a sketch of nietzsche
Nietzsche says a lot of strong things about language in "On Truth and Lying in the Non-Moral Sense," and he tears pretty hard at the concepts of truth and fact. In some ways this is just to provoke us, or to keep us alert about what we call "certainty," but it hits at a fairly common desire of ours to be comforted, to accept as truth those ideas that we find simplest or most encouraging.
We can demonstrate this by taking two serious and meaningful human "realities": the fact that it can be wasteful and destructive to worry about the past, and the fact that a single human life will not make much difference to the universe. Very likely, there have been more books written to guide us, morally, to the first truth than to the second, and almost certainly, we would have a preference for reading books with the first conclusion. In this way, we select the more appealing lesson and focus on that, and Nietzsche's analysis of human behaviour proves true.
But Nietzsche attributes all our thoughts to this habit. He complains of the ways in which language restricts and narrows the range of our thoughts, and in this way, he properly diagnoses something that is not a real problem. If we put all leaves in a class of "leaves," the information we leave out is information that deserves to be left out: since we are concerned with freedom, power, or happiness, what matters is not the pattern of veins in a leaf, but the fact that it came from a tree, that it is broad and thin, and that it is safe to step on. We narrow our ideas of a leaf to the "universals" which are most relevant. The same way, if I ask for a cup of coffee, I will receive something very close to my initial desire -- even if my request for "coffee" leaves out almost all information and detail about what kind of item I want, it will function just the same as if I had requested the coffee in more depth.
In literature, language is both a tool and a garnish. As a tool, no writer can describe with 100% accuracy how it feels to drink a cup of bad coffee, and to get closest to that 100% mark, one suspects they might have to borrow from different languages and end up conveying confusion rather than coffee. By Nietzsche's rules, this failure shows that language is flawed and that bad coffee cannot be truly expressed, especially since every bad cup of coffee is a different and individual experience. This is, all our words and expressed have become stale, and they only narrow our possibilities for sensation.
Nietzsche praises the artistic, or "intuitive" as he calls it, which takes us outside of the common range of ideas, but he does not include literature among these arts. Words are the hardened, inflexible artifacts of convention, but these artifacts can function as building blocks. Nietzsche would argue that art compares to literature as a statue compares to a lego statue, built of rigid unmoving pieces, but the role of words is to crystallize certain ideas and, yes, concepts. The singing painter could not, without words, express the sensation of heat; the best he could do is try to simulate its emotional effects. The music that reminds us of heat, really, is the music that we know to come from hot climates; the sensation of heat cannot be expressed through music -- but it can be expressed through words! Even if someone didn't know the words "heat" or "warmth" or anything, it takes a very simple explanation ("when you want a blanket") to convey what heat is. Even if "heat" were not coded to us with a word, we would recognize a fundamental sameness between the heat of a cup of coffee and the heat of a summer's day -- for instance, we'd notice that we enjoy coffee more when it is cold outside.
Nietzsche is right to argue against the sins of reduction-by-label or reduction-by-concept, but the fundamental patterns of nature can't be written off as human constructions of order. An egg from a bird will contain no other creature than a second bird. Rain from the sky is always made of water and always arrives in clusters. A person moves faster by walking on feet than on hands. If there are negligible or semantic exceptions to any of these "laws" or "facts," the exceptions are not enough to make us rethink the rules, not enough to take away the value of living and acting by these rules; this is, my umbrella need not be coffee-proof and need not be opened unless some rain has already fallen.
It is difficult to back up the ideas we think of as moral truths. But to back up the generalizations of language, these founding structures of literature, is absolutely essential. The reason language is accepted and made stale and not properly considered, of course, is that it has succeeded so many times for us that it is not necessary to reconsider. The word "coffee" could be called a lie because it has nothing to do with hot liquids, but every time I use the word to a waiter, I get a hot dark beverage for my ingenuity. If the word excludes other concepts from my consciousness, those concepts can be restored with language! Anyone can alert me at any moment to the ideas of "ground coffee" and "cold coffee," with more precision through language than would be possible through any other means. For instance, if I had never seen the word "coffee" on a large tin in my freezer, I might still have believed my sense of sight and thought that ground coffee was a type of dirt.
Language and literature cannot show the truth with perfect accuracy, but they can show almost all sensations with great accuracy and great simplicity. There are things that are very difficult to explain with language, such as emotional states or abstract concepts in math, but it should be noted that when people do try to express those ideas, language is almost always their tool of choice. By painting a sharp line between truth and lies, Nietzsche throws out the valuable performances of a medium which is not perfect, but is very, very close.
