This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative...This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative element in Nietzsche＇s attitude towards the tropic nature of cognition underlies well-known problems in his response to nihilism. These problems include ambiguities in Nietzsche＇s attitude to truth, and the question of how well he can carry through his project of affirming the individual on the basis of a creative reinterpretation of experience. I maintain that Novalis understands language and cognition to be tropic in a similar way as Nietzsche does, and that these writers provide similar critiques of discursive reason on the basis of what they view as its stultifying rigidity and misleading claims to a ＂literal＂ form of objectivity. However, I argue that Novalis avoids Nietzsche＇s difficulties by maintaining that a creative element in cognition does not rule out a variant of a correspondence notion of truth. Although Novalis＇ account thus falls foul of Nietzsche＇s goal of providing an immanent affirmation of human experience, the comparison shows that a Nietzschean attempt to provide a convincing model of individual self-affirmation should integrate a more positive role for trope, which can support a satisfying conception of the value of human creativity.展开更多
文摘This paper analyzes the role of six tropes （metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, analogy, allegory, and irony） in Nietzsche＇s and Novalis＇ writings on language and cognition, using the comparison to show how a negative element in Nietzsche＇s attitude towards the tropic nature of cognition underlies well-known problems in his response to nihilism. These problems include ambiguities in Nietzsche＇s attitude to truth, and the question of how well he can carry through his project of affirming the individual on the basis of a creative reinterpretation of experience. I maintain that Novalis understands language and cognition to be tropic in a similar way as Nietzsche does, and that these writers provide similar critiques of discursive reason on the basis of what they view as its stultifying rigidity and misleading claims to a ＂literal＂ form of objectivity. However, I argue that Novalis avoids Nietzsche＇s difficulties by maintaining that a creative element in cognition does not rule out a variant of a correspondence notion of truth. Although Novalis＇ account thus falls foul of Nietzsche＇s goal of providing an immanent affirmation of human experience, the comparison shows that a Nietzschean attempt to provide a convincing model of individual self-affirmation should integrate a more positive role for trope, which can support a satisfying conception of the value of human creativity.
