Recent decades have witnessed a flurry of interest in Nietzsche's metaethics — his views, if any, on metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and psychological issues about normativity and normative language and judgment. Various authors have highlighted a tension between Nietzsche's metaethical views about value and his ardent endorsement of a particular evaluative perspective: Although Nietzsche makes apparently "antirealist" claims to the effect that there are no evaluative facts, he vehemently engages in evaluative discourse and enjoins the "free spirits" to create values. Nearly (...) every major type of metaethical "-ism" has been ascribed to Nietzsche in response. This chapter provides a critical introduction to Nietzsche's metaethics, focusing on matters concerning the nature and grounds of normativity. I begin by examining and raising challenges for Nadeem Hussain's prominent interpretation of Nietzsche as a revolutionary fictionalist. I argue that a constructivist interpretation (developed elsewhere) provides an improved account of the connections, for Nietzsche, between evaluative attitudes and the nature of value, and among practical nihilism, art, and value creation. Values, on this view, are treated as grounded purely in facts about creatures’ evaluative attitudes. The chapter concludes by considering several alternative subjectivist, constitutivist, and non-cognitivist interpretations. A nuanced understanding of the space of metaethical theories brings into relief a plausible normative and metanormative view that we can attribute to Nietzsche. (shrink)

In this essay I intentionally employ Nietzsche's genealogical method as a means to critique the complex concept of ‘good’ teaching, and at the same time reconstitute ‘good’ teaching in a form that is radically different from contemporary accounts. In order to do this, I start out by undertaking a genealogical analysis to both reveal the complicated historical development of ‘good’ teaching and also disentangle the intertwining threads that remain hidden from us so we are aware of the core threads that (...) hold it together. Two major threads are identified in my analysis, which I refer to as: Genealogy I: Teaching as applied science or practice; and, Genealogy II: Teaching as a vocational calling or neutral profession. With this in mind, I take the two value systems presented in my critique of ‘good’ teaching, and rather than return to old, or create new values, I argue that the true task of any educational endeavour is to make human beings human. Therefore, in the spirit of Nietzsche, I revive and extend Nietzsche's account of Bildung as a dynamic way of living timeless educational aims, such as learning to see, think, speak, write and feel in becoming true human beings. (shrink)

John Doris and Friedrich Nietzsche have a lot in common. In addition to being provocative and humorous writers in their native idioms, they share a conception of human agency. It can be tiresome to point out the priority claims of an earlier philosopher, so I should say at the outset that I do so not to smugly insist that my guy got there first but to showcase a closely-allied perspective that may shed additional light and offer glimpses around blind corners. (...) In particular, I argue that Nietzsche anticipates both the anti-reflective and the dialogical aspects of Doris’s theory of agency. (shrink)

Compassion unites people during times of suffering and distress. Unfortunately, compassion cannot take away suffering. Why then, is compassion important for people who suffer? Nurses work in a domain where human suffering is evidently present. In order to give meaning to compassion in the domain of professional care, it is necessary to describe what compassion is. The purpose of this paper is to explore questions and contradictions in the debate on compassion related to nursing care. The paper reviews classical philosophers (...) as well as contemporary scientists' main arguments on compassion. First, I will examine the relationship between compassion and suffering. Second, how does one recognize serious suffering? This issue raises questions about the role of imagination and the need for identification. Third, literature describes compassion as an emotion. Some philosophers consider emotions uncontrollable feelings; others see a clear rational dimension in emotions. In order to determine what compassion is, it is necessary to weigh these contradictional arguments. Fourth, I will discuss motives for compassion. Is compassion an act of altruism or egoism? In this debate Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are well‐known opponents. Today, analysis of their arguments leads to some surprising conclusions. Fifth, there is the issue of fault and compassion. Can we only feel compassionate when people who suffer are not to blame for their own suffering? Such a condition faces professional caretakers with a dilemma which needs a thorough analysis if compassion is to be of use in the field of professional care. Finally, I will explore the moral meaning of compassion. Compassion, described as a concept with cognitive as well as affective dimensions, also has volitional and behavioural aspects. These aspects specifically are of importance to nursing care and further research of compassion in the nursing domain. (shrink)

Robert Adams argues that often our moral commitment outstrips what we are epistemically entitled to believe; in these cases, the virtuous agent doxastic states are instances of “moral faith”. I argue against Adams’ views on the need for moral faith; at least in some cases, our moral “intuitions” provide us with certain moral knowledge. The appearance that there can be no certainty here is the result of dubious views about second-order or indirect doubts. Nonetheless, discussing the phenomena that lead Adams (...) to postulate moral faith brings to light the nature of the epistemic warrant underlying various kinds of moral commitments. (shrink)

