Friedrich Nietzsche

Richard Rorty has argued that Friedrich Nietzsche and William James are both polytheists in the deflationary sense that they are both pluralists about human value. I argue that there is a more philosophically significant sense in which Nietzsche and James might be called polytheists: both advocate a life of openness and receptivity to multiple and potentially incommensurable sources of inspiration outside of our conscious control. The value of these sources is accessed in experiences in which one feels that one is (...) given something in an experience that one could not have obtained through conscious effort. I argue that this moment of passivity plays a crucial role in both James’ treatment of religious experience in his Varieties and Nietzsche’s account of the state of inspiration he experienced while composing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and that their deep similarity on this point suggests that Nietzsche is closer to Jamesian religion than he is to Rortyan secularism. (shrink)

Las relaciones entre Nietzsche y América Latina están marcadas por el desencuentro. Lo cual no implica que Nietzsche no haya sido leído en Latinoamérica; pero es diferente aludir a Nietzsche, a asumir una perspectiva nietzscheana. Por eso, en vez de usar a Nietzsche para analizar su moral, para desplazar el punto de vista, en América Latina se moraliza a Nietzsche al ponerlo al servicio de esa moral, dejándola indemne. El caso de la filosofía latinoamericana es síntoma de ese desencuentro: en (...) tanto pensamiento de lo uno, no puede servirse del pensamiento nietzscheano, ya que es imposible construir un pensamiento del origen y la unidad desde un pensamiento de lo múltiple, como el de Nietzsche. Explorar y explotar al máximo ese desencuentro, sin intentar subsanarlo, permite construir la relación entre Nietzsche y América Latina en términos nietzscheanos, lo que implicaría deshacerse de la idea misma de América Latina en tanto sujeto, para concentrarse en la disección de sus fuerzas y en la potencia y miseria de sus pasiones. (shrink)

In the following paper, pursuing a lead from Heidegger’s 1937 reading of Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (ASZ), I first claim that the Nietzschean emphasis on awakening the thought and the thinker of eternal return should be read as analogous to Heidegger’s own call to awaken a fundamental attunement in the 1929/30 lecture course, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (GDM). I bolster this claim by insisting on a Nietzschean inspiration in the very call to awaken a fundamental attunement, which can be identified (...) on both implicit and explicit levels of the text. Initially exploring these levels, I argue that their commonality announces in part Heidegger’s effort to digest a debt of gratitude to the Nietzschean concept of horizon, and the task of the paper becomes to locate and articulate the connection between Nietzschean horizonality and the Heideggerian phenomenon of attunement. This is achieved through the dynamics of sleep and awakening as Heidegger contends with them thematically in GDM. By enumerating key steps of Heidegger’s argument, I show how attunement demonstrates the force of the problem of horizon and with it, the extent to which Heidegger’s thinking can be said to be intimate with that of Nietzsche. (shrink)

For Heidegger Nietzsche is the last metaphysician because he determines truth in relation to the establishment of value-scheme. Heidegger argues that beginning from schematism and its overcoming is starting too late. Starting from beings as value-structures turns Will to Power itself into a value, the highest value. What Nietzsche fails to do is think from WITHIN, that is , AS the supposed self-presencing lingering of the schematism. The fore-structuring gesture of transcendence is not what goes beyond schematism, or before it (...) as its condition of possibility, but what is 'built into' it, what happens IN the 'is', AS the 'is. (shrink)

How do such normative affectivities as 'unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence' emerge as ultimate outcomes of a philosophy of groundlessness? Aren't they motivated by a sort of 'will to goodness', a preferencing of one affective dimension over others? It would seem that groundlessness for Evan Thompson doesn't apply to the thinking of affect and desire. Despite Varela's claim that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness (...) to a notion of the will, he doesn't recognize that the positive affectivities he and Thompson associate with meditative practice are, as dispositions of feeling opposed to other dispositions, themselves forms of willing. A true experiential groundlessness begins from the inseparability of meaning and feeling, and prevents the justifying of a preferential elevating of one class of feeling over others. (shrink)

