314—15.‘Theory and Method 7 causes do not even have to be related to one another but, on the contrary, in some cases succeed and alternate with one another in a purely chance fashion." Nietzsche’s theory of language consists of a transforming and recombining of clements, experimentation, creation of forms and sloughing off of forms. Nietzsche often grows a new skin over which the old simultaneously begins to loosen, die, and fall off. Sometimes Nietzsche clings to the old skin long after it has lost value for him. Often it will seem as if I have gone out of the way of the thread of language which we are following, but only to find the thread again in more significance. In offering a genealogical exegesis of Nietzsche’s beginning texts on language this work is also largely concerned with the texts of others and the manner in which these texts come to be integrated into Nietzsche’s own text on language. Nietzsche was undoubtedly a valuable and unique thinker, but he was also very much a product of his times. I attempt to discover under what conditions Nietzsche devised his beginning theory of language and what value it possessed for him. It is in the small and painstaking work with the texts of others, that Nietzsche begins, through the process of rarefaction, consolidation, and unification, to form what is finally “his own.” The ge- nealogical method attempts to pull together the scattered, regular and dis- continuous elements which result in the effective formation of Nietzsche’s beginning discourse on language. I am putting into practice Nietzsche’s method of tracing “conceptual transformations” (“Begriffs-Verwandlungen’” ) and phases in such conceptual transformations." Therefore, in treating influ- ences upon Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language, the coincidence and interchange of texts is played out in some detail. To the genealogical exegete this offers the coincidence and juxtapositioning of documents upon which the practice of rumination can be applied. It is part of my purpose to allow a play of interactions between texts to arise in the reader, in conjunction with or independent of my interpretations. Certainly no attempt will succeed in following Nietzsche’s thinking about language and the influences upon this thinking as completely and variously as it ia all probability occurred. I indicate some of the influences which helped to form Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language, but it can also be said with certainty that there must have been others as well. What the reader will confront, then, is in the nature of a nodal procedure of genealogical method. An attempt is made to provide a general on-going background, upon which moments in Nietzsche’s thinking about language, *5 Thid., GM 77, KSA 5: 314. % Ibid., GM 27, KSA 5: 261 and GM 29, KSA 5: 263.8 Introduction in the context of influences upon that thinking, are enlarged upon, opened up, and played out in detail, in order to suggest certain, but far from all, relations moving between nodes. I will focus primarily on ideas surrounding and relating to the role of language in major influences upon Nietzsche as they see important to him. The manner in which this is done is the following: what I present of Schopenhauer, Kant, Hartmann, Gerber, and other sources of influence should be read as telescoped versions of their thinking seen from the perspective of what we eventually come to understand as Nietzsche’s theory of language. To put it simply, I take Nietzsche’s view of language, from his discourse at a later time, primarily his 1873 unpublished essay “Uber Wahrheit und Liige im aussermoralischen Sinne” (“On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”), and then look back at Schopenhauer, for example, to see what fits it, which ideas could have served to influence it. What is revealed is a sort of echo in advance, which allows us to trace a probable path of genealogical development. Of course, proceeding in this manner puts us in a position of advantage which Nietzsche himself did not have, that of knowing at the beginning approximately where his theory of language was heading. However, this in no way detracts from the effectiveness of the genealogical method, in fact, such a genealogical method presupposes it. To give the reader an indication of the nodal procedure of my analysis, I mention the progress of just two such nodes, of which at least twelve are offered. A brief description of each genealogical node is given in Appendix B.1. The procedure of nodes results in a cumulative effect, so that, what may appear as arbitrary and unnecessary detail at the beginning of the work comes to be used and reused throughout the work; detail, which, by the end, proves itself important to the overall economy of the genealogical method. The first nodal example, revolving around the progression in Nietzsche’s thinking with regard to language, is the node of relations which pertains to the sensory perception of sight, its translation into images, and projection of images. When, in discussing Schopenhauer’s theory of language, the reader finds a long passage on the sense of sight, a first piece in the overall node arises, which surfaces again in Lange’s discussion of sight as an example of sensory synthesis and the question of projection of images. The node again surfaces in the discussion of images of representation as opposed to things in themselves, or Schopenhauer’s will, or Hartmann’s unconscious. Eventually Nietzsche develops his worldview in Anschanung which, in one of its aspects, is nothing less than a whole theoretics of viewing, images, and projection of images. The theoretics of language as arising out of a metaphorical imaging process is then discussed in light of “On Truth and Lies” and the influence of Gustav Gerber’s Language as Art.‘Theory and Method 9 ‘A second example of the genealogical nodal procedure centers around Nietzsche’s interest in and criticism of the basic grammatical forms of subject and predicate. Nietzsche works with this node of thought again and again, each time under a new influence and in a new context. He first meets with the problem in Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kant. Again, in Hartmann and Lange. So ingrained does the subject predicate node become for Nietzsche, that he eventually turns it into use as a major weapon of criticism against Schopenhauer. Finally, in the worldview in Anschanung, Nictzsche’s cumulative thought about the subject predicate relationship comes to ground his first stated non-identity of the subject and the purely represen- tational nature of any predicates attached to such a non-identity. The subject predicate relationship is also at the basis of Nietzsche’s view that appearance is all there is and that artistic or rhetorical language is the only effective, but not true, means of expressing it. It is important to note that these nodes with which Nietzsche is working in his beginning theory of language do not end with his worldview in Anschanung ot his essay “On Truth and Lies.” They continue to be reformed and worked with, in some cases, throughout his philosophical thinking. In my use of the genealogical nodal method a roughly chronological order is preserved. However, chronology is not strictly maintained in the interests of providing a synchronic aspect to the study. A chronology of the period studied is provided in Appendix B.2. An overall logical order of thought is maintained, but does not always prevail. The genealogical nodal method used is almost the technique of pointillism in which, when one backs up and takes the totality of points into view, each of which is uniquely necessary, something of a whole picture presents itself. Now to address my second question: Why language? First, because language has become one of the central and most widely developed objects of thought in the twentieth century, Language has become a study in itself, along with the recognition of its structuring effects on all fields of endeavor. In 1869 Eduard von Hartmann wrote, and Nietzsche read, in his Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious): Still to this day there is no philosophy of language, for what goes by that name is altogether fragmentary, and what is usually offered as such ate pretentious appeals to human instinct, which afford no explanation at all ... yet philos- ophy, the farther it has progressed, has ever more clearly perceived that the understanding of one’s own thinking is the first task, and that this is admirably furthered by raising the spiritual treasures which are buried in the language of the discoverer.” ” Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 3 vols., trans. William Chatterton Coupland, London: Tribner and Co., 1884, In all cases reference to the English translation is followed by reference to the German Philosophie des Unbewussten, Berlin, 1869. PU 1: 295, PUG 228-29.10 Introduction Since then philosophies of language have become abundant and respectable, if not necessary as precondition to philosophy in general, to understanding of human forms of interaction through communication and institutions. The study of language and discourse has brought about reevaluations of such ordering principles as history, mythology, psychology, and philosophy. The effects of research in such areas as linguistics, semantics, and semiotics are restructuring most others, literary criticism, psychology, education, social patterning and communications interaction. Language has been turned upon itself from a critical aspect. Such staples of Western thought as subject and object, logic, truth, and knowledge, are being reexamined from a new perspective of language which finds that language is not static, that meanings change, that unconscious drives and motivations contribute to the formation of and use of language often over and above that of rational thinking. Secondly, it is my aim to find Nietzsche's place within this series of events in which language has, as Foucault writes, “returned into the field of thought directly and in its own right.” I am very much in sympathy with Foucault who gives Nietzsche credit for “opening up” the space wherein language has now become so central, in calling Nietzsche “the first to connect the philo- sophical task with a radical reflection upon language.”"