An Early Nietzsche Fragment on Language

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche’s thoughts on language are contained in a relatively unknown fragment entitled “Über Musik und Wort” (1871).¹ This is not, of course, the only place Nietzsche’s reflections on language are to be found. His books, as everyone knows, are full of striking remarks and observations on language. Not surprisingly, a fair sprinkling of these have been finding their way, in recent years, into the journals. But despite our intense preoccupation with semantics and Nietzsche’s rising stock in consequence of that preoccupation, this remarkable fragment which is devoted almost exclusively to language still remains comparatively unknown, and its place and importance in Nietzsche’s development as a writer on aesthetics insufficiently, if indeed at all, appreciated.