Nietzsche and 19th Century Linguistics

Benedetta Zavatta

Nietzsche and Linguistics1

1. Origin and Development of Sprachwissenschaft

Linguistics established itself as an autonomous discipline in the mid-nineteenthcentury. It was Friedrich Schlegel in the early years of the century who invented thehistorical-comparative method, which he used for his research on Sanskrit (Schlegel1808). Franz Bopp made the first large-scale application of the method in his Über dasConjugationssystem der Sanscritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen,lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (1816), later re-worked in his mo-numental Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen,Litthauischen, Gothischen und Deutschen (1833–1857). Rasmus Kristian Rask extendedresearch on the grammar and phonology of Scandinavian languages, providingfurther proof of the effectiveness of the new comparative method (Rask 1814), whilePott, in his Etymologische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Spra-chen (1833–1836), used it for etymology. Comparative linguistics was mainly a productof German culture, as the first historians of the discipline recognised (Benfey 1869).2

After Bopp had received his chair in Berlin (Orientalische Literatur und allgemeineSprachkunde, 1821) and Pott in Halle (Vergleichende Grammatik, 1833) there was arapid increase in the sector, both in research and teaching. Leipzig University, inparticular, where Nietzsche studied classical philology from 1865 to 1868, was soonrecognised as a leading centre in the field, thanks to the presence of distinguishedscholars of Indo-European languages and scientists as Karl Ludwig Merkel, the authorof important works on the anatomy and physiology of language (1857, 1866).3 Sprach-wissenschaft, in fact, made great use of such fundamental contributions from thephysical and medical sciences as Helmholtz’ research on acoustic phonetics (Helm-holtz 1863) and the many studies of aphasia and other language disturbances by PaulBroca, which led to the linguistic faculty being located in the brain (Broca 1863).

1 I would like to thank the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal) which is currentlysupportingmy project “Language, cognition and cultural experience. FromHumboldt to contemporaryCognitive Linguistics” (SFRH/BPD/86257/2012). I would also express my gratitude to the Instituto deFilosofia da Linguagem (IFL), the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH) of the UniversidadeNova de Lisboa, and in particular tomy supervisor Prof. João Constâncio.2 Nietzsche borrowed Benfey’s Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft from Basle University Library inNovember 1869 (see Crescenzi 1994, p. 390).3 Leipzig University’s preeminence in the field of linguistics dates from 1861 with Curtius’ teaching,followed by that of Leskien, Brugmann and Wundt. Saussurre too – a generation younger thanNietzsche – studied at Leipzig in the years when themovement of the Junggrammatiker emerged, as didthe American Leonard Bloomfield.

The development of linguistics as an autonomous field of study among theGeisteswissenschaften was based on the new conception of classical philology thatdeveloped at Göttingen University, thanks to Christian Gottlob Heyne and FriedrichAugust Wolf. Unlike France and Great Britain, where philology was mere Sprach-studium, in Germany philology was understood in a wider sense as Alterthumwissen-schaft, where language, religion, art, usages and customs played equally importantroles. In the late ninteenth century it was August Boeckh who developed the concep-tion of philology as Altherthumsstudien that Wolf had introduced. Boeckh regardedthe object of philological research as “that which the philosophers call the principle ofa people or an age, the innermost kernel of its total being” (Boeckh 1877, p. 56; Porte2000, p. 201). Nietzsche’s teachers at Leipzig, the famous Latinist Ritschl and theGreek scholar Georg Curtius, were keen supporters of this broader conception ofphilology.4 Georg Curtius in particular saw language as the first and most importantform of expression of human beings, and therefore hoped for a close alliance betweenPhilologie and Sprachwissenschaft. In his inaugural lecture at Leipzig in 1862 Curtiusclaimed that the principles of comparative linguistics should be well known to a goodphilologist.

Die Sprache hängt überdies mit dem ganzen Geistesleben eines Volkes so innig zusammen, sieumschliesst bis zu dem Grade die Denkformen und den Denkgehalt desselben, dass die feinerenund höheren Fragen nur von dem gestellt werden können, der in diesem Gesistesleben heimischist. Andrerseits aber können sie nicht recht gestellt werden ohne einige Einsicht in die Mittel unddas Verfahren des Sprachforschers (Curtius 1862, p. 18).

Although Nietzsche’s letters do not give the impression of a very attentive student, butone who preferred to concentrate on his own reading, Schopenhauer in particular, wecertainly cannot disregard the importance of the influence of the university environ-ment on his thought.5 His inaugural lecture at Basle in May 1869, Homer und dieklassische Philologie, confirms that he had chosen to follow his masters’ way oflooking at the subject. Philology is defined „ebenso wohl ein Stück Geschichte alsein Stück Naturwissenschaft als ein Stück Aesthetik“: History to the extent that itattempts to understand the development of peoples; natural science for its explorati-on of man’s most profound instinct, the linguistic instinct; and aesthetics as it definesthe canon of classical antiquity, on the basis of which we can evaluate the present

4 The Danish Latinist Johan Nicolai Madvig, too, regarded a perfect understanding of language(Sprachverständnis) as a premise, but not the aim, of philology (see Benne 2005, p. 69). Nietzsche readMadvig’s Opuscula academica (1834–1842) in 1870, his Adversaria critica ad scriptores Graecos etLatinos, Bd. 1 (1871) in 1871, and his Kleine philologische Schriften (1875) in 1876 (see Crescenzi 1994).Nietzsche’s personal library also containsMadvig’s famous Lateinische Sprachlehre für Schulen (1877).5 In a letter to Mushacke of 27. April 1866 Nietzsche describes Curtius as “abscheulich” and his lessonsas a mortal bore (Bf. an Mushacke, 27.04.1866, KGB I/2, Bf. 504). But at the beginning of the newsemester Nietzsche was already revising his judgement on Curtius (see Reich 2004, p. 50).

266 Benedetta Zavatta

(HkP, KGW I/1, p. 246). In later years, as we can see from the list of books borrowedfrom Basle library, Nietzsche’s interest in language grew. At the same time he felt agrowing impatience with what had become the prevailing orientation of linguisticresearch: the collecting and cataloguing of facts. To safeguard the scientific nature ofthe new discipline, linguists preferred not to speculate on the nature and origin oflanguage, which had been all the rage in the previous century. A clear indicator of thecultural climate of the age was the decision taken in 1866 by the Société de linguisti-que in Paris to accept no more contributions on the origin of language or on universallanguages (art. 2 of the Statute). Humboldt, who had aspired to combine empiricalresearch with philosophical reflection on language, was an author much admired, butlittle imitated. Registering a widespread opinion among European scholars of theperiod, Whitney described Humboldt as “a man whom it is nowadays the fashion topraise highly, without understanding or even reading him” (Whitney 1873, p. 333).6

More popular in the 1860s and 1870s was the theory of August Schleicher, whoseCompendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1861–1862) was for a long time the standard manual of the new discipline. Schleicherclaimed that language, as an emanation of a natural organism, was regulated by itsown laws, independent of the history and culture of the people that spoke it. Linguis-tics should therefore be regarded as an autonomous discipline and included amongthe natural sciences rather than the historical ones where philology had its place18Schleicher 1861–62, p. 1).

In his Encyclopedie der klassischen Philologie, an introduction to classical studiesdelivered in 1871, Nietzsche set out the idea that historical-comparative research onlanguages was now a powerful tool for investigating antiquity, but could not becomean end in itself. While demonstrating his great appreciation of the important resultsthat it had produced, Nietzsche thought it necessary to use them for more wide-ranging considerations (EKP, KGW II/3, pp. 389f). He took the same line in the notesof 1875 for the never-to-be-published Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung onWir Philologen, inwhich he deplored the blindness of those who devoted themselves only to studyingthe particular without being able to include it in a wider vision (KGW IV/1). The list ofbooks which Nietzsche borrowed during the Basle years confirms the fact that he wasmore interested in authors who used the results of the historical-comparative methodto advance general considerations on the subject of language. Three authors at theforefront of his thoughts were Heyman Steinthal, Max Müller and Gustav Gerber. Hisreading of them gave Nietzsche the tools for transcending the prevailing empirical-descriptive current of his time and for investigating how language is related to cultureand also to the humanmind.