* However, a note of criticism is needed here. It is surprising that Foucault, who, as we saw above, champions the nonrelevance of originality or priority of the authors of texts, but chooses to study, rather, the regularity of discourse-objects, should after all give Nietzsche priority here. It appears to be true that Nietzsche deserves much of this credit, however, my study demonstrates that Nietzsche’s theory of language is itself largely the product of a “regulated transformation” of the texts of others. Much has been written in the last fifteen years or so about Nietzsche’s unique relation to language," usually in connection with what is currently Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. R. D. Laing, New York: Random House, 1973. OT 305. © See, for example: Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philospher, New York: Macmillan Co., 1965; Paul de Man, “Rhetoric of Tropes” and “Rhetoric of Persuasion,” Allegories of Reading, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979; Jacques Derrida, Eperons, Paris: Flammarion, 1976; Ruediger H. Grimm, Nietesche’s Theory of Knowledge, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977; Sarah Kofmann, Nietzsche et la metaphor, Paris: Payot, 1972; Philippe, Lacoue-Labarthe, “Le detour” and “La fable,” Le sujet de la philosophie, Patis: Aubier—Flammarion, 1979; Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, London: Harvard University Press, 1985; Bernard Pautrat, Versions du soleil: Figures et systeme de Nietzsche, Pais: Editions du Sevil, 1971; Jean- Michel Rey, Lienjew des signes, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971; J. P. Stern, Study of Nietgsche, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975; Richard Schacht, Nietzsche, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983; and Gerold Ungeheues, “Nietzsche tibet Sprache und Sprechen, Uber Wahrheit und Traum,” Nietzsche Studien, 12, 1983.The Beginnings of Nietzsche's Theory of Language: 1863—1873 1 called his “theory of knowledge.” Such articles and books have dealt with various aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking about language: his ideas on rhetoric and language, genealogy (as a tracing of the formation of ideas and cultures upon the basis of linguistic transformations), the disassociation of language as a system of signs which does not correspond to a seality outside of itself, and language as dealing always and only with a fiction of the world. If Nietzsche’s ideas about language are having an effect on our thinking today, or at least run concurrently with that thinking, then this work constitutes an attempt to follow the genesis and beginning development of those ideas. The Beginnings of Nietzsche's Theory of Language: 1863—1873 The early years in Nietzsche’s thinking, Hollingdale writes, “will seem a dull one unless you look beneath the surface.” In 1962 Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders published a book about this period entitled Friedrich Nietgsche: Von den verborgenen Anfiingen seines Philosopbierens (Friedrich Nietzsche: The Hidden Beginnings of his Philosopbizing). Aside from the obvious lack of access to many of Nietasche’s texts of this period until quite recently, which led Schlechta and Anders to characterize this period as “hidden,” there exists in the texts themselves evidence that to talk of a surface and a beneath, of something hidden is a very appropriate description. Again, Hollingdale writes: “Ostensibly Nietzsche was playing a secondary role in his own life: he was a ‘follower’ of Schopenhauer and Wagner; under the surface, however, there was an intense conflict going on between these dominating influences and all those influences which resisted such domination.”” Nietzsche, himself, characterizes this period in his second Preface to Human All Too Human II, written in 1886, as a time when it was necessary to hold what was closest to him secret. When, in the thisd Untimely Meditation, 1 went on to give expression to my reverence for my first and only educator, the great Arthur Schopenhauer. ... [I] already ‘believed in nothing anymore; as the people put it, not even in Schopenhauer: just at that time I produced an essay I have refrained from publishing (cin gebvim gehaltenes Scbriftsbick) “On Truth and Lies in a Non- moral Sense.” ... Even my festive victory address in honour of Richard Wagner on the occasion of his celebration of victory at Beyreuth in 1876 . & work wearing the strongest appearance of being ‘up to the minute’, was in its background an act of homage and gratitude to a piece of my own past ... and in fact a liberation, a farewell. ™ R, J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. HN 51. ® Ibid. Nietzsche, MA 2: 2, KSA 2: 370.12 Introduction Why was Nietzsche in the position of leading an essentially double life at this time? That of the young, idealistic, yet critical professor of philology who made a stir with The Untimely Meditations and The Birth of Tragedy, with that of, as he calls himself, a skeptic and critic, one who “did not believe in a blessed thing,” one who “hid away” those thoughts closest to him? Part of the answer to this question, is simply that Nietzsche was doing so much simultaneously. Many of his pursuits at the time were contradictory. And it appears as if he could not or did not wish to give up a part of them to concentrate on but a few. To follow the results of this straining of capacities and influences is fascinating. Nietzsche was a disciple of Schopenhauer, yet a subterranean critic of Schopenhauer. He became professor of philology at the early age of 24, and was soon writing notes very critical of philology. His real avocation, even at this time, was philosophy. The outline and many pages of notes for a dissertation in philosophy were written in 1867—68 with the title “Uber den Begriff des Organischen seit Kant” (“Concerning the Concept of the Organic Since Kant”). Although Nietzsche eventually used his prize winning essay “De fontibus Laertee Diogenis” (“Concerning the Sources of Laertius Diogenes”) as his dissertation, this other philosophical excursion into teleological questions was apparently a serious contender as a dissertation topic in his mind. He was a social and cultural critic of modern Germany as his Untimely Meditations were to show. Thus, he lived in two worlds, that of ancient Greece and of modern Germany. He was also early drawn to the study of the natural and physical sciences. The most influential carly reading was F. A. Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Mate- rialism), which Nietzsche praised highly and to which he returned again and again. And, of course, Nietasche was a “Wagnerian,” but also a secret critic of Wagner. These competing facts and tendencies in the young professor Nietzsche resulted in work of the most interesting kind. Because he could not give up his love of the Greeks, of philosophy, of music, or of the natural sciences, he attempted, during these early years, to combine them in a grand plan which Schlechta and Anders point to and describe in some detail using plans and notes of Nietzsche’s from the years 1872 and 1873. In this plan: ‘The exemplary meaning of the Pre-Platonic philosophers, the anthropo- morphic transferences, “Truth and Illusion,” necessity of illusion, the rela- tionship of philosophy and science, the relationship of philosophy and culture (art); all of these themes have their place. Through the inclusion of modern philosophy (Kant and Schopenhauer) the whole receives its topical impor- tance.” ® Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, Friedrich Nietzsche: Von den verborgenen Anfingen seines Philosopbierens, Scattgart: Bad Cannstatt, 1962. VAP 85—86.The Beginnings of Nietzsche’s Theory of Language: 1863—1873 13, Nietzsche’s planned title for this comprehensive work was “Die Philosophen des tragischen Zeitalters” (“The Philosophers of the Tragic Age”). In the Summer of 1872 Nietzsche writes, of these plans, that they should “deal with The Birth of Tragedy from another side.” And, that it should “receive its confirmation from the philosophy of its contemporaries.” Nietzsche’s plans for such an ambitious undertaking were never realized, but the notes and essays which come as a result of this possibility constitute a whole stream of thinking, a Gegenstiick, a gebeimgebaltenes set of texts which Nietzsche did not choose to publish. The thread of language can be followed profitably through- out as a perspective from which to draw these competing interests together.”