Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 46 Heft: 1 Seiten: 308-313.

Dans les leçons sur la rythmique ancienne de F. Nietzsche, le rythme est objet d’une étude philologique, lié à l’expérience de la parole et du texte, mais aussi et surtout d’une étude anthropologique, parce que son action sera repérée dans les moments originaires de l’organisation religieuse, sociale et civile de l’homme. Le lien entre ces deux approches s’éclaircit quand on comprend que le discours sur le rythme est d’abord un discours sur la forme (en un sens aristotélicien) et sur la (...) norme (la normativité), ou bien sur la convention et sur son rapport avec la nature. Le rythme est une forme qui a une capacité normative, capable d’informer la matière, conçue aussi bien comme poésie et musique ou comme âme, caractère et habitus de l’homme. (shrink)

The place of God in Nietzsche’s thought remains central and controversial. Nietzsche’s proclamation of 'the death of God' is one of the most famous slogans in modern philosophy, seeming to encapsulate the nineteenth-century loss of religious faith in the affirmation that God has "turned out to be our oldest lie" and yet the nature of Nietzsche’s own ‘theology’ is far from clear. This volume engages with Nietzsche’s arguments about God, theology, and religion. The volume extends the discussion to an engagement (...) of Nietzsche with alternative models of God, with ancient Greek religions, and with discussions of diversity in dis/conjunction with religion. The chapters examine Nietzsche’s genealogy of religion and his claims about the place of God and theology in the history of Western thought, as well as his engagements with alternative conceptions of God. The volume also examines the historical and contemporary reception of Nietzsche’s arguments about God by religious and non-religious thinkers, asking to what extent Nietzsche’s philosophy of God speaks to the challenges of today's globalized philosophy and religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACTGeography must be conceived in relation to man. It is not merely a description of the Earth, rather it accounts for the history of man’s relationship with it, of man’s movements on its surface, and his transformative impact on the world. From this perspective, Friedrich Ratzel was extraordinarily innovative respect to other nineteenth century scholars. That said, however, his revolutionary approach actually relied on an ancient foundation. To understand the basis of Ratzel’s anthropogeographical project it is vital to return to (...) a Greek concept that, over the centuries, has been variously resemantized: the concept of the oecumene. In his understanding of the oecumene, the entire breadth of humanity is conceived in historical and geographical relation to the world around it. Ratzel’s anthropogeography aspires to an all-encompassing understanding of man. In fact, it allows us to reconstruct the coordinates of time and space through which man has developed as a being capable of culture. The Earth, according to Ratzel, transcends its eminently geophysical connotations and becomes more similar to the ancient oecumene. It is, once more, the abode of man; it is that which he knows and recognizes, that to which he gives a name. (shrink)

Resumo Quando pensamos na Grécia, o “lugar dos sonhos” dos alemães, e especialmente na relação de Nietzsche com a Grécia, muitas coisas podem com razão chamar nossa atenção. Grécia pode ser interpretada de diferentes maneiras na obra de Nietzsche. Mas todos podemos talvez concordar que, para Nietzsche, o mundo grego é uma ferramenta de valor crítico insuperável. Eles são testemunhas da diferença que os separa de nós. Eles são uma alternativa cultural inalcançável e inalcançada, para a qual é permitido orientar-nos, (...) mas da qual, frequentemente e mais facilmente, podemos nos separar. Nietzsche serve-se do mundo grego a fim de aprofundar a crise da cega confiança etnocêntrica do homem moderno. Como historiador e filólogo, Nietzsche usa a literatura grega para lutar contra o absolutismo científico do mundo moderno. Sua crítica almeja falsificar as categorias científicas modernas, prosseguindo com um estudo genealógico que deve “transvalorar” as bases da cultura ocidental moderna.When we think of Greece, the “Place of Desire” of the German, and especially of the relation between Nietzsche and Greece, many things could indeed come to our attention. Greece could be interpreted in many different ways in Nietzsche’s work. Although we can all agree that, to Nietzsche, the Greek world is a tool of insurmountable critical value. They are spectators of the difference that separates them from us. They are an unattainable and unattained cultural alternative, which allows us to orient ourselves, although from which, frequently and most easily, we can draw apart from. Nietzsche uses the Greek world in order to deepen the blind ethnocentric confidence crisis of modern man. As a Historian and Philologist, Nietzsche uses Greek literature to fight against scientific absolutism of modern world. His criticism aims to falsify the modern scientific categories, proceeding with a genealogical study, which should “transvaluate” the basis of the modern western society. (shrink)