This is a 2018 revision of my 1988 dissertation "The Choreography of the Soul" with a new Forward, a new Conclusion, a substantially revised Preface and Introduction, and many improvements to the body of the work. However, the thesis remains the same. A theory of consciousness and trance states--including psychedelic experience--is developed. Consciousness can be analyzed into two distinct but generally interrelated systems, which I call System X and System Y. System X is the emotional-visceral-kinaesthetic body. System X is a (...) harmonic system of "endokinetic" (internal bodily) and "ectokinetic" (emotionally expressive) movement. System Y is a "teleokinetic" (goal directed) system that includes language, cognition, perception, voluntary motor control, manipulation of the environment, etc. Contrary to theories of consciousness prevalent in the Western philosophical traditions that begin with Plato, I argue that System Y is secondary to and dependent upon System X, not the reverse. In building my thesis I draw upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, Jungian depth psychology, political anthropology, modern neuroscience, Pythagorean music theory, and the mathematical theory of harmonic systems. (shrink)

When I began writing about Nietzsche, working within an Anglophone philosophy department, I found little to read about the methods and goals of the practice I was engaging in. This was very surprising to colleagues in other disciplines, for whom “methods” classes were standard fare. Within my discipline, conversely, pretty much nobody asked questions about methodology. Increasingly, this has become, to my mind, one of the greatest challenges facing philosophical Nietzsche scholarship: to give an account of itself. My guess is (...) that a general and not too controversial account would be that we are exploring the productive tension between what the real Nietzsche wrote and what we take to be good philosophy. Some... (shrink)

Review of The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious by Paul Katsafanas.

Book review of Mark Anderson's 'Plato and Nietzsche: Their Philosophical Art' for Pli, the Warwick Journal of Philosophy.

This paper considers phenomenological descriptions of health in Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Svenaeus. In these phenomenologies of health, health is understood as a tacit, background state that permits not only normal functioning but also philosophical reflection. Nietzsche’s model of health as a state of intensity that is intimately connected to illness and suffering is then offered as a rejoinder. Nietzsche’s model includes a more complex view of suffering and pain as integrally tied to health, and its language opens up the (...) possibility of many ‘healths,’ providing important theoretical support to phenomenological accounts of the diversity and complexity of health and illness. (shrink)

The paper defends the idea that Jamesian pragmatism, Nietzschean perspectivism, and philosophical anthropology represent a consistent triad, for the similarities and connections between the first two positions rest in their engagement with the anthropological question. As will be argued, a) pragmatism is concerned with anthropology and that it deals with a fundamental issue of Nietzsche’s late thought; b) the problem of the type of man (der Typus Mensch) is involved in Nietzsche’s questioning the value of truth, and perspectivism is an (...) alternative view to Platonic and Christian metaphysics which arises from the same phenomenalist conception of knowledge defended by James ; c) Nietzsche’s interest in developing a philosophy that affirms the perspectival character of existence is primarily anthropological, and this is in fact the pragmatic criterion of validity that one can attribute to Nietzschean perspectivism. (shrink)

: This paper examines a claim defended by an unlikely pair: Friedrich Nietzsche and Iris Murdoch. The claim is that perceptual experience itself—as distinct from perceptually based judgments and beliefs—can be morally significant. In particular, Nietzsche and Murdoch hold that two agents in the same circumstances attending to the same objects can have experiences with different contents, depending on the concepts that they possess and employ. Moreover, they maintain that this renders perception an object of moral concern. This paper explicates (...) these claims, examines the way in which we might distinguish between better and worse perceptual experiences, and argues that if some version of the Murdochian/Nietzschean claim is accepted, then certain influential accounts of moral epistemology and agency must be rejected. (shrink)

