Occidental Studies

Language-power-event relationship in Nietzsche and Heidegger's thought and its philosophical-political consequences

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

chehartangi abolghasem 1
mohammad ali tavana 2

1 PhD Student in Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Department of Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Political Science, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Department of Political Science, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

10.30465/os.2025.49155.1990
Abstract
Introduction
Modernity is known for ideas such as freedom, equality, and democracy, but how were modern ideas formed? What is the basis of these ideas? Modernity considers these ideas to be the most rational concepts possible for life. Nietzsche and Heidegger are two thinkers who genealogize modernity and its ideas. From their perspective, modern ideas are historically constructed and draw a direct and inevitable historical line for humanity; that is, modernity introduces its reality as a universal truth. From the perspective of Nietzsche and Heidegger, modernity is a metaphysical thought because it attributes a fixed essence to existence and man and imagines the subject as a fully active being with the power of great change and ignores the role of history and society in the construction of his existence.
Methodology
 This article looks at the language-power-event relationship in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger from a poststructuralist perspective and uses the method of contextual interpretation to analyze their texts.
Findings
 As a result, from the perspective of Nietzsche and Heidegger, modernity not only does not lead to freedom, but also conceals power relations. This concealment occurs especially within language. Accordingly, the article examines the relationship between language and power in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger and then assesses their relationship with the event as a path to liberation. Nietzsche shows that the will to truth is a cover for the will to power. He shows that truth is constructed based on the linguistic presuppositions of the subject. Therefore, the transformation of power becomes possible only through the selection of new linguistic assumptions. Hence, only a new linguistic experience can create an untimely event. In this sense, Nietzsche cuts the relationship between truth and language. In his view, man is a historical being and experiences life solely based on his linguistic assumptions. That is, language - as a medium - has an impact on what we see. In other words, Nietzsche does not consider language to be a transparent and neutral tool for acquiring knowledge. Therefore, when the social values ​​of the ruling class are established as truth in the form of concepts and signs of language, then the power of the elite is consolidated and perpetuated. In other words, our encounter with the world occurs through metaphorical and figurative language, and any knowledge or speculation about the world is also imbued with this metaphorical and figurative language. However, changing linguistic assumptions can lead to the achievement of a new perspective and, as a result, a different knowledge. In short, Nietzsche shows that power operates through language, that is, the institutionalization of the social values ​​of the ruling class and then their transformation into norms, ethics, and law occurs through language.
Heidegger also reminds us that the experience of being is made possible through language, that is, any experience and understanding of the world is linguistic. In this sense, not only is being essentially linguistic and linguistic assumptions create our type of knowledge, but the lack of questioning about the nature of language automatically leads to forgetting being.
Discussion and conclusion
The result of this is that, according to Heidegger, the use of language in a different form, for example, the language of poetry, can make our understanding of the world different. The genealogy of the modern subject in Foucault's thought can be considered the result of a combination of the perspectives of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Foucault shows that the subject is formed within discourses - as a linguistic construct. In this sense, a space for experiencing the new requires the occurrence of a new language, which at the macro level means a transformation in the knowledge system of an era, something like scientific revolutions of the Kuhnian type, and at the micro level, it is a doubt about the norms that govern personally or collectively. In general, Nietzsche and Heidegger believe that our interpretation of the world changes with the change of our language. Therefore, they are skeptical about the definitive and absolute beliefs and assumptions of the modern era. That is, ideals such as truth and reason were questioned at the level of ontology and epistemology. They noted that our linguistic assumptions affect who we are and how we understand the world. So they focused on language-power to show that power is more than an external thing, it is an internal thing that lies within our language, and that such language-power not only constitutes truth but also justifies the definitive path of societies. But what can disrupt this path is an event of language.

Keywords

Nietzsche
Heidegger
power-language-event
poststructuralism
postmodernism
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