Nietzsche never presented a worked-out normative ethical theory and appeared to regard any attempt to do so as woefully misguided. He poured scorn on the main contenders for such a theory in his day, and in ours – Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. Moreover, he repeatedly referred to himself as an 'immoralist' and gave one of his books the title Beyond Good and Evil, thus seeming only to confirm the impression that he was more interested in demolishing, and even abolishing morality (...) altogether than in making any constructive contribution to the subject. While the topic of morality appears as a central and almost obsessive interest in his works – especially in the sequence of books from Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881) to On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – it generally does so as the target of relentless criticism. Many have concluded, not surprisingly, that Nietzsche, rather than being interested in replacing an existing conception of morality with a better one of his own, was in the business of advising us to abandon morality altogether – to live, in some sense, without morality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 1 2 3 4.

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

This article examines various readings of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. It treats key issues regarding each of the book’s three essays. The first essay presents slave morality as arising out of ressentiment against masters; Nietzsche thinks that this resentful attitude or affect becomes ingrained and is inherited in later generations. The second essay centers on the phenomenon of “bad conscience.” Nietzsche treats this not just critically, but also as enabling the “artist’s cruelty” which makes possible a new kind of human (...) enhancement. The third essay is about the “ascetic idea,” a “will to transcend” certain essential features of life—such as appearance, change, even willing—from which life suffers. Although Nietzsche finds this ascetic ideal present in the “unconditional will to truth,” this by no means implies that Nietzsche abandons truth as an aim. These three stories should be viewed as “conjectures” and as examples of the kind of thinking needed to understand morality and values. (shrink)

Aaron Ridley explores Nietzsche's mature ethical thought as expressed in his masterpiece On the Genealogy of Morals. Taking seriously the use that Nietzsche makes of human types, Ridley arranges his book thematically around the six characters who loom largest in that work—the slave, the priest, the philosopher, the artist, the scientist, and the noble. By elucidating what the Genealogy says about these figures, he achieves a persuasive new assessment of Nietzsche's ethics. Ridley's intellectually supple interpretation reveals Nietzsche's ethical position to (...) be deeper and more interesting than is often supposed: the relation, for instance, between Nietzsche's ideal of the noble and the ascetic or priestly conscience does not emerge as a stark opposition but as a rich interplay between the tensions inherent in each. Equally, he shows that certain under-appreciated confusions in Nietzsche's thought reveal much about the positive aspects of the philosopher's moral vision. The only book devoted entirely to the Genealogy, Nietzsche's Conscience offers a sympathetic but tough-minded critical reading of the philosopher's most important work. Delivered in clear and vigorous language and employing a broadly analytical approach, Ridley's commentary makes Nietzsche's reflections on morality more accessible than they have been hitherto. (shrink)

Nietzsche wrote in a scientific culture transformed by Darwin. He read extensively in German and British Darwinists, and his own works dealt often with such obvious Darwinian themes as struggle and evolution. Yet most of what Nietzsche said about Darwin was hostile: he sharply attacked many of his ideas, and often slurred Darwin himself as mediocre. So most readers of Nietzsche have inferred that he must have cast Darwin quite aside. But in fact, John Richardson argues, Nietzsche was deeply and (...) pervasively influenced by Darwin. He stressed his disagreements, but was silent about several core points he took over from Darwin. Moreover, Richardson claims, these Darwinian borrowings were to Nietzsche's credit: when we bring them to the surface we discover his positions to be much stronger than we had thought. Even Nietzsche's radical innovations are more plausible when we expose their Darwinian ground; we see that they amount to a new Darwinism. (shrink)

Nihilism -- Overcoming disorientation -- The will to power -- Overcoming despair -- The eternal recurrence -- Dionysian wisdom.

The paper examines Nietzsche's claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls "ressentiment" are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche's reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is "corrupt." Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

The paper examines Nietzsche’s claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls “ressentiment” are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche’s reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is “corrupt.” Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche’s early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche’s writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert, and accounts for Nietzsche’s lack of historical references. On the other (...) hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism’s conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche’s failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree. (shrink)

Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have?? To answer this question, I compare the method of pragmatic genealogy advocated by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker—a method whose singular combination of fictionalising and historicising has met with suspicion—with the simpler method of paradigm-based explanation. Fricker herself has recently moved towards paradigm-based explanation, arguing that it is (...) a more perspicuous way of reaping the same explanatory pay-off as pragmatic genealogy while dispensing with its fictionalising and historicising. My aim is to determine when and why the reverse movement from paradigm-based explanation to pragmatic genealogy remains warranted. I argue that the fictionalising and historicising of pragmatic genealogy is well motivated, and I outline three ways in which the method earns its keep: by successfully handling historically inflected practices which paradigm-based explanation cannot handle; by revealing and arguing for connections to generic needs we might otherwise miss; and by providing comprehensive views of practices that place and relate the respects in which they serve both generic and local needs. (shrink)

