João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco (eds.), Nietzsche on Instinct and
Language (proceedings of a conference held in 2009 at Universidade Nova de Lisboa). ).
Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. xxiv + 295 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-024656-8. Cloth,
$140.
Nietzsche’s critique of the will to truth, and, more specifically, the metaphysical
tradition, is inextricable from both his philosophy of language and his turn to physiology.
Though the way in which Nietzsche conceived of the intertwinement of language, reason
and the body developed through the course of his philosophical maturation, it is
nonetheless an interconnection that spans the breadth of his oeuvre (compare e.g. the
early Nietzsche’s unpublished essay ‘Uber Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen
Sinn’ [1873] and the late work, ‘Book V’ of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [1887]). To be
sure, Nietzsche on Instinct and Language seems principally concerned with
comprehensively mapping out this complex interrelation across its various formulations.
The modern, occidental habit of preaching the authority and higher worth of
reason over and against the compulsions of the body undoubtedly finds precedence in
Plato’s schema of the tripartite soul; however, more immediately, as Nietzsche points out,
the diremption and hierarchicisation of these “antipodes” ought to be imputed to
Descartes’ dualism (JGB 191). As is well known, Nietzsche took it upon himself to
subvert this opposition, and hence the topographical aspect of Nietzsche on Instinct and
Language is directed at illustrating the precise way in which reason and the body are
more properly conceived of as existing on a single continuum. Language becomes of
prime importance since, as it is both bodily function and the medium of dialectical
thought, it represents the connective tissue bridging mind and body.
In addition to the above, the editors’ introduction delineates another, corollary
objective of the volume – namely, to interrogate the self-reflexive issues raised by
Nietzsche’s linguistics. Certainly, one must ask, if Nietzsche accepts language as
instinctual, and as incapable of expressing a purely rational or transcendent form of truth,
then where does this leave the truth value of his own texts? Or, more to the point, how is
Nietzsche’s own use of language alive to, and indeed, how does it embrace, the linguistic
limitations of which it speaks? This is described in terms of his struggle to forge a new,
critical-philosophical ‘language’. Though this is a recurrent theme throughout the eleven
articles comprising the volume, it is most prominent in the latter half the book, and one
therefore finds the first two chapters laying foundations toward this end. The essays
which constitute the first chapter, entitled ‘Nietzschean Beginnings and Developments’,
therefore focus on Nietzsche’s early thoughts concerning language. Andrea Bertino, for
example, does so through a series of comparative ‘notes’ on Nietzsche and Herder;
subsequently, Chapter Two, ‘Dissolving an Opposition’, tries to explicate the way in
which Nietzsche contests the traditional opposition between language and instinct. Thus,
Chiara Piazzesi’s paper from this cluster give a close reading of FW 14 to show how
Nietzsche breaks down the opposition between love and greed and thereby illustrates the
more general point that such bipolar oppositions originate as linguistic phenomena that
are then projected onto the experienced world; it is then in Chapter Three, ‘Instinct,
Language and Philosophy’, that, in their respective essays, Werner Stegmaier and Scarlett
Marton examine in greater depth the broader philosophical consequences of this
dissolution of opposites; and finally, the fourth chapter, ‘The Critique of Morality and the
Affirmation of Life’, groups together four articles that survey the connection between
Nietzsche’s critique of language and, as its title suggests, the life affirming aspects of his
philosophy. From this chapter, Marta Faustino’s paper on the indefinite meaning of
health in Nietzsche work is of most interest. However, as compared with the other
chapters, there is a definite lack of cohesion amongst these closing essays and,
furthermore, they do not seem to deal any more specifically with Nietzsche’s critique of
morality nor the life affirming aspects of his philosophy than many of the other preceding
essays in the volume. Structurally, then, one finds the volume at its weakest in its final
quarter.
It is not here possible to provide an overview and analysis of each of the volume’s
eleven papers; however, by examining at a small selection, one can obtain a fairly clear
picture of the argumentative movement that characterises the collection taken as a whole.
A good place to start is with Patrick Wotling’s contribution in the volume’s second
chapter, ‘What Language do Drives Speak?’ Wotling is less interested in what would
ordinarily be referred to as language – i.e. conscious, verbal, human communication – so
much as the so-called ‘language’ of the drives. The central argument is that, for Nietzsche,
individual conscious thoughts are, contrary to our phenomenological experience, not
causally connected. Rather, they are each the superficial effect of deeper processes,
rearrangements and struggles occurring within the infra-conscious community of the
drives. To summarise, Wotling’s thesis is that an ‘originary’ form of communication
between the drives is a precondition of such interaction and that, indeed, that this
necessity was something of which Nietzsche was well aware. Going into further detail,
Wotling argues that the interaction of the drives is almost exclusively orientated toward
their self-hierarchicisation, and that the resulting network of command and subordination,
since it is imposed immanently, requires some form of communication (p.76–7). Finally,
since this communication is based on the ‘feeling’ of respective power statuses, is it
therefore, says Wotling, affective as opposed to verbal.