This paper speaks of morality in the broadest of terms, but in generalities derived from one of the most fundamental of phenomenological doctrines. It is proposed that a polarization exists which corresponds to the epistemological divide that can be found between idealism and empiricism. Our morality harks back to Platonism, the arrival of which immediately provoked a response which resulted in a competing paradigm, its polar opposite: the embryonic Aristotelian doctrine of what Merleau-Ponty termed "induction". Interpretations to this day waver (...) between adherence to the material world and the ideal. What is maintained in this paper is that idealism and empiricism are both epistemologically inadequate. Given, however, that our morality is one of moral universals, the reader is asked to reflect on what induction must mean for it, and to consider the shadow that induction, being far from benign, must cast in a society which rests on a belief in moral absolutes. While acknowledging that this may raise eyebrows, given Nietzsche's reputation, the author contends that Nietzsche (1886, 1887) was the first to break with this duality and to speak from a place which was on neither side of this metaphysical divide. While scholars often ignore that part of Nietzsche's philosophy which is affirmative, focusing instead on his "nihilism", it is argued that the evils which his philosophy is said to foster mostly exist in a style of thought which he explicitly rejects. Although Nietzsche was hostile to modern ideas, perceiving in them a threat to our spiritual health, and hoped to "translate man back into nature" (Nietzsche, 1886/1989, p. 161) - which those sympathetic towards liberal values will take issue with - it cannot but be agreed with Nietzsche that in modernity the moral landscape has changed. Morality has been rationalized in a way that the ancients never knew; mind has been introduced into what primordially was the domain of instinct (Nietzsche, 1888/1990, p. 43). While for Nietzsche himself, however, rationality was more a symptom, the contention of this paper is that it is the source of the change in the moral landscape of modernity. (shrink)

This article reconstructs a pragmatist conception of political conviction from the works of William James. Pragmatism is often criticized for failing to account for the force of moral convictions to motivate risky and confrontational political action. This article argues that such criticisms presume a conception of conviction as an experience of moral command that pragmatism rejects. In its place, pragmatism portrays the experience of conviction as acting on faith. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the stutter, I argue that this (...) experience of faith is neither a deliberative justification nor a form of decisionism but rather a style of moral deliberation that is experimental, social and affective. I consider the sole piece of political oratory in James’ corpus, his 1897 oration to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, as a significant example of stuttering conviction. James’ oration seeks to demonstrate the ways that convictions can take hold of actors without relying on deep philosophical foundations or justifications. Although James places his argument squarely within the context of the politics of race, he himself does not attend to the ways his celebration of Shaw obscures the moral experiences of the African–American soldiers of the 54th. In response to this blindness, the final section considers whether or not the martyrdom of John Brown provides a more appropriate conception of conviction than James’ Shaw. (shrink)

Nietzsche believes that we do not know our own actions, nor their real motives. This belief, however, is but a consequence of his assuming a quite general skepticism about introspection. The main aim of this paper is to offer a reading of this last view, which I shall call the Inner Opacity (IO) view. In the first part of the paper I show that a strong motivation behind IO lies in Nietzsche’s claim that self-knowledge exploits the same set of cognitive (...) capacities as well as the same folk-psychological framework involved in outward-directed mind-reading. In the second part I turn to Nietzsche’s view of agency and argue that he sees a fundamental discrepancy between the conscious attitudes we have introspective access to, on the one hand, and the subpersonal processes and states occurring at the unconscious level of the drives, on the other hand. (shrink)

On many standard readings, shame is an emotion that in an accentuated manner targets and involves the self in its totality. In shame, the self is affected by a global devaluation: it feels defective, objectionable, condemned. The basic question I wish to raise and discuss is the following: What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? What kind of self is it that is affected in shame?

We begin, in section 2, with a brief sketch of a cluster of assumptions about human desires, beliefs, actions, and motivation that are widely shared by historical and contemporary authors on both sides in the debate. With this as background, we’ll be able to offer a more sharply focused account of the debate. In section 3, our focus will be on links between evolutionary theory and the egoism/altruism debate. There is a substantial literature employing evolutionary theory on each side of (...) the issue. However, it is our contention that neither camp has offered a convincing case. We are much more sanguine about recent research on altruism in social psychology, which will be our topic in section 4. Though we don’t think this work has resolved the debate, we will argue that it has made illuminating progress – progress that philosophers interested in the question cannot afford to ignore. (shrink)

From a prima facie point of view, Nietzsche’s use of virtue may appear to be a form of virtue ethics. Certainly, this is one position that has been established within the secondary literature; however, I argue that a more fruitful philosophical reading is to view his use of virtue as a part of his drive psychology. Indeed, what makes Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology relevant to this topic, is the way in which he characterises the “sovereign individual” as an agent that is (...) in control of good or appropriate actions because they are strong enough in character to sublimate their “drives” in the act of willing. Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology has important educational implications because an obvious place to cultivate the sovereign individual is through education, but to Nietzsche, education and educational institutions seem only interested in promoting certain Christian virtues (e.g., faith, hope, and charity), and herd forming virtues (e.g., obedience, guilt, and equality) that breed sick young people who are decadent and weak willed. In response to this dilemma, I turn my attention to how Nietzsche overcomes this problem by proposing new virtues that should figure in a new type of education which is concerned with educating the will of the sovereign individual. Central to Nietzsche’s new type of education is the painful labour of self-cultivation (Bildung), the revaluation of one’s values, and a ceaseless striving to overcome obstacles (will to power), so we are able to educate ourselves against life-negating virtues or vices that make us decadent and weak willed. (shrink)

