The paper explores the issue of moral relativism in Nietzsche, and tries to argue that Nietzsche's attitude towards moral values does not support a radical relativism according to which since (i) every moral interpretation is relative to a judging perspective, and (ii) an absolute viewpoint is lacking, then (iii) every moral interpretation seems to be as true, valid or justified as the others. On the contrary, Nietzsche's perspectivism leaves space for a rank order among values, whose establishment is considered by (...) Nietzsche as the future task of the philosopher. (shrink)

An overview of Nietzsche's philosophy of action.

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)

ABSTRACTI offer an interpretation of Nietzsche's striking idea of ‘the innocence of becoming’, and a partial defense of its import, namely, that no one is ever morally responsible or guilty for what they do and that many of the so-called reactive attitudes are misplaced. I focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the arguments as set out in Twilight of the Idols. First, there is Nietzsche's hypothesis, partly psychological and partly historical or anthropological, that the ideas of ‘free’ action or free (...) will, and of responsibility for actions freely chosen or willed, were introduced primarily in order to justify punishment. Call this the Genetic Thesis about Free Will. Second, there is Nietzsche's claim that the moral psychology, or ‘psychology of the will” as he calls it, that underlies this picture is, in fact, false – that, in fact, it is not true that every action is willed or that it reflects a purpose or that it originates in consciousness. Call these, in aggregate, the Descriptive Thesis about the Will. Finally, there is articulation of a programmatic agenda, namely, to restore the ‘innocence of becoming’ by getting rid of guilt and punishment based on guilt – not primarily because ascriptions of guilt and responsibility are false, but because a world understood as ‘innocent’, one understood in terms of ‘natural’ cause and effect, is a better world in which to live. I focus in particular on a reactive attitude often ignored by philosophers, but of crucial importance for Nietzsche, namely, revenge. I aim to explain and defend Zarathustra's recommendation: ‘Enemy’ you shall say, but not villain; sick you shall say, but not scoundrel; fool you shall say, but not ‘sinner.’ Nietzsche's views are contrasted with those of important modern writers on these topics, especially P.F. Strawson and Derk Pereboom. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ “Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology”, replete with provocative and insightful claims, has been extremely influential in Nietzsche scholarship. In the two decades since its publication, much of the most interesting and philosophically sophisticated work on Nietzsche has focused on exactly the topics that Williams addresses: Nietzsche’s moral psychology, his account of action, his naturalistic commitments, and the way in which these topics interact with his critique of traditional morality. While Williams’ pronouncements on these topics are brief and at times (...) oracular, and although many important details are not addressed, he manages to identify some of the richest veins in Nietzsche’s texts. In this response, I focus on the four central claims in Williams’ article. Sections One and Two address the claim that Nietzsche is a naturalist and an advocate of “minimalist moral psychology,” respectively. Sections Three and Four examine Williams’ interpretations of Nietzsche on the will and agency. Finally, Section Five critiques Williams’ claim that Nietzsche cannot be a source of philosophical theories. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to provide a systematic account of Nietzsche’s philosophy of value by examining his exemplars. It will be argued that these exemplars represent his favoured evaluative practices and therefore illustrate what I will call his evaluative ideals. The thesis will be structured in three chapters, each examining a different exemplar that emerges from a particular period of Nietzsche’s work. Proceeding in this way will allow me to examine what I take to be three strands of (...) his philosophy of value; the critical ideal through the exemplar of the Free Spirit, the ethical ideal through Zarathustra, and the meta-ethical ideal through the exemplar of the Future Philosopher. These standpoints, it will be claimed, reflect Nietzsche’s central insights about what we should value and the way in which we should value, and are in this sense his evaluative ideals. Moreover, in doing so I will also attempt to provide some key insights on Nietzsche’s reasons for his evaluative preferences, as given through these exemplars as evaluative ideals. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethics and metaethics that reconciles his apparent antirealism with his engagement in normative discourse. Interpreting Nietzsche as a metaethical constructivist—as holding, to a first approximation, that evaluative facts are grounded purely in facts about the evaluative attitudes of the creatures to whom they apply—reconciles his vehement declarations that nothing is valuable in itself with his passionate expressions of a particular evaluative perspective and injunctions for the free spirits to create new values. Drawing on (...) Nietzsche’s broader epistemological and psychological views, I develop a distinctive, and genuinely Nietzschean, version of constructivism. On this account, evaluative properties are grounded in affective valuations of the new philosophers. The proposed interpretation synthesizes a variety of disparate features of Nietzsche’s writings and improves on existing interpretations in the literature. The resulting version of constr.. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é articular os conceitos de autogenealogia e de reivindicação de objetividade moral, na medida em que exploro a fecundidade da noção de autorreferencialidade do argumento autogenealógico, e de uma concepção deflacionada de objetividade, onde o mais importante é o controle sobre o conteúdo dos juízos morais, e menos a verdade correspondencial desses juízos. Para isso, lanço mão de algumas categorias do debate contemporâneo em metaética, de modo sustentar que Nietzsche ocupa uma posição não-cognitivista, mas com algum (...) sucesso de reivindicação de objetividade moral. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers Friedrich Nietzsche’s claims about value creation alongside his proclamation that ‘nature is always value-less’, assessing their implications for his metaethics. It begins by weighing the evidence for a recent constructivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s metaethics, arguing that despite several apparent interpretive advantages, Nietzschean constructivism ultimately fails. Through a close reading of GS 301 and related passages, the constructivist interpretation is shown to be misguided in taking Nietzsche’s talk of value creation as expressing a metaethical view according to which (...) the evaluative attitudes of philosophers ground what is valuable. Against this, it is argued that GS 301 should be understood as an assertion of the status of philosophers as the causal sources of new evaluative outlooks that shape the held values of their respective cultures, a claim developed through analysis of passages in which Nietzsche discusses his ideal of the ‘genuine philosopher’ and contrasts this figure with ‘critics’ or ‘philosophical laborers’. It is next argued that, insofar as it is best understood as describing a social or anthropological phenomenon rather than a metaphysical one, GS 301 is a poor piece of evidence not only for the constructivist interpretation, but in fact for any account of Nietzsche’s metaethical position—including radical anti-realist interpretations informed by his statement that ‘nature is always value-less’. The paper then concludes by appealing to another passage, GS 55, which hints towards a very different—and plausibly realist—picture of Nietzsche’s metaethics. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to make sense of the tension in Nietzsche’s work between the unashamedly egocentric and the apparently mystical. While scholars have tended to downplay one or other of these aspects, this book shows that the two are not only compatible but mutually illuminating. Supporting both of these aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy is a conception of the one and the many that develops from the thought of Goethe. Goethe is not typically given a lot of attention in (...) Anglophone philosophy, and this is the case even in Nietzsche studies. This is a severe limitation as Goethe had an immense influence on many subsequent thinkers, and this is especially true of Nietzsche. Goethe’s conception of the relationship of the one to the many is unique - as Cassirer wrote, such a view “can hardly be found elsewhere in the history of philosophy or of natural science”. Nietzsche as Egoist and Mystic shows how this “Goethean” conception of the one and the many was further developed by Nietzsche, and how it helps to illuminate Nietzsche’s complex and much disputed religious thought. This book is a mediation between Nietzsche and major currents in mystical thought both East and West which shows how previous interpretations fail to adequately account for crucial aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, including his egoism. (shrink)

