Nietzsche's Naturalism: On the De-Deification of Nature and the Naturalization of the Human Being

Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University (2000)
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Abstract

In this study I characterize Nietzsche's thought as a kind of philosophical naturalism. Chapter 1 provides historical and theoretical background on naturalism as a philosophical position. The following chapters focus on Nietzsche's peculiar variety of naturalism, which is engaged in a dialogue with its naturalist predecessors, sometimes rejecting, sometimes appropriating and radicalizing their insights. Chapters 2--4 focus on Nietzsche's attempt to "de-deify" or "dehumanize" our understanding of nature. Chapter 2 emphasizes the privative dimension of Nietzsche's naturalism, focusing on his criticisms of earlier varieties of naturalism, such as mechanistic materialism and vitalism. Chapter 3 lays out Nietzsche's hypothesis regarding the "total character of the world" as chaos, which I interpret via Nietzsche's conceptions of chance and necessity. Chapter 4 points out the ineliminably anthropomorphic dimension of Nietzsche's own account of nature, while differentiating it from earlier humanistic falsifications. Chapters 5--7 focus on the second aspect of Nietzsche's naturalism, what he calls the "naturalization" of the human being. Chapter 5 interprets this as an attempt to achieve anthropological self-knowledge, by translating the human being back into nature and facing the "terrible text of homo natura." Chapter 6 examines this aspect of Nietzsche's project from an ethical-evaluative perspective, by examining his quarrel with the Stoics over the possibility of "living according to nature." Chapter 7 lays out the final, "nomothetic," or political aspect of Nietzsche's naturalization of the human being: his attempt to complete and perfect human nature. This constitutes the apotheosis of Nietzsche's whole naturalistic project, inasmuch as it legislates the formation of beings who are powerful enough and healthy enough to affirm nature as it is, without resentment or humanizing fictions. The study concludes with a critical examination of Nietzsche's account of nature, raising the question of its truth-status, and whether Nietzsche can justify the superiority of his account in a non-circular, non-dogmatic way. The two appendices provide a defense of my use of Nietzsche's unpublished writings, and a supplementary history of the concept of 'natural history' before Nietzsche appropriates it

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Peter Groff
Bucknell University

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