This is a précis of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects (Routledge, 2017), for a forthcoming symposium on the book.

This article concerns whether Nietzsche is sympathetic to monism about concrete objects, the heterodox metaphysical view that there is exactly one concrete object. I first dispel prominent reasons for thinking that Nietzsche rejects monism. I then develop the most compelling arguments for monism in Nietzsche’s writings and check for soundness. The arguments seem to be supported by the texts, but they have not been developed in the literature. Despite such arguments, I suggest that Nietzsche is actually not sympathetic to monism (...) about objects—but his reasons for siding against monism are not at all obvious. The result should be a new understanding of some of Nietzsche’s fundamental ontological commitments. (shrink)

Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche's argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche.

Resumen: A partir del último libro de La gaya ciencia en este trabajo procedo, en primer lugar, a fijar los rasgos del nuevo entendimiento nietzscheano de la creencia en cuanto un determinar activo contrapuesto a la pretensión de verdad entendida como corrección o ajuste de la representación, es decir, en cuanto contracreencia. En segundo lugar, caracterizo a grandes rasgos lo que hay que considerar como creencia específicamente nietzscheana, constitutiva del sentido nuclear de su producción filosófica. Debemos denominar "fe dionisíaca" a (...) esa "creencia", en el entendido de que resulta imposible fijarla y definirla en un sentido estricto porque no excluiría nada, ni siquiera a sus opuestos.: Based on The Gay Science’s last book, in this paper I proceed, first, to set the features of the new Nietzschean understanding of belief as an active determining opposed to the claim of truth traditionally understood as correction or adjustment of representation. That is to say, belief understood, in an important even though paradoxical sense, as counterbelief. Second, I aim to characterize although roughly what could be considered as the specifically Nietzschean belief, constitutive of his philosophical production’s core meaning. We should call that "belief" the "Dionysian faith", in the understanding that fixing and defining it would be strictly speaking rather impossible, since it does not exclude anything, not even its opposites. (shrink)