This paper examines three reasons to think that Craig's genealogy of the concept of knowledge is incompatible with knowledge-first epistemology and finds that far from being incompatible with it, the genealogy lends succour to it. This reconciliation turns on two ideas. First, the genealogy is not history, but a dynamic model of needs. Secondly, by recognizing the continuity of Craig's genealogy with Williams's genealogy of truthfulness, we can see that while both genealogies start out from specific needs explaining what drives (...) the development of certain concepts rather than others, they then factor in less specific needs which in reality do not come later at all, and which have also left their mark on these concepts. These genealogies thereby reveal widespread functional dynamics driving what I call the de-instrumentalization of concepts, the recognition of which adds to the plausibility of such instrumentalist approaches to concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a preview of the article: This essay begins by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the developmental strategy adopted in my Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morality” in relation to the contrasting approaches of Conway, Hatab, and Janaway in their studies of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. It then turns to take up a topic that, in the light of the readings of Conway, Hatab, Janaway, and myself, I now take to be much more (...) central than any of us has adequately acknowledged, namely, the relationship of GM to the Hellenistic conception of philosophy. I sketch this argument and explore its implications through Janaway’s and Hatab’s different (but not incompatible) reflections on perspectivism, before finally providing an illustration of how Nietzsche’s indebtedness to the themes of freedom and slavery in ancient philosophy illuminates our understanding of the slave revolt in morals, the psychology of the priest, and the interpretation of the sovereign individual. Given the complexity of the rhetorical and argumentative structure of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, any author presumptuousness enough to offer a study of this text needs to have a clear (and defensible) strategy for approaching it.1 Such strategies may be various, and in the cases under consideration, this is the case. Both Larry Hatab and Dan Conway offer textualist interpretations, with Hatab seeking to communicate the intensely radical character of GM by focusing strongly on the agonistic dimensions of its argument and rhetoric, while Conway reads GM as a Bildungsroman and so seeks to track and explicate Nietzsche’s efforts to guide his readers from innocence to experience. (Such readings need not be incompatible since it could be, for example, that it is through his efforts to construct an internal agon within the reader that Nietzsche seeks to overcome their innocence.) By contrast, both Chris Janaway and I offer more contextualist accounts. Janaway’s strategy is to take Nietzsche at his word and to offer a close reading of the argument of GM in relation to the two philosophical figures—Paul Rée and Arthur Schopenhauer—that Nietzsche identifies as his representative opponents. My own strategy is to adopt a developmental approach to considering GM, one that seeks to reconstruct the reasons—internal to his project of reevaluation—that lead Nietzsche to require a genealogical investigation of morality and to use this reconstruction as a way of orienting the analysis of this text. (And obviously there is some overlap here given Nietzsche’s varied relationships to Schopenhauer and Rée in the course of his philosophical development.) Although my own methodological commitments favor a contextualist approach, it is wise to avoid dogmatism on this issue—not least because one might reasonably note that Ridley’s Nietzsche’s Conscience, perhaps the most widely admired recent analysis of GM and one to which all of the authors considered here are indebted, is thoroughly textualist in its strategy of focusing on the central characters of GM.2 In what follows, I will briefly review my reasons for favoring a developmental form of contextualist account and what I take the strength and limitations of this approach (and of my performance of it) to be. I will then turn to consider what I now see as a central issue for understanding GM—namely, Nietzsche’s relationship to ancient philosophy—that has emerged in the light of further reflection on the arguments presented in these four works. I conclude by briefly reconsidering the nature of Nietzsche’s genealogical enterprise. (shrink)

Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases of contingency anxiety involve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting this Disagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in determining whether (...) to revise our beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by the Disagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases of contingency anxiety involve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting this Disagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in determining whether (...) to revise our beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by the Disagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)

By a will to truth Nietzsche understands an overriding commitment, unlimited in scope, to believing in accordance with evidence and argument. I show that the critique of this commitment found in Nietzsche’s later works uncovers the psychological grounds of our modern will to truth and establishes its affinity with distinctively moral commitments. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique nevertheless provides no answer to his question concerning the value of a will to truth in general. Nietzsche’s examination of the will to truth (...) aims instead to establish that we presently lack any standard for determining its value. (shrink)

Many commentators have said that Nietzsche is concerned, either in all or in some parts of his career, with providing a kind of ‘theodicy,’ or with justifying or finding meaning in suffering. In this article, I examine these notions, questioning whether terms such as ‘theodicy’ or ‘justifying suffering’ are helpful in getting Nietzsche’s views into focus, and exploring some unclarities concerning the way in which such terms themselves are understood. I conclude that, while Nietzsche’s later position is continuous with the (...) tradition of theodicy in seeking to relate suffering’s value to some wider whole, it is also discontinuous with that tradition because it does not hold that suffering as such has a fixed normative value, that suffering as such has a meaning, that it happens for a reason, or that it is justified, let alone that the world’s containing suffering is in line with our interests, or that we ought because of suffering to value our lives one way or another. On Nietzsche’s view there is nothing that guarantees meaning or specific normative value to suffering just because it is suffering. In all these senses Nietzsche has moved away from the tradition of theodicy. (shrink)

