"Through this feeling of being obliged to designate one thing as "red", and another as "cold", a third one as "dumb", awakes a moral emotion relating to truth" (Nietzsche 263). We humans seem to have the need to assign names to objects, people, places, and animals. "Some people regard language [...] as a naming-process only-a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names" (Saussure 60). This poses a true danger not only within the act of naming, but within language as well. Using the lenses of both Nietzsche and Saussure in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael we can see just how dangerous our anthropomorphic assignment of names can be, as well as the repercussions this act has on us as a people.