* In his “Attempt at a Self Criticism” of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote of this early period: How I regret now that in those days I still lacked the courage (or immod- esty2) to permit myself in every way an individual language of my own for such individual views and hazards — and that instead I tried laboriously to express by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas strange and new valuations which were basically at odds with Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s spirit and taste!” My genealogical analysis of Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language offers a basis for and direction to the period of Nietzsche’s early thinking to which he refers above. It is challenging to separate Nietzsche’s thinking from that of his influences, to separate one concern of his own from another — something which, as he admits above, he could himself not do adequately for a time. ‘The result of this process will be to demonstrate, that to an extent, which Nietzsche himself was apparently unaware at the time, he did have a language of his own, despite the truth of his claim that he often clothed it % The notes which Nietzsche gathered under the planned title “Die Philosophen des tragischen Zeitalters” (which can be found in KSA 1: 800—872), translated into English by Marianne Cowan in 1962 with the title Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1962, represents only a part of the overall plan which Nietzsche had in mind. For a discussion of the details of the larger plan, see especially pages 77—99 of VAP. % Schlechta and Anders, VAP 79~—80. % Nictzsche’s thinking about language during this early period, the natural and physical sciences, the modern philosophers, etc. was often being thought with reference to the Greeks and his philological and philosophical studies of them. No attempt is made in this work to connect Nietzsche’s early theory of language, as I find it, with the Greeks, except where necessary. Nevertheless, this does not detract significantly from what I have to offer because my research indicates that the theory of language originates in his modern influences and may at most have been confirmed or prefigured, here or there, in the ancients. It is also clear that Nietzsche's readings in modern philosophy, and the natural and physical sciences were often used as a basis from which to evaluate, and reevaluate, his thinking about philological matters. Were someone with the expertise in Greek philology to attempt such research into Nietzsche's philological work, it is certainly possible that another dimension could be added to what I offer with regard to Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language. ® Nietzsche, GT 24, KSA 1: 19.14 Introduction in the terminology of others, and not only that he had a language of his own, but also a very definite theory about language. My genealogical nodal method will open up for the reader Nietzsche’s statement that he “tried laboriously to express by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas strange and new valuations which were basically at odds with Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s spirit and taste.” It will open up this statement by showing where Nietzsche does exactly what he claims, while providing a close look at the developing “new valuations” which do operate in a circle of thought whose direction diverges fundamentally from that of Schopenhauer and Kant. And my study reveals that these new valuations were strongly in place before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy. Part of Nietzsche's failure to permit himself a language of his own in The Birth of Tragedy was his new allegiance to Wagner, which in his mind entailed a continuing allegiance to Schopen- haver, one which, was for the most part already overcome. It is precisely because underneath, in his “secret” self that Nietzsche develops a theory of language and resulting worldview, that after 1876, he is strong enough to choose to let go of Schopenhauer, Wagner, and those aspects of philology of which he was highly critical. The Texts In this work I translate and interpret several texts written by Nietzsche between 1863 and 1870/71 with the intention of retracing his development of a beginning theory of language. I take the most central of these texts, a fragment written in 1869/70 entitled “Vom Ursprung der Sprache” (“On the Origins of Language”), and offer a thorough exegesis of it. While “Origins” is the major text interpreted throughout and returned to again and again, I examine the various veins of thought represented by the other texts inter- preted which feed into my reading of this text. These consist of Nietzsche’s ‘own texts and the texts of major influences contributing significantly to my exegesis. T go back to Nietzsche’s reading of Schopenhauer beginning in 1865 and to his gleaning of an understanding of Kant. Nietzsche's relationship to Schopenhauer, especially his criticism of and the specific elements of his slow and considered breaking away from the influence of Schopenhauer’s thinking, which took place under the surface of his continually avowed discipleship, is presented in detail. The importance of the influence of Eduard von Hartmann, is indicated in conjunction with my examination of Kant and Schopenhauer. I introduce, in great detail, the progress of this influence and demonstrate to what anThe ‘Texts 15 extent Nietzsche’s thinking begins with a full appreciation of Hartmann’s unconscious. After having based Nietzsche’s first forms of language theory in Scho- penhauer, Kant, and Hartmann, I examine the great influence which Lange’s book Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism} had upon Nietasche’s perception of Kant and Schopenhauer, and how it prepared some of the ground for his further interest in Hartmann, and in the natural and physical sciences, My research integrates into its basic framework specific discussions of the importance of the natural and physical sciences to the evolution of Nietzsche's thinking about language. Prompted by his reading of Lange, in 1867/68, Nietzsche writes two texts in the form of notes. The first of these texts is a criticism of Schopenhauer entitled “Zu Schopenhauer” (“On Schopenhauer”). During the same period, Nietzsche also penned a copious set of notes for a planned dissertation topic to have been entitled “Uber den Begriff des Organischen seit Kant” (“Con- cerning the Concept of the Organic Since Kant”), which is found in Nietzsche’s notes under the heading “Zur ‘Teleologie” (“On Teleology”).” A thorough examination of these two texts, taken in conjunction with Lange’s and Hartmann’s influences, as they relate to “On the Origins of Language” allow a rich understanding of the complex of thought material working its effects in the young Nietzsche's thinking with regard to language and introduces a new dimension to understanding Lange’s influence on Nietzsche. In 1870/71, during the period when Nietzsche is beginning sketches for The Birth of Tragedy, he again, writes two sets of notes of interest to my study, notes, most of which were not included in that work. In these notes, which I have drawn together upon the basis of their similar ideationat content, and to which I have given the title “Anschasung Notes,” I maintain, Nietzsche fashioned his own first significant philosophic worldview, one which grows directly out of all I will have discussed up to that point.” It is a worldview which Nietzsche had already sketched out very briefly in some notes from 1863, long before his seading of Schopenhauer, Kant, Hartmann, and Lange, influences which to a large extent, offered Nietzsche the tools to work his early intuitions into a considered worldview.” The gathering together and interpretation into a worldview of the “Anschasung Notes” presents a model % “Zur Teleologie,” “Zu Schopenhauer,” and “Vom Ursprung der Sprache,” are not included either in the Karl Schlechta, nor in the new Colli~Montinari Studienausgabe of Nietzsche’s works. I have used the BAW 3 version of “Zu Schopenhauer,” 352—361, and “Zur Teleologie,” 371—394, and the MusA 5 version of “Vom Ursprung des Sprache,” 467—470. ® These notes are reproduced in KSA 7. Additional notes, which I could not find in the KSA Edition, I have taken from the MusA 3 Edition, 336—37. » These 1863 notes can be found in BAW 2: 255—257.16 Introduction which allows the unifying elements of diverse activities in the early years of Nietzsche’s thinking to be discovered. It creates a context for the further elaboration of Nietzsche’s thinking about language and music and especially for a very fruitful reinterpretation of The Birth of Tragedy. The worldview in Anschanung is compared with specific elements of Schopenhauer’s thinking and yields a thorough and interesting contrast between Nietzsche’s own ideas as they reflect his breaking away from Schopenhauer before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy. This comparison with Schopenhauer also demonstrates how early in his thinking Nietzsche is anticipating the major elements of his mature philosophy. Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language, as developed out of the analysis of these texts and influences, is then summarized in light of Nietzsche’s notes for a course on “Rhetoric” and his unpublished essay “On Truth and Lies” and the influence of Gustav Gerber’s Language as Art.