Angèle Kremer Marietti
Nietzsche, Metaphor and Cognitive Science
Nietzsche’ s particular interests for symbolic
processes render him very near to our contemporary philosophers of the mind. One
of them, Colin Murray Turbayne explains that now the problem is “of
bringing to the surface these extended metaphors submerged or partially
submerged in the account of influential metaphysicians of the past”. In
the present essay, as in previous ones written in the same spirit, I have tried
to examine Nietzsche’ s hidden epistemology which reveals the symbolic
processes in the human mind. Indeed, in many texts, and especially in the Philosopher’s book, Nietzsche stated that it was possible to find
out a genesis of thought from the point of view of an artistic power selecting
the images on the basis of similarity and contrariety. I will present
Nietzsche’s thought on this issue.
1.
Nietzsche’s observation : there are symbolic processes in the human
mind
Nietzsche has seen the common origin of philosophy and
science, the artistic genesis, favourable to philosophic and scientific
approaches. In that origin, reason, art and nature were and are not separated:
“the natural process is carried on by
science”[1], exactly as it was
in the times of Plato and Aristotle and even earlier with the presocratic
philosophers. Before knowing the universe, we were jointly and severally
liable to it. Nietzsche has conceived the way reason started to be active in
human minds through artistic powers, producing images and making choice among
them. All this activity would have been thereafter developed according to the
rhetorical and logical laws. And Nietzsche evoked the “power to discover
and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each
thing, a power that Aristotle calls rhetoric, [and which] is, at the same time,
the essence of
language”[2].
For
Nietzsche, indeed, metaphor was more important than metonymy and synecdoche:
these last tropes are only particular operations and accessories useful to
metaphor; they help to accomplish the main operation of metaphor. Metonymy
substitutes an adjunct for the thing that is meant; and synecdoche substitutes a
part for the whole thing or vice-versa. And what remains identical with
metaphor, metonymy or synecdoche is always substitution, but it can be
also displacement or derivation. Then, what is a symbolic process
? Nothing else than a substitution with its properties of displacement and
derivation. We can substitute the same for the same but also the same for its
neighbour or its contrary: the contrary is then a justification of the same; for
instance, the relation of hatred and love. The basis is always the body, that is Leib and Leben, and what is dynamical in it, that is Will to
Power. As to the Metaphysics of Art, it is a modus operandi proper to
this bodily basis. Art is something practical; it shows what cannot be told:
even poetry and literature, made of words, are anyway showing what
“cannot be said” but can artistically work.
Nietzsche’s own interest for symbolic processes can be noticed
in works so different as The Birth of Tragedy and Human All Too Human. Especially in the Philosopher's
Book[3] – where he
explicitly noticed them – Nietzsche interpreted all symbolic
processes as belonging to «fiction» (Erdichtung), that is as
being artistic creations. This thinking activity would have been developed
according to the rhetorical laws of metaphor – and subsequently of
metonymy and synecdoche[4] – for
ever at work in human language :
“The drive toward the
formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a
single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with
man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact
that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own
ephemeral products, the concepts.”[5]
When Nietzsche
refers to metaphor he refers to the structure of our thought, but conceived as
incorporated in the structure of our body (Leib), because at the bottom
of every thought there is always Leib. What seemed to be in the beginning
esthetical progressively became a deep philosophical problem. Tragic knowledge
concerns too the discovery of the bodily basis of what our culture found to be
spiritual. And then the “Pathos der Distanz” can be the usual way
that human beings take to forget together the body and its corporeal life. For
Nietzsche, there were bodily states, mental states being only consequences or
symbols of the former.
From that point of view, everything has its
beginning in Leib or its departure from Leib ; especially homo
natura is what is at the bottom of mankind (Beyond Good and Evil,
230). Every symbolic process and also every moral judgment is a
“language of signs”. And then what we call “truth” or Wahrheit has its roots in Leib and is a representation of life.
That is why not only truth but also freedom, justice and love are Wille zur
Macht, which is a dynamics coming from Leib and Leben.
Therefore, the hardest thing is to be a servant of truth.
In his
course on Rhetoric (1872-1873), Nietzsche evoked the art of rhetoric as
the « power to discover and to make operative that which works and
impresses, with respect to each
thing »[6]. Abstraction
itself was seen as a product of metaphorical processes, as an enduring
impression in the sets of images worth to be retained and solidified in the
memory :
“There are many more sets of images in
the brain than are consumed in thinking; The intellect rapidly selects similar
images; the image chosen give rise, in turn, to a profusion of images; but
again, the intellect quickly selects one among them, etc.” [7]
Also Nietzsche gives us a
genesis of thought from the point of departure of an artistic power selecting
the successive images on the basis of similarity (and non similarity). As
regards to the fundamental question of space and time, Nietzsche did not see
them exactly as they were the a priori forms of sensitivity
(Sinnlichkeit), enounced by Kant’s analysis. But space and time are
surely according to Nietzsche particular metaphors of cognition; and the same
may be said for causality. Besides, at the beginning of mankind what worked in
any speech also was a « moral phenomenon »: that is a social
obligation to ‘tell the truth’, coming from the community and which
was artistically generalized[8] through metaphors, metonymies, synecdoche: tropes being used as processes of
substitution, displacement and derivation – processes afterwards
discovered by Freud in dreamwork (Traumwerk). And finally, truth itself
was seen by Nietzsche as coming to life through symbolic
processes:
“What then is truth ? A movable host of
metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphism: in short, a sum of human relations
which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and
embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed,
canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are
illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of
sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as
metal and no longer as
coins.”[9]
This activity of rational understanding, called by Nietzsche the
"knowledge drive"[10], is "mastered
by the imagination"[11], which gives
us what we seek in order to think [12]. And – if we come back
to Kant – from this Nietzschean point of view we can say that the
transcendental imagination is Kant's most original finding in the Critique of
Pure reason, and it is thereafter also Nietzsche's idea, but combined with
an original intuition about the unconscious processes of the
mind:
“There are many more sets of images in the brain than
are consumed in thinking; The intellect rapidly selects similar images; the
image chosen give rise, in turn, to a profusion of images; but again, the
intellect quickly selects one among them,
etc.”[13]
Therefore, Nietzsche did not separate reason, art and nature; for
him, "the natural process is carried on by science" [14]. There is an archaeological
ground for that: originally, we were (probably) jointly and severally related to
the universe before knowing it. In the beginning of mankind, when reason started
to be active in human mind, there would have been continuously “artistic
powers”, producing images and making a choice among them [15]. And this archaeological
process is going on still nowad ays:
“Conscious thinking is
nothing but a process of selecting representations. It is a long way from this
to abstraction.