6 According to Jürgen Trabant the Kawi-Einleitung was already out-of-date when it was publishedposthumously in 1836, precisely because it uses historical analysis as a means for a philosophicalconsideration of the problem (see Trabant 1985, pp. 676f).

Nietzsche and Linguistics 267

2. Heymann Steinthal and Linguistic Relativism

Heymann Steinthal (1823–1899) was active as a Privatdozent in Berlin from the midnineteenth century onwards, and was one of the few scholars who tried to keepalive Humboldt’s legacy, promoting an edition of his works and knowledge of them.7

In November 1869 Nietzsche borrowed from Basle University Library the Geschichteder Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern mit besonderer Rücksicht aufdie Logik (1863) and, in the bibliography for his Encyclopädie der klassischenPhilologie we find Steinthal’s Philosophie, Geschichte und Psychologie in ihrengegenseitigen Beziehungen (NL 1869, KGW I/5, 75[3]). In that period Nietzsche wasworking on the Vorlesungen über lateinische Grammatik (1869–1870), whose pro-logue Vom Ursprung der Sprache contains interesting philosophical reflections onthe relation between the grammatical form of language and the logical form ofthought. Nietzsche claimed that language inevitably pre-determines the thoughtexpressed in it, and that metaphysical, moral or religious systems simply re-elabora-te the hidden philosophy contained in the grammar of the language in which theyare formulated.8 Although the thoughts developed in this essay are along the linesof those in Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophie des Unbewusstes (Thüring 1994;Crawford 1988), we should not underestimate the importance of the influence thatSteinthal might have had on Nietzsche.

Humboldt had already claimed that grammar was the form of thought in hisKawi-Einleitung, assigning linguistics the task of identifying, through the comparati-ve method, the grammatical forms common to all languages, so as to then trace fromthem the corresponding universal forms of the human spirit (Humboldt 1963,p. 10f).9 The premise of Humboldt’s research was Kant’s idea of a transcendental

7 Heymann Steinthal never obtained a chair, anti-Semitism being widespread then (see Stammer-johann 1996, p. 885). Along with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus he founded and for thirty yearsedited the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (1860–1890). The project of aVölkerpsychologie was later taken up again in the early twentieth century by Wundt, who, in Sprach-geschichte und Sprachpsychologie (1901), praised him for being the first to introduce a psychologicalperspective into the science of language (see Knobloch 1987, pp. 268–273). In any case Steinthal waslittle understood or appreciated by his contemporaries. Delbrück described him thus: “Ein schwerverständlicher Philosoph, dem es auf den Höhen der Abstraktion am wohlsten war” (Delbrück 1919,p.11). And Jespersen observed: “This obscurity, in connexion with the remoteness of Steinthal’sstudies, which ranged from Chinese to the language of the Mande negroes, but paid little regard toEuropean languages, prevented him from exerting any powerful influence on the linguistic thought ofhis generation” (Jespersen 1925, p. 87).8 Nietzsche regarded the concepts of substance and accident, which are fundamental to Westernphilosophy, as derived from the linguistic categories of subject and predicate. “Die tiefsten philosoph.Erkenntnisse liegen schon vorbereitet in der Sprache […]; der Begriff des Urtheils ist vom grammati-schen Satze abstrahirt. Aus Subjekt u. Prädikat wurden die Kategorien von Substanz und Accident”(Vorlesungsaufzeichnungen SS 1869 –WS 1869–1870, KGW II/2, p. 185. See Simon 1972).9 See also Humboldt 1822.


subject, which precedes and founds empirical subjectivity. At first Steinthal hadshared Humboldt’s vision and had taken on this task. But, after considering langua-ges very different from the Indo-European ones, like that of the Mande negroes, hesoon became convinced that such a comparison was impossible, and that therelation between linguistic structure and the form of thought should be consideredin relation to specific cases (Steinthal 1867, VIf). The innere Sprachform – thegrammatical form of a language – would not reveal an assumed universal mentalform, but the particular spirit of the people that created it. Steinthal’s vision was alsorigidly deterministic: he was convinced that the grammar of every language alreadycontains in nuce all the logic, metaphysics and even scientific vision that the peoplespeaking it can develop (Steinthal 1871, p. 108). His monumental project of a Völker-psychologie, later taken up by Wundt, aimed to verify how the pecular spirit of eachpeople reaches expression in the grammar of its language. Unity is to be found, à laHegel, in the development from one language to another. Each people represents adifferent phase in the development of the Spirit and its essence is incarnate in theirlanguage, giving form to the logical categories with which it should be evaluated(Steinthal 1848, p. 93). Steinthal’s thinking marks the transition from a universallinguistic relativism to a particular one, where language is bound not by the uni-versal categories of Kantian reason, but by historical-cultural forms.10 In Philosophie,Geschichte und Psychologie (1864), which Nietzsche read in the winter of 1868–69,Steinthal vindicated the need to relate grammar not to the logical categories of anassumed transcendental subject, but to the psychological categories of empiricalsubjectivity.

Nietzsche’s critique of grammar and the restraint it unconsciously places onthought, which he began in 1869 with Vom Ursprung der Sprache, was powerfully re-worked in the years of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, and later became a constantLeitmotiv in the works of the 1880s. Grammar is defined as a “faith (Glauben)” or,rather, a sort of popular belief or “superstition (Aberglauben)”11 that comes into beingto satisfy humans inherent need to make a stable and coherent mental representationof the world. To live, man is forced to believe that, below the flux of becoming, thereexists a substantial “being” that remains. Actually, Nietzsche observes, it is the

10 Bernhardi’s (1801) and Heyse’s (1856) attempts are also worth mentioning. Their critique ofeighteenth-century universal grammar is accompanied by a dissatisfaction with the simple collectionand comparison of data and, as a result, the search for a philosophical foundation of the empiricalsciences, including linguistics (see Formigari 1997, pp. 199f).11 Nietzsche defines grammar as “Gouvernanten-Glauben” (JGB 34, KSA 5, p. 52) or “Volks-Metaphy-sik” (FW 354, KSA 3, p. 590). Schopenhauer defines religion as Volks-Metaphysik, since it indicates in asymbolic manner to non-philosophers the metaphysical truth that only philosophy can adequatelyconceive. Nietzsche applies this definition to grammar since it represents a sort of popular creed thatprecedes and underlies true metaphysical speculation. Governesses (Gouvernaten) represent thepopulace, the non-intellectuals (see Schank/Zavatta forthcoming).


predicative relation “subject-verb-object”, that leads us to imagine a causal agentbehind every phenomenon, thus giving rise to a world of metaphysical substancesthat are known to us only through their “effects”.

Wenn ich sage ‘,der Blitz leuchtet’, so habe ich das Leuchten einmal als Thätigkeit und dasandere Mal als Subjekt gesetzt: also zum Geschehen ein Sein supponirt, welches mit demGeschehen nicht eins ist, vielmehr bleibt, ist, und nicht ‚wird‘ (NL 1885–1886, 2[84], KSA 12,p. 104).12

It is therefore through language that a Hinterwelt of eternal, immutable substances iscreated as cause of the visible world.13 That is why Nietzsche claims: „Ich fürchte, wirwerden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik glauben …“ (GD Vernunft 5,KSA 6, p. 77). Even when the old religious systems have been demolished, as soon aswe start to reflect on reality we once again project onto it the shadow of metaphysics(FW 109, KSA 3, p. 467), because we can only think in the form that language makesavailable to us (NL 1886–1887, KSA 12, 5[22]).

