Abstract

The article Metaphorical Nature of Language in Herder aims to demonstrate how Herder’s thesis regarding the metaphoricity of language reflects itself in his conception of the relationship between language and the world. A comparison with Friedrich Nietzsche’s understanding of this relationship in his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense helps clarify Herder’s position. While both thinkers share the postulate of the metaphoricity of language, the implications they draw from it are different: unlike Nietzsche, Herder does not turn sceptical regarding the capacity of language to reveal the world, and he understands language not only as a tool of survival but also as a tool of knowledge – not in spite of its metaphorical nature, but rather precisely because of it.