(1) the power which produces the profusion of
images; (2) the power which selects and emphasizes what is
similar.”[16]
2. The symbolic processes in Nietzsche’s mind.
Deliberately,
Nietzsche thought and wrote according to the opposition between concepts and
images: his choice went at first to the imagery of myth and ancient thought with
its rich polysemantics. Later on, he would distinguish clearly his present
intellectual constitution and became conscious of the state of mind in which he was and in which he is presently relatively to the previous one.
He will be really conscious of the distance between his first constitution of
mind and the new one, when, in spring 1877, he affirms that his previous works
were like pictures for which he used to take colours from the subjects he
represented, like an artist[17].
With The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche began to put the
problem of science in the manner of the artists, since the book is full of
images of Greek art and myth. Nevertheless, in 1886 he depicted his work with
severely excessive formulas : "images frenzied and confused, sentimental, in
some places saccharine-sweet to the point of
effeminacy"[18]. Indeed, symbolic
processes in Nietzsche’s mind appear clearly in his first book, The
Birth of Tragedy,in which the central and huge
metaphor is that of the dualism of two great opposites, that is the diptych of
Apollo and Dionysus: the first as the sun-god and the second as an agrarian god.
This fundamental metaphor is concentrated on a complementary
opposition between the two personalities - both sons of Zeus but half-brothers:
Apollo’s mother is Leto, Dionysus’ mother is Semele -, because
this duality presents contrasting characteristics, not in the logical sense but
in existential interacting like the duality of the sexes.
The
opposition between Apollo/Dionysus has been established at first by Plutarch
(46-120 before. J.-C.), well known to Nietzsche; it was also used by Michelet in
his Bible de l'humanité (1864). The antithesis between Apollo and
Dionysus connects us to the antithesis measure/excess; similarly to other
antitheses: order/disorder, justice/hubris, form/force,
beautiful/misshapen. We can distinguish in it the Kantian opposition beautiful/
sublime or the Rousseauist one between culture and nature. Similarly, in
Apollo “representation” and in Dionysus “Will”, two
Schopenhauerian concepts, can be recognized.
Then, we see that
numerous images of Apollo and Dionysus, opposed or joined, are loaded with many
superposed meanings. At the bottom, for Nietzsche, they have together to play
the part of the parents of tragedy. Attic tragedy was born from the
“struggle of the opposition only apparently bridged by the word
‘art’ ”. Nietzsche explains:
“ that art
derives its continuous development from the duality of Apolline and Dionysiac; just as the reproduction of species depends on the duality of
the sexes with its constant conflicts and only periodically intervening
reconciliation. ”(BT,1, 14)
Beside this basic and
generative opposition, the first derived opposition between these two figures
consists in the separation of the two art worlds of dream and intoxication. Apollo is identified with the plastic art of the sculptor, and
Dionysus with the non-visual art of music. Dream implies illusions which is a
response to suffering and transcend it; but Nietzsche adds, “with
restraining boundaries”: that is the beautiful illusion as “the
precondition of all visual art”. Finally the symbol of the Olympian Apollo
means individuation and consciousness:
“as the glorious
divine image of the principium individuationis, from whose gestures and looks
all the delight, wisdom and beauty of ‘illusion’ speak to
us” BT, 1, 16).
On the contrary, intoxication implies, for
one part, a return of the memory of the Titanic origins and sufferings, and for
another part an oblivion of the individual reality, apart from the principle of
sufficient reason [19]:
“the tremendous dread that grips man when he suddenly loses his way
amidst the cognitive forms of appearance, because the principle of sufficient
reason, in one of his forms, seems suspended” (BT,1,
16)
We can see that in The Birth of
Tragedy[20], but also on all
stages of his writings, Nietzsche had recourse to a metaphorical style; he was
not satisfied to assign generally to any language and thought a metaphorical
origin, he also used metaphor more strongly to express his thought. It is so
especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra which enjoys, in addition to
the metaphor of the dance - since Zarathustra is a dancer. There is the
significance of a whole bestiary including above all Zarathustra’s
domestic animals which are endowed with speech: the eagle, the proudest animal,
and the snake, the craftiest one, but also the camel, the yellow lion, a flight
of doves, frogs, the multicoloured cow, finally the monkey which is the derision
of man. As for the great day of Zarathustra who is compared to the Sun, it is
crossed by the solar phases: like the Sun Zarathustra rises and lies down the
same way, descends and goes up the slopes of the mountain. Already, in The Birth of Tragedy, Apollo, the solar god, referred to
the understandable things and the visual arts, while the dark Dionysus
revealed to man the hidden face of world and existence.
The Sun as
source of light is generally presented as the source of vital energy. In
Nietzsche’ s metaphorical way, the Sun looks like an original eye and also
signifies different particular eyes and especially the eye of knowledge.
Nietzsche also evokes the eye of the spirit as well as the eyes of
Ulysses[21], even the third eye
which “looks at the world through the two
others“[22], but in a
definitely pejorative way the cyclopean eye of
Socrates[23].
However,
it is not the strictly accurate metaphor as brought back to expression which is
the matter in the present essay, nor even the philosophical use of metaphor by
Nietzsche[24]. Effectively, what can
also be interesting from an epistemological point of view, is the Nietzschean
analysis concerning the phases of the conceptualization following one another:
starting from the current of the images passing by words to lead to concepts. In
addition, I by no means intend to affirm that Nietzsche is a precursor of
cognitive sciences; however, I want to show that the “rhetoric
turn“[25] which belongs to
Nietzsche (as one speaks now of ‘linguistic turn’) is far from being
a mere speculation. If the Nietzschean positions have been judged, in more than
one way, inopportune, they are from now on topical, since metaphor becomes an
object of study in Cognitive Science, and especially since our principal
concepts concerning the notions of significance, concepts and reason have to be
reconsidered in the light of the most recent cognitive studies emphasising the
nature and the importance of metaphor as a fundamental process of
thought[26].
We are
finishing the third decade of Cognitive Science; this one relates to disciplines
as varied as linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, neural
sciences and naturally philosophy. “Cognitive“ is any mental
process generally associated with our comprehension, but still with the
formulation of our beliefs and the proper acquisition of our knowledge. Among
these sciences, the neural sciences study the operation of sensory factors.
Thus, for example, thanks to these sciences we know that one
sees[27] with one’s brain; and
that vision is a form of intelligence, because it can be connected with a true
reasoning. Thus, perception is not a simple copy of reality; it occurs only as
the result of a great number of calculations carried out by a great number of
networks, at the precise time of a confrontation with reality. Currently
detailed analyses could be carried out, relating to the way in which metaphors
really structure our conceptualization and reasoning. In the complex subject of
metaphor, there are now many distinctions conceived in the frame of Artificial
Intelligence, for instance concerning representation schemes and conceptual
graphs[28].
