Abstract

My thesis is that Nietzsche holds a version of transcendental idealism. This project was motivated by several concerns. First, I noted the widely diverse and contradictory readings attributed to Nietzsche in the literature. I wanted to make sense of these various readings and resolve the conflicts as best I could. Second, I wanted to try to make Nietzsche as internally consistent as possible. For instance, if Nietzsche really abandons metaphysics wholesale, why does he seem to hold certain metaphysical positions? On the other hand, if it's true that Nietzsche holds the view often attributed to him that all claims are interpretive or perspectival , how could Nietzsche make metaphysical claims, and how can we take any of Nietzsche's views seriously if they are mere interpretations or if they are merely perspectival? ;I noted first that Nietzsche's earliest position is a Platonic/Schopenhauerian metaphysical dualism which he subsequently abandons. I argue that when Nietzsche subsequently rejects metaphysics he means precisely such dualism, such that he can consistently hold a non-dualistic metaphysics. Further, I note that when Nietzsche does reject dualism, he begins to develop his doctrine of the flux and his falsification and perspectivism theses. I claim on the one hand that he denies that the flux possesses those features which Kant denies the thing-in-itself possesses, and that Nietzsche's falsification thesis is a type of construction thesis wherein the mind constructs experience and the objects of experience by providing the various features which constitute the objectivity of objects: space, time, causality, permanence, substance, etc. In this way, Nietzsche's world-as-flux functions in the same way that Kant's thing-in-itself functions, and Nietzsche's falsified world of experience is the same as Kant's phenomena. In this way, I argue, Nietzsche holds a version of transcendental idealism