®' My discussion reveals that, although Nietzsche adopts Gerber’s tropological framework as a work- ing hypothesis for longstanding questions of his own, the major assumptions of Gerber’s theory of language had already been worked out independently by Nietzsche before he reads Gerber in the fall of 1872. > Gerber's influence upon Nietzsche's notes for a course on “Rhetoric” and “On Truth and Lies” has only recently been established. See my chapter 14,Chapter One Eduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious In Nietzsche’s short fragment entitled “On the Origins of Language,” written in 1869/70, the text reads: “Every conscious thinking first possible with the help of language,” and “something expedient can be without consciousness.” These two statements, when taken together, form the fun- damental basis of Nietzsche’s theorizing about language. Since, as Nietzsche holds, language first makes human conscious thinking possible, he agrees with Schelling, whom he quotes in this context: Since without language there could be nothing philosophical, and in general no human consciousness is thinkable, the foundation of language cannot lie in consciousness. Yet, the deeper we look into it, the more surely it is discovered, that its depth far exceeds that of the most conscious productions. It is with language as it is with organic beings; we think we see them come blindly into existence and at the same time, cannot deny the unfathomable intentionality of their formation even in the smallest detail.” At the head of his fragment on the origins of language, Nietzsche writes and underlines the follwing: “Language is neither the conscious work of individuals nor of 2 majority.”* If language does not find its origins in consciousness, one can certainly assert, following Nietzsche, that language represents the method of its func- tioning, the condition upon which consciousness rests. Human consciousness is what it is at any given point in time and space owing to the particular shape of language which structures it. However, Nietzsche emphasizes re- peatedly in his early writings about language that consciousness and its structuring method — language — no matter how intricately developed, 1 “On the Origins of Language” (“Vom Ursprung der Spracke”) was used by Nietzsche as the introduction to a course on Latin grammar taught in 1869]70, first published in the appendix of Volume Il of the Philolegica by Kroner (GA XIX: 385—387). In the case of my translations of Nietzsche’s works, reference is made to the page number of the full translation provided in Appendix A. The German text follows each translation in Appendix A. Nietzsche, US 222 and 224. 2 Ibid., 224. Quoted by Nietzsche from Hartmann, PUG 227. Hartmann takes the quote from Schelling’s “Philosophie der Mythologie,” Sdmmtliche Werke, Exster Band, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856, PM 52, > Thid., 222.18 1, Bduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious remain inadequate for an accurate perception and expression of the world, in fact, that it may function as a detriment to its realization. In November 1868 Eduard von Hartmann’s book Philosophy of the Uncon- scious, with the subtitle “Speculative results according to the inductive method of physical science,” was published. In a letter to Gersdorff of August 4, 1869, Nietzsche writes: “An important book for you is ‘Hartmann’s Philos- ophy of the Unconscious, in spite of the dishonesty of the author.”* On November 5, 1869 Erwin Rohde writes to Nietzsche: Have you read E. v. Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious? He plunders Schopenhauer while at the same time insulting him: posits the will, as if he had birthed it himself, with two blind eyes, an unconscious intellect, through which the whole becomes a kind of mole. Long terrible deserts of scholastic ‘emptiness run through the book; however, if one can eventually conquer one’s annoyance with the imolence against Schopenhauer, one reads much with interest. The so called method of physical science used in the book is stupid.® Nietzsche, was, of course, already reading Hartmann’s book and had rec- ommended it to Gersdorff with the same qualifications of “dishonesty of the author.” He replied to Rohde on November 11: “About Hartmann, I join with you in opinion and expression. However, I read him much, because he has the most beautiful knowledge and off and on knows how to strongly harmonize with the old Nornen-song of accursed existence.”® Nietzsche is clearly taken with the book in spite of its disservice to his declared mentor, Schopenhauer. Why make much of Nietzsche’s reading of Hartmann, and why here at the beginning of my discussion of his theory of language? Because the majority of ideas which Nietzsche promotes in his fragment “On the Origins of Language” come directly from Hartmann’s chapter “Das Unbewusste in der Entstebung der Sprache” (“The Unconscious in the Origins of Language”). One could further counter: why make much of this? A fragment of writing influenced by a current reading is not an unusual thing. True; however, my study of Nietzsche’s beginning theory of language will demonstrate that Hartmann not only provided some interesting ideas on the origin of language for the young Nietzsche, but that he filled a major gap in Nietzsche’s thinking about language, one which had been opened up, but not satisfactorily filled, through his readings in Kant and Schopenhauer. Not only does Hartmann fill this gap, but he offers, what must have been for Nietzsche convincing, * Nietzsche, KSB 3: 36. 5 Alwin Mittasch, Friedrich Nietzsche als Naturpbilosopb, Stuttgart: Alfred Kréner Verlag, 1952, FNN 308-09. ® Nietzsche, KSB 3: 73.1. Eduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious 19 explanations as to why and where Schopenhauer and Kant fail to close it. We will find, in what follows, that Hartmann’s influence, coming as it did, at a time to build upon Kant and Schopenhauer, and in ways already preshadowed by Nietzsche’s own thinking about and criticism of these philosophers, becomes a major influence for him. In his book, Nietzsche als Naturphilosoph, Mittasch writes: “How far, Nietasche’s idea of the unconscious was influenced by Schelling, Schopenhauer, Carus, and E. v. Hartmann, can remain undiscussed.”” I will make significant inroads in opening up this question for discussion. Hartmann opens his chapter “The Unconscious in the Origins of Lan- guage” with the quote from Schelling which Nietzsche uses in his fragment, and which I quoted above. Hartmann writes, in view of this prompting from Schelling, that “all conscious human thought is only possible by the help of language.” The position which Hartmann states very clearly, and which Nietzsche makes his own is that: Without language, or with a merely animal vocal language devoid of grammatical forms, a thinking so acute that the marvelously profound organism of universally identical fundamental forms could emerge as its conscious product, is, therefore, quite inexplicable. Rather, all progress in the development of language will be the first condition of progress in the elaboration of conscious thought, not its consequence ... Nietzsche converts this thought into the following: “Every conscious thinking first possible with the help of language. Such an ingenious thinking com- pletely impossible with a mezely animalistic sound-language; the wonderful pensive organism.”® To the question, then, what form of action of the human mind has produced language? Hartmann answers: unconscious instinct. '° The 7 Mittasch, FNN 331. * Hartmann, PU 1: 298, PUG 231. Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious first appeared in November 1868. It underwent nine editions between 1869 and 1882. It is the English translation by Coupland of the ninth edition which I use in this work. Between the first and ninth editions Hartmann revised and expanded his work several times. While the English translation inchides these alterations, I am convinced that Nietzsche's study of Hartmann between 1869 and 1871 was conducted on the basis of the first or second (1869) edition based on the dates of the letters quoted above in which he discusses Hartmann. In this study, then, where Nietzsche is directly concerned, I remain only with what is contained in these editions. Where it seems relevant to the discussion, I append, in notes, references to the expanded material available in the English translation of the ninth edition. In some cases material included in the first two editions is not contained in the English translation. In those cases I offer my own translation. ° Nietasche, US 222. 