This book first published in the year 2021 June. Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Kuhn von Verden Verlag. Includes bibliographical references. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 19th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. 6). Nihilism (Philosophy). 7). Eternal return. I. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. II. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-.[Translation from German into English of Friedrich Nietzsche’s notes of 1881]. New Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Many of the notes have never been (...) translated into English before. Go inside the workshop of a great philosopher's mind and read these notes. Table of Contents Introduction and Preface (Pages: 1-11 ) Notebook: 11 = M III 1. Spring - Autumn 1881 11 [1 to 348] (Pages: 12-167 ) Nietzsche’s Notebooks in English: a Translator’s Introduction and Afterward (Pages: 168-183 ) The thought of the eternal return of the same (Pages: 184-197 ) Later Recapitulation note of 1888 14 [188] (Pages: 198-204 ) Rejection of the idea of eternal (Pages: 205 ) Translation of 4 notes by Nietzsche on Perspectivism (Pages: 206-210 ) Nietzsche gets some final few words (Pages: 211-216 ) Bibliographies (Pages: 217-236 ) Project started in summer of 2012. No one else has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. If you want to get in to more philological details you must learn German (see Nietzschechannel plus many published books on the topics). Translation notes. I have not tried to fix, polish-up, or clarify Nietzsche’s unpublished writings. Some of the translator have really refined Nietzsche’s ideas and positions. I have not “fixed” Nietzsche. I have not dropped or added words or changed the wording to make Nietzsche’s position clearer or stronger (others have done enough damage). Learn German and read the texts in German – my best recommendation and advice to you the reader. There are groups on the internet that work on all the details of translating Nietzsche’s remarks. There are many nuances and shades of the meaning in attempting to translate anyone’s language. Some words I could not translate from German and French; and I left those few words in German, but more words in French. I think most of the French texts are quotes that Nietzsche wrote down from French authors that he was reading at the time he wrote these notes. Reader beware. There are many historical and philosophical allusions as in all of Nietzsche’s philosophical writings and these notebooks are similar. Remember these are “notebooks” and include lots of notes or jottings -- and these are neither fragments nor polished drafts for publication. Nietzsche may have written these notebooks from back to front and re-used various notebooks at a later time. In the German text there are missing punctuations marks, missing quotation marks, missing words, abbreviation of words, miss numbered section, working table of contents for project books he wanted to publish, projects outlined, quotes without quote marks. Enjoy reading and thinking with Nietzsche in his unpublished notes. (shrink)

