Nietzsche: Epistemology

Güç istenci öğretisi ve bu öğretinin temel kavramları olan yorum ve perspektivizm, Türkçe Nietzsche literatüründe ihmal edilen ya da yeterince ilgilenilmemiş konulardır. Ancak, bana göre, güç istenci öğretisi ve söz konusu kavramlar olmadan, Nietzsche’nin felsefesinin anlaşılma olanağı yoktur. Güç istenci öğretisi ve bu öğretinin ortaya koyduğu güç mücadelesi, karşımıza kaotik, sürekli değişimin yaşandığı bir evren çıkarmaktadır. Bu değişimin temel dinamiği güç mücadelesidir. Bu güç mücadelesi ise, güç odaklarının bu evrene ilişkin kendi perspektiflerinden oluşturdukları yorum üzerinden gerçekleşmektedir.

Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality includes several cases of agents who are, prima facie, self-deceived. Recent work has linked these cases to deflationary accounts on the one hand and intentionalist Sartrean accounts on the other. But neither is fully satisfactory. I suggest a new account that gives a central role to focused daydreaming and imagination, especially as related to affective content that threatens to destabilize self-deception. This approach, not neatly categorizable, builds upon both deflationary and intentionalist accounts, emphasizing links (...) between vengefulness and forgiveness in Nietzsche's psychology. (shrink)

La “visión del mundo” (Weltanschauung) es una cuestión que ha sido pasado por alto por un gran número de investigadores en el pensamiento de Nietzsche, aunque aparece con frecuencia en sus escritos. Pocos intérpretes han tocado esta noción, y dirigen únicamente su atención en puntos muy concretos de vista, destacando algunos aspectos menos esenciales de la misma. Parece que el concepto de Weltanschauung nunca ha sido considerado como un objeto independiente dentro de la obra de Nietzsche. Este trabajo pretende elaborar (...) un recorrido interpretativo, resaltando su importancia y, sobre todo, el lugar que posee dentro de uno de sus primeros escritos, El Nacimiento de la Tragedia. (shrink)

Nietzsche sometimes praises the drive to order—to simplify, organize, and draw clear boundaries—as expressive of a vital "classical" style, or an Apollonian artistic drive to calmly contemplate forms displaying "epic definiteness and clarity." But he also sometimes harshly criticizes order, as in the pathological dialectics or "logical schematism" that he associates paradigmatically with Socrates. I challenge a tradition that interprets Socratism as an especially one-sided expression of, or restricted form of attention to, the Apollonian: they are more radically disparate. Beyond (...) strengthening the case for this basic point, I develop a distinctive account of what, exactly, distinguishes the Apollonian-classical and Socratic forms of order. To this end, I advance interrelated interpretations of Apollonian-classical simplicity and the "cold" calm that it elicits, by contrast to superficially similar Socratic phenomena. This illuminates Nietzsche's broader ambivalence toward science, in part by clarifying the nature and value of an idealized Apollonian science. (shrink)

The paper provides a thorough account of the relationship between Ernst Mach’s thought and that of an apparently more intellectually distant near-contemporary, Friedrich Nietzsche. The consistency of their views is in fact substantial, as I try to show within the paper. Despite their interests being different, both Mach and Nietzsche were concerned with the same issues about our intellectual relationship with the external world, dealing with the same questions and pursuing a common aim of eliminating worn-out philosophical conceptions. Moreover, it (...) can be argued that both Mach and Nietzsche converged on what we now know as the problem of realism versus anti-realism in the philosophy of science, and that they both rejected ‘representational’ (realist) conceptions of science in favour of a certain sort of pragmatic anti-realism, whose focus was on the role science plays as a means of orientation. (shrink)

Symposium on Nietzsche's Constructivism (Routledge, 2018), replies to Adler, Cabrera, Doyle, Migotti, Sinhababu, Pedersen.

This is a précis of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects (Routledge, 2017), for a forthcoming symposium on the book.

