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The Practice of Meaning in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
- The Journal of Nietzsche Studies
- Penn State University Press
- Issue 26, Autumn 2003
- pp. 12-24
- 10.1353/nie.2003.0019
- Article
- Additional Information
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The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 26 (2003) 12-24
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The Practice of Meaning in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
M. J. Bowles
I. The Primacy of Practice
It has not often been noticed that Nietzsche and the later Wittgenstein, who are usually regarded as very dissimilar philosophers, approach the topic of meaning in a very similar way. The similarity occurs because both philosophers attempt to show that meaning is a practical affair. Presumably it is this approach that has led to both names being cited as examples of what has been called postanalytical philosophy. For if we take it that meaning is not a theoretical entity we will also begin to wonder whether the tools of theoretical enquiry are suitable ways to access meaning. However, one can easily see why an analytic philosopher would be reluctant to accept such considerations. For it is by no means obvious that theory is not coextensive with practice. After all, why cannot the procedures of science be used to explain our behavior? Biology and psychology approach behavior using the tools of analysis; and if we wish to explore the claim that human practice differs from the animal, then surely our best approach is still that of analysis. While moral philosophy resists any crude behaviorism, it does not do it by appealing to considerations that lie beyond theoretical comprehension; it offers analyses of the mechanisms of reason. Without a doubt, the principal problem that analytic philosophy has in registering the challenge to its methodology offered by the works of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein is in accepting the far-from-obvious claim that theory and practice are not coextensive. The claim has a decidedly metaphysical feel to it. It seems that we are asked to accept that there is a foundation, albeit a practical one, beyond what can be grasped and understood. According to analytic philosophy, the problem with any such claim is that, if we should analyze them, we would find that they are without meaning. Here we meet what is probably the defining characteristic of analytic philosophy: it refuses to accept meaninglessness. And indeed, initially, one cannot help but have some sympathy for such an approach, for how can meaninglessness be accepted? The puzzle that such reflections leave us with, however, [End Page 12] is that for both Nietzsche and the later Wittgenstein practice does involve the loss of meaning and yet nevertheless they both insist that such a void is the hole out of which meaning comes into the world.
II. Meaning and Power
If one is to approach the failure of meaning, one must start with some notion of what meaning might be. Hence we find in the third essay of the Genealogy of Morals that while Nietzsche does indeed consider the collapse of meaning, he also provides an account of what constitutes meaning. Nietzsche uses the term "meaning" as a synonym for power. Thus a concept, a precept, or an idea has meaning if and only if it has power. The problem, of course, that such a bold definition of meaning gives us is to try and get to grips with Nietzsche's notion of power. It is fundamentally a biological notion; although this is not to say that it is something recognized in the study of biology which dominates our age. Nietzsche tells us that "every animal . . . instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it can expend all its strength and achieve its maximal feeling of power"; and he specifies this claim further by informing us that: "I am not speaking of its path to happiness, but its path to power, to action, to the most powerful activity." 1 It is important to realize that while power is certainly an affect, something we feel, it is not to be taken as simply happiness or pleasure. For the affect that Nietzsche is indicating is that which life feels when it overwhelms other life. Thus power is felt with digestion, when one life form is obliged to carry the code of another: when one life form grows at the expense of...