Alongside his work as a professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Basel, Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on the value of classical studies in contemporary nineteenth-century society, starting with a self-analysis of his own classical training and position as a philologist and teacher. Contrary to his well-known aversion to classical philology, a science conceived as being an end in itself, aimed at mere erudite complacency, I highlight Nietzsche’s defence of the system of Classical studies, and of the education (...) of young people through the works of the ancient Greek and Roman period. Such an apology ‘redeems’, in a sense, the discipline, and justifies its role and continued relevance in our present-day society. (shrink)

A word of warning I would offer to those approaching this excellent book by Francesco Ghedini is that it cannot be read alone. For it is the latest, and perhaps not the last, chapter of a long and continuous study of the figure of Plato in Nietzsche’s work that Ghedini began more than a decade ago. In it, Ghedini deals with Nietzsche’s mature works from 1881 to 1887, searching out the images of Plato to be found in them and investigating (...) their significance for Nietzsche’s philosophical trajectory. Ghedini begins, perhaps somewhat abruptly, with The Gay Science, proceeds to an exhaustive analysis of the period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, and ends with a brief consideration of Book V of The .. (shrink)

Emil Walter-Busch’s study is the latest in a long series of scholarly works focused on Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche and the relationship between them. Works of primary importance, such as Karl Löwith’s Jakob Burckhardt. Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte (Luzern: Vita nova Verlag, 1936), Edgar Salin’s Vom deutschen Verhängnis. Gespräch an der Zeitenwende: Burckhardt–Nietzsche (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), and Alfred von Martin’s Nietzsche und Burckhardt. Zwei geistige Welten im Dialog (Munich: Erasmus Verlag, 1947), have for a long time set the (...) framework for conceiving the relations between these authors, both from a biographical point of view and when it comes to their reciprocal intellectual debts. More .. (shrink)

After the Second World War, German intellectuals who opposed the Nazi regime, faced a crisis of consciousness. They were concerned with a critical analysis, which involved every aspect and even the very essence of their culture. In this contribution, I will turn my attention to some segments of this debate on myth, irrationality and nihilism within the field of classical scholarship and history of religions, approaching as samples the correspondence of three scholars, who are representative for three generations before, during (...) and after WWII: the Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann, the Hungarian mythologist Karolyi Kerényi and the Italian mythologist Furio Jesi, theorist and critic of the right-wing culture. In the work and reflection of all these authors, Friedrich Nietzsche will play a key role. (shrink)

History and memory rank as central themes in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. As one of the last philosophers of the 19th century, Nietzsche naturally belongs to the so-called ‘historical century’. The contentious exchange with the past and with antiquity – as much as the mechanisms, the dangers, and the lessons of memory and tradition – are continually examined and stand in close relationship with Nietzsche’s vision of life and his project of human development. As Jacob Burckhardt once wrote of (...) the cultural critique to his Basel colleague: "Fundamentally, you are always teaching history". Following Burckhardt’s judgment, the contributors focus on the analysis of core questions in the philosophies of history and memory, and their respective convergence in the thought of Nietzsche. The epistemological relevance of these central concepts will be thematized alongside those concerning tradition, and education. The discussion of these rich themes unifies a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from cultural memory to contemporary philosophy of mind. The contributions are revised versions of selected papers presented at the 2018 conference of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society in Naumburg. (shrink)

The place (or absence) of God in Nietzsche's thought remains central and controversial. Nietzsche's proclamation of 'the death of God' is one of the most famous (and parodied) slogans in modern philosophy, seeming to encapsulate the nineteenth-century loss of religious faith in the affirmation that God has "turned out to be our oldest lie" and yet the nature of Nietzsche's own 'theology' is far from clear. This volume engages with Nietzsche's arguments about God, theology, and religion. The volume extends the (...) discussion to an engagement of Nietzsche with alternative models of God, with ancient Greek religions, and with discussions of diversity (race, class, gender, sex) in dis/conjunction with religion. The chapters examine Nietzsche's genealogy of religion and his claims about the place of God and theology in the history of Western thought ("that faith of the Christians, which was also Plato's faith"), as well as his engagements with alternative conceptions of God. The volume also examines the historical and contemporary reception of Nietzsche's arguments about God by religious and non-religious thinkers, asking to what extent Nietzsche's philosophy of God speaks to the challenges of today's globalized philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This volume, edited by Vinod Acharya and Ryan J. Johnson, consists of fourteen chapters concerning Nietzsche’s lifelong fascination with Epicurus. Epicurus was hailed by Nietzsche as the ideal thinker in the middle period of his philosophical career and subsequently accused of being a decadent figure.The volume is divided into four parts. Part 1 is titled “Encounters: Body, Mood, Geography and Aesthetic” and consists of five chapters: Carlotta Santini on Nietzsche’s critique of Epicurus’s writing style; Ryan Johnson on the (...) topic of “gastrosophia,” namely the moral effects of foods according to Nietzsche and Epicurus; Jill Marsden on the kinship between Nietzsche and Epicurus about philosophy and the art of living;... (shrink)

