On Rhetoric and Language

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair

Presenting the entire German text of Nietzsche's lectures on rhetoric and language and his notes for them, as well as facing page English translations, this book fills an important gap in the philosopher's corpus. Until now unavailable or existing only in fragmentary form, the lectures represent a major portion of Nietzsche's achievement. Included are an extensive editors' introduction on the background of Nietzsche's understanding of rhetoric, and critical notes identifying his sources and independent contributions.

Genres: Philosophy

cloth

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

The text to which I refer goes under the French name given above (Rhétorique et Langage), yet the description refers to the English translation of the same central text (Nietzsche's lecture course of 1872-3 on rhetoric), Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language.

These two volumes differ, however, not only in terms of the language of translation. Because Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's French translation was originally published in 1971 in volume 5 of the journal Poétique, the translators have excised the last half of the course, where Nietzsche continues to explicate historical associations and descriptions, but adds no more of any serious (or, perhaps, "interesting") import on the relation between rhetoric and language more generally - that is, he tends toward to academic mode of recitation of history rather than elaboration of novel insights. But beyond this difference of length (the English translation also contains the German original as facing-text), there is also a further distinction in terms of addendum or appended materials. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy have chosen to translate various other texts which relate to the titular themes or topoi, including some collected notes from the early notebooks. The English editory and translating trinity collect some of the same additional materials ("On the Origin of Language" (1869-70) and"The History of Greek Eloquence" (1872-3)), and while they do not present the notes and other brief excerpts (from "Cicero and Demosthenes" (1874) and the prospective pages from an unactualized "untimely meditation" on "Reading and Writing" (1873-5)), does translate two other brief texts from 1875 ("On the Poet" and "On Rhythm"), along with a translation of Nietzsche's most well know early piece concerning language - that is, his 1873 essay on truth and lies/lying.

Finally, it must be noted that Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, despite the shorter text, provide much more in-depth notes, which unfold the philosophical implications in Nietzsche's nascent thought simply passed over by the philological translators of the English "version."

In the end, both translations, in either language, remain chimerical, perhaps even centauric - and incomplete, as they necessarily must be. Perhaps the best way - the only way - to read and think what these notes seek to invoke and incite in memory would be to read them across the distances in and between languages; not just German, English, and French, but within each the translational attempts at metaphorically transposing the Greek and Latin (and, in a few instances, Sanskrit) which drives the thought expressed in these texts as the dynamic force abyssally grounding each instance or iteration, binding together thought and language to the expression which disperses and disseminates them, in the distance from its other which is but the mimetic echo of what it "itself" would be.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... language is rhetoric, because it desires to convey only a 'doxa' [opinion], not an 'episteme' [knowledge]."

* * *

This difficult to find/out-of-print book, probably the least read in the Nietzsche canon, though, arguably, the most important since it focuses on the nature of language itself, prefigured Derridean/de Manean deconstruction by almost 100 years... it compiles Nietzsche's early philological writings on rhetoric/language when he was a professor at the University of Basel in the 1870's...

Nietzsche's startling view, that ALL language is figurative and can never be an epistemological vehicle, that it can only persuade, remains on the upper threshold of the iconoclastic; yet as Yale literary critic Paul de Man argued in 'Allegories of Reading' (1979), Nietzsche doesn't exactly exempt himself as his greatest creation, Zarathustra, deploys innumerable rhetorical stratagems to convince, cajole, influence, and, really, seduce the reader... Zarathustra's subtitle, which is typically overlooked, 'Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen' ('A Book for All and None'), may even play on such a conundrum that Nietzsche, often knowingly, exploits ... at bottom, how do we read this master rhetorician of 'Die fröhliche Wissenschaft'? This remains - will seemingly always remain - a central exegetical issue...

Most university libraries have the book which is well-edited/translated (its bi-lingual) by Gilman, Blair and Parent... worth finding and highly recommended!

[Brandon Sitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of all I've read by Nietzsche this collection, Ecce Homo, and Zarathustra are my top three. The first, and longest, of the essays is on Ancient Rhetoric and is Nietzsche at his most formal and academic; for this reason, most readers of Nietzsche will probably find little of interest here (unless they also have an interest in classical studies or philology). The rest of the essays, however, deal with topics such as the origin of language, the nature of metaphor, the purpose of poetry, and the (perhaps dis-)utility of truth.

[Nicolas]

Cet opuscule inédit propose un regard sur l’œuvre proprement philologique de Nietzsche. Indissociable d’une certaine musicalité et d’une rythmique quasi poétique, la rhétorique représente pour Nietzsche « la plus haute activité intellectuelle de l’homme politique achevé ». Compétence divine, elle signifie le « beau » - le rhéteur est « dieu parmi les hommes » (p. 50).



Elle signale également la supériorité des Grecs : « c’est dans le pouvoir-discourir que se concentre progressivement l’hellénité et sa puissance. » p. 67. Aussi, selon Nietzsche, « l’antiquité ne mérite pas d’être proposée en exemple à toutes les époques pour son contenu : mais bien pour sa forme » (p. 76).



En comparaison, Nietzsche perçoit ses contemporains comme « beaucoup plus décolorés et abstraits » (p. 36), regrettant que la formation du peuple soit « incroyablement plus rudimentaire que dans le monde hellénistique-romain ; […] les effets peuvent être obtenus par des moyens beaucoup plus lourds et grossiers ; toute finesse est écartée, ou excite la méfiance ; au mieux, elle a son petit cercle de connaisseur » (p. 68).



Peu accessible à prime abord, le travail de Nietzsche procède par prélèvement et détournement, citant tour à tour Schopenhauer et Cicéron. Un travail déviant in fine de la mécanicité propre à l’analyse sémantique – une démarcation assumée : « le philologue lit encore des mots, nous Modernes ne lisons plus que des pensées » (p. 75).