Furthermore, the mental representation of the world, created according to thecategories of syntax, is absolutely congruent with the categories of the humanintellect. “Knowledge” is, indeed, the illusion that is generated whenever we meet acorrespondence between the sphere of being we have invented and our cognitivestructures, without noticing that the regularity we find in nature is what we ourselveshave brought to it. As Nietzsche observes in his Zur Genealogie der Moral, forgettingthe unstable foundation of all knowledge is a blessing for human beings (GM II 1,

12 The example of the lightning flash is used by Trendelenburg in his Logische Untersuchungen(Albrecht 1979, p. 239), but Nietzsche took it from Drossbach’s Ueber die scheinbaren und die wirklichenUrsachen des Geschehens in der Welt (1884). Drossbach offered Nietzsche important stimuli for re-flecting on the fact that the imagination always tends to see the effect (Wirkung) of an action (Wirken)as the work of a subject (ein Wirkendes) (see Drossbach 1884, p. 3; Orsucci 2001, p. 221; Schmidt 1988).Nietzsche returns to the example of the lightening flash several times in the Nachlaß 1885–1886, see forexample NL NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[78]; NL 1885–86, KSA 12, 2[193]. Using the same argument in ZurGenealogie der Moral, he discusses how the strongman cannot be separated from his strength (see GM I13, KSA 5, p. 279). Another important source for Nietzsche was Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher (1801).Lichtenberg claims that grammar represents the skeleton of thinking, which supports it and at the sametime imprisons it. The spine is represented by the subject-predicate-object relation (see Stingelin 1996,p. 25). Through the criticism of predicative determination he attacks causal inference in general, andthe cogito ergo sum as a particular form of it. Tilman Borsche objects to Nietzsche’s theory, inviting theconsideration that, while we cannot say more than: “der Blitz leuchtet”, we can nonetheless conceivethis phenomenon in terms of event, “ohne ‘den’ Blitz als Täter einer Tat hypostatisieren zu müssen”(Borsche 1988, p. 174).13 In substitution of the traditional “Ding-Modell” Nietzsche proposes a “Prozeß-Modell”, in which“als ‘Bausteine’ der Natur und des Lebendigen nicht ‘Dinge’ im Sinne Raum-Zeit-Stellen besetzender‘materieller Körper’, sondern ‘Ereignisse’ resp. ‚Prozesse’ angenommen warden” (Abel 2001, p. 11). It isan adualist onthology (adualistische Ontologie), that is, which does not foresee the separation betweenorganic and inorganic, between physical andmental.


KSA 5, p. 291). The make-believe of a reality that develops according to immutablelaws, and can therefore be controlled and predicted by the intellect, is the indispensa-ble condition for human nature to thrive (GM II 2, KSA 5, p. 293).

That Nietzsche was not inclined towards a universal linguistic relativism, likeHumboldt, but rather to a “speziellen Sprachrelativismus”, like Steinthal, emergesclearly from JGB 20 (Albrecht 1979).14 On this occasion Nietzsche took up the thesis ofVom Ursprung der Sprache, by which the grammatical categories of a language pre-dispose conscious thought to take a certain direction, encouraging certain thoughtsand thwarting others. Concepts are to language as plants to the terrain: at a certainlatitude only certain types of vegetation can grow. This also explains why theconcepts formulated in a certain language have a kind of affinity that allows them tobecome parts of the same system, or why the diversity of philosophical systemsformulated in the same language is always circumscribed within certain limits. Thephilosophers do nothing more than fill in a pre-formed “framework [Grundschema]”,constituted by the grammatical structures of their language. All philosophizing is notso much the discovery of something new, as the recognition of something alreadyknown: a sort of “return home” to that homeland (that is grammar) from which thethinking originates (JGB 20, KSA 5, p. 34). Nietzsche also states in a fragment of 1885,contesting Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: “Vor der Frage nach dem ‚Sein‘müßte die Fragevom Werth der Logik entschieden sein” (NL 1885, [40]23, KSA 11, p. 640). Beforedealing with the question of being and other philosophical problems, that is, weshould ask ourselves about the legitimacy of inferring from a thought the existence ofsomething that exercises the action of thinking: we should wonder if the logic we areusing is really universal and incontrovertible, or does not rather depend on thegrammar of the language in which we are expressing ourselves.15

With regard to Steinthal, Nietzsche takes another step, however: he considersgrammar as the expression not of the Volksgeist, but rather of the physiology of agiven race. In the above-mentioned JGB 20 Nietzsche claims that grammatical re-straints reflect physiological value-judgements and race-conditions:

Philosophen des ural-altaischen Sprachbereichs (in dem der Subjekt-Begriff am schlechtestenentwickelt ist) werden mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit anders „in die Welt“ blicken und aufandern Pfaden zu finden sein, als Indogermanen oder Muselmänner: der Bann bestimmter

14 Albrecht opposes Simon’s thesis, by which Nietzsche tends towards an “allgemeiner Sprachrelati-vismus” (Simon 1972, p. 12). Djurić 1985, p. 44 is more moderating, seeing Nietzsche as being moreinclined towards a “spezieller Sprachrelativismus” in JGB 20 but not being so clear in other texts.15 Nietzsche suggested, rather, that the subject has just a “Scheinexistenz” (JGB 54) and is a heuristichypothesis for organizing our perceptions, making the world representable and, consequently, ourexistence on the earth easier. The development of a criticism of the subject starts from a considerationof Teichmüller’s Die wirkliche und scheinbare Welt (1882). See Orsucci 2001, pp. 212ff; Zavatta 2009,pp. 286f.


grammatischer Funktionen ist im letzten Grunde der Bann physiologischer Werthurtheile undRasse-Bedingungen (JGB 20, KSA 5, p. 34).16

Nietzsche alludes to the fact that human beings fix grammatical categories in respon-se to particular Existenz-Bedingungen: through language an image of the world has tobe produced in which a race can live and thrive. Grammar is also described as a mirrorof the “fernen uralten Gesammt-Haushalt der Seele” – the primordial traffic of stimuliand responses between the body and the outside world. Replacing “Geist”, a termtraditionally used to denominate the immaterial principle separate from the body andopposed to it, with “Seele”, understood as the whole of an organism’s psycho-physicalprocesses, Nietzsche wants to underline how the “Weltansichten” created by differentlanguages are not a purely intellectual product, but rather the fruit of “perspektivi-sche Schätzungen […], vermöge deren wir uns im Leben […] erhalten” (NL 1885–1886,2[108], KSA 12, p. 114). Every human institution that is created through inter-sub-jective agreement reached through language is the expression not of a spirit dis-engaged from the body, but of the effort of a specific life form to create an environ-ment for itself that is suitable for its survival.

The tradition of comparative grammar from which he came thus provided Nietz-sche with important tools for carrying out the more strictly philosophical task he hadset himself, that of an Erkenntniskritik and a Kulturkritik. On the one hand, underliningthe role played by physiology in the formation of grammatical categories, he shook upthe Kantian idea of a ‘pure’ reason detached from the body. On the other, underliningthe great diversity of grammatical systems and visions of the world that they produce,he questioned the universality of reason and, consequently, the absolute validity ofmoral values unconsciously conveyed by language.