In certain cases, people judge that agents bring about ends intentionally but also that they do not bring about the means that brought about those ends intentionally—even though bringing about the ends and means is just as likely. We call this difference in judgments the Kraemer effect. We offer a novel explanation for this effect: a perceived difference in the extent to which agents know how to bring about the means and the ends explains the Kraemer effect. In several experiments, (...) we replicate the Kraemer effect in a variety of non-moral and moral scenarios, and we find support for our new account. This work accords with a burgeoning area of action theory that identifies an important connection between know-how and intentionality. (shrink)

In their theories of know how, proponents of Intellectualism routinely appeal to ‘practical modes of presentation’. But what are practical modes of presentation? And what makes them distinctively practical? In this essay, I develop a Fregean account of practical modes of presentation: I argue that there are such things as practical senses and I give a theory of what they are. One of the challenges facing the proponent of a distinctively Fregean construal of practical modes of presentation is to provide (...) an account of their nature on which they are plausible qua Fregean senses. I take up this challenge, arguing that we find examples of practical senses in the semantic values assigned to programs by operational semantics for programming languages. By looking at a species of practical senses, we will have taken one important step towards legitimizing the genus. In particular, I show that certain features of operational semantic values can be generalized towards a comprehensive theory of practical senses. The upshot is a full-fledged account of what practical senses are, which can be put to use in an explanatory theory of know how. (shrink)

The similarity approach stands as a significant attempt to defend scientific realism from the attack of the pessimistic meta-induction. The strategy behind the similarity approach is to shift from an absolute notion of truth to the more flexible one of truthlikeness. Nonetheless, some authors are not satisfied with this attempt to defend realism and find that the notion of truthlikeness is not fully convincing. The aim of this paper is to analyze and understand the reasons of this dissatisfaction. Our thesis (...) is that the dissatisfaction with the notion of truthlikeness concerns the double role that this notion plays within the similarity approach: This notion plays both a regulative role in the conception of theories and a constitutive one in their selection. (shrink)

This is the introduction to my forthcoming book and the table of contents.

I argue for an analysis of ‘therefore’ as presupposition trigger against the more standard conventional implicature story originally put forward by Grice (1975). I propose that we model the relevant presupposition as “testing” the context in a way that is similar to how, according to some dynamic treatments of epistemic `must', ‘must’ tests the context. But whereas the presupposition analysis is plausible for ‘therefore’, ‘must’ is not plausibly a presupposition trigger. Moreover, whereas ‘must’ can naturally occur under a supposition, the (...) same is not true for ‘therefore’. In the light of these differences, I suggest we distinguish between different sorts of tests on the basis of the mechanisms whereby these expressions test the context (whether through a presupposition or through their core content) and on the basis of whether they can operate only on categorical contexts or on both categorical and hypothetical contexts. (shrink)

From artistic performances in the visual arts and in music to motor control in gymnastics, from tool use to chess and language, humans excel in a variety of skills. On the plausible assumption that skillful behavior is a visible manifestation of intelligence, a theory of intelligence—whether human or not—should be informed by a theory of skills. More controversial is the question as to whether, in order to theorize about intelligence, we should study certain skills in particular. My target is the (...) view that only a particular class/kind of skill (i.e., ‘theoretical’, or ‘intellectual’ skills, versus ‘practical’, or ‘embodied’ skills) manifests intelligence, or especially does so. I call this view ‘Intelligence Elitism’. Intelligence Elitism is pervasive in popular culture, in academic culture, as well as in psychometrics. It has, arguably, a long pedigree in philosophy (though explicit arguments for it are rare). But it is a substantive view which, if false, can promote unfairness. In this article, I defend Intelligence Socialism—the claim that intelligent behavior is everywhere skillful behavior is. I go on to isolate the best case for the further Elitist claim that, even if all skillful behavior is intelligent in some modest sense of ‘intelligence’, there is a principled difference in intelligence between theoretical, or intellectual, skills, on one side, and practical, or embodied skills, on the other, and I show it wanting. (shrink)