The core of the study is a critical comparison of Nietzsche’s notion of Übermensch, and its transhumanist rewriting into different variants of the posthuman. The first part contextualizes transhumanist thought, primarily in relation to certain evolutionary ideas that, in their totality, exhibit a fundamental anthropological deficit: they speak of the evolutionary overcoming of human, but the limit of sensibility that attempts to imagine a future human being is only the mere negation of what human has been so far. In this (...) way, the posthuman is not removed from the somewhat vague context of the technological “extension” of previous humanity. In this respect, the whole concept is grossly unaesthetic. The second part shows that Nietzsche’s rethinking of the overhuman was intertwined with other anthropological structures, for example, the idea of Mitfreude (‘shared joy’), which is supposed to creatively (in the manner of art) replace the morally misleading notion of compassion. The Übermensch therefore enabled Nietzsche to propose a different conception of intersubjectivity; one that would no longer be reduced to contempt for the human being. The third section traces the causes of the transhumanist failure in productive imagination. It is based on the hypothesis that this failure is driven by an unconscious preference for the figure of the comic book Superman. It postulates, through a Kantian conception of the sublime, that an adequate elaboration of the image of the posthuman cannot do without an affective component that would allow for Bejahung (‘affirmation’). Only the artificial will always appear, to some degree, as alien, and therefore will never transcend the limits of reactive adaptation. A living posthuman could only emerge if he offered anthropological techniques of the art of living. Therefore, transhumanism continuously raises anthropological questions, especially regarding the problem of the extent to which the artificiality of art can be identified with technology. Without proper answers, it will not achieve the complexity of Nietzsche’s overhuman, and will always only dilute him into technological supplements. The posthuman will come into being when he is conceived as a grandiose work of art. (shrink)

Philosophers often identify forgiveness with either overcoming or forswearing blaming attitudes such as, paradigmatically, resentment for the right reasons; yet there is little debate as to which of the two (if either) is correct. In this article, I present three arguments that aim to strengthen the forswearing view. First, on the overcoming view, many paradigm cases of forgiveness would turn out to be mere ‘letting go’ instead. Second, only the forswearing view plausibly allows for forgiveness in cases where the victim (...) lost resentment before she had a reason to forgive. Third, only the forswearing view can show why victims of an offense are usually able to know whether they are in a position to forgive. (shrink)

In this article, it has been aimed to examine Nietzsche’s main critique towards different understandings of morals in his era. With this criticism, it is aimed to integrally understand the opinions -which are articulated directly or metaphorically- towards morals which have been encountered. In here, while keeping in mind the difference between the concepts of immoralism and amoralism, Nietzsche’s views are interpreted. Being parallel to that aim mentioned above, it has been investigated if there is a thinking in Nietzsche which (...) can be seen as a kind of understanding of morals (maybe as the understanding of morals without morals) or not. And finally, it has been thought that if Nietzsche’s views on morals have any value for the 21st century and upcoming 22nd century human or not, whether there’s something left to learn for this human from his critiques or not. (shrink)

I present three versions of the argument from divine hiddenness that are grounded in moral considerations regarding how a just deity would act and auxiliary commitments that theists often have. First, I argue that the problem of hiddenness is made worse if one also holds that many will suffer in the afterlife due to not achieving a proper orientation towards God and the demands of morality in this life. Second, I argue that if any version of the moral argument for (...) theism is successful, then God has a very good reason to not remain hidden. Third, I argue that a just God would not allow people to do evil in her name. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche puts forward a pandispositionalist view that can be seen as the conjunction of two basic claims: that powers are the basic constituents of reality, on the one hand, and that the only properties things possess are relational qua dispositional, on the other hand. As I believe that such a view is, at least in part, motivated by his rejection of Kant’s notion of things in themselves, I start by sketching the metaphysics of Kant’s transcendental idealism and (...) by presenting Nietzsche’s critical reaction to it. After that, I start to work out Nietzsche’s pandispositionalist view by considering first the case of physical reality and second that of psychological reality. I then argue that in both cases that view does not conflict with Nietzsche’s naturalism. In the last part of the paper I explore how his notion of will to power fits into such a pandispositionalist picture. Here, I shall argue, some serious tension does arise, for the claim that Nietzsche sometimes makes to the effect that the will to power is a fundamental physical force seems to clash with central aspects of his mature thought. However, whereas he repeatedly entertains that claim in his unpublished notes, it is far from clear that he ever meant to endorse it in his published work. Thus, I conclude that the available textual evidence only justifies attributing to Nietzsche the kind of pandispositionalist view spelled out in the first sections of the present paper, and not also the further claim that the will to power is a fundamental physical force. (shrink)