The paper presents anthropological issues as one of the main topics of Nietzsche’s philosophy. I begin with how Nietzsche defines the goals of his anthropological reflection and then I identify the perspective of naturalism as its central interpretational tool. Subsequently I try to show how it is instrumentalized in order to develop correct – according to Nietzsche – characteristics of human being, and as a mean of Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics. In this way conceiving man as “homo natura” allows to (...) reflect on human in axiological context not limited by old metaphysical beliefs. This attempt of combining naturalistic dimension with axiological one determines specific character and importance of Nietzsche’s anthropology. (shrink)

Theories and ideas have consequences, like actions do. As a rule, we hold people responsible for their actions. In a similar way, we should reasonably hold intellectuals responsible for their theories and ideas. Among the aims of this paper is to consider whether the fact that Nietzsche’s thought was distorted and manipulated by Fascist and Nazi ideologues is a sufficient condition for releasing Nietzsche from all responsibility for the crimes that were partly justified through the appeal to his philosophy.

“La ‘modernidad’ a través de la imagen de la comida y la digestión”. Ésta es la tarea y el programa de la genealogía fisiológica y psicológica identificada con claridad por Nietzsche en un fragmento del otoño de 1888 y firmemente perseguida en toda su obra. El diagnóstico es implacable y es posible por un uso extendido de la metáfora gastronómica, aplicada a todos los campos de la experiencia y el lenguaje por una escritura temeraria de la historia. Como Valéry y (...) Péguy también lo ilustran, la experiencia de los hombres contemporáneos es pobre y enferma y se caracteriza por una duplicidad radical y una contradicción sin síntesis. No sólo las cosas, como además lo muestra en sus análisis sobre las mercancías como nuevos jeroglíficos que marcan el espacio saturado de la metrópolis, sino también el hombre es doble, así como su corporizada y profundamente fisiológica economía. Su estómago hambriento tiene dos caras, porque todo lo toma pero no nutre en absoluto; vocifera acerca de entusiasmos varios y heterogéneos, no sobre un verdadero alimento para ser absorbido y transformado. En resumen, vive por un instante sin pasado ni futuro. El opuesto de esta lógica de la enfermedad y la insensibilidad en busca de muchas sensaciones y shocks sensacionales, y el reverso de este olvido por rapidez excesiva, es un ser anti- o incluso premoderno en extremo. En los tiempos modernos, el entrenamiento de un criticismo genuino acerca de los prejuicios y el supuesto auto-conocimiento implican una regresión y una alteración de las propias identidades históricas, las creencias y los valores. Finalmente, como Benjamin y Warburg lo revelaron, el criticismo es como tornarse otra vez animal y la interpretación es como recuperar la lentitud y la melancolía de un eterno masticar, al igual que un perro o una vaca. (shrink)

This article provides a new account of Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysical philosophy. After framing Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical project (Section 1), I suggest that to understand the logic of his critique we should reconstruct a taxonomy which distinguishes between ‘rich metaphysics’ and ‘thin metaphysics’ (Section 2). I then consider Nietzsche’s methodological critique of ‘rich metaphysics’, arguing that his position, which alleges motivational bias against ‘rich metaphysics’, is not compelling, since even granting that previous ‘rich metaphysicians’ exemplified such bias there is no necessity (...) to a new ‘rich metaphysician’ doing so (Section 3). Nonetheless, there is much of interest in the second aspect of Nietzsche’s critique, understood in terms of indifference to ‘thin metaphysics’, which I consider in Section 4. I argue that the existing readings are unsatisfactory, and as an alternative we should think of this idea in sceptical terms by drawing on an argument from ‘thin metaphysical’ disagreement. (shrink)