Causal knowledge unquestionably provides useful means to describe, explain and predict both natural and daily phenomena. This article addresses whether causality as such may not be ontologically primary and looks for an alternative fundamental mechanism encapsulating the information load of the causal framework. A probabilistic process view of reality asserting the struggle of natural forces is considered along with lines quoted from Nietzsche’s posthumously published notebooks and published work. Examples from scientific discoveries, in particular neurosciences, echoing his ontology are provided. (...) Furthermore, I propose a basic number game algorithm to illustrate and model the struggle of forces leading to causal inferences for an external observer. Nietzschean dynamic ontology involving the ceaseless struggle of will-to-power units accords with the emergentist approach to causation, which has been principally employed by the scientists working under the fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and complex dynamical systems. (shrink)

Nietzsche is known for his penetrating critique of Mitleid. He seems to be critical of all compassion but at times also seems to praise a different form of compassion, which he refers to as “our compassion” and contrasts it with “your compassion”. Some commentators have interpreted this to mean that Nietzsche’s criticism is not as unconditional as it may seem – that he does not condemn compassion entirely. I disagree and contend that even though Nietzsche appears to speak favorably of (...) some forms of compassion, he regards the nature of all compassion to be fundamentally bad. Furthermore, I suggest that Nietzsche’s discussion on different forms of compassion have significant implications for achieving greatness and meaning in life. More specifically, I argue that, for Nietzsche, “our compassion,” however regrettable qua compassion it is, may give occasion for a rare and peculiar insight into “co-suffering” with others, which in turn results in overcoming compassion entirely. I also argue that although Nietzsche objects to compassion, he approves of a form of what feminist theorists might now call “anticipatory empathy.” Even though a large body of literature has evolved over Nietzsche’s critical evaluation of compassion, his understanding of a non-compassionate response to suffering is, in my view, rather overlooked and should receive more attention. (shrink)

To understand Nietzsche’s pedagogy of self-overcoming and to determine its true import for contemporary education, it is necessary to understand Nietzsche’s view of the self that is to be overcome. Nevertheless, previous interpretations of self-overcoming in the journals of the philosophy of education have lacked serious engagement with the Nietzschean self. I devote the first part of this paper to redressing this neglect and arguing for a view of the Nietzschean self as an assemblage of ontologically basic affects which have (...) been guided and modulated by the incorporation of perspectives. This interpretation has important consequences for self-overcoming, for it constrains the individual’s conscious agency to operations on perspectives. In light of this view I then advance a competing conception of self-overcoming and discuss some of the shortcomings of antecedent interpretations. Although previous interpreters have done their part to exhaust the characteristic actions of self-overcoming, I argue that they have either exaggerated the deleteriousness of social influence in the formation of the authentic individual, or else ignore it altogether. In the final part I reconsider the debate over the democratic or aristocratic nature of Nietzsche’s pedagogy of self-overcoming. Interestingly, self-overcoming cannot be labeled strictly as either, and out of this ambiguity grows the role of the school as an agent of cultural transformation. (shrink)

