Nietzsche Binary: Metaphor/Concept

Writing Analytically defines a binary as, "the breeding ground of ideas." In Nietzsche's work, he constructs a binary between a metaphor and a concept to support his conclusion that concepts are simply humans, "omitting the dissimilar…overlooking the individual and the real." In order to develop his point, Nietzsche presents a metaphor as the original development from the initial sensory interaction between a human and a thing. This stimulus is what first produces a sound distinguishing the thing with some title. In his view, these metaphors begin as the articulation of a personal experience, but overtime become concepts as they are "worn out" by human generalization. Concepts are formulated when this original "nerve stimulus...has been produced millions of times and has been passed down through generations...in the end it has for man the same significance as if it were the only necessary image...as if it were the original nerve stimulus were a strictly causal relationship."

Nietzsche further develops this metaphor by stating, "Just as no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other, certainly the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily dropping these differences." The point of drawing the binary of metaphor and concepts in this way is to demonstrate that within human language a leaf and leaves are referring to the same type of object, but to Nietzsche they are referring to two completely contrasting entities. A leaf at first could describe our personal sensory experience with the object (metaphor), but leaves is just human generalization which creates the concept. The contrast of what we would otherwise find similar enforces Nietzsche's argument.

Nietzsche implies through this binary that there is a point where human experience and human knowledge collide. According to his argument, this binary represents where a human's innocent metaphor becomes concepts that are the lies of human knowledge and the arrogance of human language. It is ironic that though presented as starch contrasts, both are objects of human creation. The fact that they are both spawn from the human mind is a relationship that enforces Nietzsche's view that there is a definite point where the unassuming metaphor becomes a product of human conceit. The point of this binary is to cultivate this distinction by contrasting two things that could otherwise be taken as being similar by a human who, when first reading Nietzsche's argument, doesn't realize the maturation of concepts from our initial interaction with a thing and would otherwise be prone to consider metaphors and concepts as similar, rather than as a binary opposition.