Nietzsche’s Critique of Metaphysics and Language
The Confusion of First and Last Principles
This two-second feature of philosophers is derived from the following: Philosophers, believing in a reality that is not subject to evolution, are forced to accept the highest concepts through which they access the true world. These concepts have no home and no human evolutionary history. The principles are considered in a double sense, as both the starting point and that which constitutes the support, the cause of the real. They also do not come from nothing, which explains the rejection experienced by traditional philosophers with regard to evolution. The concept, empty of empty concepts, is “God,” which is considered the primordial reality that explains everything.
Philosophy appears as a mental illness (brain disorder) of those with a pathological refusal of life (the sick). These specialists create oppressive mechanisms of concepts (cobweb weavers). Traditional philosophers admit as real only what they cannot catch in their webs, and they have the same objective as the spider: to survive.
Language as a Cause for Loss of Reality
Nietzsche exposes his own theory, an analysis of the features that constitute the idiosyncrasy. “Belief in metaphysical language: at one time, change was a sign of error, something that hides the truth. However, we need the mistake of believing that reality does not change, even though in the depths of ourselves we know that it is not so. The rejection of evolution comes from language.”
Reason makes us believe in metaphysical language; that is, it makes us think that grammatical functions reproduce the structure of reality. This means that the structure of language is almost always the existence of a grammatical subject to which something is predicated.
If we believe that this structure mirrors the structure of reality, we also believe that there are fictitious entities (self, substance, will, God, etc.). Thus, we invent what does not exist. For example, we see a line of bright spots in the sky and say it is a constellation.
Nietzsche says that what we do is a projection mechanism and calls it a fetish. It corresponds to the most primitive form in psychology, in which one attributes to an object a reality or power that it lacks. In this way, language is fetishistic.
Language as a Tool to Objectively Know Reality
Language is a tool to objectively know reality. These language fictions have enabled us to survive and live with others. This problem arises if one misses this practical origin and believes that language reveals the structure of reality. Moreover, it will appear as an autonomous power that causes our knowledge.
On one side is an “I” with its essential features, and on the other, actions that “I” decides to do.
Location of the Categories of Reason (Language) in Another World
Philosophers eventually discover the necessary rational order, but they do not interpret it as what it is (a manifestation of the need to dominate the future by simplifying the facts, artificially implanting in them an order). Instead, they see it as proof that rational categories have their origin beyond the realm of experience.
Every time we utter a word or phrase, we fall into a mistake: we believe that “being” in our judgments is the “true self,” thereby giving an objective entity to all our concepts.
All philosophers (Parmenides, Plato, Democritus, modern science) are wrong to confuse the grammatical cheat with metaphysics. They are based on reason, which makes them believe that reality is revealed through grammar. Thus, God appears as the culmination of metaphysics, the super-being.