Nietzsche’s Humean (all-too-Humean) Theory of Motivation

In The Nietzchean Mind. Routledge. pp. 161-176 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Nietzsche and Hume agree that desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. This shared view helps them appreciate continuities between human and animal motivation and sets them against a long tradition of rationalist rivals including Kant and Plato. In responding to Kant, Nietzsche further developed the Humean views that Kant himself was responding to. Kantians like Christine Korsgaard argue that reflective endorsement and rejection of options presented by desire demonstrates reason’s ability to independently drive reasoning and action. In Daybreak 109, Nietzsche provides a simpler Humean explanation: reflective endorsement and rejection involve reflecting on one desire from the viewpoint of another, with desire as the only motivational force. This explains the attentional and hedonic phenomenology of reflective endorsement without ascribing any motivational force to rational processes independent of desire.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Humean motivation and Humean rationality.Mark van Roojen - 1995 - Philosophical Studies 79 (1):37-57.
Blame and the Humean Theory of Motivation.Adam R. Thompson - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1345-1364.
Realism, Rational Action, and the Humean Theory of Motivation.Melissa Barry - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (3):231-242.
How reason can be practical: A reply to Hume.Philip Clark - 2007 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 94 (1):213-230.
The Humean theory of reasons.Mark Schroeder - 2007 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 2. Oxford University Press. pp. 195--219.
Because I Believe It’s the Right Thing to Do.Joshua May - 2013 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4):791-808.
Ethical Relativism and Ethical Reasons.Mark Steven van Roojen - 1993 - Dissertation, Princeton University
'Humean' Rationality, Morality, and Reasons for Action.John Joseph Tilley - 1988 - Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison
Directions of fit and the Humean theory of motivation.Mary Clayton Coleman - 2008 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (1):127 – 139.
Motivation in agents.Christian Miller - 2008 - Noûs 42 (2):222–266.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-07-26

Downloads
351 (#52,320)

6 months
135 (#21,099)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Neil Sinhababu
National University of Singapore

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The moral problem.Michael Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
The sources of normativity.Christine M. Korsgaard - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Onora O'Neill.
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).David Hume - 1969 - Mineola, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Sources of Normativity.Christine Korsgaard - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (196):384-394.

View all 12 references / Add more references