Nietzsche on the Nature of the Unconscious

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (3):327-352 (2015)
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Abstract

This paper argues that Nietzsche develops a novel and compelling account of the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states: he argues that conscious mental states are those with conceptual content, whereas unconscious mental states are those with nonconceptual content. I show that Nietzsche’s puzzling claim that consciousness is ‘superficial’ and ‘falsifying’ can be given a straightforward explanation if we accept this understanding of the conscious/unconscious distinction. I originally defended this view in my ‘Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization’ ; since then, the view has come under criticism on several fronts. Brian Leiter and others suggest that there is not enough textual evidence for the view. In addition, Leiter, Mattia Riccardi and Tsarina Doyle argue that, rather than aligning the conscious/unconscious distinction with the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, Nietzsche endorses a higher-order tho..

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Paul Katsafanas
Boston University

Citations of this work

Inner Opacity. Nietzsche on Introspection and Agency.Mattia Riccardi - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (3):221-243.
Nietzsche's Pluralism about Consciousness.Mattia Riccardi - 2016 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1):132-154.

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References found in this work

On the genealogy of morality.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 2007 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson & Carol Diethe.
The gay science.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1910 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Common, Paul V. Cohn & Maude Dominica Petre.
Nietzsche.John Richardson & Brian Leiter (eds.) - 2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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