In recent years, Nietzsche’s views on (natural) science attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Overall, his attitude towards science tends to be one of suspicion, or ambivalence at least. My article addresses the “Nietzsche and science” theme from a slightly different perspective, raising a somewhat different type of question, more pragmatic if you like, namely: how to be a Nietzschean philosopher of science today? What would the methodological contours of a Nietzschean approach to present-day research areas (such as neuroscience, (...) astrophysics, synthetic biology or climate studies) amount to? In other words, my paper reflects a shift of focus from author studies to extrapolation. The design of my article is as follows. I will start with the question (already widely discussed in the expert literature) to what extent Friedrich Nietzsche (a classical philologist by training) managed to familiarise himself with the natural sciences of his epoch. Subsequently, I will outline some basic methodological and conceptual ingredients of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science, focussing on core issues such as “genealogy”, “interpretation”, “enhancement” and “truth”. Next, I will elucidate Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology with the help of three case studies (three representative samples if you will) taken from Nietzsche’s writings and dealing with physiology, astronomy and neuro-psychology respectively. Finally, I will present the methodological contours of a Nietzschean understanding of contemporary technoscience. (shrink)

To date authors are unsure about Nietzsche's self-critical attitude regarding his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While few doubt that the narrative reaches a dramatic climax at the end of its third part, the largely satirical fourth part invites to take this climax cum grano salis. I provide an interpretation of the dramatic structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by focusing on the tragic nature of Nietzsche's ideal of the Übermensch and the comical relief provided by part four. Accordingly, the completion at the (...) end of part three is relegated to a noble lie to assuage the tragic nature of Zarathustra's ideal. (shrink)

Se analizan los textos de Rafael Gutiérrez-Girardot sobre F. Nietzsche en torno a la tragedia y el pesimismo. Esta aproximación se elabora a partir de tres temas: estilo, nihilismo y estética. Se argumenta que la interpretación de Gutiérrez-Girardot sobre Nietzsche impide que este sea visto solo como un crítico literario. Asimismo, este trabajo brinda el tono a la escritura de Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot y, de este modo, configura su estilo personal.

Nietzsche attributes ‘will power’ to all living things, but this seems in sharp conflict with other positions important to him‐and implausible besides. The doctrine smacks of both metaphysics and anthropomorphizing, which he elsewhere derides. Will to power seems to be an intentional end‐directedness, involving cognitive or representational powers he is rightly loath to attribute to all organisms, and tends to downplay even in persons. This paper argues that we find a stronger reading of will to power‐both more plausible and more (...) consistent with Nietzsche's other views‐by developing his affinities with Darwinism. By seeing will to power as an ‘internal revision’to Darwinism, opposing the latter's stress (as Nietzsche thinks) on ‘survival’, but assenting to its uses of natural selection, we can ground or naturalize that notion, congenially to Nietzsche and to us. (shrink)

It has become orthodox to read Nietzsche as proposing the ‘sublimation’ of troublesome behavioural impulses. On this interpretation, he is said to denigrate the elimination of our impulses, preferring that we master them by pressing them into the service of our higher goals. My thesis is that this reading of Nietzsche’s conception of self-cultivation does not bear scrutiny. Closer examination of his later thought reveals numerous texts that show him explicitly recommending an eliminatory approach to self-cultivation. I invoke his theory (...) of the will to power in order to explain why he persistently valorises both elimination and sublimation as preconditions of healthy subjective unity. I conclude that which of these two approaches he recommends in a given situation depends on whether or not the impulse in question can be put to use within the overall economy of our drives. (shrink)

Based on a review of the literature and historical evidence, I argue that the use of the methodological principle known as the priority principle in Anglo-American Nietzsche scholarship is inconsistent and irreconcilable with historical evidence. It attempts to demarcate between the published works and the Nachlass. However, there are no agreed upon necessary and sufficient conditions of a particular textual object being considered “Nachlass.” This absence leads to implicit and often tacit value demarcation criteria that can be broadly grouped into (...) four types of consideration: publication, authorization, publicness, and audience. Each of these criteria pick out a different set of texts as “Nachlass.” Thus, despite the veneer of agreement, the most broadly accepted methodological approach in the Anglo-American tradition of Nietzsche scholarship is applied inconsistently. I argue that we must either offer necessary and sufficient conditions for a piece of text being Nachlass, or we ought to abandon such abstract criteria altogether and embrace a contextual and historical approach. I then argue that the first option is impossible given historical evidence. I conclude this article by explicating several recent German approaches to the Nachlass which I think can offer a new possible approach. (shrink)

