Nietzsche: Retórica, Metáfora y Filosofía

Abstract

This article describes the most relevant aspects of ancient rhetoric, points out the contribution of this tradition on the study of language and forms of discourse, and highlights its relationship with democracy and the symbolic forms of social interaction at the heart of the Polis, using as a starting point Nietzschean studies on rhetoric, oratory, and eloquence in Greece. This brief description will serve as a preamble to, and prepare the ground work for, a subsequent presentation of Nietzsche’s idea of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. Nietzsche’s texts on rhetoric allow clarification of, and complement, the concept we have of this great thinker from his extensive and complete works, and the even more prolific contribution of his interpreters and commentators. In these writings Nietzsche intends to justify rhetoric against the positivistic scientism which its instrumental rationalism imposes, in its desire to control and dominate the world. This article intends to show how – according to this philosophy – rhetoric is an epistemological paradigm for understanding the function of language in the structuring of reality.