Resumo O objetivo do texto é relacionar a abordagem expressivista do agente moral em Nietzsche com as condições de sucesso de avaliação de juízos práticos perfeccionistas. Como locus da transformação, o agente moral se exprime por meio do potencial transformativo que consegue produzir, e não como entidade por trás das ações. Duas condições podem ser usadas, regulativamente, para avaliar o sucesso de juízos de caráter perfeccionista: por um lado, a maximização de conexões e interrelações no espaço, bem como o endosso (...) afirmativo de promessas no tempo e, por outro lado, a boa constituição que alguém mantém em meio à tensão entre um plano individual e supraindividual. No desdobramento do potencial transformativo, crítica e transformação são interdependentes e, além disso, o julgamento público reforça a dimensão social da filosofia de Nietzsche.The aim of the text is to relate the expressivist approach of the moral agency in Nietzsche to the conditions for successful evaluation of practical perfectionist judgments. As the locus of transformation, the moral agent expresses him/herself in the transformative potential that he/she manages to produce, and not as an entity behind the actions. Two conditions can be used, regulatively, to evaluate the success of perfectionist judgments: on the one hand, the maximization of connections and interrelationships in space, as well as the affirmative endorsement of promises in time, and, on the other hand, the good constitution one keeps in the middle of the tension between an individual and supraindividual plan. In the unfolding of transformative potential, criticism and transformation are interdependent and, moreover, public judgment reinforces the social dimension of Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, Stephen Hawking proclaimed the death of philosophy. Only science can address philosophy’s perennial questions about human values. The essay first examines Nietzsche’s nineteenth century view to the contrary that philosophy alone can create values. A critique of Nietzsche’s contention that philosophy rather than science is competent to judge values follows. The essay then analyzes Edward O. Wilson’s claim that his scientific research provides empirically-based answers to philosophy’s questions about human values. Wilson’s bold new hypothesis about the (...) ‘social conquest of the earth’ challenges Nietzsche’s vision of philosophy’s mission. Confronting both Nietzsche and Wilson, the essay then considers three theoretical proposals for a consilience of philosophy, science, engineering and technology. The conclusion presents a working African model of consilience that addresses the existential problem of poverty in the Global South. (shrink)

This essay contrasts Nietzsche’s remarks on elite education with W.E.B. Du Bois’ demand for democratized education. The essay takes their remarks as springboards for a twenty-first century philosophy of education rather than an historical account of their philosophies. Both thinkers cultivated Kant and Hegel’s dream that the spirit of freedom guided by reason would unite all the world’s peoples. Both held that education was key to realizing the dream. Their judgments about qualifying for education separated them. Nietzsche insisted that only (...) the elite should receive the fullest measure of education. Du Bois believed that in the future virtually every human being would receive a university-level education. The essay’s principal point is to show how contemporary technology can make Du Bois’ dream a reality. An African philosopher’s working model demonstrates a path to universal university education. (shrink)

In this paper, I speculate on imitation’s role in language development and, more significantly, on its connection to sexual selection. My analysis is grounded in an interpretation of Darwin’s Descent of Man . In addition to observing imitation’s role in language development according to the argument of the Descent , I explore the ability of human beings that allows for the imitation of both the beautiful and the terrible or repulsive. I suggest that humans, in their appreciation of the beautiful (...) and formidable characters produced by a process of sexual selection, can appropriate these things in order to adorn themselves, thus imitating other non-human animals. This capacity points to a form of polymorphism manifest in human beings that is grounded in a psychological fluidity. Human beings, like birds, also have the power to use song in order to charm and challenge. Song and music provide the means by which imitation as seen in language development and sexual selection are intertwined, thus providing the important connection between the two main foci of my paper. (shrink)

