Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The significance of language for the evolution of culture

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. This is one of those instances where I think there is something reasonably insightful here but not exactly sure of its nature without some more extended mulling. Nietsche can be like that though. There's a thin line between profundity and guff sometimes.
The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

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