One can intentionally do something only if one knows what one is doing while they are doing it. For example, one can intentionally kill one’s neighbor by opening their gas stove overnight only if one knows that the gas is likely to kill the neighbor in their sleep. One can intentionally sabotage the victory of one’s rival by putting sleeping drugs in their drink only if one knows that sleeping drugs will harm the rival’s performance. And so on. In a (...) slogan: Intentional action is action guided by knowledge. This essay reviews some motivations for a ‘knowledge-centered psychology’ — a psychology where knowledge enters center stage in an explanation of intentional action (§2). Then it outlines a novel argument for the claim that knowledge is required for intentional action (§3) and discusses some of its consequences (§§4-5). (shrink)

Aristotle’s use of the term ‘eironeia’ in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) appears to be inconsistent: first, he attributes the attitude termed ‘eironeia’ to the great-souled man (megalopsychos), who is defined by his virtuousness, then he classifies ‘eironeia’ as one of the two vices which are central to his account of the virtue of truthfulness. Modern attempts to explain and to solve the “riddle of the great-souled eiron” have not been satisfying. This paper argues that the riddle results from Aristotle trying (...) to reconcile aristocratic values with democratic reality. In the process, some insight will be gained on the concept of the megalopsychos in general, on Aristotle’s notion of the virtue of truthfulness and on his depiction of Socrates. Finally, it is argued that Aristotle’s use of the notion of ‘eironeia’ in the NE bears some resemblance to the use of the notion of ‘irony’ in modern political theory. (shrink)

Il testo prende in esame lo spazio domestico e le relazioni che lo caratterizzano attraverso il tentativo di leggerli come un’infrastruttura sociale. Pensare la casa come infrastruttura significa anche ampliare la concezione di cosa sia un’infrastruttura e riflettere sulla relazione tra politica e intimità per mettere in discussione i confini tra pubblico e privato. Inoltre, osservare la casa attraverso la dimensione infrastrutturale permette di mettere la centro il lavoro riproduttivo non solo come lavoro ma anche come elemento centrale per l’infrastruttura (...) sociale. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is absolute—that is, it cannot come in degrees. On the other hand, there seems to be strong evidence for the gradability of know-how. Ascriptions of know-how are gradable, as when we say that one knows in part how to do something, or that one knows how to do something better than somebody else. When coupled with absolutism, the gradability of ascriptions of know-how can be used to mount a powerful argument against intellectualism about know-how—the view (...) that know-how is a species of propositional knowledge. This essay defends intellectualism from the argument of gradability. It is argued that the gradability of ascriptions of know-how should be discounted as a rather superficial linguistic phenomenon, one that can be explained in a way compatible with the absoluteness of the state reported. (shrink)

A good surgeon knows how to perform a surgery; a good architect knows how to design a house. We value their know-how. We ordinarily look for it. What makes it so valuable? A natural response is that know-how is valuable because it explains success. A surgeon’s know-how explains their success at performing a surgery. And an architect’s know-how explains their success at designing houses that stand up. We value know-how because of its special explanatory link to success. But in virtue (...) of what is know-how explanatorily linked to success? This essay provides a novel argument for the thesis that know-how’s special link to success is to be explained at least in part in terms of its being, or involving, a doxastic attitude that is epistemically alike propositional knowledge. It is argued that the role played by know-how in explaining intentional success shows that the epistemic differences between know-how and knowledge, if any, are less than usually thought; and that "revisionary intellectualism", the view that know-how is true belief that might well fall short of knowledge, is not really a stable position. If its explanatory link to success is what makes know-how valuable, an upshot of my argument is that the value of know-how is due, to a considerable extent, to its being, or involving, a kind of propositional knowledge. (shrink)

1. What is the relation between skilful action and knowledge? According to most philosophers, the two have little in common: practical intelligence and theoretical intelligence are largely separate...

