Nietzsche: Value Theory, Miscellaneous

Nietzsche’s injunction to examine “the value of values” can be heard in a pragmatic key, as inviting us to consider not whether certain values are true, but what they do for us. This oddly neglected pragmatic approach to Nietzsche now receives authoritative support from Bernard Reginster’s new book, which offers a compelling and notably cohesive interpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. In this essay, I reconstruct Reginster's account of Nietzsche’s critique of morality as a “self-undermining functionality critique” and (...) raise three problems for it: (i) Is there room within an etiological conception of function for the notion of self-undermining functionality? (ii) If Nietzsche’s critique is internal and based solely on the function it ascribes to morality, where does that critique derive its normative significance from? (iii) Does Reginster’s account not make out ascetic morality to be more universally dysfunctional than it in fact is, given that some priestly types have done remarkably well out of morality? (shrink)

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘create values’, which involves two steps: (1) envisaging ideals for human life, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behaviour and (...) societal organization. To accomplish step (2), philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements have best advanced this ideal in the past or might in the future. (shrink)

ABSTRACT 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 new and deeper understanding (...) of how Nietzsche does philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche values intellectual honesty, but is dubious about what he calls the will to truth. This is puzzling since intellectual honesty is a component of the will to truth. In this paper, I show that this puzzle tells us something important about how Nietzsche conceives of our pursuit of truth. For Nietzsche, those who pursue truth occupy unstable ground, since being honest about the ultimate reasons for that pursuit would mean that truth could no longer satisfy the important human needs (...) it satisfies at present. We can pursue truth, or be honest about what in us is served by such a pursuit, but not both. Nietzsche aims to show that understanding and owning up to this instability is the sort of affirmation of human life to which we ought to aspire, and is the price we pay for being free from otherworldly morality. (shrink)

This book is at once incisive and exploratory, interpretive and historic scholarship. It appeals to both general and specialized readers. It uniquely takes a common philosophical theme, the meaning of life, and traces it through many philosophers’ and novelists' works. Sometimes the theme is buried and implicit, and offers a plausible distillation of each author's view. The result is a title that may sound like a self-help book’s—except the contents expand in manifold directions rather than narrow to easy advice. The (...) reader, not spoon fed, is provided only one advice: Read these, and decide for onerself, especially if none of them answers sufficiently for each reader. Philosophers represnted include Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard. Nietzche, James, Wittgenstein, Novelists include Melville, Tolstoy, Proust, and Camus. (shrink)

This paper argues that besides the critical and historically informed genealogies of his later work, Nietzsche also sketched genealogies that are not historically situated and that display an under-appreciated affirmative aspect. The paper begins by looking at two early examples of such genealogies where datable historical origins are clearly not at issue, which raises the question of what kind of origins Nietzsche is after. It is argued that these genealogies inquire into practical origins—into the original point of certain conceptual practices (...) given certain needs, and that this reflects Nietzsche’s instrumentalism about concepts. It is then argued that this focus lends the genealogies an affirmative dimension, because they present their object as naturalistically intelligible and practically indispensable. Finally, it is shown how the nature and limits of this affirmative dimension can be tentatively sharpened by connecting it to Nietzsche’s later notion of the economic justification of morality. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche is a critic of just the kind of genealogical debunking he is popularly associated with. We begin by showing that interpretations of Nietzsche which see him as engaging in genealogical debunking turn him into an advocate of nihilism, for on his own premises, any truthful genealogical inquiry into our values is going to uncover what most of his contemporaries deem objectionable origins and thus license global genealogical debunking. To escape nihilism and make room for naturalism (...) without indiscriminate subversion, we then argue, Nietzsche targets the way of thinking about values that permits genealogical debunking: far from trying to subvert values simply by uncovering their origins, Nietzsche is actively criticising genealogical debunking thus understood. Finally, we draw out the consequences of our reading for Nietzsche’s positive vision. (shrink)

A consideration of Nietzsche and Marx on Epicurus, and focused on Epicurus as a philosopher in whom, as Nietzsche puts it, 'wisdom assumes bodily form'.