La noción de perspectivismo, presente en la producción tardía de Nietzsche, delimita un ámbito particularmente interesante y fértil. En efecto, esta metáfora visual, que el filósofo utiliza antes que nada en referencia a la dimensión epistémica, encierra profundas consecuencias hermenéuticas y prácticas. Los ensayos de este volumen dan cuenta de esta doble implicancia. El primero, poniendo la investigación filológica al servicio de la reflexión filosófica, propone una discusión contextual de la dicotomía "hechos-interpretaciones", estrechamente ligada al perspectivismo nietzscheano. El segundo lleva (...) la atención del plano teórico al plano práctico y se concentra en el tema de la moral gregaria, que en el quinto libro de la "Ciencia jovial" Nietzsche presenta unido indisolublemente al perspectivismo y al fenomenalismo de la conciencia. Estas incursiones en el pensamiento de Nietzsche y en sus lecturas permiten antes que nada volver a considerar algunas célebres cuestiones de su reflexión madura y tomar nota de la riqueza de su pensamiento, en contraste con las malas interpretaciones que han visto en su perspectivismo la expresión de un mero relativismo y un nihilismo epistemológicos. (shrink)

Hans Kleinpeter’s letters to Ernst Mach held in the Deutsches Museum Archive in Munich are of the greatest importance in order to learn some details of the working relationship between these scholars. In the three letters here entirely published for the first time Kleinpeter shows his interest for Nietzsche’s thought, and states that some of the latter’s ideas are in compliance with Mach’s epistemology.

Tra i numerosi autori attivi nel campo delle scienze naturali che Friedrich Nietzsche ebbe modo di conoscere nel corso della propria vita, Ernst Mach rappresenta certamente un caso significativo. La sua presenza all'interno degli scritti del filosofo è pressoché nulla, ma la comunanza dei temi trattati e la particolare affinità delle prospettive adottate in materia di teoria della conoscenza invitano ad avvicinare questi due autori e a ipotizzare un qualche tipo di influsso diretto tra loro. Ciononostante, fino ad oggi non (...) era mai stato svolto uno studio critico e completo che esaminasse e discutesse tale relazione. Muovendo dai contenuti di una delle principali opere di Mach, i "Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen" (1886) questo volume delinea un quadro esegetico che fa di Mach non tanto un referente diretto, quanto piuttosto il segnale di una prospettiva di ricerca che in qualche modo stimolò l'interesse di Nietzsche e che per molti aspetti egli mostra di condividere. (shrink)

I consider an epistemological, methodological dispute between Nietzsche and Kant about the possibility of rational self-critique: an activity where the intellect reflects on its cognitive powers, demarcates the proper use and limitations of these powers, and thereby achieves a systematically complete insight into what we can and cannot know. Kant affirms whereas Nietzsche denies that we can successfully conduct such a self-directed rational enquiry. By reconstructing the central argumentative moves that Nietzsche and Kant do or could make to defend their (...) respective position, I trace their disagreement to starkly diverging models of philosophical enquiry, of what philosophy is and ought to be all about. (shrink)

Nietzsche talks about trust [vertraue*] and mistrust [misstrau*] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to trust in 90 passages and mistrust in 101 – approximately ten times as often as he refers to resentment/ressentiment. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and trust includes just a handful of publications. Worse still, I have been unable to find a single publication devoted to Nietzsche and mistrust. This chapter aims to fill (...) the gap in the secondary literature by using digital humanities methods to systematically investigate the functions of trust and mistrust in Nietzsche’s writings. I argue that Nietzsche offers three main insights into trust and an additional two into mistrust. When it comes to trust, in his free spirit works, he reflects on the development of interpersonal trust, with an eye to situations in which trust is or is not reciprocated. He also criticizes some of the heuristics people use to identify trustworthy partners, especially the notion that all and only people with stable character are trustworthy. And perhaps Nietzsche’s most interesting thoughts about trust relate to self-trust, which he thinks is often unjustifiably undermined. When it comes to mistrust, although he regards generalized mistrust as a sign of bad character, he also thinks that harnessing mistrust can be valuable in at least two domains. One is morality, where we are disposed to accept traditional pieties and would benefit from turning a suspicious eye towards these pieties. The other is science, which systematizes both trust and mistrust in pursuit of the truth. (shrink)

This paper argues there are crucial points in Nietzsche’s texts where he offers a priori epistemic justification for views he believes are correct. My reading contrasts with the dominant view that Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism is incompatible with a priori justification. My aim is to develop Nietzsche’s brand of a priori justification, show that he employs this account of justification in the texts, and suggest how it might be compatible with naturalism.

Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement concerning Nietzsche's view of metaphysics is that some commentators believe Nietzsche has a positive, systematic metaphysical project, and others deny this. Those who deny it hold that Nietzsche believes metaphysics has a special problem, that is, a distinctively problematic feature that distinguishes metaphysics from other areas of philosophy. In this paper, I investigate important features of Nietzsche's metametaphysics in order to argue that Nietzsche does not, in fact, think metaphysics has a special problem. The result (...) is that, against a long-standing view held in the literature, we should be reading Nietzsche as a metaphysician. (shrink)

Review of Marco Brusotti & Herman Siemens (eds.), Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy, Volume I: Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. xix + 298 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4742-7477-7. Hardcover, $114.00 (volume); $256.00 (collection).

Beginning with the Untimely Meditations (1873) and continuing until his final writings of 1888-9, Nietzsche refers to humility (Demuth or a cognate) in fifty-two passages and to modesty (Bescheidenheit or a cognate) in one hundred and four passages, yet there are only four passages that refer to both terms. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, he often speaks positively of modesty, especially in epistemic contexts. These curious facts might be expected to lead scholars to explore what Nietzsche thinks of humility and modesty, but (...) to date there have been no systematic analyses of Nietzsche’s reflections on these dispositions. In this chapter, I fill that gap in the literature using semantic network analysis and systematically-guided close-reading. In so doing, I show that Nietzsche sharply distinguished between humility and modesty, considering the former a vice (for certain types of people in certain contexts) and the latter a virtue (again, for certain types of people in certain contexts). (shrink)

This essay examines a particular rhetorical strategy Nietzsche uses to supply prima facie epistemic justification: appeals to intuition. I first investigate what Nietzsche thinks intuitions are, given that he never uses the term ‘intuition’ as we do in contemporary philosophy. I then examine how Nietzsche can simultaneously endorse naturalism and intuitive appeals. I finish by looking at why and how Nietzsche uses appeals to intuition to further his philosophical agenda. Answering these questions should provide a deeper understanding of how Nietzsche (...) does philosophy. (shrink)

I examine three kinds of criticism directed at philosophical genealogy. I call these substantive, performative, and semantic. I turn my attention to a particular substantive criticism that one may launch against essay two of On the Genealogy of Morals that turns on how Nietzsche answers “the time-crunch problem”. On the surface, there is evidence to suggest that Nietzsche accepts a false scientific theory, namely, Lamarck’s Inheritability Thesis, in order to account for the growth of a new human “organ”—morality. I demonstrate (...) that the passages interpreted by some scholars to prove that Nietzsche is a Lamarckian can be reinterpreted along Darwinian lines. I demonstrate that Nietzsche hits upon the right drivers of phenotypical change in humans, namely, torture and enclosures (e.g., walls of early states), but misinterprets their true impact. Nietzsche believes that these technologies are responsible for producing what I call “culture-serving memory” and the bad conscience by causing emotions that once were expressed outwardly to turn inward causing the “psychological digestion” of the human animal. In reality, however, these mechanisms are conducive to breeding a particular type of individual, namely, one who is docile, by introducing artificial and unconscious selective pressures into the environment of early humans. In showing that Nietzsche’s genealogical account of memory and bad conscience is not underpinned on a false scientific theory and is consistent with Neo-Darwinism, I deflect a potentially fatal blow regarding the veracity of Nietzsche’s genealogies. -/- . (shrink)

This paper aims to increase our understanding of the genealogical method by taking a developmental approach to Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology and reconstructing an early instance of it: Nietzsche’s genealogy of truthfulness in On Truth and Lie. Placing this essay against complementary remarks from his notebooks, I show that Nietzsche’s early use of the genealogical method concerns imagined situations before documented history, aims to reveal practical necessity before contingency, and focuses on vindication before it turns to subversion or problematization. I argue (...) that we understand Nietzsche’s later critique of truthfulness better if we place it against the background of his earlier vindicatory insight into the practical necessity of cultivating truthfulness in some form; and I suggest that Nietzsche’s own mature genealogical method has roots in its supposed contrary, the method of the “English” genealogists. (shrink)

