The multiple sources and functions of Heraclitus in Nietzsche’s writings should not be underestimated. Nietzsche’s early readings of Heraclitus are steeped in the Greek fragments, the doxographical tradition, and in philological scholarship. Hence, they are largely either fair interpretations of the extant fragments, clear translations of a select group of fragments into his own language, or improvisations based in part on a narrow subset of the spurious remarks set down in the doxographical tradition. Nietzsche’s later departures from this tradition articulate (...) an anti-metaphysical Heraclitus that he found in the Heraclitean fragments, which he takes to prefigure and later parrot his doctrines of becoming, the child, strife, chance, and eternal recurrence. For this reason, Nietzsche’s Heraclitus is necessarily no objective, individual historical person, but at various times and to various degrees a copy, an appropriative invention, and a personal-philological-philosophical archetype filtered through the lenses of ancient Greek understandings of how he must have lived, given what he said and what philosophy is; nineteenth-century German philological reconstructions of Heraclitean thought; and Nietzsche’s own need for such a precursor to voice his own doctrines and thereby lend them heft against the Platonic tradition of metaphysical philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract“Chemistry of Concepts” and “Historical Sense”. On Philosophical Concept Formation. The question concerning concepts and their relations to objects and words has had a long and controversial history. Recently, it is challenged by an anew turn towards objects and an emphasized object‐oriented ontology. The article argues that one reason for this is the reduction of concepts towards pure rational constructions and offers arguments for alternative understandings. In this context, the article proposes a re‐reading of Nietzsche’s particular approach and shows that (...) Nietzsche’s thought is decisively shaped by the sciences of his time, especially physiology and chemistry. Before the background of the recent increase in research interest on Nietzsche and the sciences the article examines place and function of the sciences related to the genealogy and justification of concepts. Opposing a strong naturalist reading it makes a plea for understanding Nietzsche’s epistemological critique concerning concepts systematically as a triple one: philological, physiological, and historical. (shrink)

Continental philosophy of science has developed alongside mainstream analytic philosophy of science. But where continental approaches are inclusive, analytic philosophies of science are not–excluding not merely Nietzsche’s philosophy of science but Gödel’s philosophy of physics. As a radicalization of Kant, Nietzsche’s critical philosophy of science puts science in question and Nietzsche’s critique of the methodological foundations of classical philology bears on science, particularly evolution as well as style (in art and science). In addition to the critical (in Mach, Nietzsche, Heidegger (...) but also Husserl just to the extent that continental philosophy of science tends to depart from a reflection on the crisis of foundations), other continental philosophies of science include phenomenology (Husserl, Bachelard, Merleau‐Ponty, etc.) and hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Heelan, etc.), especially incorporating history of science (Nietzsche, Mach, Duhem, Butterfield, Feyerabend, etc.). Examples are drawn from the philosophy of sciences (chemistry, geology, and biology) other than physics. (shrink)

There has been no shortage of readers who take Nietzsche as educator (cf., for a by no means exhaustive list: Allen, 2017; Aviram, 1991; Bell, 2007; Cooper 1983; Fairfield, 2017; Fitzsimons, 2007;...

La filosofía nietzscheana es una filosofía filológica. Por debajo del legado del Nietzsche de madurez prevalece una base crítico-metodológica descubierta por él en sus años de práctica filológica y de la que se desprende una mirada filosófica profundamente original. Este artículo pretende mostrar las razones de esa coincidencia en un recorrido de continuidad a través del problema de la crítica.

The Birth of the Philologist from the Spirit of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy. Nietzsche’s Inaugural Lecture On the Personality of Homer. This essay highlights Schopenhauer’s decisive and unexplored role in Nietzsche’s Über die Persönlichkeit Homers. Following Schopenhauer’s negative assessment of the study of history, Nietzsche criticizes F. A. Wolf’s organic systematization of the sciences of antiquity and foregrounds the aesthetic dimension of philology. Contrary to Wolf, Nietzsche believes that historical investigation is subordinate to the essential pedagogical function of philology; and only through (...) its aesthetic component can philology establish which literary works of antiquity are to be considered truly “classical.” The debate on the Homeric question after the publication of Wolf’s Prolegomena ad Homerum illustrates that philologists have paradoxically become opponents and “destroyers” of the ideal of antiquity. Nietzsche shows how a methodological approach inspired by Schopenhauer’s philosophy can revive the relationship between philology and art. Nietzsche’s arguments to counter Wolf’s thesis about the problem of Homer’s personality implicitly rest on Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. In particular, through Schopenhauer’s conception of genius, Nietzsche rehabilitates the individuality of the poetic author of the Iliad and Odyssey, even though this poet does not correspond to the one referred to as “Homer” in antiquity. (shrink)