The primary explanatory items of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology are the drives. Such drives, he holds, are arranged hierarchically in virtue of their entering dominance-obedience relations analogous to those obtaining in human societies. This view is puzzling for two reasons. First, Nietzsche’s idea of a hierarchical order among the drives is far from clear. Second, as it postulates relations among subpersonal items that mimic those among persons, Nietzsche’s view seems to trade on the homunculus fallacy. In this paper, I argue that (...) a Hume-inspired dispositional reading of the drives’ order successfully addresses these two problematic issues. Moreover, I argue that my reading is superior to the two main competing interpretations, which I call the vitalistic reading and the normative reading, for these ascribe to Nietzsche a view committed to the homunculus fallacy. (shrink)

Lecture on Nietzsche's relativism and perspectivism given at a conference on the 'crisis of reason' in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, October 26, 1991. Nietzsche claims that truth does not exist and knowledge is not possible, because knowledge serves life and is bound to an organic position. In fact, this is a paradox that refutes itself. Knowledge has evolved precisely because organisms must have limited, perspectivistic knowledge of their environment from a subjective point of view. In science, subjectivity can even be transcended (...) to some extent by making models that take into account the effects of our subjective experience of the world. The fact that theories are ‘just models’, ‘just interpretations’ does not mean that knowledge is impossible, because models and interpretations can be improved, corrected and be more or less adequate. In fact, Nietzsche relativism is incompatible with his metaphysical, psychological and ethical claims which implicitly claim a kind of philosophical or scientific progress. (shrink)

It is commonplace among Nietzsche scholars to think that Nietzsche maintains a sceptical attitude towards the possibility of self-knowledge. This attitude, which is patent in the late works, could be traced back at least to the period of Human, All Too Human, if not to the unpublished essay On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense (1973). As much as this picture may be correct, it is incomplete. To see why this is so, one needs to distinguish between different notions (...) of the self and different methodologies. These distinctions will prove to be helpful to examine Nietzsche’s stance towards self-knowledge in Human, All Too Human as well as the pivotal role that genealogy plays in achieving it. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism towards the substance-concept “I” plays an important role in his thought, and can be properly understood by making reference to the 19th century debate on the scientific psychology. Friedrich Lange and Ernst Mach gave an important contribution to that debate. Both of them thought about a “psychology without soul”, that is, an investigation that gives up with the old metaphysics of substance in dealing with the mind-body problem. In this paper I shall deal with Lange’s and Mach’s (...) views, in order to shed some light on Nietzsche’s rejection of the I in philosophy. (shrink)

In his 1937 lectures, Heidegger searches for Nietzsche’s initial thought of “the Moment”. This paper mimics Heidegger’s pursuit of Nietzsche’s Moment by tracing Heidegger’s own early arrival at the Moment in Being and Time, published 10 years prior to his lectures on Nietzsche. Both Zarathustra and Dasein are chased in and out of an authentic relationship with the Moment by their own shadows, which disappear at midday. Dasein’s shadow is the being that is always closest-at-hand, the being in whom I (...) lose myself in everyday care. Dasein forgets itself in inauthentically securing its identity in that which it cares for and that which it is not, darkness. Yet Dasein also confronts its own finitude in its negative double as it witnesses the daily dwindling of its shadow—the everyday passing away of time. (shrink)

It is common knowledge that Nietzsche is very critical of traditional philosophy and strongly opposes a number of philosophers, but Alain Badiou goes beyond this claim to interpret and classify Nietzsche as an “antiphilosopher.” As such, Badiou’s interpretation belongs to the vast literature focusing on Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics and truth. However, Badiou goes a bit further and develops a notion of “antiphilosophy” that not only is critical but also has a positive impact: Nietzsche is not only a critic of (...) metaphysics, but he is also an antiphilosopher like Pascal or Rousseau. Nietzsche. L’antiphilosophie I is the transcript from a seminar Badiou gave in 1992–93 and, as the title suggests, is... (shrink)