There is, of course, The Given: what is given in experience. The ‘Myth Of The Given’ is just a wrong answer to the question ‘What is given?’ This paper offers a brief sketch of three possible right answers. It examines an early account by Charles Augustus Strong of why The Myth is a myth. It maintains that a natural and naturalistic version of empiricism is compatible with the fact that the Myth is a myth. It gives proper place to enactivist (...) considerations. It is ) broadly in line with the Sellarsian view as refined by John McDowell. It meets an important constraint: acknowledging the reality of something that seems at first to lend support to The Myth—i.e. the fact that we can engage in ‘non-inferential self-attribution of … sensations’ —without in any way succumbing to the Myth. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to begin a conversation about how we read and write about Nietzsche and, related to this, other figures in the history of philosophy. The principle of charity can appear to be a way to bridge two dif-ferent interpretative goals: getting the meaning of the text right and offering the best philosophy. I argue that the principle of charity is multiply ambiguous along three different dimensions, which I call “unit,” “mode,” and “strength”: consequently, it is (...) not a single, neutral or independent principle to which we can helpfully appeal and it cannot, in itself, perform this bridging function. Nietzsche, I suggest, is particularly ill suited to some forms of charitable reading. I compare charity to what I call “misreporting” a philosopher’s words, in order to highlight some problematic structural similarities. Finally, I assess what charity might be doing instead, if it is not intended to bridge meaning and best philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: Nietzsche, we are often told, had an account of 'self' or 'mind' or a 'philosophical psychology', in which what he calls our 'drives' play a highly significant role. This underpins not merely his understanding of mind, in particular, of consciousness and action. but also his positive ethics, be they understood as authenticity, freedom, knowledge, autonomy, self-creation, or power. But Nietzsche did not have anything like a coherent account of 'the drives' according to which the self, the relationship between (...) thought and action, or consciousness could be explained; consequently, he did not have a stable account of drives on which his positive ethics could rest. By this, I do not mean that his account is incomplete or that it is philosophically indefensible: both would leave open, misleadingly, the possibility of a rational reconstruction of Nietzsche’s views; both would already assume more unity and coherence than we find in his texts. Specifically, as I show through detailed analysis, Nietzsche provides varied and inconsistent accounts of what a 'drive' is, how much we can know about drives, and the relationship between drives and conscious deliberations about action. I conclude by questioning the hunt for a Nietzschean theory: is this the best way to be reading him? (shrink)

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

Interpreting Nietzsche’s writings on agency and responsibility through the lens of non-sovereignty generates interpretive and political-theoretical contributions. More specifically, I advance three arguments. First, Nietzsche’s genealogical critique of moral responsibility denaturalizes modernity’s conception of individual sovereignty and responsibility, by providing a naturalistic account of agency. Agency and responsibility are neither Kantian presuppositions of practical reason nor pieces of folk psychology to be abolished, but are normative, social, and historical achievements, and thus non-sovereign. Second, this implies a theory of responsibility that (...) is simultaneously more and less demanding than moralistic accounts: while, because agents are not autonomous, they do not bear sole responsibility for their lives, they are called upon to be responsible to and for the world, by maintaining the conditions of possible agency and flourishing. Third, Nietzsche provides both generative resources and cautionary tales for political theories of non-sovereign agency. While non-sovereign responsibility holds emancipatory and potentially democratic implications, Nietzsche’s explicit political writings demonstrate the risk that, rather than tempering existential resentment, this account could generate and intensify a resentful anti-political authoritarianism. Just as non-sovereignty provides a useful framework for making sense of tensions within Nietzsche’s thought, Nietzsche’s post-moral theory of agency and responsibility brings forward tensions, provocations, and paradoxes that must be engaged by theorists of non-sovereignty. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka has argued that Nietzsche’s positive ethical views can be formulated as a version of perfectionism that posits an objective conception of the good as the maximization of power and assigns to all agents the same goal of maximizing the perfection of the best. I show that Hurka’s case for both parts of this interpretation fails on textual grounds and that the kind of theory he proposes is in conflict with Nietzsche’s general approach to morality. The alternative reading for (...) which I argue defends a form of perfectionism as the value perspective of a ‘noble type’ that may emerge in the wake of a revaluation of all values. The basis of this perfectionism is an individual’s projection of an ideal of life to which she ascribes intrinsic value and in terms of which the value of other things is assessed. Justifying this reading requires drawing a distinction between life-denying ideals – forms of the ‘ascetic ideal’ – and life-affirming ‘counterideals’. It also requires recognizing that the perfection of the noble type is expressed in an individual ideal that cannot be shared with others, as opposed to a common ideal of human perfection. (shrink)

Abstract Nietzsche defends an ideal of freedom as the achievement of a ?higher human being?, whose value judgments are a product of a rigorous scrutiny of inherited values and an expression of how the answers to ultimate questions of value are ?settled in him?. I argue that Nietzsche's view is a recognizable descendent of ideas advanced by the ancient Stoics and Spinoza, for whom there is no contradiction between the realization of freedom and the affirmation of fate, and who restrict (...) this freedom to rare individuals, who escape the bondage of conventional mores and passive emotional states. Although Nietzsche rejects key assumptions made by both the Stoics and Spinoza, his outlook is an extension of their efforts to elaborate the notion of freedom as an ideal. (shrink)