We thus have
the confirmation that metaphor is not a pure linguistic phenomenon, but that it
is definitely a conceptual and ‘experiential’ process by which we
structure our universe. Johnson Mark justly writes : “We obtained major
outlines on the ways according to which our conceptual system and all the forms
of interaction symbolic system are founded on our body experiment and,
consequently, structured according to an imaginative mode
“[29].
3. Metaphor at the origin of
language and thought
Nietzsche’ s interest for the
symbolic processes is present from its first works to the last one: in
particular in the fundamental work, The Birth of
Tragedy[30] - the texts date
back to 1870 until 1872 - , as well as in the writings of 1872 unto 1875
published under the title The Philosopher’s
Book[31]. Let us also us note
that its youth essays also testify to symbolic
processes[31] and that this concern
is found even during the positivist period of the books published under the
title Human too
human[32], therefore in the
years 1876-80. The same applies well beyond, that is in 1886 with an
“Attempt at a self-criticism“, since Nietzsche affirms then
explicitly that “the ground of art “ is that on which must be put
and solved the problem of science. – But what did Nietzsche mean exactly
by these words “the ground of art” ?
The Nietzschean
references to art play without interruption the part of an epistemological
criterion: Nietzsche offered a new concept for art as something mixed with
feeling, which was and still is at the beginning of conceptual thought. He
presented the philosopher of desperate knowledge as becoming necessarily the
philosopher of tragic knowledge, because he thought that this philosopher had to
master “the uncontrolled knowledge drive, though not by means of
metaphysics”[33] (metaphysics
being taken here in its traditional sense). As master of uncontrolled drives,
the philosopher of tragic knowledge penetrates the arcana of language and
science from the point of view of the relation truth/untruth, understood in a
non-moral sense, in order to finish by asking the philosophic question on the
cultural opposition of science and wisdom.
Nietzsche interpreted
the symbolic processes of every thought as pertaining to fiction (in German : Fiktion or Erdichtung) understood as the activity of art which,
according to him, generally characterizes thought, inasmuch as creations are at
the same time on the field of art and nature, and as they relate to several
human generations, nature itself being apprehended by Nietzsche on the ground of
art[34]. Thus, Nietzsche evoked the
“complete fiction“ (vollständige Fiktion) which
represented to him the logical thought, or, in other words, “our fiction
“ of what are in fact the things – or finally the
“necessary“ fiction consisting in the philosophical concepts of
‘subject’, ‘substance’ and
‘reason’.
However Nietzsche affirmed that without fiction
– which means then in fact without thought –, and especially
without recognizing a value to the logical fictions, human beings could not
live. Nevertheless, for Nietzsche some fictions would be “empty”:
for example that of ‘being’; others unusable out of any context:
they are the “fictions” of ‘spirit’,
‘reason’, ‘thought’, ‘conscience’,
‘soul’, ‘will’, ‘truth’. Finally, other
“fictions” would have the virtue of regulating our conducts, like
the extreme fiction of the unconditional or the absolute (das Unbedingte by Kant). And, when he treated interpretation, Nietzsche saw it depending on
psychological fictions. For Nietzsche, what is supposed in the great art is only
the intelligence of the world through symbols. From this heuristic point of
view, Nietzsche considered art, therefore not as a “paralysed
effect”, but as an “extraordinary cause”, or a “remedy
for knowledge”.
Under all the Nietzschean metaphors, it should
be understood that the systems of symbolic processes are comparable to the
artistic processes; however, Nietzsche stressed that these processes are at the
origin of the understanding of all that is surrounding us. This is why the
process originating any appearance is, according to Nietzsche, primarily
artistic. And in consequence, since any form of art comprises by the way a
degree of rhetoric, one can say that when art is considered, rhetoric is not
far. Anyway and besides, rhetoric itself may be considered as an art of speech
and the art of presenting our thoughts. Definitively, the rhetorical figures
are very important non only for language but also for thought: Nietzsche
appreciated them as the very essence of
language[35].
Indeed,
rhetoric is quite present at the same time in speech and in speech objects: that
is, in form and in content, Nietzsche noticed very early an existing close link
between thought and language; this is why he wrote, in the draft of a course on
the origin of language: “very conscious thought was not possible without
using language“. Language and thought have no other origin for Nietzsche
but rhetoric. Language conveys the copy of an impression or an emotion by
sparing its reception to it: so does rhetoric. Not different from rhetoric,
language itself does not grant the truth of things, but it is an extraordinary
means of expression and communication between all the men or
women.
One knows the passage of this text from 1873, “On truth
and lie in the extra-moral sense“, in which Nietzsche presented truth like
a “moving multitude of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphism, in short,
a sum of human relations which poetically and rhetorically were raised,
transposed, decorated, and which, after a long use, seem to people steady,
canonical and constraining : truths are illusions which one forgot that they
are, metaphors which were worn and which lost their significant force, coins
which lost their print and which enter consequently in consideration, no more
like coins, but like
metal.“[36]
The
phenomenology of consciousness (and also of
unconscious[37] or
conscious[38] thought) suggested by
Nietzsche, begins with a nervous excitation; and what translates this nervous
excitation in images is articulated in successive stages. The expressiveness
appears in the tropes. In his course on Old Rhetoric (1872-1873), Nietzsche
characterised the processes which are synecdoche, metaphor and metonymy: i.e.
the tropes, which are “the artistic process, the most significant of
rhetoric thought“. Metaphor moves all the meanings, transposes the place
over time; for example, in German one says curiously: “Zu Hause“, in
the house, and “Jahraus“, during the year. Synecdoche quotes a part
for the whole, the sail instead of the boat: one can find in language the
application of this model of designation; thus, the Latin term
“serpens“ (in French ‘serpent’) comes from the
characterization of what crawls; it is certain that “serpens“ could
have meant snail, but it has not been the case. Lastly, metonymy is the
commutation of cause and effect: in some cases, one can really say
“sweat“ for work, or even “the stone is hard “ instead
of saying only that it appears hard to us.
All these current
rhetorical expressions are inherent in the language by its manner of
constituting the literal meaning starting from the ancient figurative meaning.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau had noticed in his Essay on the Origin of Languages (1781)[39] the necessary passage
from the figurative meaning to the literal meaning of every particular term.
Nietzsche has also noticed that any speech starts with an original figuration.
However, once the language is made up, this originating process does not exempt
from following rules in order to defend the clearness of language and thus from
avoiding linguistic faults, some of which relate to the negligence of the
propriety of words. The propriety (in Greek, kyriologia being the proper meaning
of a word) is the use of a word with the maximum of its significance. It is
because of this wish for clearness that Cicero demurred to the abuse of
metaphors; for him the proper expressions existed in a sufficient number to
avoid the use of metaphors. However, Aristotle thought that metaphor was useful
because it was used to visualize the relations; and he illustrated his matter by
a sentence of Empedocles “old age is to life what the evening is to day;
therefore can one call the evening the old age of the day and old age the
evening of life “ (Rhetoric, III, 2).
