The Limits of Metaphor in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals

Abstract

Notes that while Nietzsche makes greater use of metaphor than most philosophers, the boundaries between metaphor and literal language are unclear, especially when Nietzsche uses biological terms. Argues recent commentators, anxious to avoid biological reductionism, have interpreted such terms as purely metaphorical; but claims that others have demonstrated Nietzsche worked within a nineteenth-century intellectual context which saw biology as providing models for explaining processes in other areas of life without reducing them to biology. Tests this insight by examining the metaphors (or apparent metaphors) used for processes of change in The Genealogy of Morals, showing how Nietzsche draws on two branches of scholarship that he especially valued, philology and biology.