Is there an essential convergence between signification and animals? on the truth and lying of animal names in a nietzschean sense

Abstract

This paper reads Nietzsche‘s work On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense as a curious repetition, or more precisely, an animal mimicry of Herder‘s Treatise on the Origin of Language. Language, according to Herder, has always been human, and this implies the universality of language: a universality that has no opposite nor an outside. There is nothing outside of language. Nietzsche shows that the origin of this idea can be traced to the thought of a dual outside, one that falls short of language and another that lies beyond language: whilst the animal has not yet been allowed into the sphere of language, it has always abandoned or forgotten the rational thinking that Herder criticizes. Within language, however, one cannot discern a difference between the two conditions, i.e. between the inability of cognition (in animals) and misjudgment (in humans). For Nietzsche, this has the consequence that humans subconsciously or unreflectively revert to their animalistic origins and thus never become human.