3. Friedrich Max Müller and theMythology of Language

Another author who was particularly attentive to the relation between thought andlanguage, and whom Nietzsche had read and admired as early as the Basle years wasFriedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), an Orientalist and scholar of comparative mytholo-gy. After studying at Leipzig, he moved to Paris to study Sanskrit with Burnouf, and

16 Andrea Orsucci 2006 suggests the possibility of an influence from Winckler 1885. This author,whom Cassirer had also read, discovered that the syntax of Indo-Germanic languages emphasizes thesubject who acts, while the syntax of Ural-Altaic languages emphasizes the action performed by thesubject. In the syntax of Indo-European languages subject and verb are two separate, autonomousentities, while in Ural-Altaic languages the whole phrase is organized as a verb substantive: e.g: I take /taking –my.


later to London, where he spent several years translating the Rig-Veda. In 1854 hebecame Taylorian Professor of Modern Languages, but it was ten years before OxfordUniversity offered him a chair in Comparative Philology. Language for Müller was thetool by which man can organize his experience coherently, establish models of inter-action with the outside environment, and relate to his fellow men, setting up socialand cultural practices. He claimed that “language is the true autobiography of thehuman mind” (Müller 1887, p. 515; Cloeren 1988, pp. 167f) because it witnesses thecultural development of humanity and the evolution of social practices. However,linguistics is to be considered not just as a historical science, but also and above all asa physical science (Van Den Bosch 2002, p. 215), in as that from language we canextract information about what today is called the “cognitive unconscious” – all thoseoperations that the mind performs automatically. This is certainly the most interestingpart of Müller’s thought, and also what makes it distinctive in the cultural panoramaof his time: language becomes for him a torch to light up “the dark chambers” ofthought (Müller 1887, p. 6; Van Den Bosch 2002, p. 217) and explore their depths.Criticizing the purity and universality of Kantian reason, Müller underlined theimportant role played by language in the transcendental synthesis. We always thinkwithin the historical forms that language makes available to us: “We think with ourwords as we see with our eyes” (Müller 1887, p. 550). Unawareness of this fact has ledover the centuries to an interminable series of pseudo-problems that philosophy hasvainly struggled to solve. Müller, anticipating twentieth-century Logical Positivism,believed they should not be solved, but dissolved through rigorous linguistic analysis.In the new linguistic science he therefore saw a powerful weapon for combatting“cloudy German metaphisycs” (Müller 1887, p.123; Zavatta 2009, p. 275).

Nietzsche’s personal library contained the second volume of Müller’s Essays(1869), the Beiträge zur vergleichenden Mythologie und Ethnologie, while Nietzschereferred various times to the first volume of the work, the Beiträge zur vergleichendenReligionswissenschaft, in his notes of the years 1869–74 (KSA 14, pp. 534f). InNovember 1869 Nietzsche also borrowed from the Basle library the famous Vor-lesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache (1863–1866)17 and, in October 1875, theEinleitung in die vergleichende Religionswissenschaft (1874), a cycle of four lectures

17 Nietzsche borrowed this work various times in the crucial years 1869–74. It was also oftenmentioned by Ritschl and Curtius in their lectures. See Nietzsche’s notes of Ritschl’s lectures on‚Institutiones grammaticae linguae latinae‘ (Bonn, SS 1865). The notebook C IV 3b (= GSA 71/55)contains 53 sheets, i.e. 105 written pages and has the title “Lateinische Grammatik, vorgetragen vonF. Ritschl Bonn, Sommersemester 1865, Erster Theil”. Max Müller is mentioned by Nietzsche also in thenotebook C IV 2, p. 174, which fromp. 158 to p. 174 refers to Ritschl’s seminar “Einleitung undAnleitungzur lateinischen Grammatik”, vgl. BAW 1, LVIII. See Figl 2007, pp. 193–194. Georg Curtius quoted MaxMüller’s Vorlesungen and the essay Comparative Mythology (1856, republished in the second volume ofhis Essays, NB) in his seminar “Geschichte der griechischen Literatur” (see Nietzsche’s notebook C III1a,Wintersemester 1865–1866).


published along with two other essays, Über falsche Analogien and Über Philosophieder Mythologie.

Müller’s work offered Nietzsche various stimuli, but decidedly the most fertile wasthat of a mythology unconsciously generated by an uncritical use of language.Nomina numina, observed Müller: the names given to things become divinities thatanimate them. Concepts, first created for purposes of recapitulation to speed upcommunication and facilitate the sharing of needs and objectives, over time areerroneously confused with the names of really existing, though invisible, entities. Thisattitude is not only characteristic of primitive peoples, but a universal instinct ofhuman beings. In Über die Philosophie der Mythologie (1874) Müller makes use of theresults of scientific etymology and comparative grammar to show how this instinctcan be found identical in every age and at every latitude. Even the modern age, nowsecularized and dominated by the scientific spirit, is by no means free of mythology.The concepts of atom, substance and force, claims Müller, are still more imaginativethan the creatures imagined by Homer. „Mythologie im höchsten Sinne des Wortes istdie durch die Sprache auf den Gedanken ausgeübte Macht, und zwar in jeder nurmöglichen Sphäre geistiger Thätigkeit“ (Müller 1874, p. 317). Since every thoughtneeds language if it is to be expressed, there is no ambit of thought that is free of itsseduction.

Müller’s influence on Nietzsche’s thought is very visible in an aphorism of DerWanderer und sein Schatten, where he observes how it is language that enables us toisolate individual objects from the flux of perceptions. That is to say, it is by assigninga name to a group of sense impressions that we conceive them as a single phenome-non (WS 11, KSA 2, p. 546).18 This simplification certainly brings great advantages forcommunication, but at the same time produces the illusion that these concepts havecorresponding metaphysical entities. As Nietzsche had already noted in Über Wahr-heit und Lüge, forgetting the origin of the concept ‘leaf’, coined to summarize a seriesof similar perceptual experiences, we imagine there is a metaphysical entity, ‘the leaf’that real leaves are imperfect copies of (WL 1, KSA 1, p. 875). The whole Platonicdoctrine of ideas is based on this misunderstanding (DaR 7, KGW II/4, p. 446). Thisphenomenon produces still more absurd consequences in the moral sphere. Forexample, we speak of virtues like daring so often that we tend to imagine there existqualities that, if possessed by a certain individual, lead him to act in a certain way.

18 One possible source for Nietzsche was also Lange’sGeschichte des Materialismus (1866). Langeexplains that the tendency to create anthropomorphic images of the world around us is a universal,irrepressible characteristic of human beings. Projecting attributes of human beings onto nature, weimagine the physical processes as actions of entities on other entitites and group sense impressions indiscrete units, so that we recognize “objects” in the world. “Dinge nennen wir eine Gruppe vonErscheinungen, die wir unter Abstraktion vonweiteren Zusammenhängen und inneren Veränderungeneinheitlich auffassen” (Lange 18872 II, p. 217). Nietzsche read Lange for the first time in 1866 and wasstruck at once by him (see Salaquarda 1978 and Stack 1983).


Actually, daring is simply an abstract concept derived from a series of moral judge-ments conferred on individual actions on the basis of a moral code whose validity isnot universal and necessary, but limited to a certain historical-cultural context (DaR7, KGW II/4, p. 446).19 So, Nietzsche concludes, the artistic impulse that led the Greeksto personify virtues like wisdom, courage, etc. in images of gods does not just define anaive, pre-scientific stage in the history of man, but is still active today. Using Müller’swords, Nietzsche thus cautions us against the seduction language exercises overthought: „Es liegt eine philosophische Mythologie in der Sprache versteckt, welchealle Augenblicke wieder herausbricht, so vorsichtig man sonst auch sein mag“ (WS 11,KSA 2, p. 546).

In the published works and the Nachlass of the second half of 1880s Nietzschetakes up and develops this consideration in a series of reflections on the coercion thatwords exercise on thought unconsciously. The concepts we create to facilitate ourreasoning, such as “Einheit, Identität, Dauer, Substanz, Ursache, Dinglichkeit, Sein”(GD Vernunft 5, KSA 6, p. 77), often end up escaping our conscious control anddeceiving us. Science seems to Nietzsche no less mythological than the fables of theancients, as the concepts it uses, like “atom”, “force” and “causality”, are just asarbitrary as those of “freedom”, “soul” or “God” (GM II 13, KSA 5, p. 280). Psychologytoo becomes metaphysical when it speaks of faculties like the will, the imaginationand the intellect, or worse still, when it speaks of the soul as an immaterial principleseparate from the body and opposed to it. Nietzsche observes in a note of 1880: „KeineMythologie hat schädlichere Folgen gehabt, als die, welche von der Knechtschaft derSeele unter dem Körper spricht” (NL 1880–1881, 3[152], KSA 9, p. 69).20