Adorno and Horkheimer’s legacy is incomplete without reference to their infamous political quietism. To thinkers such as Habermas, this was the unfortunate consequence of their alleged evacuation of reason. Attending to the treatment of Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment illuminates the distinct irony of such charges. Here, in their most popular book, Nietzsche is presented as precisely that which they praised him for warning against elsewhere: an advocate of cruelty animated by a reactionary morality. I contend that this exaggeration is (...) not accidental, but rather illustrative; the authors present a consciously hyperbolized version of Nietzsche in order to articulate how he made possible his own misappropriation, and to distinguish themselves sharply from Nietzsche given their disagreements about the necessity of reason. Ultimately, however, even though Adorno and Horkheimer performatively differentiate themselves from the nihilism they saw in Nietzsche, their alternative would ironically be subject to precisely the same charges of irrationalism and political aporia that they sought so desperately to avoid. (shrink)

In this paper I track the deployment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment by three major thinkers in postcolonial theory, namely Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and Achille Mbembe. My argument is that while postcolonial theory has used ressentiment in a captivating way, which may have the potential for accounting for how contemporary moral culture conditions racism, nativism and xenophobia, the deployment remains incoherent. The postcolonial deployment of ressentiment begins with an incoherent reading of Nietzsche by Fanon, a mistake which is (...) creatively appropriated by Said and Mbembe. As ressentiment travels into the postcolony Nietzsche’s insights are discarded and the term is transformed through Hegelian and psychoanalytic schematics that take morality to be a universal and prescriptive code, the very problem that Nietzsche was attempting to overcome. For Fanon, ressentiment explains how colonial projection or the racial gaze is internalized by the colonized subject to produce a relation... (shrink)

Blanchot’s Thomas the Obscure and Death Sentence are marked by the imperative to hear the call of night, of darkness, and death. In each work, the ear is enlisted to undermine the prominence accorded to the eye. If sight is essential to measure and confirm the space separating subjects from objects or subjects from other subjects, Blanchot introduces hearing as a way to collapse this protective distance. The border between inside and outside becomes porous, and the subject is no longer (...) protected by vision’s capacity to establish a neutral and demonstrable distance between itself and the object of sight. As vision becomes catastrophic, hearing assumes an ascendant role. Thomas and Anne each hear the call of death, as well as cries, laments and sudden sounds that burst through silence. The characters of Death Sentence also hear and respond to a variety of calls, including the call to yield to death and the open grave. In both works, Blanchot provides a literary space in which sounds... (shrink)

The ancient Greek philosophical discourse harbors an anthropology radically discontinuous with the framework of modernity. Rather than emphasizing the tension between the individual and community, and far from understanding the political on the ground of instinctual sacrifice, Greek thought illuminates the interdependence of ethics and politics, and situates the human being in a cosmos in which the human is neither central nor prominent. In particular the reflection of philia, most notably in Plato and Aristotle, calls for the exploration of human (...) potentiality with outstanding vigor and visionary audacity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTUnquestionably, philosophy has acquired a somewhat new register lately. First, I discuss the appearance of the theological virtues in contemporary philosophy. This appearance is heralded in Nietzsche’s famous preface to The Gay Science. The event remains at this point curious and without explanation. In a second step, I explore current French philosophy and culture as the frame and/or the effect of this appearance. At this point, I still cannot find the philosophical meaning of the virtues, only the condition of possibility (...) of their ‘extra-theological’ relevance. At most, I can reopen the religious nature, element or register of thought, of philosophy. I will do that by introducing eschatology and desecularisation, implying that modern rationalist allegedly areligious atheism is actually a hyper-religious theism. Desecularisation can only be understood within the frame of an ‘open world’, within a world-as-opening. World then becomes the event of meaning and the thought that thinks the opening, open thought as it were, is philosophical charity or philosophy-as-charity. The effect of all this is precisely philosophy turning into virtuous thought. Philosophy becomes, in ‘fact’, hope, faith and charity. (shrink)

This article reconstructs a pragmatist conception of political conviction from the works of William James. Pragmatism is often criticized for failing to account for the force of moral convictions to motivate risky and confrontational political action. This article argues that such criticisms presume a conception of conviction as an experience of moral command that pragmatism rejects. In its place, pragmatism portrays the experience of conviction as acting on faith. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the stutter, I argue that this (...) experience of faith is neither a deliberative justification nor a form of decisionism but rather a style of moral deliberation that is experimental, social and affective. I consider the sole piece of political oratory in James’ corpus, his 1897 oration to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, as a significant example of stuttering conviction. James’ oration seeks to demonstrate the ways that convictions can take hold of actors without relying on deep philosophical foundations or justifications. Although James places his argument squarely within the context of the politics of race, he himself does not attend to the ways his celebration of Shaw obscures the moral experiences of the African–American soldiers of the 54th. In response to this blindness, the final section considers whether or not the martyrdom of John Brown provides a more appropriate conception of conviction than James’ Shaw. (shrink)

