Nietzsche’s “drive theory”, as it is referred to in the secondary literature, is a rich, unique and fascinating articulation of the human condition. In broad brushstrokes, Nietzsche appears to contend that all human psychology is either directly reducible to animal drives (e.g. sex, aggression) or indirectly explicable to the historical transformations thereof (e.g. ressentiment). Moreover, Nietzsche’s initial elucidation of drive theory in On the Genealogy of Morals (and elsewhere) is well-complemented with a fecund, profound, and clear elucidation of the concept (...) in the secondary literature. -/- Yet, there remains a glaring lacuna for all the discussion of drive theory in the scholarship. The secondary literature is delinquent in explaining how animal drives became incorporated to form the human psyche. Nietzsche’s account to elucidate how drives became “digested” or in his words “inpsychated” is called the Internalization Hypothesis. However, as it appears in GM: II, 16, the hypothesis is grossly inchoate. The result of this undertheorization is manifold; its deleterious effects resonate along many axes of Nietzsche’s philosophy. -/- The present book, Internalized Valuation: A Genealogical Analysis of Nietzschean Drive Theory, offers an original and fruitful interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology. First, it clarifies what drives are. Second, it provides a new way of thinking about Nietzsche’s genealogical methods and then applies these insights to The Genealogy itself. What follows is a work that not only sheds much-needed light on Nietzsche’s philosophy of mind in general and his theory of emotions in particular, but also informs and illuminates problematic passages of Nietzsche’s Genealogy. (shrink)

The Internalization Hypothesis (I.H.), as expressed in GM II 16 of On the Genealogy of Morals, is the essential albeit under-theorized principle of Nietzsche’s psychology. In the following essay, I investigate the purpose I.H. serves concerning Nietzsche’s theory of drives as well as the Hypothesis’s epistemic warrant. I demonstrate that I.H. needs a Neo-Darwinian underpinning for two reasons: 1) to answer the Time-Crunch Problem of Transformation, and 2) in order to render it coherent with Nietzsche’s physiological determinism as articulated in (...) Twilight of the Idols. My re-examination of I.H., then, serves to underwrite the Hypothesis on solid empirical footing. In addition, my analysis provides further evidence to think that Brian Leiter’s initial (but naïve) type-fact reading of Nietzsche’s philosophy of psychology is accurate, deterministic warts and all. (shrink)

: In his work Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams offers a very different interpretation of philosophical genealogy than that expounded in the secondary literature. The “Received View” of genealogy holds that it is “documentary grey”: it attempts to provide historically well-supported, coherent, but defeasible explanations for the actual transformation of practices, values, and emotions in history. However, paradoxically, the standard interpretation also holds another principle. Genealogies are nevertheless polemical because they admit that any evidence that would serve to justify a (...) genealogical account is indexical to a perspective. In short, genealogies are not true per se. This view of genealogy leaves it vulnerable to three criticisms. I call these three: (1) the reflexive, (2) the substantive, and (3) the semantic. In contrast, Williams argues that all genealogies provide a functional account for the manifestation of something and further, that a State of Nature story subtends these accounts. The upshot of Williams’ approach is that it makes for strange philosophical bedfellows. For example, Nietzsche’s account for the rise of Christian morality shares methodological features with Hobbes’ functional explanation for the emergence of civilization and yet Nietzsche seems to take issue with genealogists who are hypothesis mongers gazing haphazardly into the blue. In the following article, I flesh out, more fully, how to make sense of Williams’ novel reclassification of genealogy. I show that Nietzsche’s genealogies are State of Nature stories and, just like Hobbes’ State of Nature story in chapter thirteen of Leviathan, are subtended by our collective corporeality. I then demonstrate how Nietzsche’s three stories in the Genealogy, when brought together, serve to undermine what Williams refers to as “ . . . a new system (of reasons)—which very powerfully resists being understood in such terms . . . ” Finally, I explain how my reconstruction of Williams’ interpretation of the genealogy immunizes it against the three criticisms noted above. (shrink)