19 See also MA I 39: “Zuerst nennt man einzelne Handlungen gut oder böse ohne alle Rücksicht aufderen Motive, sondern allein der nützlichen oder schädlichen Folgen wegen. Bald aber vergisst mandie Herkunft dieser Bezeichnungen und wähnt, dass den Handlungen an sich, ohne Rücksicht aufderen Folgen, die Eigenschaft ‘gut’ oder ‘böse’ innewohne: mit demselben Irrthume, nach welchem dieSprache den Stein selber als hart, den Baum selber als grün bezeichnet – also dadurch, dass man, wasWirkung ist, als Ursache fasst” (KSA 2, p. 62).20 Nietzsche certainly had in mind the passage from Über die Philosophie der Mythologie in whichMüller criticizes the degeneration of the concept of Seele, which derives metaphorically from that ofbreathing (psyché). In the course of time psyché becomes the name for an incorruptible, eternalprinciple separate from and oppposed to the body: “Sobald dieser Gegensatz in Sprache und Vor-stellung festgestellt war, begann die Philosophie ihr Werk und suchte zu erklären, wie zwei soheterogene Kräfte auf einander einwirken konnten, wie die Seele den Körper beeinflussen und wie derKörper die Seele bestimmen konnte” (Müller 1874, p. 324). For Müller the soul is not a metaphysicalentity, but simply a collective name for a series of processes or mental acts. In number II (June-December 1876) of the Revue Philosophique there is a review of an article by Müller that had appeared inthe journal Mind entitled Du sens originel des termes collectifs et abstraits, in which he discusses JohnStuart Mill’s theory that matter is simply the permanent possibility of sensation, just as the spirit is nomore than the permanent possibility of feeling. Müller agrees with Mill and describes the soul as acombination of states of consciousness. Nietzsche was both an admirer of the journalMind and an avidreader of the Revue Philosophique (see Bf. an Ree, Anfang August 1877, KGB II/5, p. 266, see also


In the Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaft der Sprache, too, Müller gives amplespace to the mythology evoked during the process of word formation. He defends thetheory by which language originated from a relatively small number of verbal rootsthat express everyday actions, like digging, eating, grasping, etc. In an early stage ofthe development of language, the roots were used with a holophrastic function; later,the names of objects were created on the basis of the actions involving them. Forexample, the names “sun” or “fire” were derived from the root that expresses theaction of shining, or trees were called “what can be split”, because they could be usedto make spears or boats.21 It is interesting to note that the names given to objects arenot meant to express any assumed “essence” they might have, but the type of inter-action that man can establish with them. As many names will therefore be created forthe same object as the interactions it can be involved in. With time, thanks to aprocess of „natural selection [natürliche Auswahl]” (Müller 1866, p. 290), only theconcepts used most frequently will remain.22 As a further step in language develop-ment, through metaphor abstract concepts are derived from concrete ones, providingan important aid for reasoning and so for the progress of civilization (Müller 1866,p. 331). Yet, if we forget their origin, we easily fall into what Müller calls „mythologi-sche Sprachstörung“, meaning „ein krankhafter Zustand, eine Ohnmacht der Spra-che“ (Müller 1866, p. 386). This disease of thought can be cured only through rigorous

Campioni 2001). We can therefore assume he was familiar with the theories of Mill and Müller on thesoul.21 “Man discovered in a smaller or larger number of trees, before they were as yet trees to him,something which was interesting to him and which they all shared in common. Now trees wereinteresting to primitive man for various reasons, and they could have been named for every one thesereasons. For practical purposes, however, trees were particularly interesting to the primitive framers oflanguage, because they could be split in two, cut, shaped into blocks and planks, shafts and boats.Hence from a root dar, to tear, they called trees dru or dâru, lit. what can be split or torn or cut to pieces.From the same root they also called the skin δέρμα, because it was torn off, and a sack δορός, because itwas made of leather (Sanskrit driti), and a spear, δόρυ, because it was a tree, cut and shaped andplaned” (Müller 1892, pp. 382–383). This theory of Müller can also be found in Über die Philosophie derMythologie and in theVorlesungen über dieWissenschaft der Sprache.22 MMüller takes up Humboldt’s idea that human nature in different countries is subject to differentpressures and stimuli, and therefore produces different visions (Ansichten) of things. For the stage ofinter-subjective agreement, which, for Humboldt, decreed the real birth of a language, Müller sub-stitutes the idea, taken fromDarwin, of a “natural selection [natürliche Auswahl]” or, rather, a “naturalelimination [natürliche Elimination]”. Of themany ‘apperceptions’ of an object, there remain at the endonly themost used, which become binding for a people. “Nicht jede beliebige Apperceptionwird zu derWürde eines allgemeinen Begriffes erhoben, sondern nur die constant wiederkehrende, die stärkste,die brauchbarste; und aus der unendlichen Zahl allgemeiner Begriffe, die sich dem beobachtendenund sammelnden Geiste zudrängen, bleiben nur die am Leben und gewinnen eine bestimmtenlautlichen Ausdruck, welche zur Fortführung des Lebenswerkes unbedingt erforderlich sind. VieleApperceptionen, welche sich unserem Geiste naturgemäss darbieten, sind niemals zu allgemeinenBegriffen gesammelt worden und sie haben demgemäss auch nie einen Namen empfangen” (Müller1866, p. 291).


linguistic analysis, which discloses the metaphorical origin of concepts through theiretymology and prevents us from using them uncritically.23

The need to purify thought of metaphysical superstition was strongly felt by theNietzsche of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, who sought to unmask the “Wunder-Ursprung” of the “höher gewertheten Dinge” (MA I 1, KSA 2, p. 23) through a carefulhistorical examination conducted with rigorous scientific method. The analysis oflanguage performs a fundamental role in this project. From etymological research wecan obtain incontrovertible proof of the fact that words do not provide objectivedefinitions of the things they name, but are largely arbitrary and conventional. Fromit there also emerges that the meaning of a word is not something given once and forall, but evolves and changes over time. With this discovery there collapses for everfaith in concepts like “aeterne veritates” (MA I 11, KSA 2, p. 30) and there arises ratherthe awareness that they are human products created in given historical-culturalcircumstances with, therefore, limited validity.24 Nietzsche thus believes that thefindings of linguistic research mark a turning-point for philosophy, which, if it wantsto be a science, must become historical analysis or, better, genealogy. We read in anote of 1885:

Was uns von allen Platonischen und Leibnitzischen Denkweisen am Gründlichsten abtrennt, dasist: wir glauben an keine ewigen Begriffe, ewigen Werthe, ewigen Formen, ewigen Seelen; undPhilosophie, soweit sie Wissenschaft und nicht Gesetzgebung ist, bedeutet uns nur die weitesteAusdehnung des Begriffs „Historie“ (NL 1885, 38[14], KSA 11, p. 613).

23 Nietzsche would certainly have been fascinated by the etymology of the concept-word “truth”recalled by Müller in the Vorlesungen: “Truth (Wahrheit) ist von Horne Tooke als dasjenige erklärtworden, was man trauet, troweth. Dies würde indess nur sehr wenig erklären. To trow ist nur einabgeleitetes Verb und bedeutet trauen, fur wahr halten.Was ist aber true (treu)? Es ist das sanskritischedhruva und bedeutet fest, zuverlässig, überhaupt etwas Haltbares, von dhar, halten” (Müller 1866,p. 325).24 Wittgenstein’s theory that the meaning of a word corresponds to its use in a given context wasalready widespread in nineteenth-century Germany. It can already be found in August Boeckh (18662),who claimed that words have a meaning only within concrete relations, when they are used in asyntactic, pragmatic context (see Benne 2005, p. 72–73). It can be seen in the Danish Latinist Madvig,who claimed: “Der Laut derWörter steht also in keinem natürlichen und nothwendigen Verhältniss zurVorstellung und ihrem Gegenstand. Das Wort hat nur eine Bedeutung für gewisse Menschen, die ihmdiese Bedeutung unterlegen und geben” (Madvig 1875, p. 59). It is also present in Max Müller andGustav Gerber. Gerber explains that, just as in music the same tune arouses a large number of feelingsand sensations, in the same way the Lautbild evokes many representations, which we can choose fromonly by using the word in an effective communicative context. Therefore themeaning of a word is all itspossible uses (see Gerber 1871, p. 343). Müller, too, while aware of the need to give precise definitionsof concept-words (Wortbegriffe) to avoid misusing them, nevertheless recognises that they do not havea single meaning, but rather circumscribe ‘areas of meaning’. The intension of a concept can never bedefined exhaustively. The only possible definition of a concept-word is the history of its uses, itsgenealogy (see Cloeren 1988, p. 172).