This article concerns whether Nietzsche is sympathetic to monism about concrete objects, the heterodox metaphysical view that there is exactly one concrete object. I first dispel prominent reasons for thinking that Nietzsche rejects monism. I then develop the most compelling arguments for monism in Nietzsche’s writings and check for soundness. The arguments seem to be supported by the texts, but they have not been developed in the literature. Despite such arguments, I suggest that Nietzsche is actually not sympathetic to monism (...) about objects—but his reasons for siding against monism are not at all obvious. The result should be a new understanding of some of Nietzsche’s fundamental ontological commitments. (shrink)

This article provides a new account of Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysical philosophy. After framing Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical project (Section 1), I suggest that to understand the logic of his critique we should reconstruct a taxonomy which distinguishes between ‘rich metaphysics’ and ‘thin metaphysics’ (Section 2). I then consider Nietzsche’s methodological critique of ‘rich metaphysics’, arguing that his position, which alleges motivational bias against ‘rich metaphysics’, is not compelling, since even granting that previous ‘rich metaphysicians’ exemplified such bias there is no necessity (...) to a new ‘rich metaphysician’ doing so (Section 3). Nonetheless, there is much of interest in the second aspect of Nietzsche’s critique, understood in terms of indifference to ‘thin metaphysics’, which I consider in Section 4. I argue that the existing readings are unsatisfactory, and as an alternative we should think of this idea in sceptical terms by drawing on an argument from ‘thin metaphysical’ disagreement. (shrink)

How should emotions figure in scientific practice? I begin by distinguishing three broad answers to this question, ranging from pessimistic to optimistic. Confirmation bias and motivated numeracy lead us to cast a jaundiced eye on the role of emotions in scientific inquiry. However, reflection on the essential motivating role of emotions in geniuses makes it less clear that science should be evacuated of emotion. I then draw on Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism to articulate a twenty-first century epistemology of science that recognizes (...) the necessity of emotion to inquiry but aims to manage the biases that emotions can introduce. Twenty-first century perspectivism is both social and (temporally) distal, helping it to overcome a paradox of self-critical inquiry. (shrink)

Nietzsche holds that one should believe what best promotes life, and he also accepts the correspondence theory of truth. I’ll call this conjunction of views Nietzschean pragmatism. This article provides textual evidence for attributing this pragmatist position to Nietzsche and explains how his broader metaethical views led him to it.The following section introduces Nietzschean pragmatism, discussing how Nietzsche expresses it in BGE, and distinguishing it from William James’s pragmatism about truth. The second section explains how Nietzsche’s skepticism about values that (...) can’t be grounded in individual passion attracted him to this kind of pragmatism. The third section explores an early application of Nietzschean... (shrink)

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism and (...) dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche's view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche's understanding of naturalism to support their (...) interpretation. I argue that Nietzsche embraces a social constructivist conception of causality that renders his naturalism incompatible with the views of naturalism attributed to him by the two dominant readings. (shrink)

Fictionalism plays a significant role in philosophy today, with defenses spanning mathematics, morality, ordinary objects, truth, modality, and more.1 Fictionalism in the philosophy of science is also gaining attention, due in particular to the revival of Hans Vaihinger’s work from the early twentieth century and to heightened interest in idealization in scientific practice.2 Vaihinger maintains that there is a ubiquity of fictions in science and, among other things, argues that Nietzsche supports the position. Yet, while contemporary commentators have focused on (...) fictionalism in Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, his view of fictions in science has remained largely unexamined.3 In this article, I begin... (shrink)

There is a difficulty in understanding Nietzsche’s epistemology. It is generally accepted that he endorses the naturalized epistemological view that knowledge should be closely connected to the sciences. He also holds the evolutionary epistemological position that knowledge has developed exclusively to benefit human survival. Nietzsche’s evolutionary epistemology, however, appears to imply a debunking argument about the truth of our beliefs that seems to undermine his commitment to a naturalized epistemology. This paper argues that Nietzsche’s evolutionary epistemology does not, in fact, (...) undermine his naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been associated with naturalism due to his arguments that morality, religion, metaphysics, and consciousness are products of natural biological organisms and ultimately natural phenomena. The subject and its mental life are only comprehensible in relation to natural desires, drives, impulses, and instincts. I argue that such typical natu-ralizing tendencies do not exhaust Nietzsche’s project, since they occur in the context of his critique of “nature” and metaphysical, speculative, and scientific naturalisms. Nie-tzsche challenges otherworldly projections of this-worldly beings, as (...) his naturalistic in-terpreters claim, but further the idolization of immanent worldly natural phenomena, in-cluding science itself. “Nature” is an idealization of natural organisms and environments in which its construction, projection, and interpretation is forgotten. Nietzsche strategical-ly uses naturalistic scientific strategies of explanation and demystification, while demys-tifying science, positivism, and naturalism for the sake of life. These do not provide either certainties or foundations for knowledge or life. Naturalism would be anti-natural if it denies of multiplicity and conflict of the forces of life, bracketing the natural and his-torical conditions of existence, and the interpretive and perspectival character of life and knowledge. The nexus of nature and history in Nietzsche is better clarified through his portrayal of the feeling of life and its intensification, attenuation, and transformation in relation to the forces and conditions of life, which encompass processes of socialization and interpretive and artistic individuation in the context of a life. (shrink)

