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Seduction of Grammar

 

            
             Everyday, without even thinking about it, we put words and phrases together to form thoughts and ideas in order to hold conversations, write letters, do homework, etc. Not once in this communication cycle do we think more or less about grammar. Friedrich Nietzsche, however, analyzed language and grammar and theorized on the seduction of grammar. During the first two sections of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche refers to the seduction of grammar in terms of simplifying reality and treating ideas as actual objects. .
             For Nietzsche, seduction of grammar is faith in the power of words and in objective truth. A play on words is mendacity on the part of grammar, or a bold realization of facts. Nietzsche is not saying, however, that we should believe false judgments. False judgments, although false, may be fundamental and useful, "The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it; it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely." (Section 1; Part 4) Nietzsche is trying to get us to think about the worthiness and "life-furthering, life-preserving" of opinions. We are naturally inclined to believe that the most deceitful and false opinions are the most "indispensable to us". Without some kind of realization of fictional reasoning and without a corresponding knowledge of reality and imagination "man could not live". "To recognize untruth as a condition of life", is a challenge of what is commonplace and traditional. (Section 1; Part 4).
             Distorted reality turns complex processes into simple ones. According to Nietzsche, there is no such thing as "immediate certainty", meaning "I think", "I feel", .
             "I believe". Speaking in this manner is deceptive and your ideas, thoughts, and words lose their significance and meaning. Nietzsche puts it in perspective this way: .
             It is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego', and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking - that I know what thinking is.


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