I argue that the rarely discussed Antichrist can serve as perhaps the best guide to Nietzsche’s mature ethical theory. Commentators often argue or assume that while Nietzsche makes many critical points about traditional morality, he cannot be offering a positive ethical theory of his own. This, I argue, is a mistake. The Antichrist offers a substantive ethical theory. It explicitly articulates Nietzsche’s positive ethical principles, shows why these principles are justified, and uses them to condemn traditional Christian morality. The chapter (...) reviews and explains Nietzsche’s ethical theory. It also considers why commentators so often assume that Nietzsche cannot have an ethical theory: I argue that commentators tend to be driven by the assumption that all ethical theories embrace seven commitments. These commitments are, I suggest, definitive of Enlightenment ethical theory, but not of ethical theory as such; Nietzsche’s rejection of them in no way precludes his having a positive ethical theory of his own. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s presentation of the eternal recurrence in Gay Science 341 is often viewed as a practical thought experiment meant to radically transform us. But exactly why and how we are supposed to be transformed is not clear. I contend that addressing these issues requires taking a close look at the psychological setting of the passage. The eternal recurrence is presented in our “loneliest loneliness.” I argue that facing the eternal recurrence from a state of profound loneliness both motivates self-transformation and (...) contributes toward helping us succeed at that project. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate affinities between Nietzsche’s early philosophy and some aspects of Kant’s moral theory. In so doing, I develop further my reading of Nietzschean wholeness as an ideal that consists in the achievement of cultural—not psychic—integration by pursuing the ennoblement of humanity in oneself and in all. This cultural achievement is equivalent to the procreation of the genius or the perfection of nature. For Nietzsche, the process by means of which we come to realize the genius in (...) ourselves is one in which our true content comes to necessarily govern or guide the shaping of our outer form (or our outward activities). Since this true content turns out to be our autonomy or free agency, I argue that this Nietzschean idea of necessitation parallels in important ways Kant’s notion of normative necessity. In particular, I claim that for Nietzsche the agent’s form becomes necessitated by his content as a result of the agent’s recognition of the duties that befall those who aspire to belong to a genuine culture and his resolve to guide his actions in accordance to them. These duties spring from the idea of humanity, from the image we have of ourselves as endowed with the capacity to be the helmsmen of our lives or to be more than mere animals or automata. The person who takes up this ideal of humanity turns his life into a living unity of content and form by organizing it around an aspect of his being that belongs necessarily, hence more truthfully, to him. He also participates in a collective project (that of the ennoblement of the human being) that can lend a certain coherence and imperishability to his individual life and through which he becomes necessarily connected to everyone else for all eternity. (shrink)

During his late period, Nietzsche focused on the problem of the “value of truth”, since according to him it plays an important role on Western culture and its anthropology. That reflection had been influenced by some outcomes of the late-nineteenth century scientific research, and can be therefore compared with other strategies that, during those years, faced the relativism implied in modern epistemology, e.g. William James’s Pragmatism. This paper aims to explore the pragmatic feature of Nietzsche’s investigation on truth. As will (...) be shown, Nietzsche’s perspectival thought can indeed be compared with classic Pragmatism on several aspects, e.g. the cultural context out of which both these philosophical position arised, and the broad consequences of their impact on European culture. (shrink)

In this paper, I take it to be uncontroversial that increasingly into his philosophical career, Nietzsche believed human greatness to be an appropriately valuable goal, at least for certain types of people. But while Nietzsche's repeated paradigms of greatness include figures as seemingly diverse as Beethoven, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cesare Borgia, Julius Caesar, it is unclear precisely what great-making property (or properties) Nietzsche considers these figures to share. I consider two possible approaches which have shaped the terrain of the secondary literature (...) on this controversial matter: greatness as a matter of internal properties (character traits); or external properties (achievements). I discuss the arguments for each view here, resulting with my own view being that both achievements and traits of character are at least necessary for what Nietzsche understands greatness to consist in. I then consider a distinction between actual and potential greatness in order to explore further necessary and perhaps sufficient conditions of Nietzsche's positive ideal. While my aim in this paper is primarily exegetical, I hope to draw upon contemporary issues in value theory surrounding the nature of achievement which are of interest to ethicists more broadly. (shrink)

RESUMEN -/- En este ensayo propongo una interpretación de la relación entre la ciencia y el Ideal Ascético en La Genealogía de la Moral, que busca explicar la enigmática alianza entre ambos que Nietzsche establece al final del tercer tratado de la mencionada obra. Según Nietzsche, contrario a lo que se cree, la ciencia moderna no es realmente un antagonista del Ideal Ascético sino más bien su forma más reciente y más noble. Argüiré que, para Nietzsche, el Ideal Ascético ha (...) sido hasta el momento la única respuesta que el ser humano ha dado a su forma especial de existencia, que consiste en encontrarse en la situación de ser el único animal capacitado para la independencia y la soberanía. El Ideal Ascético expresa una huida de la responsabilidad y la carga (el sufrimiento) que esa capacidad para la soberanía comporta. Así pues, la ciencia, como expresión última de dicho ideal, representa al igual que éste una evasión de la independencia y una declaración de guerra contra la libertad de la voluntad, es decir, contra la autonomía. (shrink)

Despite the recent surge of interest in Nietzsche’s moral psychology and his conceptions of character and virtue in particular, little attention has been paid to his treatment of the relation between character traits and the terms that designate them. In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of this relation: Nietzsche thinks there is a looping effect between the psychological disposition named by a character trait-term and the practice of using that term.