1 Ina later edition of the Philasophy of the Unconscious, Hartmann answers his question: What form of action of the human mind has produced language? even more specifically: “What other answer is conceivable to this than that of the unconscious spiritual activity, which with intuitive correctness acts here in natural instincts, there in intellectual instincts; here in the individual, there in the cooperative instincts; and everywhere alike, everywhere with infallibile clairvoyant accuracy answers to the greatness of the need” (PU 1: 300)?20 I. Eduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious proposition: an unconscious origination of language as the condition for conscious operations, is, at the time Nietzsche reads Hartmann, somewhat of a revolutionary idea. The idea of an unconscious foundation of all human activity, including that of language and rational thought, was a new and rather unprecedented perspective. Until approximately the first half of the nineteenth century and the blossoming of Romanticism, human beings viewed themselves as rational beings capable of translating their thinking will into actions effective in a more or less predictable world. Certainly, Schopenhauer shook these foundations for Nietzsche, with his idea of the irrational will. It was, to a large extent, precisely the revolutionary nature of Schopenhauer’s thinking that Nietzsche found so appealing. However, even Schopenhauer stopped short of declaring an unconscious in Hartmann’s sense. In the introduction to The Philosophy of the Unconscious Hartmann traces the origins of the idea of the unconscious first to Leibniz. He then follows a trail from Hume to Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and then to Schopen- hauer. The trail broadens into the physical sciences of his time with Herbart and Fechner, and into the natural sciences with Carus, Wundt, and Helm- holtz."' Each of these contributions to the theory of an unconscious, with the exception of Carus, who Hartmann credits with a presentation of the idea of the unconscious in its pure form, are, according to him, more or less fragmentary and often peripheral to a definite statement of its existence and effects on human development such as he himself first offers in unified form in his book. Throughout the ensuing study I will return to the various contexts in which Nietzsche confronts Hartmann’s theory of the unconscious, not only in its philosophical distinctions, but also as it relates to Nietasche’s acquaintance with the theories of the physical and natural sciences and the extent to which both influence his thinking about language." ™ One of my major objectives is to demonstrate to what an extent Nietzsche's theory of Janguage depends on his great interest in and reading of the physical and natural sciences, To my knowledge the only major works to deal with this aspect of Nietzsche’s thinking ate Alwin Mittasch, Friedrich Nietesche als Naturpbiloroph, Stuttgart: Alfted Kréner Verlag, 1952, and G. J. Stack, Lange and Nietzsche, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983. Mittasch’s compendium of Nierzsche’s work in the natural and physical sciences is outstanding, however, it should ideally be seen as a foundation for further extensive research in this area of Nietzsche studies, See also VAP (1962), which offers valuable information on these aspects of Nietasche’s thinking. To one extent or another, Nietzsche was familiar with the ideas of each of the men Hartmann mentions here. Appendix B.3 offers an introduction to each of the names in the physical and natural sciences mentioned in my work. This is done for two reasons: 1) to demonstrate the breadth of Nietzsche's interest, and, 2) because these names come into my discussion again, at a later point. See Appendix B.3 on Hartmann. Nietzsche's relationship to Hartmann is interesting. There is evidence that Nietesche often wrote of Hartmann in very unflattering light. If I continue, for example, the quote from Nietzsche's letter to Erwin Rohde of November 11, 1869 (KSB 3: 73) we find, after Nietzsche’s praise of Hartmann, the following: “He is a very fragile1, Eduard von Hartmann and the Unconscious at and stiff man — with a little spite it seems to me, and here and there also small-minded and ungrateful. And this is for me a footing in ethics and the ethical judgement of men and animals.” However, as Mittasch wisely notes, Nietzsche uses sharp, but with that all too sharp words in his ambiguous references to Hartmann. “Already in the Basel years Nietzsche spoke of ‘Schopenhauer’s imitator Hartmann (who is really his enemy)’ (GA X: 217, (KSA 7: 811)). ‘Hartmann and Heine are unconscious ironists; scoundrels against themselves’ (GA 83, [KSA 7: 659]). However, ‘Hartmann has spirit (Geirt)’ (GA X: 304, [KSA 7: 740))!” (FNN 39). Later (1884) Nietzsche writes a few notes which specifically refer to Hartmann: “What a poor fate Schopenhauer had. His injustices found their exaggerators (Dihring and Richard Wagner), his fundamental view of pessimism a Berliner involuntary belittler (Eduard von Hartmann)” (KSA 11: 161). “Poor Schopenhauer! Eduard von Hartmann cut off the legs that he walked on, and Richard Wagner also cut off his head” (KSA 11: 153)! “I was in error at that time: I thought Eduard von Hartmann was a fine, superior head and wag (feiner ‘dberlegener Kopf und Spassvogel), who made fan of the pessimistic dilemma of the age; I found the discovery of his. “Unconscious” so mischievous, so clever, it appears to me a real mousetrap for the gloomy and dumb ones (of philosophical dilettantism, as it spreads more and more over Germany). Now one is determined to assure me that he meant it in earnest: and one almost forces me to believe it; — should he, however, therefore, cease to be cheering for me? Should I have to stop laughing when this Arria again and again urges its Paetus, not to be fearful of the Dolehe, I mean of the Hartmannian pessimism? Pact, it calls tenderly, non dolet\ Paete, this pessimism does not hurt! Paeft, Eduard does not bite! Eduard is full of consideration, agreeable, human friendly, blue, even friendly to the state, even prussian-blue — in short Eduard is a maid for all tasks and his pessimism leaves nothing to be desired” (KSA 11: 532—33)! “There are still many more cheerful things on earth, than the Pessimists admit: for example, Eduard von Hartmann himself. The Laokoon group, comprised of three clowns and just as many umbrellas, cheers me not as much as this Eduard ‘wrestling’ with his problems” (KSA 11: 232). Tt seems clear that Nietzsche had something of an ambiguous relationship to Hartmann’s writings. He is consistent in asserting that Hartmann did not pursue pessimism in the full sense of the word (i.¢., as did Schopenhauer), while at the same time offering a completely pessimistic point of view. This contradictory stance seems to have been arrived at in that Nietzsche felt Hartmann was playing at pessimism, while offering the view that pessimism does not or should not hurt. The whole dynamics, which we find at work in Nietzsche's references to Hartmann, naming him as unconscious ironist, joker, as perpetrating a sort of mischievous joke upon his “fellow” pessimists is not primarily derogatory, rather the opposite. One detects a definite tone of appreciation and admiration for such a source of “cheerfulness.” ‘And Nietzsche makes this perfectly clear in section 9 of “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 1873, to which I turn in Chapter 10. It is probable that Hartmann’s influence did not stop with the period 1 am reviewing, although that influence was most likely never as marked as in this early period. Nietzsche contained in his library two other of Hartmann’s major works, the second of which was very heavily commented upon by Nietzsche in its margins. The two works were: Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkt der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie, Berlin, 1872, and Phinomenologie des sittlichen. Bewusstseins, Berlin, 1874. (See Ochler, Max. Nietzsche's Bibliothek. Vierzehnte Jahresausgabe der Gesellschaft der Freunde des Nietasche-Archivs. Wiesbaden: Lessing- aruckerei, 1942.) It is also significant that Nietzsche sent a copy of The Birth of Tragedy to Hartmann. Sce KSB 3: 310 and 316. It is part of my work to demonstrate to what an extent that book owes its birth to Nietzsche's work with Hartmann’s ideas.Chapter Two Schopenhauer Nietzsche’s theory of language takes its first forms from a working with and working against the Kantian and Schopenhauerian philosophies, and in particular from Kant’s thing in itself as seen through the filter of Schopen- hauerian criticism. Kant’s revolutionary distinction of the phenomenon from the thing in itself, based on the proof that between things and us there always stands the intellect and that on this account they may not be known according to what they may be in themselves, provides the foundation stone of Scho- penhauer’s philosophy, and subsequently of Nietzsche’s early thinking about language and epistemology. In “On the Origins of Language” Nietzsche writes: “The deepest philo- sophical knowledge lies already prepared in language.” (“Die tiefsten philo- sophischen Erkenntnisse liegen schon vorbereitet in der Sprache.”) Then he quotes Kant and at the same time makes reference to a specific discussion in Schopenhauer’s “Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie” (“Criticism of the Kan- tian Philosophy”): “Kant says: ‘a great, perhaps the greatest portion of what ‘our reason finds to do consists in the analysis of concepts which human beings already find in themselves’.” (“Ein grosser Theil, vielleicht der grésste Theil von dem Geschafte der Vernunft besteht in Zergliederungen der Be- griffe, die er (der Mensch) schon in sich vorfindet?”) And then, referring to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche adds: “One thinks of subject and object, the idea of judgement is abstracted from grammatical sentences. Out of subject and predicate come the categories of substance and accident.” (“Man denke an Subjekt und Objekt; der Begriff des Ustheils ist vom grammatischen Satze abstrahirt. Aus Subjekt und Pridikat wurden die Kategorien von Substanz und Accidenz.”)' My discussion will break into Nietzsche’s juxtapositioning * Nietwsche, US 222. The quote from Kant can be found in The Critique of Pure Reaton, Introduction, Section 3. That this is the Kantian sentence quoted by Nietzsche is corraborated by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy in their article “Friedrich Nietzsche: Rhetorique et langage,” Poetigue, No. 5, 1971. In this article the authors translate into French and annotate early writings by Nietzsche concerned with rhetoric and language. However, in the course of my research I have found that Nietzsche does not take the quote directly from Kant, but rather word for word from Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious and in so doing repeats Hartmann’s misquote of Kant’s actual sentence which will be discussed in chapter 3. Nietzsche himself, provides the Schopenhauerian reference which can be found in Schopenhauer, WWR 1: 458, SW 2: 543.Language and Representation 23 of these three statements in order to make them the opportunity of briefly schematizing Schopenhauer’s philosophy, from the perspective of the part language plays in it, while examining its aspects as a reaction against and departure from Kantian philosophy. To approach Nietzsche’s theory of language from this perspective is necessary and interesting for several reasons: 1) Nietzsche’s theory of lan- guage, as already mentioned, forms itself to a large extent in agreement with and through a critique of these philosophies; 2) it provides a specific ground upon which to clearly delineate Nietzsche’s breaking away from Schopen- haver, something which still remains to be analyzed in detail and with specific attention to particular terminology in their theories of language and the roles they play in their respective epistemologies; 3) it will provide the ground upon which Nietzsche is able to take such an interest in the natural and physical sciences, and outline a background of thinking which makes Hart- mann such an attractive possibility; and 4) it will allow me to demonstrate how carly in his thinking Nietzsche anticipates the major formulations of his later thinking about language and philosophy in general, and how they are in their earliest formation not only reactions to Schopenhauer, but also to a significant degree, reactions to specific Kantian principles. It is the basic conception of the mind shared by Spinoza and the Empi- ricists which Kant and subsequently Schopenhauer inherit. The mind is seen as an entity, immaterial or material, which receives representations of things in the world, reasons about the perceived representations, and translates thought about these representations into actions of the body willed by the mind. Kant and Schopenhauer draw this basic model more into the physical and empirical sciences, however, the major divisions of the mind, of impres- sions or images, to reasonable thought, and willed action remain, for the most part, unchanged. It is with this basic model, with its Kantian and Schopenhauerian modifications, that we will see Nietzsche working. Scho- penhauer’s philosophy provides a meeting place in which empiricism takes a role alongside the line of thinking which leads to philosophical idealism. It is this conjunction of idealism and empiricism around which Nietzsche is continually fighting his agon during his early years of thinking. Language and Representation ‘The most distinguishing clement of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which draws its fundamental inspiration from Kant and the thing in itself, is that it starts neither from object nor from subject, but from representation, which contains and presupposes both.24 H. Schopenhauer ‘The perceived world in space and time, proclaiming itself as nothing but causality, is perfectly real, and is absolutely what it appears to be; it appears wholly and without reserve as representation, hanging together according to the law of causality. This is its empirical reality ... the whole world of objects is and remains representation, and is for this reason wholly and forever conditioned by the subject (and his understanding); in other words, it has transcendental ideality.” The subject, or the principium individvationis, bas two ways of knowing, knowledge of perception (or intuitive knowledge) and knowledge abstracted from perception, that is, rational knowledge. What might exist outside of the principium individuationis, the thing in itself, can never be known (though, later in my discussion we will find that Schopenhauer does claim to have identified the essence of the thing in itself under the name of the will). Within representation, the subject can only know his perceptions, and what he conceptualizes and thinks about those perceptions, as objects. Thus, repre- sentation means more precisely — object for the subject. However, the subject itself is also, necessarily, only object for its knowing consciousness. Representation of perception is arrived at through the understanding, which takes the sensation as a datum and applies the law of causality (space and time), allowing the sensation to be perceived as an effect, thus situating the object as cause. “All perception is not only of the senses, but of the intellect; in other words, pure knowledge through the understanding of cause and effect.” Not experience first then understanding of cause and effect, but cause and effect as the conditions for experience. Rational knowledge, which is abstract consciousness, is the fixing in concepts of reason what has already become known according to perception. Schopenhauer calls this fixing of concepts “representations of representations:” Reflection is necessarily the copy of repetition of the originally presented world of perception, though a copy of quite a special kind in a completely heterogeneous material. Concepts, therefore, can quite appropriately be called representations of representations (Vorstellungen von Vorstellungen ). the abstract representation has its whole nature simply and solely in its relation to another representation.* Although the representation of a representation may have its relation to a concept or abstract representation before it, this cannot, according to Scho- penhauer, continue ad infinitum, the series of abstractions must end in the last 2 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 Vols., trans. E. F. J. Payne, New ‘York: Dover Publications Inc., 1969. Each reference is followed by reference to the German: Arthur Schopenbauer Samilicbe Werke, Herausgegeben von Julius Frauenstidt, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1891. WWR 1: 15, SW 2: 17. > Ibid, WWR 1: 13, SW 2: 15. “ Thid., WWR 1: 40—41, SW 2: 48-49.Language and Representation 25 analysis with a concept which has its basis in knowledge of perception. For Schopenhauer, the whole world of reflection rests on the world of perception as its precondition. Schopenhauer defines those concepts which are not related directly to knowledge of perception, but only through one or several other concepts as abstracta, and those which have a direct grounding in knowledge of perception as concreta, With his examples of abstracta, such as “relation,” “virtue,” “investigation,” “beginning,” and of concreta, “man,” “stone,” “horse,” Scho- penhauer demonstrates that by concepts, os rational knowledge he means conscious thinking made possible through language. In this context Scho- penhauer makes an important qualification about the “reflex” of language: “glthough abstract rational knowledge is the reflex of the representation from perception, and is founded thereon, it is by no means so congruent with it that it could everywhere take its place; on the contrary, it never corresponds wholly to this representation.”* Schopenhauer emphasizes that even concepts denoted as concreta ate to be considered as such in only a figurative sense “for even these too are always abstracta, and in no way representations of perception.”* It is clear, that for Schopenhauer, a concept is a representation of a second order nature as far as consciousness is concerned: it is abstracted from perception which already presupposes conscious operations of the intellect. Thus, for Schopenhauer, “the concept of consciousness coincides with that of representation in general of whatever kind it may be.”” However, perception and language are never exactly congruent with that of which they are representations. Both these conscious operations remain inadequate to the thing in itself, which exists as a universal lying outside the world of representation and the basic functions of the principium individuationis — time, space, and causality. In Uber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) Schopenhauer describes the process of the formation of conceptions out of objects of representation. The first objects of representation are intuitive, complete, and empirical representa- tions. ‘They are intuitive as opposed to mere thoughts, ... they are complete, in that . they not only contain the formal, but also the material part of phenomena, and they are empirical, partly as proceeding, not from mere connection of thoughts, but from an excitation of feeling in our sensitive organism, as their origin, to which they constantly refer for evidence as to their reality. Ibid., WWR 1: 58, SW 2: 69—70. Ibid., WWR 1: 41, SW 2: 48-49, Ibid,, WWR 1: 51, SW 2: 60. Arthur Schopenhauer, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, trans. Mme. Kar! Hillebrand, London: George Bell and Sons, 1891. FR 31, SW 1: 28.26 IL. Schopenhauer The faculty of abstraction, however, reduces these complete intuitive repre- sentations into their component parts “‘in order to think each of these parts separately as different qualities of, or relations between, things.” In this process the perceptions necessarily forfeit their perceptibility. “Although each quality thus isolated (abstracted) can quite well be thoagh? by itself, it does not at all follow that it can be perceived by itself.”