This paper is primarily a response to ‘analytically-minded’ philosophers, such as Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter, who push for a ‘naturalistic’ interpretation of Nietzsche. In particular, this paper will consider Leiter’s (2007) discussion of Nietzsche’s chapter in Twilight of the Idols, ‘The Four Great Errors’, and argue that Leiter has misinterpreted this chapter in at least four ways. I provide a superior interpretation of this chapter, which argues that Nietzsche is using a transcendental style of argument to argue against a (...) common conception of causation. I argue that Nietzsche’s ultimate aim of this chapter is to argue for ‘the innocence of becoming’ rather than, as Leiter claims, the error of free will. I argue that this anti-naturalist methodology and conclusion are in tension with Leiter/clark’s Nietzsche, and highlights the need to pay attention to the being/becoming distinction in Nietzsche. (shrink)

Resumo Florescimento e excelência são dois ideais que ocupam um lugar central no perfeccionismo de Nietzsche. Este artigo procura oferecer uma interpretação original acerca do que está envolvido nestes termos, de como eles se diferenciam e se conectam, desenvolvendo assim um quadro axiológico que confira sentido a esse conjunto. Uma sugestão adicional é de que o modelo subjacente de valor que emerge a partir desta interpretação - com efeito, um modelo de uma vida boa - seja interessante e atrativo por (...) si só, e que, portanto, possa ter um apelo filosófico mais amplo.Central to Nietzsche's perfectionism are two ideals: flourishing and excellence. This article offers an original account of what they each involve, including how they differ and connect, plus an axiological picture that makes sense of that. It also suggests that the underlying model of value which emerges--in effect, a model of a good life is interesting and attractive in its own right, and that it may therefore have wider philosophical appeal. (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)

Nietzsche believes that we do not know our own actions, nor their real motives. This belief, however, is but a consequence of his assuming a quite general skepticism about introspection. The main aim of this paper is to offer a reading of this last view, which I shall call the Inner Opacity (IO) view. In the first part of the paper I show that a strong motivation behind IO lies in Nietzsche’s claim that self-knowledge exploits the same set of cognitive (...) capacities as well as the same folk-psychological framework involved in outward-directed mind-reading. In the second part I turn to Nietzsche’s view of agency and argue that he sees a fundamental discrepancy between the conscious attitudes we have introspective access to, on the one hand, and the subpersonal processes and states occurring at the unconscious level of the drives, on the other hand. (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)

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.

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche’s early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche’s writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert, and accounts for Nietzsche’s lack of historical references. On the other (...) hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism’s conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche’s failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree. (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)

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)

Against a widely supported view that Nietzsche was not a political thinker, there have been a number of edited collections and monographs devoted either to Nietzsche’s politics or, what is not quite the same thing, relationships between his thought and contemporary political philosophy. What is striking about this secondary literature is the degree of divergence among the positions taken. The books discussed in the present review provide further illustration of this diversity. This applies not only to the question whether he (...) was or was not a political thinker, but also to the further question what kind of political thinker. (shrink)

Against the tendency to regard Deleuze as a materialist and a naturalistic thinker, I argue that his core philosophical writings involve commitments that are incompatible with contemporary scientific naturalism. He defends different versions of a distinction between philosophy and natural science that is inconsistent with methodological naturalism and with the scientific image of the world as a single causally interconnected system. He defends the existence of a virtual realm of entities that is irreconcilable with ontological naturalism. The difficulty of reconciling (...) Deleuze’s philosophy with ontological naturalism is especially apparent in his recurrent conception of pure events that are irreducible to their incarnation in bodies and states of affairs. In the last section of this essay, I canvass some of the ways in which Deleuze’s thought might be reconciled with a more liberal, pluralist and ethical naturalism that he identified in an early essay on Lucretius. (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)

