Nietzsche a realist? What are you smoking?

[j-harsin at nwu.edu]

Hello.
>
>Yeah, save your money and be smugly up to date: buy a dog-eared *Genealogy
>of Morals* and repeat the words you find there-in after the prefix "As
>(place any well-known French philosopher since Althusser here) has argued
>... ".  Nietzsche didn't have a useful answer to the representation
>problem, and neither do the pomos.  Well, mebbe Rorty, in his more
>pragmatist moments, comes close.  His continuation of the idea that valid
>truth claims are the ones that currently seem to work ain't a million miles
>from Chomsky's idea of competence (as I think I understand it) and
>Habermas's idea of intersubjectivity - as Hilary Putnam has it "what is
>true depends on what our terms refer to, and - on any picture - determining
>the reference of terms demands sensitivity to the referential intentions of
>actual speakers and an ability to make nuanced decisions as to the best
>reconstruction of those intentions."
>
I don't know whether Nietzsche has a "useful" answer to "the representation
problem," but in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, Nietzsche stages/dramatizes his
philosophy in the bildung of Zarathustra, the latter of whom is, by the end
of the book,  absolutely disenchanted with the relation of
semiotics/linguisticality/representation to truth.  Zarathustra begins as a
Platonic teacher who "loves men" and has a "gift" for them. But he sees
again and again that language, and pedagogy via language/representation, is
hopelessly inadequate for conveying the truth he communes with (which
ironically, is being proferred to us readers linguistically--does this
contradict my points or point to a tension in Nietzsche?).  IMHO, this
moves Nietzsche in the direction of the solepicistic, disgustingly
conservative, bio-geneticism that runs throughout his work and culminates
in The Will to POwer.  He is greatly distrustful of
language/referentiality.
Cheers,
Jayson