In addition to
metaphor, Nietzsche recognized in synecdoche a strongly active phenomenon in the
formation of language: he noted that, in Sanskrit, kesin means ‘the
hairy’ and indicates the lion seen the “ hairy one “. While
synecdoche transfers the meaning of an object from a part of it to its whole,
metonymy transfers the meaning of an object to the nearest or contiguous object
to the first one. In Greek and Latin, the word Metaphora means transfer
or transport and is convenient to express the movement of meaning in a
particular metaphor as well as in synecdoche or in metonymy.
But
particularly with regard to the formation of concepts – and therefore
beyond language – in the field specific to thought, the most effective
trope was for Nietzsche metonymy, because the abstract terms indicate qualities
in us and out of us; however we perceive those stripped of their support and
consequently these terms acquire in our eyes the autonomy of essences. Nietzsche
takes up this idea by criticizing it in the first book of Human, All Too
Human, § 15: “ thus the philosophers in general transport the
concept of inside and outside to the essence and the phenomenon of the world
“. An example of this transfer is the reification of the concept which is
at the origin of Platonism: the schema of two worlds, one perfect and original,
the other as the simple copy of the first one which is its model. In fact,
Nietzsche thought that concept is “neither inside nor outside in the
world“. Indeed, Socrates started prudently by questioning on the beauty as
Idea starting from the observation of beautiful pots and beautiful girls. For
Nietzsche, concepts have been elaborated starting from our sensitivity, but we
let us consider them wrongly as if they were for ever the essence of things.
Thus, what was at first only the appearance of things originates for us the
essence of things. Consequently, abstract terms seem to indicate realities which
would be the cause of qualities, whereas they are only the effect of the same
qualities[40]. For Nietzsche causal
reality lies in the concrete qualities of the things of our perception, and the
abstract concept taken as essence is purely metaphorical, the simple effect of
these concrete qualities: here Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge is a
fundamental nominalism.
In his Critique of Judgement,
Kant al ready saw hypotyposis as the significant image being able to be
presented either in diagrammatic form and related to science, or like symbolic
system and related to art. The epistemology considered by
Nietzsche[41] is, a particular sort
of a radical result from Kantian positions or - if one prefers - the parody of
some Kantian theses. By conceiving this epistemology as “reflective“
– i.e. not as “determining“ – I apply the Kantian
distinction between determining judgements and reflective judgements. The
Kantian concept of “reflection“ relates to the awakening of the
relation of active representations to the various sources of our knowledge in
relation with our understanding and sensitivity (see, in the Critique of Pure
Reason, the Amphiboly of the concepts of reflection). Not having
necessarily to do with the objects themselves, the reflection can, according to
different adopted points of view, give place to different forms of
“truth” – or be a perspectivist truth in Nietzsche’ s
meaning – i.e. truth whose criterion lies only in evaluation and, more
precisely, in one of the various possible types of
evaluation.
Indeed, whereas for Kant the schema gives to a concept
its image, Nietzsche reverses the approach and considers the image as such in
itself, from the point from which a concept can be thought or to which it can be
given. Especially, Nietzsche joined there the ultimate or first images of time and space, which were for Kant the a priori forms of our
sensitivity; and, adding causality to them, he writes: “Time,
space and causality are only metaphors of the knowledge by which we interpret
all things“[42]. But Nietzsche
in a way remain Kantian since he counts primarily on the imagination which,
according to Kant in the Critique of Judgement, is exerted “for the
contents of the reflection“ and which, through the aesthetic idea, gives
rise to thinking without any concept being adequate for it.
From
these original data, it is possible to locate Nietzsche in the context of a
research that is contemporary to us. First of all one can include his ideas on
the origin of thought in the field of knowledge (it maybe a philosophical
fiction) concerning the supposed subject. I think in particular of
psychological and psychoanalytical work, and especially of the oneiric processes
and their interpretation, for which Nietzsche preceded Freud. Indeed, in Human, All Too Human, I, 1, § 13, Nietzsche studied what he
called the “logic of the dreams“. In his opinion, this logic uses
“ the visual impressions of the day “: because Nietzsche conceived
humanity in its beginning as thinking in the same way as we continue to dream
today. And when he is also taken in the “world of the
dream”[43], the thinker does
not directly reach the stage of abstraction.
Besides, in what is
currently called ‘philosophy of mind’ and even in Cognitive Science,
one finds out some Nietzschean assertions which were a long time considered
to be inopportune a long time, whereas Nietzsche only tried to be lucid on the
true progress of thought through the originating processes of symbolic systems.
To a large extent, the questions and answers of current research are related to
the Nietzschean theses. I will follow the texts concerning the question raised
by some rhetorical processes.
I think that some of the contemporary
theses on metaphor are close to Nietzsche an theses. Colin Murray Turbayne
was among the first to explain why the problem of the philosophy of mind was "to
make go up on the surface these wide metaphors submerged or partially submerged
in the considerations of the influential metaphysicians of the
past"[44]. More precisely and more
recently, George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson[45] developed a position
which they name 'experientialist', at the same time opposite together with
objectivism and subjectivism, which Thomas
Leddy[46] takes again, by dealing
with the ontological statute of metaphor.
In this direction, Leddy
goes further than Lakoff and Johnson while affirming just like Nietzsche :
“we think the world in terms of conceptual metaphors – that the
components of our experiment of the world are
metaphorical”[47]. Like
Nietzsche, Leddy makes the thought objects of traditional philosophy depend on
the metaphorical process, until "truth" itself also becomes for him
"metaphorical". Thus, just like Nietzsche, for Leddy, essences are by nature
metaphorical with, as basis, an idea that Lakoff and Johnson entertain of it,
the idea that truth (thus also metaphorical truth) is, at the same time, a
question of correspondence, coherence and pragmatism.
The interest
that I feel myself to direct me towards this aspect of Nietzsche’ s
philosophy joined my previous concern with knowing what Husserl called "our
epistemological origin", and which I expressed, among other works, in La
Symbolicité[48], also in
an article which I wrote in English on philosophy considered as the theory of
symbolic system, just like in La raison créatrice and in another
article entitled "the fictional reference of the text". One finds the same
spirit in my previous works on Nietzsche and in those which followed them. But
I must add that the orientation of my curiosity relative to these issues does
not have anything subversive against scientific rationality and its statute: I
think that it works to constitute the full and whole objectivity of scientific
concepts, even if, ultimately, the conceptualization of scientific ideas
depends indirectly on an originating and fundamental
metaphorization.