This essay presupposes that Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolf Carnap champion contrasting reactions to the fact that, throughout history, persons have been engaged in metaphysical disputes. Nietzsche embraces a libertarian reaction that is in agreement with his anti-democratic aristocratic political views, whereas Carnap endorses an egalitarian reaction aligned with his democratic and socialist political views. After characterizing these reactions, the essay argues for two claims. The first claim is that the stated contrasting reactions are to be considered, not only by the (...) few scholars who are interested both in Nietzsche’s and Carnap’s writings, but by a far larger group that includes those who have addressed the continental-analytic gap; those who are concerned with the development of contemporary philosophy; and/or those who are interested in the writings of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, David Lewis and/or Peter van Inwagen. The second claim is that we have to entertain a synthesis of Nietzsche’s libertarian and Carnap’s egalitarian reaction in order to overcome the continental-analytic gap. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to argue that Nietzsche takes his own taste, and those in the relevant sense similar to it, to enjoy a kind of epistemic privilege over their rivals. Section 2 will examine the textual evidence for an anti-realist reading of Nietzsche on taste. Section 3 will then provide an account of taste as an ‘affective evaluative sensibility’, asking whether taste so understood supports an anti-realist reading. I will argue that it does not and that (...) we should resist construing the affects, which constitute taste for Nietzsche, as no more than Humean subjective preferences. Section 4 will then consider passages in which Nietzsche makes a connection between taste and epistemic considerations, suggesting that he appears to situate the epistemic privilege of his taste in a more fundamental method of evaluative disclosure, namely pre-reflective affective responses. Finally, Section 5 will argue that we can make sense of how such affective responses could provide us with evaluative knowledge by narrowing the scope of the objects of Nietzsche’s taste to other affective-evaluative states, such that the affective responses are meta-affective evaluations. On the basis of this idea, I construct a theory of meta-affective responses providing their subjects with access to the intrinsic phenomenal value of other affective-evaluative states, and then go on to show how Nietzsche can be read as applying this theory in a number of passages. (shrink)

Abstract Struck by essentialist and anti-essentialist elements in his writings, Nietzsche's readers have wondered whether his conception of the self is incoherent or paradoxical. This paper demonstrates that his conception of the self, while complex, is not paradoxical or incoherent, but contains four distinct levels. Section I shows Schopenhauer as Educator to contain an early description of the four levels: (1) a person's deepest self, embracing all that cannot be educated or molded; (2) a person's ego; (3) a person's ?ideal? (...) or ?higher self?; (4) a person's ?true self? or ?true nature?. In the remaining three sections, I show that Nietzsche develops and enriches this conception, without ever abandoning it. Section II treats the fourfold conception as it appears in Human, All Too Human. Section III interrogates relevant passages in the Gay Science, showing that while Nietzsche speaks of artful self-fashioning (as Alexander Nehamas emphasizes), he also pays due regard to the sense in which we are not our own creations. Section IV turns to the ?deepest? level of the self, consisting of motives and drives. Drawing primarily upon Daybreak and Beyond Good and Evil, I show that Nietzsche regards neither the drives nor their hierarchical ordering as things that we construct. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s ambiguous and allusive style of writing creates special problems for the principle of charity, the idea that we should work to understand philosophic statements in the way that will yie...

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s “sovereign individual,” which appears in the second treatise of his 1887 On the Genealogy of Morality. I argue that Nietzsche’s presentation of that figure’s sovereignty is much more ambiguous than has hitherto been recognized. In contrast to scholars who argue that he is either completely free from moral conscience or entirely subservient to it, I argue that he is neither completely autonomous nor heteronomous. He surpasses the need for the enforcement of custom (...) only by internalizing it, i. e. by developing a conscience. This positions him as a crucial link in Nietzsche’s understanding of the human being’s dependence on morality. Attending to the sovereign individual’s ambiguities reveals Nietzsche’s skepticism about the possibility of autonomy within the political community. (shrink)

There is a long and successful scholarly tradition of commenting on Nietzsche’s deep affinity for the philosophy of Heraclitus. But scholars remain puzzled as to why he suggested at the end of his career, in Ecce Homo, that the doctrine he valued most, the eternal recurrence of the same, might also have been taught by Heraclitus. This essay aims to answer this question through a close examination of Nietzsche’s allusions to Heraclitus in his first published mention of eternal recurrence in (...) The Joyful Science and in a related set of notes from the period when he was formulating and defending his doctrine of eternal recurrence while writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The key to answering this question, it is argued, is that Nietzsche came to believe that the doctrine of eternal recurrence, when properly understood as requiring identical repetition, has to presuppose a Heraclitean reality of eternal, absolute, and universal flux. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é esboçar os traços de uma antropologia nietzschiana que sustente um processo de transformação humana. Na primeira parte, antropologia literária, argumento que sua antropologia resgata a noção grega arcaica da natureza como arte ou cultura. Na segunda parte, antropologia científica, apresento o método científico de Nietzsche e de Freud em sua aproximação filosófica da questão da natureza. Na terceira e última parte, antropologia transformadora, discuto o desafio da renaturalização do ser humano, isto é, compreender não (...) apenas o que somos como seres humanos, mas também do que podemos nos tornar, questão que ilustro apelando para a ideia do “além-do-homem” de Nietzsche.: The purpose of this article is to sketch traces of a Nietzschean anthropology that supports a process of human transformation. In the first part, literary anthropology, I argue that his anthropology recovers Greek notion of nature as art and culture. In the second part, scientific anthropology, I present Nietzsche’s and Freud’s scientific method and its philosophical approach to the question of nature. In the third part, transformational anthropology, I discuss the challenge of renaturalizing human being, i. e., of understanding not only what we are as human beings, but also what we might become, issue that I illustrate by relating it to the Nietzschean overman. (shrink)

