Return to Saussure

AI art Introduction The notion that reality is not simply given but shaped through interpretation finds powerful articulation in the works of two philologists who transformed modern thought: Friedrich Nietzsche and Ferdinand de Saussure. While Nietzsche famously asserted, "I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations,"[1] Saussure, working within the confines of linguistics, claimed, "The object is not given in advance of the viewpoint: far from it. Rather, one might say that it is the viewpoint adopted which creates the object."[2] Though their domains differed, both thinkers challenged the positivist faith in objective facts and laid the groundwork for what would later be known as perspectivism and structuralism, respectively—terms neither of them used. This article explores how these parallel insights interrogate the idea of pre-existing truths and reframe knowledge as perspectival and system-dependent. Nietzsche’s Perspecti...