4. The symbolic processes evoked by
Nietzsche
Actually, Nietzsche narrowly connected the fact of
knowing the processes of symbolic systems with the hope of a philosophical
therapy inherent in this setting up to date and even with the idea of a quite
simply therapeutic philosophy which would have as a finality the proper
medication of culture[49]. Thus
– well beyond what could seem a conflict between art and science that he
evoked besides[50], and even beyond
the idea of a philosophy accentuating a possible opposition which would move
away science from wisdom[51] -
Nietzsche’ s intuition of symbolic processes imposes on the attention of
those which seriously study what is called mind or thought. Admittedly,
Nietzsche extrapolated his position until the idea that philosophy would come
from there to control the development of science and to fix the table of the
values of a given civilization[52].
Then, the truth would be held, for Nietzsche, in a zone which would
no more be either subjective or objective, but still as Thomas Leddy advances:
in the simple fact that the essences are finally only metaphors. Nietzsche
spoke about the abstracted terms, the called abstracta, that once
obtained one takes for essences, where Leddy speaks only about essences. Leddy
distinguishes essences and concepts; the latter which lie in theory in the mind
can however structure our objective world. Besides Nietzsche affirmed that the
produced concepts select us, therefore act pragmatically, beyond the
correspondence and the coherence which characterize them nevertheless, as well
for Nietzsche as for the 'experientialists' (according to Leddy). Indeed, for
Nietzsche, even if abstracta are only effects and by no means causes,
they correspond metaphorically to the world: they correspond to it; moreover
they can maintain between them a certain coherence and then act physically on
us, as we can act through them in the world. The origin and the end of the
"artist process" remain physiological, while passing by the medium of the
material world: "the science of nature now opposes to that the absolute natural
truth: higher physiology will include undoubtedly already in our becoming the
artistic forces, not only in man’s becoming, but also in the becoming of
the animals: it will say that the artistic one also starts with the organic
one."[53].
Whatever would
be the philosopher’s positions, the deductions which he can draw concern
his responsibility. What remains objectively interesting for the researchers in
cognitive philosophy, are the data that Nietzsche released and of which he sees
himself being propagated in later progress. Precisely, the processes of symbolic
systems consist in selective developments of images and representations in the
course of thought, before becoming perfectly abstract while being reduced unto
the form of concept. Nietzsche noted in this movement a double course: on the
one hand, he saw that there is a force, a capacity or a faculty able to produce
images; and from which, on the other hand, he discovered the action of
another capacity being able to choose among these same
images[54].
On this
level, a double question can be raised; it relates to the production of the
images and their choice or at least the criterion of their choice. First of
all, the production of the images is a fact: the image "was born" so to speak
without its birth making any question. It is the image which acts in our brain
and puts, for example, the members moving. As for the general “aesthetic
state" which inspires the images, it is a product of the states of pleasure and
of, Nietzsche affirms, pertaining with excessive physical
strength.
As for the question of the choice of the images and their
selection, it is not without being connected with the question of the standard
and the criterion, at least with a diversified requirement which is likely to
escape consciousness. This question thus appears in the texts of the years
1872-1873 joined together in The Philosopher’s Book; but
it is again evoked later and is treated, inter alia, in The Gay Science (III, §111)[55], where
Nietzsche describes the "process of thoughts and logical conclusions in our
current brain ‘as guarantor’ with a process and a fight of impulses
which by themselves are extremely illogical and iniquitous". Nietzsche pointed
out that what is held then is no other than "the old mechanism" of the first
humanity, but "in so fast a way and if dissimulated that we never realize but
result of the fight". However, this struggle is carried on taking into account
our evaluations "which are perhaps the means thanks to which something primarily
different must be reached, as what seems inside the consciousness"; however
what seems to us to be the interior stake is perhaps itself finally "only one
means for us of reaching something which is held outside our
consciousness"[56]. Here are what
would be, on Nietzsche’s part, a vision, so to speak, interior or mental,
of the processes, but which refers to a whole physiological basis. The
contemporary cognitivists recognize a system of exchanges between the neurons of
the brain. The external vision causes the concepts of thought to be
superimposed on the sensory data, so that the modes of ordering would be an
accommodation of these data, while the conceptualization would not be different
from the cognitive process even on its lower
level[57]. It seems that Nietzsche
already went in this direction.
On this organic basis,
affluent of such a system of knowledge, the grammatical structure is the first
one for Nietzsche - let us note that such is the point of view of
Chomsky’s generative
grammar[58] - compared to the
conscious thought and the opposition subject/object. For Nietzsche, it is truly
an instinct “which pushes us to form metaphors”; and this
instinct is
“fundamental”[59]: on
this basis, initially language then science work with the construction of the
concepts[60]. Meanwhile, nowadays,
one finally dares to speak of “the instinct of language”: see the
title of the book of Steven
Pinker[61] who writes that all the
new-born children come into world with linguistic
abilities[62]. For Nietzsche,
“the language instinct” was without any doubt, consequently, the
instinct of science. It is, in other words at least, what is called 'common
sense', but one does not hear the latter in a formal nor logical way ; it is as
a naturalist that Nietzsche wrote: “As the bee works at the same time to
build cells and to fill these cells with honey, thus science works unceasingly
with this large columbarium of the concepts, with the sepulchre of the
intuitions, and always builds the new ones and higher stages, it works, cleans,
renovates the old cells, it especially endeavours to fill up this
half-timbering raised unto monstrous and to arrange the entire empirical world
there, i.e. the anthropomorphic
world.”[63]
In the
above text, the term ' anthropomorphic' is certainly not used in the sense of a
primary education anthropomorphism. The actually produced science corresponds
directly to the capacity of the human brain. It is not thus a question of
confusing this Nietzschean position with the contemporary epistemological
relativism. Nietzsche’s relativism - there is one - is strictly related
to the physical constitution of the human being in general, and not with social
determinations which would build scientific truth out of nothing, as some
sociologists of sciences believe. This notion of the anthropomorphical
character noticed by Nietzsche thus closely follows the achieved extension
starting from the instinctive activity of the language which he noted.
Before the logical logos, humankind knew and practised the
word of the muthos. Myth does not know the principle of contradiction and
the Nietzschean myth has the same particularity. Anyone may signify anything
according to his proper qualities. As representing dream, nevertheless Apollo
may be together rational and irrational in spite of his clarity and
distinctness. Dionysus may be Zagreus. In fact, it is what the myth taught us.
Zagreus was Dionysus’name in Orphism, under of which influence he became
the symbol of universal life. Zagreus was worshipped because he was
dismembered by the Titans and came to life again; then he could be anywhere
under the form of an element: air, water, earth and fire. Therefore, Dionysus
is anywhere and anything. Through his two-phased intoxication, he could be under
the effect of a fermented drink[64],
or, on the contrary, under the sublime pleasure of
music[65]. Nietzsche’s
intuition has been followed by the great studies of Greek religion: I am
particularly thinking of Jane Harrison’s works.