This paper argues that Foucault’s The History of Sexuality contains an implicit but important interpretation of Nietzsche’s critique of the ‘ascetic ideal’. It suggests that Foucault undertakes a non-reductive synthesis of seemingly conflicting aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, on the one hand, its valorisation of the ‘Dionysian’ and, on the other hand, its enthusiasm for ‘self-disciplining’. The consequences of a failure to appreciate how Nietzsche’s thought combines these two themes is illustrated through a sketch of what is termed an ‘oppositional’ interpretation (...) of his thought. This erroneously imposes the nature/culture distinction upon Nietzsche’s thought and reads its critique of morality in terms of ‘repression’, the ‘renunciation of instinct’ etc. An alternative, ‘economic’ interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought in which his ‘affirmation of the Dionysian’ and valorisation of self-disciplining are conjoined is outlined and recommended. Foucault’s interpretation of Nietzsche is presented as an example of such an ‘economic’ reading, in that it appreciates Nietzsche’s libidinal interpretation of self-denial. This combination of Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s thought is termed ‘noble ascesis’. This is illustrated through a reading of Foucault’s account of Greco-Roman ethics. Attention is drawn to how Foucault’s implicit interpretation of Nietzsche helps to clarify Nietzsche’s conception of the possibility of a ‘healthy’ appropriation of the ‘ascetic ideal’. The paper attempts to show how the ‘non-moral’ ethical practice Foucault retrieves from the classical world, on the basis of Nietzsche’s distinction between different forms of self-denial, emphasises the affective and libidinal investments of asceticism. This, in turn, is related to Foucault’s critique of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ and overcoming of the ‘repression/transgression’ model of the nature of power. However, the paper identifies some tensions between Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s accounts of asceticism and interpretations of the ethical practice of the Greco-Roman world and closes by considering whether or not these tensions can be resolved. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic for our current understanding of nature. I will show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy can be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a (...) highly paradoxical project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I argue that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Nietzsche often writes in praise of self-overcoming. He tells us that his humanity consists in “constant self-overcoming” 1 and that if someone wanted to give a name to his lifelong self-discipline against “Wagnerianism,” Schopenhauer, and “the whole modern ‘humaneness,’” then one might call it self-overcoming. He says that his writings “speak only” of his overcomings, later claiming that “the development of states that are increasingly high, rare, distant, tautly drawn and comprehensive … are dependent on the constant ‘self-overcoming of man’”,2 (...) and that “the most spiritual people, being the strongest, find their happiness where other... (shrink)

Nietzsche’s perspectivism is a philosophical methodology for achieving various epistemic goods. Furthermore, perspectives as he conceives them relate primarily to agents’ motivational and evaluative sets. In order to shed light on this methodology, I approach it from two angles. First, I employ the digital humanities methodology pioneered recently in my recent and ongoing research to further elucidate the concept of perspectivism. Second, I explore some of the rhetorical tropes that Nietzsche uses to reorient his audience’s perspective. These include engaging the (...) audience’s emotions, apostrophic address to the reader, and what I’ve elsewhere called ‘Nietzschean summoning’. Each of these methods tugs at the affects and values of the audience, positioning them to notice, find salient, and be disposed to act in relation to certain (aspects of) things while ignoring, finding less salient, and being disposed to neglect (aspects of) other things. This suggests that, for Nietzsche, perspectivism may have less to do with cognition than the painterly metaphor of a visual perspective suggests. Instead, I’ll argue that for Nietzsche, perspectivism relates primarily to agents’ motivational and evaluative set. (shrink)

There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche’s view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche’s understanding of naturalism to support their interpretation. (...) I argue that Nietzsche embraces a social constructivist conception of causality that renders his naturalism incompatible with the views of naturalism attributed to him by the two dominant readings. (shrink)

Nietzsche informs his readers frequently and seemingly with great confidence that his most original contributions to philosophy are best understood in the context of his development of a radically new kind of psychology. In his most enthusiastic moments, he even suggests that the originality of his thinking reveals not just a very, very good psychologist at work in his writing but also something more like the invention or inauguration of the field of psychology itself. It is this inaugural sense of (...) his own originality, for example, that leads Nietzsche to ask the question, “What philosopher before me was a psychologist instead of its opposite, a ‘higher fraud?’” and then offer the bold response, “Psychology did .. (shrink)