Wotling’s paper, however, leaves a number of questions unanswered (if not
further complicated). The first concerns the precise meaning of the term ‘language’ – an
issue that in fact pervades the volume as a whole. Whereas the often overlooked
differences between Nietzsche’s use of Triebe and Instinkte is carefully drawn in
Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, the distinction extant between language proper and
non-linguistic communication is not. Nietzsche undoubtedly strives to renaturalise both
language and reason in a way that tries to leave Descartes behind; however, in the
interests of clarity and philosophical rigor, we ought to retain an important distinction
identified by the latter and also quite rightly sustained by contemporary psychologists and
linguists alike – viz., that existing between linguistic and non-linguistic forms of
communication.1 Of course, not all communication is linguistic, and the drive
communication which Wotling indexes, is certainly not. In his defence, Wotling explains
that he has only chosen to call this originary, affective species of communication
‘language’ in a metaphorical sense, and indeed throughout the volume, ‘language’ is
often placed in quotation marks when used to refer to these infra-conscious levels of
communication (see e.g. p.78, 100, and xviii). Nonetheless, the indubitable uniqueness of
the socio-cultural phenomenon of language proper is eroded without a clear
differentiation of these two forms of communication. It is understandable that the editors
1
See e.g. Descartes (1861), p.53–4 and Hauser et al. (2002).
and authors of the book may not have wanted to separate language from other forms of
communication since doing so may reinforce its transcendent or supra-natural appearance.
Such a move, however, would need to be explicitly justified. In any case, it is surprising
that, in a book in which ‘language’ is such a key term, the noun so consistently eludes
precise definition.
There is then the issue of the ‘causal’ relation between language and conscious
thought on the one hand, and the instincts and drives on the other. According to Wotling,
it is the originary communication of the drives that renders possible language proper
(p.78). Yet, as Wotling emphasises, this relation ought not to be thought of in terms of
causality, since, as is well known, Nietzsche was highly critical of our tendency to
fabulate such facile causal connections. But the passages that Wotling cites in order to
ground this claim are specifically directed against the idea of the human will as a unified
causal force and, thus, the idea that conscious thoughts are the cause of subsequent
conscious thoughts (NL 2[103] KSA 12.112; NL 15 [13] KSA 13.414). So, although
Wotling argues very competently that, for Nietzsche, there is no horizontal causal relation
between conscious thoughts, he does not adequately demonstrate that there is none
between, on the one side, the activity of the drives and, on the other, the phenomenon of
conscious thought and language proper. NL 6[264] KSA 9.266, quoted by Wotling (p.65)
and also once earlier in the volume (p.41), is a note that demands closer exegesis than it
is subject to in Nietzsche on Instinct and Language; especially the following lines:
Auch dem feinsten Gedanken entspricht eine Verhäkelung
von Trieben. – Die Worte sind gleichsam eine Claviatur
der Triebe, und Gedanken (in Worten) sind Akkorde darauf.
Is Nietzsche painting a vertical model of mental causation here – i.e. are language and
conscious thought merely higher descriptive levels of the activity of the drives. Are these
two levels therefore synchronic manifestations of the same activity as opposed to distinct
links on a causal chain (after all, this is a relation of Entsprechung as opposed to
Kausalität)? Thus, striking the correct combination of keys would not cause the chord,
they would be the chord described from one perspective, and the sound its description
from another. Unfortunately, these questions are left unanswered by Wotling.
João Constâncio, in the book’s fourth essay, ‘Instinct and Language in
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’, also engages with this elliptical interrelation of
language, conscious thought and the drives. Whereas both Wotling and, in the volume’s
opening essay, Bertino (see p.30) both present a unidirectional account of this
interrelationship starting with the drives and ending with conscious thought, Constâncio
contends that:
If we had to think of the relations between conscious and unconscious mental states and
processes in terms of causality, we would have to conceive of a bi-directional path of
causality, for although conscious mental states are always ‘caused’ and sustained by
unconscious mental processes, they also influence and change the life of the
unconscious drives. Strictly speaking, however, Nietzsche conceives of such relations
in terms of sign- and power-relations’ (p.97).