The
Nietzschean intuition is thus that rhetoric activity is the oldest activity of
the brain; it would be also, according to Nietzsche, the same activity which
continues tacitly still each day when we carry out the operations of our
thought, even the most logical. Mental activity would be at work in the human
language applying the laws of rhetoric, according to its capacity of expression
and communication[66]. Thus, from
the point of view of thought, the abstraction is finally only the product of
systems of symbolic processes having nevertheless a metaphorical origin, since
it is: “a durable impression which was fixed and hardened in the
memory”[67]. And if the
concepts are thus produced by metaphorical processes, consequently, for
Nietzsche, science itself indirectly owes its existence to rhetoric: “To
the construction of the concepts works originally, as we saw it, the language,
and later also science”[68].
Under these conditions, the natural laws are “simple relations of one
thing to the other and to
man”[69]: for Nietzsche, they
do nothing else but continue “the laws of
feeling”[70]. Here we need to
explain our need for identity and for non contradiction !
Nietzsche
has approached the real work of language as being exerted according to the
variety of individuals. On the one hand, the concepts are the work of language
: philosophy is built-in through language, the phenomenon under which it
appears. But, in addition, science is another system independent from the
individual who receives the concepts which dominate him. Curiously, the
illogical element of the metaphor lives in the language which then connects us
in the bonds of logic[71]: this
seems to be a mysterious metamorphosis of language and thought. Thus it was in
the heart of the original chaos of representations that logic was born, while
the majority of them were vanished [72]. Also Nietzsche asks: “
What is properly ' logical' in the thought in images? “ [73]. The existence of the logical
judgement is explained because it could surface, “while measuring with
current and frequently checked chains” [74]; and, without any doubt for
Nietzsche, “even the same nervous activity reproduces the same
image”[75]. But the strength
of art in action “does not carry an interest equal to every thing
perceived”[76]: it reinforces
the principal features by forgetting the secondary ones.
Conscious thought is for Nietzsche a process of representations which
leads to abstraction by a long way. There are thus many stages; at first,
“1. the force which produces the profusion of images; then, 2. the
force which chooses the similar one and accentuates it” [77]: “the analogue points
out the analogue and is compared by this
means”[78]. The brain in its
activity carries series of images useful for the development of the thought, and
of which the understanding is the effective and rapid referee when it selects
the similar images, which themselves still give rise to a profusion of images
among which understanding selects
again[79]. By doing this,
understanding distinguishes the Same and the Other, categories and names; it
establishes headings according to the principle of its surface force of choice:
if the eye attaches us to the forms, understanding obeys the “artistic
force” which reigns on us [80].
As Nietzsche well
indicates, metaphor does not relate only to language nor thought, but still to perception. However, some researchers in Cognitive Science, currently
study the metaphors of perception. I return to Lawrence E Mark’ s ess ay
(1996), “On perceptual
metaphors”[81], which
testifies that we had to wait until 1982 so that one could speak of
“pictorial
metaphor”[82]: he quotes the
work of J.M. Kennedy on the question. It is true that there can already have
been an influence of the linguistic metaphor on the pictorial metaphor; but
there are cases where colours and sounds are answered metaphors directly as in
Rimbaud’ s Sonnet of the Vowels. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche
asked: “With which title does the music in the mirror of mental imagery
and concepts appear?”[83]. Also,
after Schopenhauer, Nietzsche affirmed that, according to the concept of its
essence, music is not will (as Schopenhauer thought), but “seems
will”; so that according to the concept of its appearance, it had for it
to do with the universal one. Nietzsche would not change his opinion, when, in
the same spirit as Hanslick[84], he
refused to see in music a semiotics of affects, even if, in Dawn,
§142, he will admit that it can however be so for us who are listening to
it as “the imitation of an imitation of feelings” [85].
The inaccuracy of
sight and hearing are at the basis of corresponding arts: “art rests on
the inaccuracy of the sight. With the ear even inaccuracy in the rhythm, the
temperament, etc. And on top rests again,
art”[86]. Starting from
metaphorical perception, we pass to art related to this perception and then only
to thought, since “the images are original thoughts, i.e. surfaces of the
things concentrated in the mirror of the eye” [87]... just as understanding is
itself a mirror[88]. At this point
in time, the philosopher comes who, as Nietzsche said, endeavours “to
pose, in the place from the thought in images, a thought by concepts” [89]. Men and women have the
vocation to create forms and rhythms, this is why they believe in
“being” and in
“things”[90]. By the
difference of the rhythms, perceptible to human sense, number, time and space
are given to the mental activity. By conceiving the human thought, Nietzsche
saw a new form of reality appear.
Thus bringing back all the human
and material phenomena to the elements of feeling and memory, Nietzsche suddenly
raised a fugitive assumption: and what if matter itself were endowed with
feeling and memory ? Mankind, in return, would have the privilege of knowing
the essence of things: coming out of a dream, it would be able to see itself in
a dream; since “Der Mensch glaubt an ‘Sein’ und an
Dinge, weil er formen- und rhythmenbildendes Geschöpf
ist.“[91]
5. Conclusion : Metaphor as an effect of imitation
Thus, with the principle
of the processes of symbolic sets of images and with thought, Nietzsche
primarily saw a principle of similarity at work; the same attracting the same
and allowing the comparison with what is different: identity and analogy are
criterions of choice between the images of the mind.
Whereas the current debates on the processes suitable for thought divide today
the theorists into two camps, and Nietzsche’ s position put him obviously
in the camp of those who to-day believe that thought is governed by a principle
of similarity among the ideas ; while the other camp affirms, on the contrary,
that what governs the unfolding of the mind is a whole of mental rules [92]. Probably, both camps are
right, since language and thought follow rules and then render possible the
rigorous scientific activity.
What Nietzsche tried to
build up is much more than a theory of knowledge; it is a phenomenology of
knowledge which would go down the last roots, further than the first metaphor,
until the origin of any sign of life and its impression of pleasure or
displeasure, very far in the genesis of the intellectual thought, to the
emotional root from where the images are born long before the thoughts
themselves. However, we should not omit that for Nietzsche the source of truth
has also to do with moral and political constraints, in the sense that the
community imposed the obligation “to tell the truth”. What will
become later a scientific knowledge has a moral origin, thus it owes its birth
to the obligation of truth imposed by the community. Admittedly, 'moral' means
here, in fact, 'useful for society ', or even 'what supports life'; however,
for Nietzsche, this vital truth would turn an enemy to life, since Nietzsche
noted: “truth kills”, and “it kills
itself”[93].