A central thesis of my interpretation of Nietzsche has long been that he fundamentally was a naturalistic thinker, who had a significant philosophical agenda that is best understood accordingly.1 This is a characterization with which many—in the analytically minded part of the philosophical community, at any rate—have come to agree. But there are many kinds of things called "naturalism" in the philosophical literature; and it would be a mistake to suppose that any of them in particular is what Nietzsche espoused (...) or was moving toward—especially since there are some kinds of naturalism of which he himself is quite disdainful, and even scathingly critical. For example, there is the "mechanistic" kind he calls one of .. (shrink)

This volume comprises ten original essays on Nietzsche, one of the western canon's most controversial ethical thinkers. An international team of experts clarify Nietzsche's own views, both critical and positive, ethical and meta-ethical, and connect his philosophical concerns to contemporary debates in and about ethics, normativity, and value.

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism and (...) dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche, Naturalism and InterpretationJames WinchesterChristoph Cox. Nietzsche, Naturalism and Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Pp. 241. Cloth, $45.00.This is a well-written book. It is clear. Making use of a wide variety of sources both analytic and continental, it argues that Nietzsche is a naturalist. By that Cox means that Nietzsche rejects other worldly sources of knowledge and being. Cox argues that Nietzsche rejects both the epistemological (...) notion of a "God's eye view" and the ontological notion of a "pregiven world." For Nietzsche there is "a primacy and irreducibility of interpretation" (70). Nietzsche's commitment to naturalism allows him to argue that some interpretations are better than others, for naturalism becomes the bar according to which interpretations are judged. The best interpretations are those that eliminate all references to other-worldly phenomena.Cox does what he sets out to do. Assuming that there is a coherency to Nietzsche's thought—particularly to the writings from The Gay Science through to the end of Nietzsche's works—Cox buttresses his interpretation through extensive quotations from the published works. He also makes extensive use of the Nachlass—actually he uses the Will to Power to show Nietzsche's naturalism. And why not? Assuming that there is a unity in Nietzsche's thought, the book seeks to package the oft unruly Nietzsche in terms used in recent analytical debates about ontology and epistemology—and this the book does very well. Passages out of the Will to Power buttress Cox's argument that Nietzsche's thought fits into these categories. Still I would have preferred that he used the Nachlass. It is important to know when Nietzsche is writing. With the Will to Power we do not know how it fits into what Nietzsche was writing at the time.The book does not consider Nietzsche's own claim that his writing cannot be so neatly packaged. Nietzsche is suspicious of the will to systematize and I find that at times Cox overly systematizes Nietzsche's work. For example, according to Cox, Nietzsche rejects the notion that "there exists a pre-given world, nothing can serve as the foil for an interpretation except other interpretations." We transform interpretations not by confronting them with fact, but rather we transform one interpretation by leveraging it against another interpretation. Cox argues that for Nietzsche we never encounter a world outside of interpretation (160-161). For the most part this is right. Cox quotes extensively from Beyond Good and Evil. If we read the first section of that work "On the Prejudices of Philosophers," as a whole, then Nietzsche is not as consistent as Cox suggests. In aphorism 1 Nietzsche argues that no one ever seems to question the will to truth. He seems to be saying that one could seek out truth, but that it may be impossible to live with the truth. Nietzsche asks not what is true, but rather what is necessary for life and why has truth been valued. In aphorism 4 he writes that for him the falsity of a judgment is not an objection to it and that his philosophy might sound strangest when he claims that the falsest judgments are for him the most necessary. In aphorism 9, nature is described as something other than people have thought it to be. He writes, "In truth it is much different." In other words, here Nietzsche claims that he is right about the nature of the world and those who believe there are laws of nature are wrong. As Cox notes, in aphorism 22 Nietzsche does imply that his own vision of nature is "only an interpretation," but "On the Prejudices of Philosophers," or for that matter Nietzsche's [End Page 606] entire later philosophy is not as unambiguous about this as Cox suggests. (Cox also argues for a unitary interpretation of Will to Power in Nietzsche. I have argued against this position in my Nietzsche's Aesthetic Turn: Reading Nietzsche After Heidegger, Deleuze and Derrida [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994]).Cox is a good reader of Nietzsche, a good reader of current analytical thought, and a good reader of contemporary continental figures. To overemphasize Nietzsche... (shrink)