Bringing to light the origin of some designations on which the present moral systemhinges, Nietzsche reveals the substantial continuity between literal and metaphoricalmeaning, where the former is simply the historical deposit of a continual artisticcreation of meanings. In Zur Genealogie der Moral Nietzsche links, for example, themoral concept of spiritual “purity” to the physical experience of cleaning (GM I 6,KSA 5, p. 264), or the abstract concept of guilt (Schuld) to the material one of debt(Schulden) (GM II 4, KSA 5, p. 297; GM II 8, KSA 5, p. 305). The „second sight [zweitesGesicht]” (GM II 4, KSA 5, p. 297) that the genealogist possesses is one that considersevery phenomenon in the historical stratification of its meanings, and does not simplystop to consider the last and most recent of them as if it were the only one.25 A passagein the Encyclopedie der klassischen Philologie reveals that Nietzsche was well aware ofMüller’s theory on the formation and natural selection of names since 1871:

Die vergleich. Mythenforschung hat constatirt daß die Namen von Gottheiten ursprünglichPrädikate sind: nun aber hat ein Object meist eine Anzahl von Prädikaten, u. so giebt es in denUrperioden eine Mehrzahl von Namen, die einem Objekte zukommen: also Synonyme. Nun abersind viele dieser Namen wieder gebräuchlich für andre Objekte, es giebt demnach auch vieleHomonyme. […] Daher, wenn die Metaphern vergessen sind, große Verdunkelung der Mythen(EKP, KGW II/2, p. 410).

“Das Interesse der vergl. Mythenforschung ist das Zurückführen ethischer Ideen aufsinnliche Anschauungen” (EKP, KGW II/2, p. 412).

Also the above-mentioned note of 1885 suggests that Nietzsche knew and sharedMüller’s conjecture that the most ancient concepts are those that, over time, haveproved most useful for the survival of the species: „Von der Etymologie und derGeschichte der Sprache her nehmen wir alle Begriffe als geworden, viele als nochwerdend; und zwar so, daß die allgemeinsten Begriffe, als die falschesten, auch dieältesten sein müssen” (NL 1884–1885, 38[14], KSA 11, p. 613). Nietzsche claims thatthe concepts of “being”, “substance”, “thing”, etc. are “the most false, that is to say,those that most contradict reality, which is a flux where nothing remains identical toitself. But they are also the most ancient concepts, those that were created first andstill survive today – because they have proved useful to the preservation of thespecies, as, more than others, they contribute to creating the illusion of a stable,durable, regular world that the human mind can know and dominate.

Nietzsche seems to share Müllers theory also in the Darstellung der antikenRhetorik, when he explains that the names given to things simply express one of theirsalient characteristics, which is taken to represent the whole. „Die Sprache drückt

25 An important source for Nietzsche’s etymological analyses in Zur Genealogie der Moral is theclassical philologist Leopold Schmidt. In Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882) Schmidt investigates thedevelopment of morality in the Greek world, statying from the lexical and semantic changes in thelanguage (see Orsucci 2001, p. 172). Schmidt’s analysis is based on the conviction that there is a closelink between a language and the spirit of the people who speak it.


niemals etwas vollständig aus, sondern hebt überall nur das am meisten hervorste-chende Merkmal hervor“ (DaR 7, KGW II/4, p. 445). For example, we call an animal“Schlange” for its characteristic sinuous movement, “schlängeln”.

Aber warum heißt serpens nicht auch Schnecke? Eine einseitige Wahrnehmung tritt ein für dieganze u. volle Anschauung. In anguis bezeichnet der Lateiner die Schlange als constrictor, dieHebräer nennen sie die Zischelnde oder die Schwindende oder die Verschlingende oder dieKriechende (DaR 3, KGWII/4, pp. 426f).

Objects are perceived and named on the basis of their most significant characteristic.26

That different languages have different names for the same object shows that thevarious peoples, depending on the historical-social conditions and the environmentin which they live, regard different characteristics of it as more important (and sorepresentative of the object). As Nietzsche emphasizes in Über Wahrheit und Lüge,man “knows” the world, not guided by instinct for the truth, but by utility. His interestis not that of understanding the “essence” of things – which is, anyway, impossible –but only to catalogue them according to the type of interaction that he can establishwith them. It is the practical interest that guides perception of reality: the names wegive things actually describe only the way in which we relate to them. Privileging onlyone of an object’s characteristics and ignoring all the others, man succeeds in con-structing concepts that certainly facilitate the organization of experience and simplifyits communication, but on the other hand also enormously reduce their complexity.Filtering the “thatsächliche Geschehen” through a “Simplifications-Apparat”, mansucceeds in establishing a “Zeichenschrift” with which his experience can be commu-nicated and shared (NL 1885, KSA 11, 34[249]). Nevertheless, the part of experiencethat reaches expression through language represents only “der kleinste [….], deroberflächlichste, der schlechteste Theil” (FW 354, KSA 3, p. 590) of the individual’sinner life, the social, public part. The world we construct through language and sharewith our fellows is therefore “nur eine Oberflächen- und Zeichenwelt ist, eine ver-allgemeinerte, eine vergemeinerte Welt, – […] Alles, was bewusst wird, ebendamitflach, dünn, relativ-dumm, generell, Zeichen, Heerden-Merkzeichen wird, dass mitallem Bewusstwerden eine grosse gründliche Verderbniss, Fälschung, Veroberflächli-chung und Generalisation verbunden ist“ (FW 354, KSA 3, p. 593).

Reading Müller helped mature Nietzsche’s awareness that language does notdepict reality exhaustively and objectively, but composes a highly ideological visionof it, suppressing some of its features and adding others. Although we cannotconceive reality outside the form that language makes available to us, it is yet possibleand necessary to be aware of its distorting effects. Therefore Nietzsche insists on theneed to use concepts critically, bearing in mind that they are “conventioneller Fiktio-

26 See also DaR 7, KGW II/4, p. 445: “Ein Zahn-habender ist noch kein Elephant, ein Haarhabendernoch kein Löwe, u. dennoch nennt das Sanskrit den Elephanten dantín, den Löwen kesín”.


nen zum Zweck der Bezeichnung, der Verständigung, nicht der Erklärung. […] undwenn wir diese Zeichen-Welt als ‘an sich’ in die Dinge hineindichten, hineinmischen,so treiben wir es noch einmal, wie wir es immer getrieben haben, nämlich mytholo-gisch“ (JGB 21, KSA 5, p. 35).