This article revisits the author’s influential account of Nietzche as a philosophical naturalist. It identifies the sources of Nietzsche’s position in the German naturalism of the mid-nineteenth century, in particular the work of Friedrich Lange. His naturalism is, however, “speculative” in that he postulates causal mechanisms not confirmed by science. Nietzsche’s ambition to explain morality naturalistically coexists with a “therapeutic” ambition to induce some readers to escape from morality. The article also addresses doubts that might arise against reading Nietzsche as (...) a naturalist. (shrink)

The article traces Nietzsche’s references to insects in his published and unpublished writings against the backdrop of his study of the entomological research of his time (esp. through his reading of Alfred Espinas’s Die thierischen Gesellschaften). The first part of the article explores how Nietzsche’s entomology allows us to add a posthumanist perspective to the more familiar poststructuralist readings of Nietzsche, as the entomological research he consulted offered him a model for understanding how rudimentary processes can lead to the formation (...) of structures and higher organizations with emergent properties. The second part of the article revisits Nietzsche’s conceptions of the will and the will to power against the backdrop of his references to insect sociality and the influence of Wilhelm Wundt. It shows that Nietzsche’s deconstruction of the will as an umbrella concept and his will to power are attempts to model the emergence of complex edifices from simple operations under which physical, psychological, and social phenomena must be thought to arise. The article concludes with a reflection of the social and political relevance of what Nietzsche identifies as modernity’s “disgregation of the will.”. (shrink)

Reading Nietzsche’s many remarks on freedom and free will, we face a dilemma. On the one hand, Nietzsche levels vehement attacks against the idea of the freedom of the will in several places throughout his writing. On the other hand, he frequently describes the sorts of people he admires as ‘free’ in various respects, as ‘free spirits’, or as in possession of a ‘free will’. So does Nietzsche think that we are or perhaps could be free, or not? I argue (...) that we ought to read these seemingly conflicting claims as part of one unified project, which is to try to understand what true freedom would look like. Nietzsche’s attacks on ‘free will’, I suggest, are not intended to establish that we are not free, but rather to show that a certain tempting picture of freedom is confused and totally inadequate for purpose. The positive half of Nietzsche’s project, then, should be read as his attempt to do a better job – to provide an account of freedom that better articulates what we were trying, via the confused picture, to get at. (shrink)

Freud claimed that the concept of drive is "at once the most important and the most obscure element of psychological research." It is hard to think of a better proof of Freud's claim than the work of Nietzsche, which provides ample support for the idea that the drive concept is both tremendously important and terribly obscure. Although Nietzsche's accounts of agency and value everywhere appeal to drives, the concept has not been adequately explicated. I remedy this situation by providing an (...) account of drives. I argue that Nietzschean drives are dispositions that generate evaluative orientations, in part by affecting perceptual saliences. In addition, I show that drive psychology has important implications for contemporary accounts of reflective agency. Contemporary philosophers often endorse a claim that has its origins in Locke and Kant: self-conscious agents are capable of reflecting on and thereby achieving a distance from their motives; therefore, these motives do not determine what the agent will do. Nietzsche's drive psychology shows that the inference in the preceding sentence is illegitimate. The drive psychology articulates a way in which motives can determine the agent's action by influencing the course of the agent's reflective deliberations. An agent who reflects on a motive and decides whether to act on it may, all the while, be surreptitiously guided by the very motive upon which he is reflecting. I show how this point complicates traditional models of the role of reflection in agency. (shrink)