Near the end of the Republic, Plato challenges defenders of poetry to explain how it “not only gives pleasure but is beneficial . . . to human life.”1 We sometimes hear a heightened version of this demand. Partisans not just of poetry but also of literature in general are asked to establish that the arts they celebrate possess a distinctive or unique value. In other words, they must show that poetry and literature are irreplaceable and that we would lose some (...) great good were they banished from the scene.2 As with Plato’s original challenge, the more radical version is often met on cognitive grounds. It is said that poetry and literature can convey knowledge and insight that could not otherwise be conveyed. They .. (shrink)

Nietzsche imagines Beethoven coming back to life and hearing a performance of one of his works in the very different style of the later nineteenth century: “‘That is neither I nor not-I but some third thing,’” says Nietzsche’s Beethoven, after a long pause, “‘—and it seems right in a way [etwas Rechtes], even if it is not exactly right [das Rechte]. But you had better take care what you’re doing, for you are the ones who have to listen to it—and (...) the living are right, as our Schiller says. So be right and let me be off again’”.1 Any interpretation of Nietzsche worthy of the name will produce neither the pure Nietzsche, nor the pure thoughts of the interpreter, but some... (shrink)

Il pensiero prospettivistico del Nietzsche maturo sorge come reazione alla «fede in un valore metafisico e in sé della verità» che, a partire da Platone, ha animato la cultura occidentale. Agli occhi di Nietzsche, tale fede si trova all’origine del processo di degenerazione antropologica che ha caratterizzato la morale europea, ed è pertanto su di essa che occorre operare criticamente se si vuole avviare un contromovimento in grado di permettere all’umanità di orientarsi nei meandri labirintici del nichilismo. Attraverso una contestualizzazione (...) delle riflessioni di Nietzsche sul tema del prospettivismo, il presente studio si propone di rilevare la componente pragmatista che si trova alla base di tale critica. In linea con quanto osservato da William James e condividendo molte delle istanze che il suo pragmatismo portò a maturazione, il pensiero prospettivistico di Nietzsche si presenta infatti come strategia per gestire lo svuotamento di senso della nozione di verità a cui conducono i risultati della moderna epistemologia. Esso consiste, in particolare, in una metodologia di orientamento che assume produttivamente su di sé gli spazi lasciati aperti da un sapere non più metafisico e dogmatico e che, pertanto, permette di avviare un nuovo percorso educativo per l’umanità a venire. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ “Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology”, replete with provocative and insightful claims, has been extremely influential in Nietzsche scholarship. In the two decades since its publication, much of the most interesting and philosophically sophisticated work on Nietzsche has focused on exactly the topics that Williams addresses: Nietzsche’s moral psychology, his account of action, his naturalistic commitments, and the way in which these topics interact with his critique of traditional morality. While Williams’ pronouncements on these topics are brief and at times (...) oracular, and although many important details are not addressed, he manages to identify some of the richest veins in Nietzsche’s texts. In this response, I focus on the four central claims in Williams’ article. Sections One and Two address the claim that Nietzsche is a naturalist and an advocate of “minimalist moral psychology,” respectively. Sections Three and Four examine Williams’ interpretations of Nietzsche on the will and agency. Finally, Section Five critiques Williams’ claim that Nietzsche cannot be a source of philosophical theories. (shrink)

This chapter provides summaries of the chapter of this book and introduces the major themes and debates addressed in the volume. Discussed are Nietzsche’s metaphysics; his philosophy of mind in light of contemporary views; the question of panpsychism of Beyond Good and Evil 36; the rejection of dualism in favour of monism, in particular a monism of value; Nietzsche’s positions on consciousness and embodied cognition in light of recent cognitive science; a conception of freedom and agency based on an intrinsically (...) motivating; embodied sense of self-efficacy; a Nietzschean account of valuing understood as drive-induced affective orientations of which an agent approves; the idea of ressentiment conceived as a process of intentional, not reflectively strategic, self-deception about one’s own conscious mental states; and a defence of a Nietzschean naturalism. (shrink)