Nietzsche's views on knowledge have been interpreted in at least three incompatible ways - as transcendental, naturalistic or proto-deconstructionist. While the first two share a commitment to the possibility of objective truth, the third reading denies this by highlighting Nietzsche's claims about the necessarily falsifying character of human knowledge (his so-called error theory). This paper examines the ways in which his work can be construed as seeking ways of overcoming the strict opposition between naturalism and transcendental philosophy whilst fully taking (...) into account the error theory (interpreted non-literally, as a hyperbolic warning against uncritical forms of realism). In doing so, it clarifies the nature of Nietzsche's ontological commitments, both in the early and the later work, and shows that his relation to transcendental idealism is more subtle than is allowed by naturalistic interpreters while conversely accounting for the impossibility of conceiving the conditions of the possibility of knowledge as genuinely a priori. (shrink)

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche demands that “psychology shall be<br>recognized again as the queen of the sciences.” While one might cast a dubious glance at the “again,” many of Nietzsche’s insights were indeed psychological, and many of his arguments invoke psychological premises. In Genealogy, he criticizes the “English psychologists” for the “inherent psychological absurdity” of their theory of the origin of good and bad, pointing out the implausibility of the claim that the utility of unegoistic<br>actions would be forgotten. Tabling (...) whether this criticism is valid, we see Nietzsche’s methodological naturalism here: moral claims should be grounded in empirical psychological claims. Later in Genealogy, Nietzsche advances his own naturalistic account of the origins of good, bad, and evil.<br>Three cheers for methodological naturalism, but it was not Nietzsche’s innovation, and he did not pioneer its application to morality. The list of moral naturalists who appealed to psychology arguably includes Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Bentham, and Mill, among many others. If Nietzsche’s naturalism is to be worth the candle of contemporary scholarship, it must involve more than the methodological naturalism that predated him by centuries and to which he made no serious contribution. Nietzsche’s key contribution to naturalism is not his adherence to its methodology, but his discovery of certain psychological facts. In particular, he realized that mental states are not ordinary dyadic relations between a subject and an intentional content. Nietzsche discovered the tenacity of intentional states: when an intentional state loses its object (because the subject realizes the object does not exist, because the object is forbidden, or because of something else), a new object replaces the original; the state does not disappear entirely. As Nietzsche puts it Genealogy, “Man would rather will the void than be void of will.” Nietzsche relies on the tenacity thesis in his explanation of the origin of bad conscience: “All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward […. They turn] against [their] possessors.” When hostility towards others becomes impossible, hostility does not disappear; instead, its object is replaced. (shrink)

Agon as analytic, diagnostic, and antidote -- Contesting Homer: the poiesis of value -- Contesting Socrates: Nietzsche's (artful) naturalism -- Contesting Paul: toward an ethos of agonism -- Contesting Wagner: how one becomes what one is.

Nietzsche’s favourable comments about science and the senses have recently been taken as evidence of naturalism. Others focus on his falsification thesis: our beliefs are falsifying interpretations of reality. Clark argues that Nietzsche eventually rejects this thesis. This article utilizes the multiple ways of being science friendly in Nietzsche’s context by focussing on Mach’s neutral monism. Mach’s positivism is a natural development of neo-Kantian positions Nietzsche was reacting to. Section 15 of Beyond Good and Evil is crucial to Clark’s interpretation. (...) The presented interpretation makes better sense of this passage and shows that Nietzsche can accept both falsification and empiricism. (shrink)

