Notes on Friedrich Nietzsche On Rhetoric And Language

“Description of Ancient Rhetoric”

• Nietzsche begins by surveying the differences between conceptions of rhetoric in the classical period, making a distinction between Greek and Roman modes of understanding persuasion. For Nietzsche, this distinction arises over the role of the individuals: in Greek rhetoric, the free play of ideas is stressed whereas the individual speaker is paramount in Roman models (and their descendants in the Western mind).
  • “[Greeks] would rather be persuaded than instructed” (3).
  • “Thus, it [rhetoric] is an essentially republican art: one must be accustomed to tolerating the most unusual opinions and points of view and even to taking a certain pleasure in their counterplay; one must be just as willing to listen as to speak; and as a listener one must be able more or less to appreciate the art being applied” (3).
  • “What is unique to Hellenistic life is thus characterized: to perceive all matters of the intellect, of life’s seriousness, of necessities, even of danger, as play” (3).
• It seems that Nietzsche is attempting to argue that rhetoric may not actually be about truth, after all.
• In tracing the eristic around the nature of rhetoric, Nietzsche shows how the term slowly loses Aristotle’s understanding of all that is possible about all things and becomes more narrowly defined to political matters (in Hermagoras, for instance (13)) while also being expanded to include: arrangement, memory, utterance, and delivery (not just invention (as Aristotle focuses on)).
• “We consider it [rhetorical style] to be not natural, and as producing the impression of being done purposefully” (21).
• “This [the rhetorical valence of ancient texts] has a deeper reason also, in the fact that the true pose of antiquity is an echo of public speech and is built upon its laws, whereas our prose is always to be explained more from writing, and our style presents itself as something to be perceived through reading. He who reads, and the one who hears, desire wholly different presentational form, and this is the reason that ancient literature seems ‘rhetorical’ to us; viz., it appeals chiefly to the ear, in order to bribe it” (21).
• “The rhetorical is a further development, guided by the clear light of the understanding, of the artistic means which are already found in language. There is obviously no unrhetorical ‘naturalness’ of language to which one coudl appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts. The power to discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing, a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is, at the same time, the essence of language; the latter is based just as little as rhetoric is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things. Language does not desire to instruct, but to convey to others a subjective impulse and its acceptance. Man, who forms language, does not perceive things or events, but impulses: he does not communicate sensations, but merely copies of sensations” (21).
• “Instead of teh thing, the sensation takes in only a sign. That is the first aspect: language is rhetoric, because it desires to convey only a doxa [opinion] and not an episteme [knowledge]” (23).
• “The tropes, the nonliteral significations, are considered to be the most artistic means of rhetoric. But, with respect to their meanings, all words are tropes in themselves, and from the beginning. Instead of that which truly takes place, they present a sound image, which fades away with time: language never expresses something completely but displays only a characteristic which appears to be prominent to it” (23).
• “A partial perception takes the place of the entire and complete intuition” (23). This shows how words can be synechdoches (?)
• Three tropes: synechdoche, metaphor, metonymy. In Nietzsche’s discussion of these three figures, he is not entirely talking about them as linguistic figures. I think, specifically, his discussion of metonymy shows how language leads to a false relationship between speaker and world (discussion of “the drink is bitter”).
• “In sum: the tropes are not just occasionally added to words but constitute their most proper nature. It makes no sense to speak of a ‘proper meaning’ which is carried over to something else only in special cases” (25).
• “There is just as little distinction between actual words and tropes as there is between straightforward speech and rhetorical figures. What is usually called language is actually all figuration. Language is created by the individual speech artist, but it is determined by the fact that the taste of the many makes choices. Only very few individuals utter schemata whose virtus becomes a guide for the many. If they do not prevail, then everyone appeals to common usus in their regard, and speaks of barbarism and solecism. A figure which finds no buyer becomes an error” (25).
• Tropes discussed: metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, epithet, allegory, irony, periphrasis, hyperbaton, anastrophe, parenthesis, and hyperbole (65)
• “Tropes deal with transferences: words are used instead of other words: the figurative is used instead of the literal. THe figures of rhetoric involve no transference. They are artistically changed forms of expression, deviations from the usual, but not transferences” (65).
• “Several phonetic spellings and sound-configurations have the same meaning; and the soul is stimulated to form the same idea. ‘Meaning’ means no more than tha; no expression determines and delimits a movement of soul with such rigidty that it could be regarded as the actual statement of the meaning. Every expression is just a symbol and not the thing; and symbols can be interechanged. A choice always remains possible” (67).
• ”Prolepsis, when a word is ascribed a quality which it acquires only as a result of the activity designated by the verb. Sophocles … [for I shall turn aside his vision[. The term is not ancient. In antiquity prolepsis means: (1) anticipation and repulsion of the opponent’s objections; (2) the same as anachronism; (3) an ungrammatical meaning, when an expression first designates generally what will follow later in detail” (77).
• “The the hypotyposis, precise and clear depiction of a thing so that one believes one sees it, even of future things” (81). Contrast with prolepsis (above). Also, cf A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
• “The anticipation of the opponent’s objections is often prolepsis or prokatalepsis” (83).
• On stasis: “Once the speaker has recognized in the noesis that he is dealing with _hypothesis, he studies whether it exists or whether it is an asystaton [absurd]” (95).
• “An example from the genus deliberativum: someone dreams that he should give no credence to dreams. What should he do on awakening? If he believes the dream, then it follows that he does not believe it; if he does not believe it, then it follows that he believes it” (97).
• Cornificius discusses a mnemonic system based on association with images and places.
• Discussion of the “eloquence of the body” (165).
• Corax defines rhetoric as “the production of conviction” (167).

“On the Origin of Language”

This essay is huge. In it, Nietzsche draws out the problems of the creation of language: it cannot be the product of an individual but it also cannot be the product of a mass of individuals (problem w/ his low opinion of masses?). The whole thing is quite good and an interesting overview of the problem.

h2.