This chapter argues against a new and perhaps more benign way of classifying Nietzsche as a political conservative. It also adds to the argument that even though Nietzsche is seen as more leftist than he appears, he is not an egalitarian. It does so by making an extended and detailed case against Julian Young’s claim that the flourishing of the community is Nietzsche’s highest value. The final section suggests that Nietzsche’s view might nevertheless be able to accommodate richer notions of (...) community value than is commonly supposed—one that, in important respects, is similar to the value that he attributes to the exceptional individual. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Much has been made of the apparent tensions in Nietzsche's ethical and metaethical views. In this essay I examine a kind of value standard available to Nietzsche that is present in his work. I offer an interpretation of honesty as both a Nietzschean virtue and a means of ethical assessment. Despite Nietzsche's well-known criticisms of truth, he upholds honesty as the only remaining virtue of his free spirits. Honesty has been treated in the literature primarily in the contexts of (...) truth or life affirmation, but I argue that we should instead recognize honesty as a virtue within the context of valuing. I defend honesty as a distinct kind of truthfulness and sincerity involving what I call confrontation. The seeds of Nietzsche's mature view are first evident in his work on tragedy, then developed further in Zarathustra, ultimately revealing a constraint on valuing that is essential to Nietzsche's broader normative projects. (shrink)

This paper aims to highlight some major differences between the ethics of “self-becoming”, as it was sketched by Friedrich Nietzsche, and the so-called “aesthetics of existence”, which was developed in Michel Foucault’s late work. Although the propinquity between the two authors is a commonplace in Foucauldian exegesis, my claim is that the two projects of self-creation are dissimilar in four relevant aspects. To support my thesis I will use Foucault’s four-part ethical framework through which I will analyze each of the (...) two projects. Foucault, Nietzsche, self-creation, will to power, aesthetics of existence, ethical substance, mode of subjectification, ethical work, ethical telos, power relations. (shrink)

This paper draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s work to defend the (admittedly non-Nietzschean) conclusion that a non-liberal egalitarian society is superior in two ways: first, as a moral ideal, it does not rest on questionable claims about essential human equality and, second, such a society would provide the optimal psychological and political conditions for individual wellbeing, social stability, and cultural achievement. I first explain Nietzsche’s distinction between forms of egalitarianism: noble and slavish. The slavish form promotes equality, defined negatively as the (...) elimination of privilege. It is non-liberal in its prioritization of equality over the interests of the advantaged. Nietzsche rejects both slavish egalitarianism and liberalism for the same reasons: they questionably assume the equal value of all persons, and they harm cultural achievement, sacrificing the potential of those who are most valuable to cultural development to the interests of the majority. Noble egalitarianism, in contrast, exemplifies Nietzsche’s conception of justice as ‘equality among equals’. It demands that individuals of equal worth or power (such as members of an artistic or political elite) treat each other as what they, in fact, are: equals. It avoids asserting essential equality, demanding instead—against both slavish and liberal forms—respect on the basis of shared superiority. And it escapes the charge of harm to cultural development, commanding respect only where equality already exists. Although Nietzsche quickly assumes that ‘noble egalitarianism’ requires the rejection of all forms of universal egalitarianism, concluding that we should ‘never make equal what is unequal’, in fact it only entails the rejection of slavish methods: equalization through harm to the advantaged. However, non-liberal forms of egalitarianism can be ‘noble’, promoting equality without harm to the advantaged—through, for example, unequal distribution of resources, the equalization of economic opportunities, and economic regulation to prevent the creation of substantial wealth disparities. If egalitarianism can ‘make equal’ without slavish methods, then Nietzsche’s demand for ‘equality for equals’ applies to the newly equal, too. More importantly, his moral psychology of power—the view that our source of happiness and incentive to self-development is the feeling of power in relation to equal resistance or ‘opponents who are our equals’ —supports the superiority of a nobly-achieved, non-liberal egalitarian society. For achieved, practical equality of wealth and opportunity would optimize conditions for the feeling of power: a balance of equal, oppositional powers serving as mutual limitation and resistance. Such a society is superior in three ways. First, it maximizes social happiness by promoting and maintaining the feeling of power in all. Liberal and aristocratic societies, in contrast, allow radical inequalities that not only diminish the power of the disadvantaged, but diminish the opportunities of the advantaged to encounter equal resistance, thus undermining the happiness of all. Second, it promotes social stability by preserving a balance of powers that prevents domination and exploitation, in contrast to the inevitable class conflicts of aristocratic and liberal societies. Finally, it promotes cultural achievement, since the feeling of power in relation to proportional resistance is the psychological incentive for self-development and cultural achievement. (shrink)