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism in (...) ethics need not be mutually incompatible. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a biologist, Nevertheless his philosophical thought was deeply influenced by ideas emerging from the evolutionary biology of the nineteenth century. His relationship to the Darwinism of his time is difficult to disentangle. It is argued that he was in a sense an unwitting Darwinist. It follows that his philosophical thought is of considerable interest to those concerned to develop an evolutionary biology of mankind. His approach can be likened to that of an extraterrestrial sociobiologist studying (...) clever beasts... in some out of the way corner of the universe ... It is shown how be uses this viewpoint to account for the origin of the central psychobiology of humankind: for dualistic philosophies, such as that of Descartes (which Ryle famously called the official doctrine), for human notions of truth and falsehood, being and becoming, and for other fundamental concepts of Western philosophy and science. All these, he argues, are no more and no less than the necessary adaptations of a zoological species, Homo sapiens, in its struggle for life in a Darwinian world. It is concluded that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to accept and use in their full depth the philosophical implications of nineteeth-century evolutionism, implications which are still resisted to this day. It is also argued that this interpretation of Nietzsche's aphoristic writings provides them with an organic consistency. (shrink)

Philosophers before Friedrich Nietzsche are more interested in reality than in appearance; they tend to believe that we can access the ultimate truth through hard work, which will set us free. However, in his book, The Gay Science, Nietzsche criticizes this aim of science, or metaphysics. While it has been argued that Nietzsche denies the distinction between perceivable appearances and a concealed, underlying reality, in this paper, I will argue that such a distinction is consistent with Nietzsche’s project and contributes (...) to his perspectivism. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine the relation between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power and to show that perspectivism is almost a direct and natural consequence of the doctrine of the will to power. Without exploring the doctrine, it is not possible to understand what Nietzsche’s perspectivism is and what he trying to do by proposing it as an alternative to traditional epistemology. To this aim, firstly, Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power (...) is explained in detail. Next, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the doctrine, its relation with Darwinism and the claims which say that it is a metaphysical principle are analyzed. Afterwards, Nietzsche’s construction of the world as becoming out of will to power is investigated. Nietzsche’s conception of interpretation as power struggle and its role in perspectivism explained. Then, how Nietzsche’s construction of the world as becoming and his concept of interpretation as power struggle emerge as perspectivism is explained. After that, in order to present the differences between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and traditional understanding of epistemology, Nietzsche’s critiques of some of the fundamental assumptions of traditional epistemology, i.e., causality, logic, and subject-object and apparent-real world distinctions, are investigated. Finally, Nietzsche’s understanding of truth based on his perspectivism is inquired. Its relation with correspondence, pragmatic and coherence theories of truth is explored to show that Nietzsche’s understanding of truth could not be comprehended through these theories. Consequently, it isclaimed that the tendency to attribute a truth theory to Nietzsche’s perspectivism, which is prevalent in the current Nietzsche studies, stems from commentator’s, consciously or unconsciously, ignoring of the relation between his perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power. (shrink)

Nietzsche offers a positive epistemology, and those who interpret him as a skeptic or a mere pragmatist are mistaken. Instead he supports what he calls per- spectivism. This is a familiar take on Nietzsche, as perspectivism has been analyzed by many previous interpreters. The present paper presents a sketch of the textually best supported and logically most consistent treatment of perspectivism as a first- order epistemic theory. What’s original in the present paper is an argument that Nietzsche also offers a (...) second-order methodological perspectivism aimed at enhancing understanding, an epistemic state distinct from knowledge. Just as Descartes considers and rejects radical skepticism while at the same time adopting methodological skepticism, one could consistently reject perspectivism as a theory of knowledge while accepting it as contributing to our understanding. It is argued that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is in fact two-tiered: knowledge is perspectival because truth itself is, and in addition there is a methodological perspectivism in which distinct ways of knowing are utilized to produce understanding. A review of the manner in which understanding is conceptualized in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science serves to illuminate how Nietzsche was tackling these ideas. (shrink)

Nearly every common theory of truth has been attributed to Nietzsche, while some commentators have argued that he simply has no theory of truth. This essay argues that Nietzsche's remarks on truth are best situated within either the coherence or pragmatist theories of truth rather than the correspondence theory. Nietzsche's thoughts on truth conflict with the correspondence framework because he believes that the truth conditions of propositions are constitutively dependent on our actions.