In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that Nietzsche does not disagree with central normative beliefs that ‘we’ hold. Such disagreement would threaten Parfit’s claim that normative beliefs are known by intuition. However, Nietzsche defends a conception of well-being that challenges Parfit’s normative claim that suffering is bad in itself for the sufferer. Nietzsche recognizes the phenomenon of ‘growth through suffering’ as essential to well-being. Hence, removal of all suffering would lead to diminished well-being. Parfit claims that if Nietzsche understood (...) normative concepts in Parfit’s objectivist sense, he would not disagree with the claim that suffering is bad in itself – that intrinsic facts about suffering count in favour of our not wanting it. I argue that Nietzsche would disagree. Suffering for Nietzsche is not merely instrumentally necessary for psychological growth, nor is it easy to construe it as something bad in itself that contributes value as part of a good whole. Suffering that can be given meaning through growth is something we have reason to want. Suffering that remains brute and uninterpreted is something we have reason not to want. But for Nietzsche, suffering as such has no invariant value across all contexts. (shrink)

Health is a central concept in Nietzsche’s work. Yet in the most philosophically sophisticated secondary literature on Nietzsche, there has been fairly little sustained treatment of just what Nietzschean health consists in. In this paper, I aim to provide an account of some of the central marks of this health: resilience, discipline, vitality, a certain positive condition of the will to power, a certain tendency toward integration, and so on. This exposition and discussion will be the main task of the (...) paper. Then in the concluding section of the paper, I consider a line taken in some related secondary literature, which would suggest that health might ultimately be understood in formal or dynamic terms, relating to one’s will to power and/or the unity of one’s drives. I will present the beginnings of an argument against such an account of health. In focusing on the formal and dynamic side exclusively, it cannot get the full story. In particular, it seems to me to miss the substantive dimension that is essential if we are to understand health properly. As I shall suggest, the core concept of Nietzschean health is not fully explicable except by reference to normative terms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Much has been made of the apparent tensions in Nietzsche's ethical and metaethical views. In this essay I examine a kind of value standard available to Nietzsche that is present in his work. I offer an interpretation of honesty as both a Nietzschean virtue and a means of ethical assessment. Despite Nietzsche's well-known criticisms of truth, he upholds honesty as the only remaining virtue of his free spirits. Honesty has been treated in the literature primarily in the contexts of (...) truth or life affirmation, but I argue that we should instead recognize honesty as a virtue within the context of valuing. I defend honesty as a distinct kind of truthfulness and sincerity involving what I call confrontation. The seeds of Nietzsche's mature view are first evident in his work on tragedy, then developed further in Zarathustra, ultimately revealing a constraint on valuing that is essential to Nietzsche's broader normative projects. (shrink)

This article explores Nietzsche’s interest in perspectives. Various epistemological and semantic interpretations of perspectivism are considered, including readings of it as a semantic claim about the nature of truth, and readings of perspectivism as an epistemological claim, that all knowledge depends on interests or affect. Nietzsche’s perspectivism is best interpreted as a kind of psychobiological claim that serves as an extension of his claim that all life is will to power. On this reading, perspectivism has neither semantic significance nor epistemological (...) import. (shrink)

Article (Reprinted in "Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Nietzsche", edited by B. Leiter and J. Richardson, Oxford University Press, 2001.

Many have questioned whether Nietzsche regularly commits genetic fallacies.1 He published at least two of them, both of which are minor, though still rather sad to behold (HH 9 and D 92).2One way to get over the sadness, and the fear that many more such cases exist in the text, is to become convinced, on the basis of actual evidence, that Nietzsche understood the fallaciousness of precisely the kind of inference he employs in those two cases. They can be treated (...) as insignificant if we have good reason to believe that Nietzsche would have repudiated them had he stopped to think about it. And there is plenty of evidence for that.In what follows I show that Nietzsche made his opposition to a particular pattern of .. (shrink)

People sometimes try to call others’ beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such ‘Etiological Challenges’ is a topic that has started attracting attention in epistemology. Current work on this topic aims to show that Etiological Challenges are, at most, only indirectly epistemically significant, insofar as they bring other generic epistemic considerations to the agent’s attention. Against this approach, we argue that Etiological Challenges are epistemically significant in a more direct and (...) more distinctive way. An Etiological Challenge prompts the agent to assess whether her beliefs result from practices of indoctrination, and whether she should reduce confidence in those beliefs, given the anti-reliability of indoctrination as a method of belief-acquisition. Our analysis also draws attention to some of the ways in which epistemic concerns interact with political issues—e.g. relating to epistemic injustice, identity-based discrimination, and segregation—when we’re thinking about the contingent causal origins of our beliefs. (shrink)