This paper argues that for Nietzsche it is only when the strong type decays on its own terms that it is possible for a weak type to come into dominance by inverting the values of the strong. It sets right a latent inconsistency in Deleuze’s work, Nietzsche and Philosophy , which traces back the origin of decadence to the subterranean struggle between reactive forces. I show that Deleuze’s reading runs contrary to his own contention that for Nietzsche the negative is (...) a result of activity. I argue that the decadence of the strong is a consequence of its very creative activity and abundant health. Relying on Nietzsche’s later works, I isolate and analyze four typical traits of the strong type which not only determine this type as what it is but also make it vulnerable to decadence. (shrink)

My dissertation examines the significance of value creation in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. In working out Nietzsche’s view, my strategy is twofold. I begin by reconstructing Nietzsche’s metaethical commitments, offering an interpretation of Nietzsche’s conception of values that shows it to be consistent, and then I explore the nature and importance of value creation to Nietzsche’s project. I argue that value creation provides the core of Nietzsche’s response to his two most significant concerns: the failures of traditional morality and (...) the loss of meaning in the modern world. In Chapter 1 I examine the current literature concerning Nietzsche’s metaethics. Recently, scholars have engaged in debates over whether Nietzsche offers a version of moral realism or anti-realism. I argue that neither side of this debate adequately captures Nietzsche’s understanding of value. Moreover, by starting from these contemporary categories we cannot make sense of the importance Nietzsche places on value creation. In Chapter 2 I defend my account of Nietzsche’s conception of value by examining two features of his view: the nature of valuing and the connection between values and reasons. I argue that Nietzsche presents standards of value that are internal to the activity of valuing, and I explore the standards of health and honesty. Nietzsche’s strategy becomes clearer when we examine the connection he makes between values and tastes, and my view has the added interpretive benefit of revealing a motivation for Nietzsche’s untraditional philosophical methodology. In Chapters 3-4 I examine the processes and functions of value creation. I begin with the historical examples of value creation Nietzsche presents, and from these I elucidate the task of value creation. I argue that Nietzsche’s aim through value creation is the development of richer, shared sensibilities or forms of concern, which provide the foundation for a new approach to ethical reasoning and justification. Furthermore, value creation comprises Nietzsche’s principal strategy to avert nihilism. My development of value creation as both a new ethical ideal and a source of meaning results in a surprising conclusion about Nietzsche’s view of social relations. Many read Nietzsche as a radical individualist, believing his ideal of value creation must require solitude or the life of a hermit. Yet, value creation is best understood as a social activity. Despite Nietzsche’s reliance on the solitary individual, I suggest that Nietzsche’s commitments to value creation are best captured by a model of competitive collaboration, which he calls friendship. The contribution of my project extends beyond mere Nietzsche interpretation. In Chapter 5 I argue that Nietzsche offers compelling arguments that address contemporary ethical debates. I offer a Nietzschean critique of a recent call for value creation by J. David Velleman. I conclude by suggesting that Nietzsche offers an intriguing twist on Bernard Williams’ conception of ethical confidence; creating values creates the normative concepts that provide the basis for meaningful action. (shrink)

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his “revaluation (...) of all values”, and lays out three “design-requirements” that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III–IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values. (shrink)

Although there is no mention of him in his published works, there is little doubt that some of Nietzsche’s most famous doctrines were inspired by the views expressed by the character Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias. Though many have been keen to notice the resemblance between their moral, societal and political views, little, if any, attention has been given to the kinship between their views on happiness and its various components or relations. What I would like to try to do in (...) this paper is to draw out these similarities. In so doing, I hope to also show where it is they might be seen to diverge in important and interesting ways. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic for our current understanding of nature. I will show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy can be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a (...) highly paradoxical project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I argue that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Using Alasdair MacIntyre as a foil, I defend what I take to be a viable Nietzschean genealogical account, showing that a proper perspectivism is neither perniciously subjectivist nor absolutist. I begin by arguing against MacIntyre’s assertion that genealogists are committed to the view that rationality requires neutrality and that as there is no neutrality, there is no rationality. I then continue by offering something of a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s view, designed partly to clarify the error pinpointed in MacIntyre’s arguments, but (...) primarily to amplify the Nietzschean solution. This reconstruction involves claiming that Nietzsche is committed to three different senses of “truth:” the “Truth” (with a capital “T”) of correspondence theories, “truth” which is really pragmatic knowledge that helps us survive, and, finally, “truth” that is nothing more that “metaphors and metonyms” which are falsely taken to be useful to survival. (shrink)

This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of "will to power", "eternal return", and "amor fati". (...) The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we "become who we are" in the recognition of their separate existence. (shrink)