Despite his position as one of the first philosophers to write in the “post- Darwinian” world, the critique of Darwin by Friedrich Nietzsche is often ignored for a host of unsatisfactory reasons. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin is important to the study of both Nietzsche’s and Darwin’s impact on philosophy. Further, I show that the central claims of Nietzsche’s critique have been broadly misunderstood. I then present a new reading of Nietzsche’s core criticism of Darwin. An important part (...) of Nietzsche’s response can best be understood as an aesthetic critique of Darwin, reacting to what he saw as Darwin having drained life of an essential component of objective aesthetic value. For Nietzsche, Darwin’s theory is false because it is too intellectual, because it searches for rules, regulations, and uniformity in a realm where none of these are to be found – and, moreover, where they should not be found. Such a reading goes furthest toward making Nietzsche’s criticism substantive and relevant. Finally, I attempt to relate this novel explanation of Nietzsche’s critique to topics in contemporary philosophy of biology, particularly work on the evolutionary explanation of culture. (shrink)

The contribution offers an interpretation of the last phase of Nietzsche’s production, based on the influence of some economic concepts. In 1887, Nietzsche encountered the work of the proto-marginalist economist Emmanuel Herrmann and his book “Cultur und Natur: Studien im Gebiete der Wirthschaft”. At the time, Nietzsche was working on the attempt – later abandoned – to offer a comprehensive interpretation of Western metaphysics and history. aimed at a “transvaluation of all values” and based on the idea of will to (...) power. Herrmann’s economic theory played a significant role in this project, offering a model capable of articulating all social and natural processes – and particularly life – in terms of purely immanent relations. By linking the ideas of transvaluation and will-to-power to the logic of capitalistic accumulation and of market society, we can gain an understanding of the influence of economical concepts on Nietzsche’s project, which should in turn allow a better evaluation of its historical relevance. (shrink)