We can demonstrate this by taking two serious and meaningful human "realities": the fact that it can be wasteful and destructive to worry about the past, and the fact that a single human life will not make much difference to the universe. Very likely, there have been more books written to guide us, morally, to the first truth than to the second, and almost certainly, we would have a preference for reading books with the first conclusion. In this way, we select the more appealing lesson and focus on that, and Nietzsche's analysis of human behaviour proves true.
But Nietzsche attributes all our thoughts to this habit. He complains of the ways in which language restricts and narrows the range of our thoughts, and in this way, he properly diagnoses something that is not a real problem. If we put all leaves in a class of "leaves," the information we leave out is information that deserves to be left out: since we are concerned with freedom, power, or happiness, what matters is not the pattern of veins in a leaf, but the fact that it came from a tree, that it is broad and thin, and that it is safe to step on. We narrow our ideas of a leaf to the "universals" which are most relevant. The same way, if I ask for a cup of coffee, I will receive something very close to my initial desire -- even if my request for "coffee" leaves out almost all information and detail about what kind of item I want, it will function just the same as if I had requested the coffee in more depth.
In literature, language is both a tool and a garnish. As a tool, no writer can describe with 100% accuracy how it feels to drink a cup of bad coffee, and to get closest to that 100% mark, one suspects they might have to borrow from different languages and end up conveying confusion rather than coffee. By Nietzsche's rules, this failure shows that language is flawed and that bad coffee cannot be truly expressed, especially since every bad cup of coffee is a different and individual experience. This is, all our words and expressed have become stale, and they only narrow our possibilities for sensation.
Nietzsche praises the artistic, or "intuitive" as he calls it, which takes us outside of the common range of ideas, but he does not include literature among these arts. Words are the hardened, inflexible artifacts of convention, but these artifacts can function as building blocks. Nietzsche would argue that art compares to literature as a statue compares to a lego statue, built of rigid unmoving pieces, but the role of words is to crystallize certain ideas and, yes, concepts. The singing painter could not, without words, express the sensation of heat; the best he could do is try to simulate its emotional effects. The music that reminds us of heat, really, is the music that we know to come from hot climates; the sensation of heat cannot be expressed through music -- but it can be expressed through words! Even if someone didn't know the words "heat" or "warmth" or anything, it takes a very simple explanation ("when you want a blanket") to convey what heat is. Even if "heat" were not coded to us with a word, we would recognize a fundamental sameness between the heat of a cup of coffee and the heat of a summer's day -- for instance, we'd notice that we enjoy coffee more when it is cold outside.
Nietzsche is right to argue against the sins of reduction-by-label or reduction-by-concept, but the fundamental patterns of nature can't be written off as human constructions of order. An egg from a bird will contain no other creature than a second bird. Rain from the sky is always made of water and always arrives in clusters. A person moves faster by walking on feet than on hands. If there are negligible or semantic exceptions to any of these "laws" or "facts," the exceptions are not enough to make us rethink the rules, not enough to take away the value of living and acting by these rules; this is, my umbrella need not be coffee-proof and need not be opened unless some rain has already fallen.
It is difficult to back up the ideas we think of as moral truths. But to back up the generalizations of language, these founding structures of literature, is absolutely essential. The reason language is accepted and made stale and not properly considered, of course, is that it has succeeded so many times for us that it is not necessary to reconsider. The word "coffee" could be called a lie because it has nothing to do with hot liquids, but every time I use the word to a waiter, I get a hot dark beverage for my ingenuity. If the word excludes other concepts from my consciousness, those concepts can be restored with language! Anyone can alert me at any moment to the ideas of "ground coffee" and "cold coffee," with more precision through language than would be possible through any other means. For instance, if I had never seen the word "coffee" on a large tin in my freezer, I might still have believed my sense of sight and thought that ground coffee was a type of dirt.
Language and literature cannot show the truth with perfect accuracy, but they can show almost all sensations with great accuracy and great simplicity. There are things that are very difficult to explain with language, such as emotional states or abstract concepts in math, but it should be noted that when people do try to express those ideas, language is almost always their tool of choice. By painting a sharp line between truth and lies, Nietzsche throws out the valuable performances of a medium which is not perfect, but is very, very close.
posted by Brendan McKendy at 10:55 AM
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