The relationship between Epicurus and Nietzsche is an increasingly popular research topic. There are a number of publications that attempt to detail the nature of this relationship by investigating specific aspects of their writings that interrelate. Such research is valuable because it reveals an otherwise hidden dynamic to Nietzsche studies, however, all previous discourse on Epicurus and Nietzsche are limited because they fail to recognise both thinkers as philosophers of immanence. This thesis proposes that ‘immanence’ is the central concept that (...) allows the influence of Epicurus upon Nietzsche’s thought to be revealed most appropriately. Furthermore, it proposes to account for the development of ‘immanence’ within the works of Epicurus and Nietzsche in order to disclose the nature of immanence itself. By following Nietzsche’s genealogical method, this thesis will demonstrate that Epicurean immanence emerged through the conceptualisation of all existence within the cosmos and nature. Moreover, immanence developed as an atomistic response to the transcendent philosophies of Socrates and Aristotle which opposed Democritean materialism. Nietzsche recognised that the increasing popularity of Platonism in late antiquity led to the event of Christianity, which dominated Western thought until its success eventually destroyed the conditions that maintained it. Nietzsche predicted that in the light of Christianity’s demise, mankind would be plunged into a state of crisis and unparalleled nihilism. In response, he proposed that the body and spirit must be reunited in an act of overcoming, and those capable of that act would ‘inherit the earth’. Immanence for Nietzsche is this unifying act and inheritance, and he demonstrates that redemptive doctrines such as Epicurus’ ataraxia, modelled on nihilism, must be rejected and overcome by a philosophy modelled on ‘cheerfulness’. It is in this respect that his philosophy from The Gay Science onwards can be recognised as a discourse on immanence. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical study of the nature of thinking based on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner. For Heidegger, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers exemplified genuine thinking, appreciating the meaning of Being. But this kind of philosophy was soon replaced by the onto-theological approach, in which Being was reductively objectified, and the question of the meaning of Being was forgotten. Hence, according to Heidegger, we still have to learn to think. Commentators on Heidegger point to the similarities (...) between his approach to thinking and that of various mystical teachings, such as those of Meister Eckhart or Zen Buddhism. Another less well known philosopher who devoted himself to this question was Rudolf Steiner. Like Heidegger, Steiner claims that we do not know what it means to really think. Steiner was however more outspoken in insisting that only through a kind of meditative practice can we directly experience the nature of thinking. Present day materialistic explanations of thinking as caused by the brain stand in clear opposition to his spiritual conception of thinking. Drawing upon Heidegger and Steiner I argue against the materialistic understanding of thinking as jumping to unwarranted conclusions. The paper ends with describing some of the elements of Steiner Waldorf education which are intended to promote the development of living, creative thinking. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Friedrich Nietzsche offers different opinions of the ancient Skeptics. On certain occasions, he praises them as philosophers of intellectual integrity, because they constantly question dogma and continue to inquire (ζητϵῖν) into the truth. He insists, however, that it is indispensable for every individual to adopt her own perspective in specific conditions, rather than suspend judgment as the Skeptics do. On other occasions, Nietzsche criticizes the ancient Skeptics because they separate their academic investigations from their philosophy of life and only (...) comply with conventions or apparent phenomena observed through sensations. Furthermore, he ridicules their ultimate goal – tranquility of mind (ἀταραξία) – as a product of feeble exhaustion. He himself is ready to embrace torments of life as part of the will to power. Although some similarities can be traced between Nietzsche and the ancient Skeptics, Nietzsche is more consistent in connecting his theoretical investigation and his philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

This essay argues that much can be gained from a close examination of Nietzsche’s work with respect to education. In order to contextualise my argument, I provide a brief critique of Nietzsche’s thinking on aesthetics, educators and education. I then turn my attention to the work of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the figures Zarathustra and the Übermensch, and other Nietzschean works with a view to outline what I mean by a Nietzschean education. My central thesis being that a Nietzschean education is (...) primarily concerned with the cultivation of the self. This is certainly not an easy undertaking as it requires both an educator and education that can reveal to students “what one is” now, and who they could become. In order to bring this about, Nietzsche employs the use of an aesthetic model in the form of an exemplar for students to aspire to become. Here, the exemplar plays an important educative function in Nietzsche’s thinking because the role of the ideal type is to unsettle the student so that they are inspired to attain their unattained self that they recognise in the other. Consequently, what makes my account of a Nietzschean education significant is due to its concern with fostering timeless educational aims, such as learning to see, think, speak, write, and feel, by unsettling students with an ideal educator and true education so that students can get a sense of who they are now and who they could become. (shrink)

Friendship is the highest form of love, according to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, because great friends inspire each other and can even push each other towards the ideal of the Übermensch. While he was sceptical that many people would be strong enough for this kind of higher relationship, Nietzsche saw friendship as essential to a good marriage. Sex, in contrast, creates complications, because a relationship based on romantic feelings is unlikely to endure a lifetime. Furthermore, the ontological differences between (...) men and women tend to turn love into a war. In order to overcome the power games in the arena of love, Nietzsche thus challenges lovers to be great friends. Drawing on Nietzsche’s plethora of aphorisms on friendship, marriage, sex and power relationships, this paper outlines how Nietzsche thought the institution of and approach to marriage could be reinvigorated in ways conducive to more successful relationships and greater human achievements. While some of Nietzsche’s ideas about marriage at first appear to be outrageous, much of what Nietzsche recommends is as relevant and challenging today as it was in his own time. Indeed, Nietzsche himself prophesied that the world would not be ready for his ideas until “sometime around the year 2000” (Fuss & Shapiro, 1971, p. 91). (shrink)

