O rebanho e a rapina. Em torno do § 354 d’A gaia ciência

Nietzsche relates the origin of self-consciousness (Bewusstsein) to communication through language and the creation of signs. As he shows in §354 of The Gay Science, the reciprocal relation between Bewusstsein and communication, which marks the “herd” character of the human species, connect the consciousness with the social relations that provides it – without a mediation of a metaphysical entity. To achieve this perspective, we will show how the notion of experience that comes from experimental medicine, as conceived by the French physiologist Claude Bernard, was crucial for Nietzsche to achieve his intention of thinking about the body and its impulses. Thus, the investigation into the constitution of identity through self-consciousness depends on looking at the problem of the birth of signs and life in society, conceived, then, from a certain sense given by the peculiarity of the experience of the “herd” and its interpretative counterpart, the “the beast of prey”.