For Constâncio, then, the desires of conscious reason (‘caused’ by the activity of
the drives) strive to become physiologically incorporated or, in other words, instinctual.
However, in spite of Constâncio’s rather cursory mention of sign- and power-relations,
along with the quotation marks he places either side of ‘caused’, he nonetheless fails to
explain sufficiently the relationship between the conscious realm of language and the
infra-conscious domain of the drives without reference to a fairly traditional conception
of causality. Perhaps, in a Nietzschean fashion, it could be argued that, at present within
our culture, it is verging on impossible to linguistically articulate a non-causal
relationship since the grammatical structure of Indo-European languages (subject- verbobject) is condemned to describe the world in terms of causality. Yet this is not argued,
and, additionally, since there is no dialogue between the stances of Wotling, Bertino and
Constâncio, readers are left none the wiser as to the precise interrelation of these
respective levels.
Having outlined the descriptive aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy of language,
Constâncio dedicates the final section of his paper to its normative dimension. This
concerns the genesis of a ‘neue Sprache’ (JGB 4). Indeed, Branco (p.51) and Hay (p.255)
similarly attempt to illumine some of the features of Nietzsche’s own ‘new language’ –
that is, the ‘language’ he suggests ought to replace the diction of the Wissenschaftler he
censures so polemically. The consensus between these three analyses is that this ‘new
language’ is one that rejects the demonstrative, logo-centric mode of philosophical
presentation and chooses, instead, to embrace the creative potential of a wholly rhetorical,
non-representational model of language.
But again, though this ‘new language’ can, in one sense, be referred to as a
‘language’, it cannot replace language proper (ordered systems of signs and syntax),
which is what Nietzsche is actually often criticizing when he speaks of language. His
‘new language’ is, rather, as Katia Hay points out, a new style; it is a new manner of
speaking about the world by means of the existing linguistic framework. For this reason,
says Constâncio, Nietzsche’s ‘new language’ is ‘not entirely new’ and ‘does not lead to
an alternative grammar of “becoming”’(p.110). To be sure, Nietzsche’s stylistic novelty
is less a radical emancipation from our grammatical-linguistic fetters (which we need to
survive and make sense of the world) so much as a far tamer rejection of a certain
academic approach. Referring to Nietzsche’s new style as ‘language’, then, I would argue,
is misleading since it is something quite distinct from what is meant by language
elsewhere in Nietzsche on Instinct and Language. Once again, then, one finds no
consistent definition of ‘language’ (used with or without quotation marks).Yet the flaws
of the book do not stop at its failure to make important conceptual distinctions; it also
lacks a thorough critical examination of the efficaciousness of this ‘new language’. If it is
grammar and the structure of language proper that governs our metaphysical
Weltanschauung and philosophical approach toward that world, how effective a force can
Nietzsche’s new fluid style be against the imperial dominance of our linguistic edifice. In
this way, then, the more pressing critical questions go unasked, and indeed, the book is
left with a tone that is almost naively celebratory with respect to Nietzsche’s fearless,
revolutionary iconoclasm and innovation.
What is more, owing to the volume’s overall lack of substantial structure and the
enormous quantity of repetition between papers, the text’s birth from an overly
concentric collection of conference papers is unfortunately palpable throughout. Finally,
for a book edited by such esteemed Nietzsche scholars and published by De Gruyter (as
part of it’s Nietzsche Today series) it must be said that the sheer abundance of spelling
and grammatical errors tarnishes the content of the collection. Notwithstanding, the
volume makes comprehensive use of existing secondary material, and so, in this respect,
this volume certainly represents an indispensible tool for anyone following a similar line
of inquiry. In addition to this, most of the essays, taken on their own, are interesting and
insightful; thus, the book remains a worthwhile addition to the Anglophone literature on
Nietzsche, especially since his thoughts on language per se tend to be treated as
secondary to both his conception of the world qua text and the role played by
interpretation in his later works. But, in particular, it is the way in which the connection
of language and physiology has been scrutinized in such a sustained manner that
represents the most original aspect of the text. Despite the major discrepancies between
Bertino’s, Wotling’s and Constâncio’s papers (see above), they nevertheless effectively
argue that any serious study of Nietzsche’s physiology – which currently happens to be
the subject of so much critical attention – ought to be considered inseparable from his
thoughts on language (and, of course, vice versa).
References
Descartes, Discours de la Méthod (Paris: Eugène Belin, 1861)
Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky and W. Tecumseh Fitch, ‘The Faculty of Language:
What Is It, Who Has It and How Did it Evolve’, Science, 298 (2002), 1569-1579