4. Gustav Gerber and Tropes as Patterns ofConceptual Association

During the Basle years Nietzsche showed great interest in rhetoric and in some of hiscourses analysed classical treatises such as Cicero’s De oratore, Quintilian’s InstitutioOratorie and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. In addition, between 1872 and 187427 he held acourse entitled Darstellung der antiken Rhetorik, which analysed the system of rhetoricin its traditional divisions. In it he makes some extremely interesting remarks onrhetoric’s relation to language and the role of tropes in the formation of language.Many of these comments bear the marks of his reading of the first volume of GustavGerber’s work, Die Sprache als Kunst (1871), which he borrowed several times from theBasle university library from September 1872 onwards. Nietzsche claims that rhetoricas techne – the orator’s conscious art of constructing a good speech – is based on anunconscious dynamis innate in every human being, animating all linguistic acts,including those not usually regarded as “rhetorical”. Even scientific discourse, whichis usually regarded as objective and neutral, and poetry, which seems to derivedirectly, spontaneously and authentically from the poet’s soul, are actually no morethan rhetorical constructions. Starting from this premise, tropes are seen not as mereornaments of discourse, but as its constituent mechanisms, reflecting cognitive pro-cedures that are indispensable in everyday life. Synecdoche, metonymy andmetaphorare not so much figures of discourse as unconscious cognitive patterns that areresponsible for the creation of language and the correspondingWeltansicht. Nietzscheexamines each of these tropes in detail. Synecdoche enters into the process of formingnames. The object is always named on the basis of one of its salient characteristics(Merkmal), which is taken as representing the whole (e.g. Schwange, from schwingen).Once a name has been created for an observable phenomenon, corresponding to aconcrete concept, we can transpose it metaphorically to phenomena that are notaccessible to sense experience, creating abstract concepts. Metonymy determines aninversion of cause and effect, so that an abstract concept created on the basis ofconcrete experiences is mistaken for their cause. “Jene Begriffe, die lediglich unsererEmpfindung ihr Entstehen verdanken, werden als das innere Wesen der Dinge voraus-

27 The dating of the Darstellung is somewhat controversial. See Stingelin 1996, p. 93; Behler 1998;Most/Fries 1994, p. 22.


gesetzt: wir schieben den Erscheinungen als Grund unter, was doch nur Folge ist”(DaR 7, KGW II/4, p. 446). For example, hardness is imagined as a qualitas occultathat brings about the property of being hard in objects (DaR 3, KGW II/4, p. 427). Asnames in no way reflect the essence of things, Nietzsche concludes that it is meanin-gless to distinguish between proper and figurative names. He paraphrases Gerber,who claims: “Alle Wörter sind Lautbilder und sind in Bezug auf ihre Bedeutung ansich und von Anfang an Tropen. […] ‚Eigentliche Worte‘ d.h. Prosa giebt es in derSprache nicht” (Gerber 1871, p. 333; cf. DaR 3, KGW II/4, p. 426). As a Lautbild theword is a transposition – a trope – as soon as it is created. It is set off at the same timeas the nerve stimulus that is generated by contact with a certain object and is inproportion to it, but it certainly does not represent the external object faithfully orexhaustively. The image of the world we produce through language is not, then, afaithful mirror of reality, and so it is meaningless to speak of “proper” meanings ofwords that are transposed in certain circumstances for certain purposes.28 Nietzschetherefore claims: “die Tropen treten nicht dann u. wann an die Wörter heran, sondernsind deren eigenste Natur. Von einer ‘eigentlichen Bedeutung’, die nur in speziellenFällen übertragen wurde, kann gar nicht die Rede sein” (DaR 3, KGW II/4, p. 427).Ultimately, for Nietzsche there is no difference between so-called proper words andtropes, apart from our habit of using them more or less frequently with reference to acertain object. Proper words are the words we use most frequently and whose originwe have forgotten. Considerations about tropes are to be found not only in Nietzsche’snotes and lectures of the Basle period. The epistemological framework elaboratedduring the Basle years is taken up again by Nietzsche in the fragments of the late1880’s. Though not using the terminology of rhetoric, he continues describing themost recurrent patterns of conceptual association as analogy, inversion of cause andeffect, and highlighting of one characteristic as representative of the whole object.Distinctive feature of the analysis conducted in the late 1880’s on man’s cognitiveprocedure of elaborating aWeltansicht is the relevance assigned to the body. From ananalysis of the most frequent metaphors, Nietzsche reaches the conclusion that thefirst cognitive schemas are formed on the basis of human beings’ everyday experienceof the perception of their bodies in relation to the surrounding space. The “embodiedschemata” formed through everyday experience are then applied to new phenomena,adapting them where necessary. The result is that we produce images of the worldthat are highly anthropomorphic. “Am Leitfaden des Leibes zeigt sich eine ungeheureVielfachheit; es ist methodisch erlaubt, das besser studirbare reichere Phänomen zumLeitfaden für das Verständniß des ärmeren zu benutzen” (NL 1885–1886, 2[91],

28 For Gerber language is involved in a process of “unaufhaltsamen translatio”, of “unendlicheVerschiebungen”, in that new words are constantly being created in the attempt to achieve a moreadequate expression of the essence of things (see Orsucci 1994, p. 204). But this aim can never beachieved as words are only works of art: they merely offer us images of things, and never the thingsthemselves (see Gerber 1871, p. 159f).


KSA 12, p. 106). The phenomenon of the body is that for which we have the greatestnumber of mental representations, because it recurs most frequently in our experi-ence. Nietzsche considers the capacity to create metaphors as a great resource forhuman beings, in that it lets them exploit the knowledge they possess about everydayphenomena so as to penetrate less directly accessible domains. This procedure is setoff by an adaptive instinct by which, faced with a new experience, we always tend tore-use the cognitive schemas we already have, modifying them where necessary,rather than create new ones. In this way we save energy and are able to respond morerapidly to external stimuli (FW 111, KSA 3, p. 471). In short, Nietzsche concludes,“‘Erkenntniß’: das ist der Ausdruck eines neuen Dings durch die Zeichen von schon‘bekannten’, schon erfahrenen Dinge” (NL 1885, 38[2], KSA 11, p. 597).

Scholars have analysed exhaustively the influence of Gerber’s work on the Dar-stellung and Über Wahrheit und Lüge.29 But it is worth asking how a scholar who wasthe Principal of a Gymnasium in a small Prussian town and always remained on thesidelines of academic debate was able to conceive such an original theory. In one ofthe first interpretations of Nietzsche’s rhetoric, Joachim Goth claims that in his daythis discipline enjoyed little esteem and was even despised as it was considered aneedless embellishment that might disturb the clarity of communication or, worsestill, an expedient to dissimulate the lack of content (Goth, 1970). This is not quitetrue. Reconstructing the origins of lexical semantics, Dirk Geeraerts explains thediscipline’s deep debt to rhetoric (Geeraerts 2010, p. 5). Round the mid nineteenthcentury etymological research had become one of the strengths of historical-com-parative linguistics. While most scholars were simply collecting and comparing data,some were also beginning to wonder if there were any general principles governingsemantic change. This gave rise to a new branch of linguistics devoted to the study ofmeaning, called semasiology or Bedeutungslehre (which led to modern semantics),whose initiators were the Latinist Karl Christian Reisig, his pupil Friedrich Haase, and,later, Karl Ferdinand Heerdegen.30 These scholars, who were classical philologists,used the enormous corpus of documents from the Latin and Greek tradition asresearch material. For interpretation, they borrowed concepts from textual rhetoric. Inhis Vorlesungen über lateinische Sprachwissenschaft (1839), the whole of the secondvolume of which deals with semantic change, Reisig claims that the development of alanguage is determined by its free use (Sprachgebrauch) within the limits set by thegeneral laws of language (Sprachgesetze) (Reisig 1881, p. 5). These are psychological

29 See Meijers 1988; Meijers/Stingelin 1988; Zavatta 2009. Today Gerber’s name is almost whollyunknown. Schmidt places him alongside Otto Gruppe, Friedrich Max Müller and Georg Runze amongthe “vergessene Sprachphilosophen des 19. Jahrhundert” (Schmidt 1968).30 Only recently has the prevailing view been corrected that it was Bréal 1897 who invented both thediscipline and the term semasiology. See Gordon 1982; Nerlich 1992; Koerner 1995; Schmitter 2003. Themain exponent of German semasiology is Hermann Paul (see Paul 1880). Nietzsche quotes HermannPaul in NL 1884–1885, KSA 11, 29[3].


laws – general laws of the human mind. Linguistic change is therefore caused by theinteraction between universal forms and historical circumstances, which are differentfrom one people to another (Nerlich 1992, p. 36). Reisig identifies some of the morefrequent paths of conceptual association and establishes their correspondence withthe procedures that rhetoric calls metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche.31 Comparingone thing with another, inverting cause and effect, focusing on one part of the objectthat is taken as representing the whole are, Reisig says, universal cognitive processes.What varies is the concrete content on which they work – the mental representationswhose association they decide, which are different from one people to another.“Gewöhnlich kann man in den gangbarsten Tropen etwas Charakteristisches einerNation erkennen, nämlich gewisse Lieblingsvorstellungen. So z.B. drücken sich dieRömer als ein Kriegervolk gern aus mit brechen, schlagen, treten” (Reisig 1890, p. 6).Reisig’s Vorlesungen, first published in 1839, reached a much larger readership whenit was reprinted in 1881–1890. In the 1870s and 1880s Haase and Heerdegen continuedto study semantic change, and, though they criticised Reisig for deducing its princi-ples from the categories of reason, rather than empirically by examining actualhistorical documents, they still reached the same conclusions. Applying the histori-cal-comparative method to a huge bulk of documents, they established that the most

