Nietzsche and German Idealism

Dissertation, University of Oxford (United Kingdom) (1988)
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Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The purpose of this thesis is to provide an interpretation of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche which makes plain the relation in which his philosophy stands to those of his Idealist predecessors, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. The current scholarly consensus, in agreement with Nietzsche's explicit comments on his predecessors, tends to construe Nietzsche's philosophy as fundamentally opposed to Idealism in all its forms. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that the central doctrines of Nietzsche's mature philosophy are best interpreted as a profound, if unintended, reflection upon and development of Kant's Critical Philosophy, and as such should be compared with Hegel's own attempts to improve on Kant. An ancillary purpose of this thesis is to critically examine the project outlined in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely the attempt to discover by means of critique the limits of human knowledge. The third purpose is to study the method of philosophical interpretation, and especially of comparative interpretation. ;A brief survey of Nietzsche's background and work reveals that, although he had some exposure to Kantian ideas, his knowledge of German Idealism was relatively superficial. The presentation of Nietzsche's important, unconscious debt to Idealism begins with a study of his early epistemological writings, which are shown to be Kantian in intention, but pre-Kantian in results. Nietzsche's mature thought, as expressed in the doctrine of the "will to power" and in the project of the "transvaluation of all values", compensates for this deficiency by guiding a more profound, post-Kantian reflection on the Critical Philosophy. The subsequent comparison with Hegel reviews Nietzsche's doctrine of the "eternal recurrence of the same", his "perspectivism", and his idea of philosophical individuality as possible contributions to a philosophy inheriting Hegel's fundamental speculative concerns

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