° In chapter 6 of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation), Part Two, Schopenhauer reiterates: “abstraction is a throwing off of useless luggage for the purpose of handling more easily the knowledge to be compared and manoeuvred in all directions.” Thus, “much that is inessential and therefore merely confusing, in real things is omitted, and we operate with few but essential determinations conceived in the abstract.”' To conceive, then, is to think less than we perceive. Concepts would, according to Schopenhauer, “entirely escape our con- sciousness, and be of no avail to it for the thinking processes ... were they not fixed and retained in our senses by arbitrary signs.”" These signs are words. According to Schopenhauer words are necessary to concepts, and language to the processes of reason, because our consciousness has time as its form and because concepts have arisen through abstraction and are thus universal rather than particular in character. It is the property of concepts to have an objective existence that does not belong to any time series. Therefore, to enter the immediate present of an individual consciousness, and consequently to be capable of insertion into a time-series, they must be to a certain extent brought down again to the nature of particular things, individualized, and thus linked to a representation of the senses; this is the word.’® Only by this means is the arbitrary reproduction, recollection, and preser- vation of concepts possible and only by this means are the operations possible which are to be undertaken with concepts, judging, inferring, comparing, limiting, and so on. Thus, for Schopenhauer, the reduction of the knowledge of perception to abstract conceptions “is the fundamental business of reason, and can only take place by means of language.” In maintaining this necessity of language, of word and speech as the means of abstract thinking Schopen- hauer is careful to point to its limitations. But just as every means, every machine, at the same time burdens and obstructs, so does language, since it forces the infinitely shaded, mobile, * Ibid., FR 115-16, SW 1: 98. © Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 64, SW 3: 68. » Schopenhauer, PR 116, SW 1: 99. ® Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 66, SW 3: 70. ® Schopenhauer, FR 116, SW 1: 100.Language and Representation 27 and modifiable idea into certain sigid, permanent forms, and by fixing the idea it at the same time fetters it.'* Schopenhauer distinguishes two types of what we might call image thought. Thinking “in a wider sense” corresponds to perceptual knowledge and is composed of “all inner activity of the mind in general, (and which) necessitates either words or pictures of the imagination: without one or the other of these it has nothing to hold by.”!® By what mechanism does perceptual knowledge produce representations? Through a physiological oc- currence in an animal’s brain, whose result is the consciousness of a picture or image (Bewusstsein eines Bildes). In discussing the creation of images of objects from the senses Schopenhauer offers examples of images arising from the senses of hearing, touch, smell and taste, which appear to be the result of @ cause and effect sequence. However, Schopenhauer finds that images created from the sense of sight are unique in that apprehension of an object appears to be direct. However, this is an illusion, and in describing the nature of this illusion, Schopenhauer offers a key passage in the mechanisms of perceptual thinking arising from the sense of sight. I quote at length, because the operations of sight and the making of pictures or images will become central to Nietzsche’s thinking about language as we proceed, and it is very probable that some of his ideas stem from the reading of Schopenhauerian passages such as the following. In the case of seeing the transition from the effect to the cause occurs quite unconsciously (ganz unbewusst) and thus the illusion arises that this kind of perception is perfectly direct and consists only in the sensation of sense without the operation of the understanding — this fact is due partly to the great perfection of the organ, and partly to the exclusively rectilinear action of light. In virtue of this action, the impression itself leads to the place of the cause, and as the eye has the capacity of experiencing most delicately and at a glance all the nuances of light, shade, colour, and outline, as well as the data by which the understanding estimates distance, the operating of the understanding, in the case of impressions on this sense, takes place with a rapidity and certainty that no more allow it to enter consciousness than they allow spelling to do so in the case of reading, In this way, therefore, the illusion arises that the sensation itself gives us the objects directly. Nevertheless, it is precisely in vision that the operation of the understanding (des Verstandes), which consists in knowing the cause from the effect, is most significant. By virtue of this operation, what is doubly felt with two eyes is singly perceived; by means of it, the impression arrives on the retina upside down, in consequence of the crossing of the rays in the pupil; and when its cause is pursued back in the same direction, the impression is Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 66, SW 3: 71. ' Schopenhauer, FR 121, SW 1: 103.28 II, Schopenhauer corrected, or, as it is expressed, we see things upright, although their image in the eye is inverted and reversed." With this we have a very good idea of what Schopenhauer means by a picture or image of perception, and the role of cause and effect in its production. However, Schopenhauer goes on to qualify this process of picturing or imaging: “Obviously the relation of such a picture to something entirely different from the animal in whose brain it exists can only be a very indirect one.”"” It is important to emphasize here, and it will become significant for my further discussion, that this picture or image thinking, even when it proceeds from sensation itself all takes place, for Schopenhauer, “inside our head.” From the point of view of Schopenhauer’s subjective idealism, the “outside us” to which we refer objects on the occasion of the sensation of sight described above, itself resides inside our head. In other words, although ‘we can experience the determination of a thing “outside” directly, we do not have within us the representation of the perceived thing lying outside us which is different from our perception of it. “Therefore, these things that we perceive directly in such a manner and not some mere image or copy of them, are themselves also only our representations, and as such exist only in our head.”"® Schopenhauer describes a second type of image thinking “in a narrower sense” which corresponds to abstract reflection by means of words. He makes a direct analogy between “the directness and unconsciousness with which in perception we make the ¢ransition from the sensation to its cause,” and the creation of abstract representations or thinking. When we read or listen, we receive mere words, but from these we pass ‘over to the concepts denoted by them so immediately, that it is as if we received the concepts immediately, for we are in no way conscious of the transition to them ... Only when we pass from abstract concepts to pictures of the imagination do we become aware of the transposition." ‘This second type of picture thinking arises only after abstract conceptuali- zation has taken place, and thus, Schopenhauer calls such pictures or images of the imagination a “representative of a conception” (Heprasentant eines Begriffs). Even when used to represent a conception, a picture of the imagination (phantasm) ought to be distinguished from a conception. We use phantasms as representatives of conceptions when we try to grasp the intuitive representation itself that has given rise to the conception and to make it tally with that * Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 23-24, SW 3: 28. " Ibid., WWR 2: 191-92, SW 3: 214. * Ibid., WWR 2: 22, SW 3: 26. © Ibid, WWR 2: 23, SW 3: 27.Language and Representation 29 conception, which is in all cases impossible; for ... we are always conscious that they are not adequate to the conceptions they represent, and that they are full of arbitrary determinations.” Because of the nature of the formation of abstractions, according to Scho- penhauer, through reduction, similarity, fixing, etc., they are ultimately in- adequate to what is represented, and thus carry with them some dangers. “All mere rational talk thus renders the result of given conceptions clearer, but does not, strictly speaking, bring anything new to light.”2" Again, Schopenhauer emphasizes the founding nature of perceptual intuition of the senses, which can bring new knowledge about, and the arbitrary nature of abstract conceptualization, which while useful, dispenses to a great extent with perceptibility. Perception is not only the source of all knowledge, but is itself knowledge ‘par excellence’; it alone is the unconditionally true genuine knowledge, fully worthy of the name. For it alone imparts insight proper; it alone is actually assimilated by man, passes into his inner nature and can quite justifiably be called Ais, whereas the concepts merely cling to him.” Thus, Schopenhauer’s scheme of language proceeds roughly in the following manner: a sensation produces an image in perception, which is an intuitive, complete, and empirical representation. This image is subjected to the proc- esses of abstraction. It is cut up and fixed in a concept through the application of a word. Concepts are used for purely logical reasoning, or are used as an activity of the faculty of judgment which “acts as the mediator between intuitive and abstract knowledge, or between the understanding and rea- son.” The attempt to “tally” a conception with the “intuitive representation itself” which gave rise to it, by “picturing” a representative of the conception, is a fundamental operation of conscious conceptuality. This type of image or picture of the imagination does not come from sensuous impressions and as a result can never tally with the intuitive representation which originally gave rise to the conception. Just as images created from sensation are not adequate to what is perceived, images arising from abstract conceptualization are equally as inadequate to what is conceived. 