This paper examines Hermann Hesse’s penultimate novel, The Journey to the East, from an educational point of view. Hesse was a man of the West who turned to the idea of ‘the East’ in seeking to understand himself and his society. While highly critical of elements of Western modernism, Hesse nonetheless viewed ‘the East’ through Western lenses and drew inspiration from other Western thinkers. At the end of The Journey to the East, the main character, H.H., believes he has found (...) the solution to his despair. This paper argues that he has not, at least not in the fullest sense Hesse came to see was possible. H.H. relies too heavily on faith and abandons reason too quickly in seeking to become ‘absorbed’ into the Other that he regards as his higher self. An answer to H.H.’s existential angst can be found in Hesse’s final novel, The Glass Bead Game, where educational growth through the development of a critical, questioning, inquiring attitude is a central theme. (shrink)

This thesis discusses the potential consequences of applying the philosophy of Mark C. Taylor to the field of Human-Computer Interaction. The first part of the thesis comprises a study focusing on two discursive trends in contemporary HCI, materiality and the self, and how these discourses describe interaction. Through a qualitative, inductive content analysis of 171 HCI research articles, a number of themes are identified in the literature and, it is argued, construct a dominant perspective of materiality, the self, and interaction. (...) Examples that differ from the dominant discourse are also discussed as alternative perspectives for each of the three focal areas. The second part of the thesis comprises an analysis of Mark C. Taylor’s philosophical project which enables a number of philosophical positions on materiality, the self, and interaction to be identified. These positions are suggested to be variations and rereadings of themes found in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. These variations emerge as Taylor approaches Nietzsche through poststructuralism and complexity theory, and it is argued that the apparent heterogeneity of Taylor’s project can be understood as a more coherent position when interpreted in relation to Nietzsche’s philosophy. Based on the findings of the two literature studies, the thesis then discusses the possible consequences for HCI, if Taylor’s philosophy were to be applied as a theoretical framework. The thesis argues that Taylor’s philosophy describes the interaction between humans and computers as an existential process, which contrasts with the dominant HCI discourse; that this view can be related to and provide a theoretical foundation for the alternative discourses in HCI; and that it can contribute to developing HCI. (shrink)

Many science teachers are presented with the challenge of characterizing science as a dynamic, human endeavour. Perspectivism, as a hermeneutic philosophy of science, has the potential to be a learning tool for teachers as they elucidate the complex nature of science. Developed earlier by Nietzsche and others, perspectivism has recently re-emerged in the context of the philosophy of science in the work of Ronald Giere. Giere presents a compelling case that scientific theories and scientific observation are perspectival by using science (...) itself. There are many tangible examples already present in science textbooks which, when approached in a certain way, offer an exciting opportunity for a realistic incorporation of philosophy of science into the classroom. Furthermore, introducing perspectivism to students necessitates an engagement with notions such as truth, reality, perception and experimentation, through a familiar medium, while painting a nuanced conception of the nature of science. (shrink)

This article challenges the idea that individual and collective agency require centred, fixed identities to be efficacious and meaningful. In post-foundational political thought, this idea frequently underpins an understanding of the subject as something temporarily consolidated through constitutive exclusions and a claim that political and ethical thought must negotiate the necessity for and inevitable failure of these exclusions. Against this thesis, the article presents a reading of Nietzsche’s analysis of the drives and their relation to the ego, holding that for (...) Nietzsche drives are synthesized into a complex but still dispersed assemblage that generates the illusion of unity in the form of an ego or ‘I’. For Nietzsche, the article argues, concrete agency is located in this assemblage of differences, the semblance of a centre being important in the coordination of these differences, but having no causal efficacy itself. The article concludes by examining whether Nietzsche falls into a variant of the ‘homunculus problem’ before turning to the doctrine of eternal return and showing how Nietzsche links his ethics to using the semblance of identity in order to overcome the need to link subjectivity to identity. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a difficulty in our contemporary discourse about atheism. My rough thesis is that certain important problems stem from the fact that contemporary culture at large is already fine tuned with many of the crucial ‘virtues’ that are held forth strongly by leading atheists. Thus, one might perhaps claim that the New Atheists are mostly preaching to the already converted. However, the main problem with this picture is that a ‘cultural atheism’, or secularism, of the (...) kind that I have in mind is far from identical with the ‘ideological atheisms’ of the contemporary debates. The theologians who respond to atheists are extremely frustrated and the debate is asymmetrical. If there is some sort of cultural identity between these camps it is constituted by an invisible cultural logic that expresses a profound godlessness beyond ideological distinctions. I will focus on the Swedish context and its peculiarities in order to theorise this cultural logic. In dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche, I develop a notion of moral emptiness and connect it to the idea of profound godlessness. I then suggest that his creative and affirmative criticism of nihilism is an interesting opening for further debate. (shrink)