The text examines two critiques of the single-family home model in post-World War II North American suburbs. On the one hand, it investigates the struggles for wages for housework in order to highlight the critique of the processes of female subjectification that take place within the house walls. On the other, it analyses the critique of masculinity that emerges from the pages of Playboy and the Playboy Townhouse project. Finally, it uses these critiques to highlight the different ways in which (...) the home can be seen as a place of work and a space open to the outside world. (shrink)

In the recent literature, several authors have argued that the capacity to track factive mental states plays a central role in explaining our ability to understand and predict people’s behavior (Nagel 2013; Nagel 2017; Phillips & Norby 2019; Phillips et al. 2020; Westra & Nagel 2021). The topic of this chapter is whether this capacity also enters into an explanation of our ability to track skilled and intentional actions.

This idea that what is distinctive of intentional performances (or at least of those intentional performances that amount to skilled actions) is one’s practical knowledge in it —i.e., knowledge of what one is doing while doing it— famously traces back to Anscombe ([]1963] 2000). While many philosophers have theorized about Anscombe’s notion of practical knowledge (e.g., Setiya (2008), Thompson et al. (2011), Schwenkler (2019), O’Brien (2007)), there is a wide disagreement about how to understand it. This paper investigates how best (...) to understand practical knowledge for it to play the desired explanatory role in a reductive theory of intentional action, of intention-in-action, and of control-in-action. I argue that practical knowledge ought to be construed as a dynamic knowledge state and that structured practical senses (Pavese 2015) are needed to model it. (shrink)

According to a standard assumption in epistemology, if one only partially believes that p , then one cannot thereby have knowledge that p. For example, if one only partially believes that that it is raining outside, one cannot know that it is raining outside; and if one only partially believes that it is likely that it will rain outside, one cannot know that it is likely that it will rain outside. Many epistemologists will agree that epistemic agents are capable of (...) partial beliefs in addition to full beliefs and that partial beliefs can be epistemically assessed along some dimensions. However, it has been generally assumed that such doxastic attitudes cannot possibly amount to knowledge. In Probabilistic Knowledge, Moss challenges this standard assumption and provides a formidable defense of the claim that probabilistic beliefs—a class of doxastic attitudes including credences and degrees of beliefs—can amount to knowledge too. Call this the probabilistic knowledge claim . Throughout the book, Moss goes to great lengths to show that probabilistic knowledge can be fruitfully applied to a variety of debates in epistemology and beyond. My goal in this essay is to explore a further application for probabilistic knowledge. I want to look at the role of probabilistic knowledge within a “knowledge-centered” psychology—a kind of psychology that assigns knowledge a central stage in explanations of intentional behavior. My suggestion is that Moss’s notion of probabilistic knowledge considerably helps further both a knowledge-centered psychology and a broadly intellectualist picture of action and know-how that naturally goes along with it. At the same time, though, it raises some interesting issues about the notion of explanation afforded by the resulting psychology. (shrink)

Is the ability to speak a language an acquired skill? Leading proponents of the generative approach to human language—notably Chomsky (2000) and Pinker (2003)—have argued that the thesis that language capacities are skills is hopelessly confused and at odds with a range of empirical evidence, which suggests that human language capacities are grounded in a biologically inherited set of language instincts or a Universal Grammar (UG). In this paper, we argue that resistance to the claim that human language capacities are (...) skills has been fostered by naïve and implausible conceptions of the nature of skilled action. Correcting these misconceptions about the nature of skilled action breathes new life into the old idea that human language competences are particular kinds of skills and does so in a way that is fully consistent with appeals to the central importance of UG, broadly construed. More generally, we argue that by taking human language capacities to be skills, we capture what is right about the generative program while at the same time avoiding its most serious pitfalls. (shrink)

Arguments and conditionals are powerful means language provides us to reason about possibilities and to reach conclusions from premises. These two kinds of constructions exhibit several affinities—e.g., they both come in different varieties depending on the mood; they share some of the same connectives (i.e., ‘then’); they allow for similar patterns of modal subordination. In the light of these affinities, it is not surprising that prominent theories of conditionals—old and new suppositionalisms as well as dynamic theories of conditionals—as well as (...) certain reductive theories of arguments tend to semantically assimilate conditionals and arguments. In this paper, I shall marshall some linguistic evidence as well as some theoretical considerations for thinking that, despite these similarities, arguments and conditionals should be given a different semantics and I shall lay out a framework that can capture at least some of their affinities while accounting for their outstanding differences. (shrink)