2 Schopenhauer, FR 120, SW 1: 102. 2 [bid., FR 123, SW t: 105. ® Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 77, SW 3: 83. ® Schopenhauer, FR 121—22, SW 1: 103.30 Hi, Schopenhauer Schopenbaner’s Departure from Kant With the statement: “The true kernel of all knowledge is that reflection which works with the help of intuitive representations; for it goes back to the fountainhead, to the basis of all conceptions,” Schopenhauer touches upon the fundamental separation of his own philosophy from that of Kant’s The more we depart from a grounding in perceptual knowledge and ascend in abstract thought, the more we deduct, the less therefore remains to be thought. “The highest, i.c., the most general conceptions, are the emptiest and poorest, and at last become mere husks, such as, for instance, being, essence, thing, becoming, etc.”** For Schopenhauer, philosophical systems which consist of such very general conceptions without grounding themselves in the knowledge of perception, “are little more than mere juggling with words. For since all abstraction consists in thinking away, the further we push it the less we have left over.” Schopenhauer considers Kant’s discovery of the a priori nature of time and space to have been a “lucky find” based on objective apprehension and the highest human thought. However, although Kant expressly states in The Critique of Pure Reason that “all thought must, directly or indirectly, go back to intuitions, ie., to our sensibility,” he went on to find pure concepts as presupposition in our faculty of knowledge which parallel the a priori categories of time and space on the perceptual leval. He imagined that empirical, actual thinking would be possible first of all through a pure thinking a priori, which would have no objects at all in itself, but would have to take them from perception. ... Thus a pure understanding corresponded symmetrically to a pure sensibility.” Schopenhauer considers that a boundary has been overleapt which leads to the precarious position wherein the abstracta come to predominate as cate- gories of understanding the world. Kant does say that abstract thinking does “very frequently, though not always” go back to our perceiving in order to convince ourselves that our abstract thinking has not taken us too fat from. our ground of perception. This referring back of concept to perception, is that already discussed above as the process of using the second type of “picture of imagination” which attempts to grasp the intuitive representation % Tbid., FR 122, SW 1: 103. % Tbid., FR 116, SW 1: 99. % Schopenhauer, WWR 2: 64, SW 3: 69. Many of the passages from The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason were brought to my attention in an article by Mosris S. Engel, “Schopenhauer’s Impact on Wittgenstein,” Schopenhauer: His Philosophical Achievement, Ed. Michael Fox, New Jersey: Barnes and Nobel Books, 1980. ® Tbid., WWR 1: 449, SW 2: 532,‘The Subject-Predicate Relationship 31 which has given rise to the conception. Kant calls a fleeting phantasm of this kind a scheme: such a schema stands midway between our abstract thinking of empirically acquired concepts and our clear perception occurring through the senses, so also do there exist a priori similar schemata of the pure concepts of the understanding between the faculty of perception of pure sensibility and the faculty of thinking « priori of the pure understanding.” Now this is the point at which Schopenhauer balks. Kant, in assuming schemata of the pure concepts a priori of the understanding, which are analogous to the empirical schemata, overlooks the original purpose of such schemata. Empirical thinking rests upon the material content of empirical perception and can refer back to that material content to assure ourselves that our thinking still has real content. However, with Kant’s concepts a priori, which have no content at all, as they have not sprung from perception, but which first receive a content from within, “have as yet nothing on which they could look back.” Schopenhauer’s differences with Kant can be summed up clearly, Whereas Kant starts from indirect, reflected knowledge, Schopenhauer starts from direct and intuitive knowledge. For Kant philos- ophy is a science of concepts, whereas for Schopenhauer, philosophy is a science ix concepts drawn from knowledge of perception, Kant minimizes the world of perception and sticks to the forms of abstract thinking, a procedure which is “founded on the assumption that reflection is the ectype of all perception, and that everything essential to perception must therefore be expressed in reflection.” The Subject-Predicate Relationship To offer a concrete example of Schopenhauer’s objection to Kant upon this score, let me refer back to my opening quote from Nietzsche’s “On the Origins of Language” and his juxtapositioning of Schopenhauer and Kant. To reiterate, Kant says: “a great, perhaps the greatest portion of what our reason finds to do consists in the analysis of concepts which human beings already find in themselves.” And then, referring to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche adds: “One thinks of subject and object, the idea of judgement is abstracted from grammatical sentences. Out of subject and predicate come the categories of substance and accident.” Nietzsche’s reference, here, to Schopenhauer % Ibid., WWR 1: 450, SW 2: 533. ® Ibid., WWR 1: 450, SW 2: 534, % Ibid., WWR 1: 453, SW 2: 537.32 II. Schopenhauer gives no hint of the point of conflict with Kant which it contains — though the page to which Nietzsche gives reference in his footnote contains the essence of the conflict. The reference is to Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kant’s categorical judge- ment in his “Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy,” where Schopenhauer maintains that the mistake Kant makes, a mistake which is commonly made, when the grounding nature of perceptual knowledge is left aside, is one of confusing the place of the abstract conceptions of subject and predicate with those of the external categories of substance and accident; a confusion which allows the projection of abstract knowledge onto the external world, as a precondition for the understanding of causality in knowledge of perception. ‘The mistake of confusing subject and predicate with substance and accident comes about because the plurality of different immediate kinds of knowledge in perception are all abstracted through the combination of the two concepts of subject and predicate: For example, the judgements: “Water boils”; “The sine measures the angle”; “the will decides”; “employment distracts”; “distinction is difficult”, express through the same logical form the most varied kinds of relations. From this we obtain once more the sanction, however wrong the beginning, to place ourselves at the standpoint of abstract knowledge, in order to analyze direct, intuitive knowledge. ... Now after this knowledge, like much that is quite different from it (e.g., the subordination of highly abstract concepts), has been expressed in the abstract through subject and predicate, these mere relations of concepts have been transferred back to knowledge of perception, and it has been supposed that the subject and predicate of the judgement must have a special correlative of their own in perception, namely substance and accident." This is the obverse of Schopenhauer’s view that cause and effect themselves condition experience. Not experience first then understanding of cause and effect, but cause and effect as the conditions for experience. Schopenhauer asserts that the subject and predicate should be kept in the abstracta where they alone have significance. In order to attempt an explanation of how subject and predicate relate to abstract conceptualization, Schopenhauer develops a theory of conceptual extension wherein conceptual spheres overlap each other in varying ways. Because concepts are abstract representations and thus not completely definite representations, as are representations of perception, they have a range, an extension, or a sphere in which they operate. The sphere of any concept converges in part with the sphere of related concepts and vice versa, although if they are really different concepts each contains something the other does % Tbid., WWR 1: 458, SW 2: $43.