Moreover, on the basis of a definition of knowledge like
"measures on a scale", Nietzsche restores the ditch which seems to separate
mankind from the universe that it wants to know. Because, whatever the adopted
scale of measures, one does not know one’s own scale. Therefore absolute
objective knowledge is illusory according to Nietzsche, because the difference
of measurements cannot be established without some fixed external reference
which we miss. Consequently and logically, the model of any knowledge is no
other than metaphor. However, the latter is justified by imitation and the
subsequent assimilation. Thanks to this will to imitate and assimilate, at least
it is not necessary to seek a proof of the existence of the external world,
since the world essentially exists as real or as alien to the individuals who
want (desperately or tragically ?) to assimilate it as to their own knowledge.
Contemporary studies show that metaphor can be used as a model
for structuring knowledge, often better than that of first-order logic. There
are numerous scientific studies such as this one : Cognition and the Symbolic
Processes, edited by Robert R. Hoffman and David S.
Palermo[94] . There is also the
journal : Metaphor and Symbolic Activity : in volume 10, 1995, Thomas
Leddy wrote : “I argue [...] that not only do we understand the world in
terms of conceptual metaphors but that fundamental constituents of our
experienced world are metaphoric”. Nietzsche was led to explain reason on
the ground of art. History and natural sciences, which are the product of reason
in modern times, worked for Nietzsche as a tool against the way taken by reason
itself, either directly in metaphysics or indirectly in science. Indeed,
Nietzsche discovered an original scientific problem : the problem of
metalanguage, according to which we meet the necessity to use metalanguage in
order to study a specific object. Under pain of being void, our study must take
the object in another perspective than its own.
Thanks to Eliane Cuvelier
for assistance with this essay
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[1] Das Philosophenbuch.
Theoretische Studien (1872-1875), Nietzsches Werke, GOA, Kröner, X; see
the different texts in Nachlass, KGW, IV, 2, 1. The French translation Le Livre du philosophe, was published with an Introduction and Notes by
Angèle Kremer Marietti (Paris : Aubier Flammarion, 1969), corrected
and reprinted 1978 with a new Introduction; now reprinted in GF-Collection
(Paris: Flammarion, 1991) with a new Introduction: « Nietzsche sur la
vérité et le langage (1872-1875) ». The English
translation: Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth.. Selections from
Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870’s, is edited and
translated by D. Breazeale, New Jersey: Humanities, 1979.
See Philosophy and Truth, p. 38; Le Livre du Philosophe, p.
44.
[2]Sander L. Gilman, Carole
Blair, David Parent, Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 20.
[3] Das Philosophenbuch..
[4] Metaphor: “the
application of a name or descriptive term or phrase to an object or action to
which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable” ; metonymy:
“the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the
thing meant” ; synecdoche: “a figure of speech in which a part is
made to represent the whole or vice versa” ; definitions from The
Oxford English Reference Dictionary.
[5] Philosophy and
Truth, pp. 88-89; Le Livre du philosophe,
pp.129-130.
[6] See Sander
L.Gilman, Carole Blair, David Parent, Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and
Language, p. 20.
[7] KGW, IV,
2, 22 (64).
[8] Philosophy and
Truth, 44.
[9] "On Truth and
Lies in A Nonmoral Sense": Philosophy and Truth, p. 84 ; Le Livre du
philosophe, p.123.
[10] "The Philosopher" § 61: Philosophy and Truth, p. 23 ; Le Livre du
philosophe, p. 61.
[11] Ibid.
[12] "The
Philosopher" § 63: Philosophy and Truth, p. 24 ; Le Livre du
philosophe, p. 62.
[13] Ibid.
[14] "The
Philosopher" § 102: Philosophy and Truth, p. 38 ; Le Livre du
philosophe, p. 79.
[15] "The Philkosopher" § 64: Philosophy and Truth, p. 24 ; Le
Livre du philosophe, p. 62.
[16] "The Philosopher" §
63: Philosophy and Truth, p. 24 ; Le Livre du philosophe, p. 62.
[17] KGW, IV, 2, 22 (64).
[18] See "Attempt at a
Self-criticism", in The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of
Music, translated by Schaun Whiteside, edited by Michael Tanner, London:
Penguin Books, Penguin Classics, 1993 ; see p. 5. Hence BT, followed by the
section number and the page number.
[19] The principle of reason
according to which nothing happens unless there is a cause or a determining
reason, that is to say a reason which could a priori explain why it is
existing rather not and why it is so and not otherwise (see Leibniz, Théodicée, I,
44).
[20] See my contribution
to the Conference Nietzsche’s Use of Language – Nietzsches
Gebrauch der Sprache – at the Nijmegen University, 21-23 September
2000: “Nietzsche’s Philosophical Interpretation of Metaphor : A
Metaphorical Genealogy” online at: http://www.dogma.lu
[21] Beyond Good and Evil § 230.
[22] Dawn, § 509.
[23] The
Birth of Tragedy 14.
[24] Angèle Kremer Marietti « Nietzsche’s Philosophical
Interpretation of Metaphor: A Metaphorical Genealogy »
(2000).
[25] Angèle
Kremer Marietti, Nietzsche et la rhétorique, Paris, PUF,
1992.
[26] Mark Jophnson,
“ Why Metaphor Matters to Philosophy”, in Metaphor and Symbolic
Activity, A Quaterly Journal, Vol. 10, N°3, 1995,
157-162.
[27] Michel Imbert,
« Théorie de la vision naturelle », in Sciences de
la cognition, Grands Colloques de Prospectives, 28 janvier 1991,
Ministère de la recherche et de la Technologie, 1991, p. 32; also
Angèle Kremer Marietti, La philosophie cognitive, Paris, PUF,
1994; and see Pierre Jacob et Marc Jeannerod, « Quand voir,
c’est faire », Revue Internationale de Philosophie,
3/1999, Neurosciences, pp.
293-319.
[28] William A Woods,
« What’s in a Link, Foundations for Semantic
Networks », Representation and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive
Science, ed. D. G. Bobrow and A. M. Collins, Academic Press, New York, 1975.
[29] Mark Johnson, op.
cit., p. 157.
[30] A.Kremer Marietti: « Le Naissance de la tragédie trace la voie
de la vérité radicale », Nietzsche, La naissance de
la tragédie, Paris: Le Livre de Poche, Classiques de la philosophie,
1994.
[31] French translation, Le
Livre du philosophe ; English translation: Nietzsche, Philosophy and
Truth. Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early
1870’s.
[31] A.
Kremer Marietti, « La pensée de Nietzsche
adolescent », in Études Germaniques. N° 2,
1969.
[32] A. Kremer Marietti
« Le questionnement radical de Nietzsche », in Humain,
trop humain, Paris: Le Livre de Poche, Classiques de la Philosophie,
1995 ; A. Kremer Marietti,
« Menschliches-Allzumenschliches : Nietzsches
Positivismus ? », Nietzsche-Studien, Berlin, New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1997.
