The paper provides a thorough account of the relationship between Ernst Mach’s thought and that of an apparently more intellectually distant near-contemporary, Friedrich Nietzsche. The consistency of their views is in fact substantial, as I try to show within the paper. Despite their interests being different, both Mach and Nietzsche were concerned with the same issues about our intellectual relationship with the external world, dealing with the same questions and pursuing a common aim of eliminating worn-out philosophical conceptions. Moreover, it (...) can be argued that both Mach and Nietzsche converged on what we now know as the problem of realism versus anti-realism in the philosophy of science, and that they both rejected ‘representational’ (realist) conceptions of science in favour of a certain sort of pragmatic anti-realism, whose focus was on the role science plays as a means of orientation. (shrink)

The chapter explores comparatively the attention to the practical dimension that—each in his own way—Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the classic pragmatist thinker William James pay when confronted with the challenge of providing a non-skeptical response to the relativist stance on truth that arose in the post-Kantian age. Particular focus will be given to the extent to which these three authors conceived of the practical framework as the only one that allows us to meaningfully address and determine truth.

Ausgehend vom Vorwurf des Relativismus, der in der frühen Rezeption Nietzsches gegen ihn erhoben worden ist, untersuche ich seinen Begriff der Erkenntnis. Dabei geht es mir darum zu zeigen, dass Nietzsches Bezugnahme auf das Leben erkenntnistheoretische Bedeutung hat und gegen naheliegende systematische Einwände verteidigt werden kann. Während Nietzsche Wahrheit und Nützlichkeit eines Urteils voneinander trennt, folgt aus der Ausrichtung auf dessen pragmatischen Wert kein erkenntnistheoretischer Nihilismus. Zudem stellt das Prinzip des Lebens eine objektive Autorität dar, die eine Pluralität von Perspektiven (...) ermöglicht. Die damit gesetzte Normativität beruht nicht, wie oft angenommen, auf einem naturalistischen Fehlschluss und sie ist auch nicht in sich widersprüchlich. (shrink)

This chapter explores Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s views on language and knowledge, establishing a philosophical dialogue between two different positions, which are based on a similar anti-essentialist and instrumentalist concern. The chapter will first focus on Nietzsche’s conception of language as the expression of valuational perspectives developing through the natural and cultural history of mankind. It will then consider Wittgenstein’s account of language as the inherited background of our practical engagement with the world. Finally, by bringing Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s views together, (...) the last section reflects on the crucial strategic move they make in their respective battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. -/- . (shrink)

Straipsnyje atskleidžiu tam tikrą pragmatizmo ir egzistencializmo suderinamumą tiesos sampratos aspektu. Siekdamas pagrįsti šį suartėjimą, tyrinėju Jameso pragmatinį metodą ir Nietzschės kritinį požiūrį į „valią tiesai“. Abu mąstytojai stoja prieš absoliučios, fiksuotos ir praktinių individo poreikių nepaisančios tiesos idėją. Atitinkamai, abu jie teigia, kad tiesa, suprantama ikiteoriškai, yra procesas, imanentiškas konkrečiai subjektų gyvenimo patirčiai. Pasitelkdamas pragmatinius ir egzistencialistinius svarstymus, aš kritiškai tyrinėju, kaip šie filosofai kvestionavo tiesą individo kaip veikėjo egzistencijos kontekste.

In this paper we will present the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s main reflections on the scientific enterprise, its relation to the metaphysical tradition, and how the German author drew on the nineteenth century cosmological discussion to develop a worldview that ultimately endorses a dynamic and more creative form of science, whose representations and values should not be separated from human interests.

The idea of the eternal recurrence is that everyone will live the exact same lives again an infinite number of times. Nietzsche appreciates that this would multiply the value of a single life by infinity, justifying intense emotional responses. His unpublished notes provide a cosmological argument for the eternal recurrence that anticipates Poincaré’s recurrence theorem. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra describes its hero discovering this idea and struggling to accept the recurrence of all bad things. He eventually comes to love the (...) eternal recurrence because it will bring back all the joys of his life, and teaches this idea to others. (shrink)