Orientierung steht am Anfang von allem, ohne selbst ein greifbarer Anfang zu sein. Als Letzt- und Grundbegriff geht sie jedem Denken und jeder Lebenstätigkeit voraus und ermöglicht sie. Dennoch war sie selbst bislang kaum Gegenstand philosophischer Reflexion. In seiner Philosophie der Orientierung macht Werner Stegmaier – bekannt durch seine Beiträge zu Nietzsche, Dilthey, Luhmann und Levinas – sie zum Ausgangspunkt, um die Philosophie selbst im Hinblick auf ihr praktisches, lebensweltliches Potential hin neu zu denken. Das breite Spektrum des Sich-Orientierens und (...) des Orientiert-Seins im Denken, die Bedingungen und Strategien der Orientierung im Alltag und ihr Ziel, die Ungewissheit, das Grundproblem der Orientierung, zu bewältigen, werden von ihm in die Perspektive der Philosophiegeschichte gestellt und im Blick auf aktuelle philosophische Fragestellungen systematisch untersucht. Die Beiträge des Bandes, abgerundet von einem Nachwort Werner Stegmaiers, eröffnen diesem genuinen Ansatz einen breiten Reflexions- und Diskussionsraum und zeigen so seine Bedeutsamkeit nicht nur für die Philosophie im Ganzen, sondern auch über ihre Grenzen hinaus. (shrink)

Nihilism, Nietzsche and the Doppelganger Problem Was Nietzsche a nihilist? Yes, because, like J. L. Mackie, he was an error-theorist about morality, including the elitist morality to which he himself subscribed. But he was variously a diagnostician, an opponent and a survivor of certain other kinds of nihilism. Schacht argues that Nietzsche cannot have been an error theorist, since meta-ethical nihilism is inconsistent with the moral commitment that Nietzsche displayed. Schacht’s exegetical argument parallels the substantive argument (advocated in recent years (...) by Wright and Blackburn) that Mackie’s error theory can’t be true because if it were, we would have to give up morality or give up moralizing. I answer this argument with a little bit of help from Nietzsche. I then pose a problem, the Doppelganger Problem, for the meta-ethical nihilism that I attribute to Mackie and Nietzsche. (If A is a moral proposition then not-A is a moral proposition: hence not all moral propositions can be false.) I solve the problem by reformulating the error theory and also deal with a variant of the problem, the Reinforced Doppelganger, glancing at a famous paper of Ronald Dworkin’s. Thus, whatever its demerits, the error theory, is not self-refuting, nor does it require us to give up morality. (shrink)

