Nietzsche's style: On language, knowledge and power in international relations

On language and politics Languages, for Nietzsche, are built upon a set of prejudices that are expressed via metaphors; selectively filtered images of objects and impressions that surround us. Languages are more than just mediums of communication. They represent the relationship between individuals and their environment. This is why language, Nietzsche argues, can never provide us with pure, unmediated knowledge of the world. Thinking can at best grasp imperfect perceptions of things because a word is nothing but an image of a nerve stimulus expressed in sounds. It functions, to simplify his argument, as follows: a person’s intuitive perception creates an image, then a word, then patterns of words and finally entire linguistic and cultural systems. Each step in this chain of metaphors entails interpretations and distortions of various kinds. When we look at things around us, Nietzsche illustrates, we think we know something objective about them, something of ‘the thing in itself’. But what we perceive are in fact metaphors, that never capture an essence because they express the relationship between people and things (Nietzsche 1968b: 100-101).