[33] Le Livre du Philosophe, p. 47-48; Philosophy and Truth, p. 11.
[34] A. Kremer-Marietti,
« ‘Le terrain de l’art’, une clé de
lecture du texte nietzschéen », in Nouvelles lectures de
Nietzsche, textes recueillis par Dominique Janicaud, Lausanne, Cahiers
L’Âge d’Homme, N°1,
1985.
[35] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 48; KSA, VII,
486.
[36] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 84; KSA, VII, 880-881.
[37] KSA, VII,
454.
[38] KSA, VII, 445.
[39] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, précédé de
« Jean-Jacques Rousseau ou la double origine et son rapport au
système Langue-Musique-Politique » par Angèle
Kremer Marietti, Paris, Aubier, 1974, 1981. Title of chapter
III: « Que le premier langage dut être
figuré ».
[40] See Nietzsche et la
rhétorique, pp.
129-134.
[41] See: A.
Kremer-Marietti, « Nietzsche et l’épistémologie
réfléchissante » in Revue Internationale de
Philosophie, N°211,
1/2000
[42] KSA, VII,
484.
[43] Philosophy and
Truth, p.24; KSA, VII,
446.
[44] Colin Murray
Turbayne, “Metaphors for the Mind”, in Logic and Art. Essays in
honour of Nelson Goodman, Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs Merrill Comp.
Inc., 1972, p.61. Cf. Colin Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor, New
Haven: Yale, University Press, 1962. See also: Earl R. Mac Cormac, A
Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985; Eileen
Cornell Way, Knowledge representation and Metaphor, Kluwer Academic
Puiblisher, 1991; Vincent de Coorebyter ed, Rhétoriques de la
science, Paris, P.U.F., Collection L’Interrogation Philosophique,
1994: A. Kremer-Marietti, 133-148: « Le figuré et le
littéral dans le langage
scientifique ».
[45] George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980; also hilosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied
Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books,
1999.
[46] Thomas Leddy,
« Metaphor and Metaphysics”, in Metaphor and Symbolic
Activity, 10 (3),
205-222.
[47] Thomas Leddy, op. cit., p. 206: “I argue, however, that not only do we
understand the world in terms of conceptual metaphors but that fundamental
constituents of our experienced world are metaphoric”.
[48] Angèle
Kremer-Marietti, La symbolicité, Paris, P.U.F., 1982; and Les
racines philosophiques de la science moderne, Bruxelles, Mardaga, 1987; also
“La référence fictionnelle du texte” , Encyclopédie philosophique, IV, Paris, PUF, 1998.
[49] Philosophy and
Truth, pp. 67-76; KSA, VII, 557-617.
[50] Philosophy and
Truth, pp. 1-58; KSA, VII, 417-517. [51] Philosophy and
Truth, pp. 125-146; KSA, VIII,
108-115.
[52] Philosophy and Truth, p. 8, pp. 22,23; KSA, VII,
424.
[53] KSA, VII,
436.
[54] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 24; KSA, VII,
445.
[55] Friedrich Nietzsche, Le gai savoir. Fragments posthumes. Textes et variantes établis
par G. Colli et M. Montinari. Traduits de l’allemand par Pierre
Klossowski. Paris, Gallimard, 1967, p.
129.
[56] KSA, 1882-1884, p.
654.
[57] See :
Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language
(1967).
[58] Jean-Yves Pollock,
1997, Langage et cognition. Introduction au programme minimaliste de la
grammaire générative, Paris,
PUF
[59] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 88; KSA, VII,
487.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Steven
Pinker, The Language Instinct, William Morrow and Company, 1994. L’instinct du langage, tr. par Marie-France Desjeux, Paris:
Editions Odile Jacob,
1999.
[62] L’instinct
du langage, p. 262.
[63] KSA, VII, 487.
[64]See
Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), New York,
Meridian Books, 1955, p. 450: “In fig. 137 from a red-figured stamnos
[note: Brit. Mus. Cat. E 439, pl. XV] in the British Museum we have the
Thracian Dionysos drunk with wine, a brutal though still splendid savage ; he
dances in ecstasy brandishing the fawn he has rent asunder in his
madness.”
[65] See
Jane Harrison, Prolegomena, op. cit., p. 450-451: “In the second picture
[note: Bibliothèque Nationale, Cat.576] (fig. 138), a masterpiece of
decorative composition, we have Dionysos as the Athenian cared to know him. The
strange mad Satyrs are twisted and contorted to make exquisite patterns, they
clash their frenzied crotala and wave great vine branches. But in the midst of
the revel the god himself stands erect. He holds no kantharos, only a great
lyre. His head is thrown back in ecstasy ; he is drunken, but with music, not
with wine.”
[66]. See :
Sander L.Gilman., Carole Blair, David Parent, Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric
and Language, p. 20.
[67] Philosophy and Truth, p. 49; KSA, VII, 487.
[68] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 88; KSA, I,
886.
[69] KSA, VII,
625.
[70] KSA, VII,
625.
[71] KSA, VII,
625.
[72] Philosophy and
Truth, p.24 ; KSA, VII, 445.
[73] KSA, VII, 445.
[74] KSA, VII, 447.
[75] KSA, VII, 441.
[76] KSA, VII, 441.
[77] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 24; KSA, VII,
445.
[78] Philosophy and Truth,
p. 45; KSA, VII, 475.
[79] Ibid
[80] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 19; KSA, VII,
435.
[81] See : Metaphor and
Symbolic Activity, Figurative Language and Cognitive Science, Vol.11,
N° 1, 1996, pp.
39-66.
[82] J. M. Kennedy,
“Metaphor in pictures”, Perception, 11, 589-605.
[83] BT 6,
34.
[84] Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen.. Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der
Tonkunst (1854). Neue durchgesehene Auflage J.A. Barth, Leipzig
1896.
[85] Philosophy
and Truth, p. 19; KSA, VII, 440.
[86] Philosophy and
Truth, p. 19; KSA, VII,
440.
[87] Dawn, §
121, p. 127.
[88] KSA, VII,
454.
[89] KSA, 1882-1884, p.
651: “Der Mensch glaubt an ‘Sein’ und an Dinge, weil er
formen- und rhythmenbildendes Geschöpf
ist.“
[90] KSA, VII,
469-471.
[91] KSA, 1882-1884,
p. 651.
[92] Steven A. Sloman
et Lance J. Rips, Similarity and Symbols in Human Thinking Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1998; Ray Jackendoff, Paul Bloom, and Karen Wynn, Language,
Logic and Concepts. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999.
[93] KSA, VII,
623.
[94] Lawrence Erlbaum,
1991.