Heidegger’s 1938–1939 seminar on Nietzsche ’s On the Utility and Liability of History for Life continues Heidegger’s grand interpretation of Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker of presence. Nietzsche ’s conceptions forgetting, memory, and even life itself, according to Heidegger, are all complicit in the privileging of presence. Simultaneous with his seminar, Heidegger is also compiling the notebook, Die Geschichte des Seyns, 1938–1940, wherein he sketches his own conception of history. Examining Heidegger’s criticisms of Nietzsche in the light of his contemporaneous (...) notebook allows us to articulate Heidegger’s concern for history and for “what has-been” as a thinking of the “coming” of being. For Heidegger, to exist historically is to exist as something sent, something arriving, as something that “comes” to us. This coming of history is an ontological determination of all that is, no longer construed as present-at-hand objects, but as always arriving, relational beings. After presenting Heidegger’s view of the coming of history, I return to Nietzsche ’s Utility and Liability of History to draw attention to an aspect of his text that is neglected by Heidegger, that of the political. The concluding sections of Nietzsche ’s text confront the politics of the present, in both senses of the genitive, in order to rally against the closure of society. In the conclusion to the paper, I turn to the political dimension of Nietzsche ’s thinking of history with an eye to how it might elude Heidegger’s interpretation. (shrink)

Two models of human perfection proposed by Nietzsche and the Buddha are investigated. Both the overman and the arahant need practice and individual effort as key to their realization, and they share roughly the same conception of the self as a construction. However, there are also a number of salient differences. Though realizing it to be constructed, the overman does proclaim himself through his assertion of the will to power. The realization of the true nature of the self does not (...) lead the overman to seek the way to be released from saṃsara as does the arahant. On the contrary, he rejoices in the eternally recurring situation. The arahant, however, has totally relinquished any attachment to the self, constructed or otherwise. The arahant does not care about the Eternal Recurrence, as he only focuses on the present moment. Finally, they are both beyond good and evil, but in a substantively different way. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the formation of the self and the worldly horizon within which this self achieves its meaning. Our inquiry takes place from two perspectives: the first derived from the Nietzschean analysis of how one becomes what one is; the other from current developments in complexity theory. This two-angled approach opens up different, yet related dimensions of a non-essentialist understanding of the self that is none the less neither arbitrary nor deterministic. (...) Indeed, at the meeting point of these two perspectives on the self lies a conception of a dynamic, worldly self, whose identity is bound up with its appearance in a world shared with others. After examining this argument from the respective view points offered by Nietzsche and complexity theory, the article concludes with a consideration of some of the political and ethical implications of representing our situatedness within a shared human domain as a condition for self-formation. (shrink)

Guided to the notion of the eternal return by the philosophical intuitions of the Greek antiquity, Nietzsche turned to the physical sciences of his day in order to further his inquiry. This extensive intellectual engagement represented a genuine attempt to investigate the possible continuity of meaning between the mythical tradition, on the one hand, and the rational-empirical (i.e. scientific), on the other. In particular, Nietzsche was intrigued by the manner in which the relationship between myth and science played out in (...) the wide-ranging debates on the eternal recurrence and entropy. Obscuring the view, however, lay the debris of metaphysical imports into the discourse of secular modern science. In the course of his ambitious undertaking to disentangle physics from metaphysics, Nietzsche discerned a possibility for synthesising the scientific explanation for his ‘fundamental conception’ (EH: Z, §1) with the mythical wisdom of the ages. His inferences proved nothing short of explosive. The doctrine of the eternal return of the same, instead of the docile cosmic torpor, urged the radical revaluation of all values. The measure of the eternal return’s power was to dissolve its impersonation – the Übermensch – into a form of well-being. Nietzsche was convinced that his ‘mightiest idea’ (NF-1881:11[148]) illuminated the path we must follow lest we wish to incur the full force of the ‘frightening wisdom of Silenus’ (BT: §4). (shrink)