Latina feminists like Gloria Anzaldúa and Mariana Ortega have developed anti-essentialist accounts of selfhood that are responsive to the problem of alterity and hermeneutic alienation experienced by multiplicitous subjects, understood as those who must navigate between multiple cultural norms and often conflicting interpretive traditions. These accounts can be fortified by examining the sense of inarticulacy that arises from having to name conditions of existence undergirded by social and historical contradictions and ambiguities—especially under the experiential stress of gendered social violence, cultural (...) trauma, and state terror. To address phenomenological accounts of “linguistic terrorism” and the role language plays in multiplicitous accounts of selfhood, I turn to a strategic reading of Nietzsche's existential conception of the self as a living multiplicity, and to his related account of the impoverishment of language. In doing so, I argue more generally that philosophies of agency that critique agential narratives of rupture, instability, and interpretive loss often do so without sufficient attunement to the ways concepts of alterity and liminality operate in North–South contexts or Latina feminist thought. I end by highlighting the critical, decolonial impetus of these concepts as responses to cultural violence. (shrink)

This paper re-examines the egos of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler with reference to Friedrich Nietzsche and the psychologist, James Hillman, and in the process also confronts the ego in other of its many manifestations, misappropriations, and mystifications.The ego is a multi-headed enigma which defies phenomenological description, and only reaches the status of concept by virtue of the gropings of an epistemology which is not up to the task. The goal of this paper is twofold: firstly, to come to terms (...) with what is commonly spoken of as ego, and secondly, to devise a scheme which does justice to it as phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's ‘higher men’ doctrine, which explains how he can simultaneously hold the following two positions: first, that higher types are especially important or valuable; and second, that all moral claims are false. Nietzsche can coherently subscribe to both views by arguing that higher types have wide inter-subjective value to lower types. More specifically, higher men, who are mainly characterized by their strong, commanding nature, fulfill a psychological need, common in most humans—the need to (...) obey. The paper develops this conception of higher types and shows how it relates to Nietzsche's insights on culture, nihilism, and becoming. (shrink)

Metaethicists typically develop and assess their theories—in part—on the basis of the consistency of those theories with “ordinary” first-order normative judgment. They are, in this sense, “methodologically conservative.” This article shows that this methodologically conservative approach obstructs a proper assessment of the debate between internalists and externalists. Specifically, it obstructs one of the most promising readings of internalism. This is a reading—owed to Bernard Williams—in which internalism is part of a practically and politically motivated revision of the assessment of action. (...) The article uses this case study to highlight the role of methodological conservatism in contemporary metaethics more generally. (shrink)

The evermore explicit technicization of the world, together with the immeasurable nature of the political and ethical questions that it poses, explicitly defy the syntheses of human imagination and invention. In response to this challenge, how can philosophy, in its relation of nonrelation with politics, help in orienting present and future negotiation with the processes of complexification that this technicization implies? The article argues that one important way to do this is to think and develop our understanding of technicity from (...) out of metaphysics, its destructions and deconstructions. The argument proceeds from the aporia of knowledge in Plato's Meno, situates continental philosophical thought's various articulations of the ‘other’ of metaphysics in relation to the problematic of this aporia and claims that certain understandings of this alterity can be further articulated in terms of technical supplementarity. Working between the concept of ‘arche‐writing’ in the thought of Jacques Derrida and that of ‘epiphylogenesis’ in that of Bernard Stiegler, the article then develops this supplementarity in terms of a play between originary technicity and its historical differentiations, one that both holds to the articulation of alterity in recent continental philosophy and develops it further in terms of its relation to historical determination. This relation, posited through a thinking of technicity, permits, finally, the ‘development’ of an ethics of giving time with which negotiation with processes of complexification can be undertaken in the name of justice. An ethical relation to these processes thereby emerges through the very excess of the human. (shrink)

The topic of this study is a notion of empathy that is common in philosophy and in the behavioral sciences. It is here referred to as ‘the notion of empathy as emotional sharing’, and it is characterized in terms of three ideas. If a person, S, has empathy with respect to an emotion of another person, O, then (i) S experiences an emotion that is similar to an emotion that O is currently having, (ii) S’s emotion is caused, in a (...) particular way, by the state of O or by S’s entertaining an idea of the state or situation of O, and (iii) S experiences this emotion in a way that does not entail that S is in the corresponding emotional state. The aim of the study is to clarify this notion of empathy by clarifying these three ideas and by tracing the history of their development in philosophy. -/- The study consists of two parts. Part one contains a short and selective account of the history in Western philosophy of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. In chapter 2 Spinoza’s theory of imitation of affects and Hume’s theory of sympathy are presented. It is argued that these theories only exemplify the second idea characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing. Chapter 3 contains presentations of Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy, and Schopenhauer’s theory of compassion. These theories are shown to exemplify the second and the third idea. In chapter 4 there are presentations of Edith Stein’s description of Einfühlung, and Max Scheler’s account of empathy and fellow-feeling. It is shown that these accounts contain explicit specifications of the third idea, and it is argued that they also exemplify the second idea. -/- In part two, the three ideas are further clarified and the notion of empathy as emotional sharing is defined. Chapter 5 contains a discussion of the main contemporary philosophical analyses of empathy. Three different views are distinguished: one that construes empathetic emotions as emotional states, one that construes them as imagined emotions, and one that construes them as off-line emotions. The first two views are criticized and rejected. The third is accepted and further developed in chapter 6, which contains a general analysis of the emotions. A distinction is made between two ways of experiencing an emotion, and it is argued that it is possible to have the affective experience characteristic of a particular kind of emotional state without being in that kind of state. In chapter 7, a definition of ‘empathy’ is proposed. This definition contains specifications of the three ideas characteristic of the notion of empathy as emotional sharing, and it shows both how the empathizer’s emotion resembles the emotion of the empathee, and how this emotion is caused and experienced. (shrink)