Excerpt: In this essay I explore the nature of the necessity of historical development in Nietzsche’s genealogy of Judeo-Christian moral values. I argue that the progression of moral stages in Nietzsche’s study is ordered in such a way that the failure of each stage is logically and structurally necessary, that each failure structures the resultant system or paradigm, but that the historical manifestation of moral paradigms coinciding with predicted or projected theoretical structures is contingent upon a multitude of other historical (...) factors. Therefore, the systematic internal failures of moral stages allow for, but do not cause, successive events. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 488-489.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 267-290 In this paper, I examine the possibility of constructing an ontological phenomenology of love by tracing Nietzsche’s questioning about science. I examine how the evolution of Nietzsche’s thinking about science and his increasing suspicion towards it coincide with his interest for the question of love. Although the texts from the early and middle period praise science as an antidote to asceticism, the later texts associate the scientifi c spirit with asceticism. (...) I argue that this shift is motivated by Nietzsche’s realization that asceticism and science share the same fetish of facts. It is now for Nietzsche no longer a matter of proving the so-called facts of the backworlds to be wrong (something science is very capable of doing), but a matter of rejecting the very structure of thought that reduces a shapeless reality into a series of facts, subjects and objects. It is this second attitude that Nietzsche regards as the common core of science and asceticism. From this critique of science and its correlative critique of facts, Nietzsche begins searching for a counter-attitude able to perform the reduction of the factual attitude. This is the attitude he calls love. Although Nietzsche’s concept of love has oft en been elucidated in terms of its object or its subject, I argue that such interpretations precisely defeat Nietzsche’s point, which is to recover a ground that precedes the division of the world into subjects and objects. Love becomes the name of this intra-relationship of being, opening up to new perspectives on Nietzsche’s ontology of the will to power. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s late writings present a value opposition of health and decadence based in his conception of organic life. While this appears to be a moral ideal that risks the naturalistic fallacy of directly deriving norms from facts, it instead describes a meta-ethical ideal: the necessary conditions for any kind of moral agency. Nietzsche’s ideal of health not only evades but also dissolves the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting that the specific content of morality is irrelevant. If health is measured by power (...) over one’s drives rather than the environment, then the source of moral conflict—organic life’s essential tendency toward domination—is surmounted by successful integration of any moral norms, regardless of content. Nietzsche’s concept of health draws on his characterization of organic life as essentially ‘exploitation’: growth through domination of the environment (BGE 259, GM II: 12). In animals, power coincides with happiness, while health and decadence track the correspondence between instinct and happiness (TI II: 11). This simple picture is complicated by the Genealogy, where Nietzsche depicts human nature as an animal illness caused by civilization’s disruption of the natural correspondence of instinct and happiness. Civilization shapes this ‘sick animal’ into the distinctly human ‘sovereign individual’ (GM III: 13, II: 2), restoring the harmony of instinct and happiness in an internal hierarchy of drives. So, sovereign individuality is a distinctly human model of health. Although life is exploitation, human health does not coincide with greater environmental power, but rather an internal qualitative expansion of power: greater variety and tension among drives, greater ‘wholeness in diversity’ in the ‘social structure’ of the self (BGE 212, 12). Nonetheless, health is not a moral criterion, but instead the precondition of moral agency. The subordination of drives to a commanding hierarchy grounds the ability to uphold any moral principles at all, to make and keep promises to oneself and others. Moral agency coincides, in turn, with overcoming the source of moral conflict in organic life’s drive for growth. The unification of opposing drives provides pleasure in power over oneself rather than one’s environment, the ‘happiness of high tension’ among drives (BGE 260), and in environmental resistance, a need for ‘equal opponents’ (TI IX: 38, EH 1: 7). Consequently, Nietzsche’s meta-ethical ideal supports a moral pluralism that supports any moral content. Moral conflicts arise precisely to the degree individuals are incapable of achieving moral agency, but they dissolve as moral agency of any kind is more widely achieved. (shrink)

Se rechaza la interpretación que identifica el superhombre con la idea del eterno retorno y se defiende que ambos conceptos son independientes.

This monograph traces the history of the concept of Gay Science, made popular by Friedrich Nietzsche through his book The Gay Science. Contrary to Nietzsche’s mistaken notion of the concept, it did not refer to a Troubadour poetics, but rather to a post-Troubadour poetics of recuperation—the complete opposite of what Nietzsche had thought. This poetry was not sung to young maidens, but instead to the Virgin Mary. The poetics of the Gay Science is found in an eight hundred page compendium (...) entitled Las leys d’amors, compiled in 1536 by Guilhem Molinier, and edited by Joseph Anglade in 1919. This post-Troubadour poetics gave rise to two schools of gaya sciensa, one in Toulouse (“Consistoire du Gai Savoir” in 1323) and the other in Barcelona (“Consistori de Barcelona” in 1338), where floral games took place. The aim here, then, is to trace the genealogy of the gay science through the cultural history of Toulouse, Barcelona, the Spanish poets of the 15th century, and its last “inheritor,” Nietzsche. -/- . (shrink)