31 “Die Grundlage der Ideenentwickelung in denWörtern ist die Gedankenassoziation in der Gemein-schaft der Vorstellungen. Es sind gewisse Ideenassoziationen unter den menschlichen Vorstellungvorzüglich gebräuchlich, welche mit gewissen Ausdrücken bezeichnet die Rhetorik sich angeeignethat, welche aber in gewisser Hinsicht auch in die Bedeutungslehre gehören, nämlich die Synekdoche,die Metonymie und die Metapher. So weit diese sogenannten Figuren auf das Ästhetische hinzielen,gehören sie allerdings der Rhetorik an, auch insofern sich Einzelne derselben bedienen; wofern aber ineiner besonderen Sprache nach diesen Redefiguren sich ein Redegebrauch gebildet hat, der dem Volkeeigen ist, so gehören diese Figuren hierher” (Reisig 1890, p. 2). Reisig goes on to explain them one byone: “Nichts ist gebräuchlicher, als daß von der Bedeutung eines Teiles die des Ganzen ausgeht, oderumgekehrt, daß die Vorstellung des Ganzen die Bedeutung eines besonderen Teiles erzeugt; dies istdie Synekdoche (partis pro toto oder totius pro parte) in der Rhetorik. Hierbei ist wahrzunehmen, wiemanche Sprache vorzugsweise einen Teil vor dem anderen gewählt hat, um das Ganze zu erkennen zugeben […]. Die Metonimye ist eine besondere Art der Vertauschung von Vorstellungen, nämlichentweder so, daß das Wort, welches die Ursache bedeutet, zugleich dient, eine gewisse Wirkungauszudrücken, oder daß eine Wirkung gesetzt wird, um den Sinn einer Ursache zu geben. […] DieAdjectiva laetus und tristis bekommen den Begriff des froh- und traurigmachenden, z.B. laetae segetes,tristis senectus” (Reisig 1890, p. 4). “Die dritte Figur, welche zu dem Ideenwechsel die Grundlage gibt,ist die Metapher […]. Ohne solche bildliche Bezeichnung wäre die Sprache tot und gestaltlos; damitaber erhält sie ein heiteres, buntes Leben” (Reisig 1890, p. 6). Friedrich August Bernhardi had alreadyidentified in his Sprachlehre (1801) synecdoche, metonymy andmetaphor as the three main proceduresthat in their different ways effected an integration betweenmental images: subordination in the case ofsynecdoche, succession in the case of metonymy, and identity in the case of metaphor (see Bernhardi1801, pp. 17f). With these mechanisms we can account for both free artistic creation and everydaylanguage use (see Schlieben-Lange/Weidt 1988, p. 89).


frequent paths of conceptual association were metaphor, metonymy and synecdo-che.32

In the first volume of Die Sprache als Kunst Gerber essentially repeats more brieflyand incisively what the German semasiologists had discovered, collecting the com-ments they had scattered in massive, densely argued volumes. Presumably, Nietzschewas sufficiently struck by Gerber’s work to use it as a model when preparing his ownlectures, but he was certainly not unaware of the tradition from which those ideascame. Karl Christian Reisig was a famous and admired Latinist, who had taughtRitschl at Halle University. Nietzsche borrowed his Vorlesungen über lateinischeSprachwissenschaft (1839) from Basle library in 1869 (Crescenzi 1994, p. 391). Haase isquoted by Nietzsche in the bibliography for the Encyclopaedie der klassischen Philolo-gie (NL 1869, KGW I/5, 75[3]). Heerdegen, even if he is never quoted or mentioned byNietzsche, dedicated his Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Semasiologie (1875) to theGreek scholar George Curtius, who taught Nietzsche at Leipzig. Heerdegen gavethanks to Curtius for being the first to state that it was not only possible, butnecessary, to find „allgemein menschliche Gesetze und Analogien” (Curtius 1866,p. 88) on the basis of which to explain semantic change in the various languages, andso had been the first to insist on the need for a section of linguistics specificallydevoted to the study of meaning.33

In conclusion, we may note that, despite what Goth says, late nineteenth-centuryGerman culture evidences a great rediscovery of rhetoric, which was not conceived asa technique of literary discourse, but as a valuable interpretative tool for under-standing how language works. Consequently, tropes were not seen as mere embellish-ments, so much as paths of mental association that are then reflected in language use.Rather than diverging from a rule, tropes seem to be the rule itself: universal laws ofthought, and consequently principles of semantic change.34

32 Haase and Heerdegen differ from Reisig not only in methodology, but above all in their aim: Reisigwanted to show that the universal laws of the mind are embodied in language and detemine how itdevelops, but Haase and Heerdegen studied Latin with the aim of understanding Latin culture (seeNerlich 1992, p. 44; Nerlich 2001, p. 1597).33 Curtius’ Grundzüge also makes a claim similar to that with which Nietzsche opens his Darstellung.Curtius distinguishes ‘constitutive’ or ‘natural’metaphors, which lead to the formation of the meaningof words, from ‘poetic’ metaphors, which extend the meaning of words beyond their normal scope ofrelevance. The former arise unconsciously and spontaneously, and express the specific character of agiven people, while the latter, “die kunstvolle Übertragungen”, are a “Fortsetzung der natürlichen”(Curtius 1866, p. 107) on a conscious level and allow us to understand how the former work, whichotherwise we could not know. Curtius explicitly states his debt to Max Müller, who was the first todistinguish ‘radical’metaphors from ‘poetic’metaphors (see Müller 1866, p. 334). Nietzsche borrowedCurtius’Grundzüge from Basle’s library in February 1870, then in May of the same year, inMay 1872 and1873, in autumn 1873, and in April 1874 (see Crescenzi 1994).34 This means we should also reconsider Emden’s claim that all classical treatises on rhetoric thatNietzsche draws on supplied only a historical perspective of the discipline, shunning any systematicdiscussion. Emden also claims that, in the authors Nietzsche read, tropes are regarded exclusively as


5. Final Considerations

Even though the authors Nietzsche read and admired were working in differentcontexts and with different aims, what unites them emerges clearly: they were allstudying language in an anthropological perspective, in relation to the man whospeaks it. Max Müller, questioning Schleicher’s position, compares language to thecirculation of the blood: just as it depends on the overall conditions of the body,although it is not subject to the conscious control of the individual, so a languagereflects the nature of those who speak it, although they cannot deliberately modify it(Müller 1863, p. 35). And, Nietzsche points out, men are not made of pure intellect, butalso of bodies that move in space and know it in relation to themselves, that strive toadapt themselves to their environment and interact with their fellows. Responding tothe needs of his age, which was marked by the growing influence of the so-called “lifesciences”, Nietzsche sets the problem of the relation between thought and languagein a broader context. The anthropological dimension of thought on language becomesfor him inseparable from reflections on the physiology of men, who are not simplyhistorical beings, but also, above all, biological organisms. If we can understand thepsychology of a people, its history and culture, from language as a historical product,then from the “language faculty” – the cognitive patterns along which these peculiarvisions of the world take form – we can draw information about the human mind andhow it works. Nietzsche was educated in a prestigious philological tradition and heused its tools to carry out an investigation that was specifically philosophical. Combi-ning the results of historical-comparative research on language with those providedby the psychology and physiology of perception, Nietzsche used the best that his agecould provide to go beyond it, developing a theory that only now, in the light of recentresearch, can be fully appreciated.

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Nietzsche and 19th Century Linguistics