Both Nietzsche and La Rochefoucauld rejected metaphysical principles, such as the Kantian moral imperatives, and adopted psychology as their first philosophy. In this article I explore their views of self-love and of the will to power as the first principles of human motivation. Although both thinkers reduce actions to egoistic motives, they define the human drives and passions differently. While Nietzsche criticizes La Rochefoucauld’s view of a self-love-oriented intention as the principal cause of deeds, his interpretation is reductionist seeing that (...) La Rochefoucauld also gives a quasi-expressivist account of deeds based on multiple drives. Unlike La Rochefoucauld, Nietzsche claims that there is no preexisting intention before or behind deeds, but rather that the doer expresses herself in and through her deeds. He laments that La Rochefoucauld’s concept of self-love is overshadowed by Christianity and criticizes him for condemning secular virtues as postlapsarian vices in disguise. Egoism, for Nietzsche, is a drive that is ingrained in the psyche for self-elevation. By comparing and contrasting their views, I conclude that self-love for La Rochefoucauld is pure self-affirmation at the expense of other drives or other agents, while Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power is a master-drive’s organization of other drives in service of the grander project of the self, which at the same time allows the subordinate drives to express themselves and fulfill the functions proper to their own nature. This interpretation sheds light on the key concept of egoism and the will to power in Nietzsche’s moral psychology, as well as on the first principles of human action in Nietzsche and La Rochefoucauld. (shrink)

In this article, I demonstrate that Friedrich Nietzsche offers us a unique form of hermeneutic critique. In particular, I contend that when reading Nietzsche’s perspectivism and will to power in light of each other, they provide us with the tools to overcome habits of interpretation through the concepts of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. I show this in three sections. In section one, I introduce Nietzsche’s perspectivism and situate it within his concept of the will to power. In doing so, I (...) demonstrate that interpretations exist amidst a complex field of agonistic, reciprocal relations in life’s constant production of meaning. In section two, I then analyze how certain interpretations sediment into habits, forming harmful blind spots in interpretive activity. Such habits, Nietzsche shows, when privileged as prima facie ‘True’ and left uncontested exclude different ways of interpreting and existing, stagnating the production of meaning and denying the agonistic conditions of life. In the final section, I argue that Nietzsche critiques such habits in the two directions of genealogy and creative hermeneutics. Through the backward approach of genealogy, Nietzsche problematizes the habit, excavates its lowly origin, and deconstructs its supposed universality. Through the forward approach of creative hermeneutics, he overcomes and reinterprets them out of their origins, experiments with difference and multiplicity, and engages in an ongoing critique to open up new perspectives. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Bernard Yack’s Longing for Total Revolution asserts that a prominent tradition of modern moral and political theory is founded on the binary opposition between nature and culture. Yack rejects this dichotomy in favor of an Aristotelean outlook, and in so doing embraces the opposition between the ancients and the moderns. Neither binary is as oppositional as Yack suggests. There is, however, a more viable distinction to be made between the ancients and the moderns—concerning the role played by teleology—and it (...) better serves the purpose of mapping the historical trajectory of moral and political theorizing. Teleology does not survive modernity, and it is this development that was truly revolutionary. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 55, Issue 1, Page 186-203, February 2021.

Violence is often considered through its causes or effects, but seldom by its source. As to that, opinion is also divided. Some say that human culture is the source of violence and that love and peace can only come from ‘outside’; others claim that precisely this ‘outside’ is the source of violence and that love can only blossom in a society that cancels all arbitrary reference to any ‘outside’. These positions are articulated by, respectively, René Girard and Gianni Vattimo. This (...) article confronts both positions and tries to learn from them, even though no scientific proof can decide between them. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's ‘higher men’ doctrine, which explains how he can simultaneously hold the following two positions: first, that higher types are especially important or valuable; and second, that all moral claims are false. Nietzsche can coherently subscribe to both views by arguing that higher types have wide inter-subjective value to lower types. More specifically, higher men, who are mainly characterized by their strong, commanding nature, fulfill a psychological need, common in most humans—the need to (...) obey. The paper develops this conception of higher types and shows how it relates to Nietzsche's insights on culture, nihilism, and becoming. (shrink)