The evolutionary process involved the suffering of quadrillions of sentient beings over millions of years. I argue that when we take this into account, then it is likely that when the first humans appeared, the world was already at an enormous axiological deficit, and that even on favorable assumptions about humanity, it is doubtful that we have overturned this deficit or ever will. Even if there’s no such deficit or we can overturn it, it remains the case that everything of (...) value associated with humanity was made possible by our evolutionary history and all that animal suffering. It can seem indecent to regard all that past suffering as having been worth it simply because it was a causal precondition for our existence. But when we consider the realistic alternatives to the way evolution in fact unfolded, there is nevertheless a conditional case for regarding past sentient suffering as a kind of necessary evil. (shrink)

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, there emerged two controversies related to the responsibility of philosophical ideas for the rise of German militarism. The first, mainly journalistic, controversy concerned the influence that Nietzsche’s ideas may have had on what British propagandists portrayed as the ruthlessly amoral German foreign policy. This soon gave way to a second controversy, waged primarily among academics, concerning the purportedly vicious political outcomes of German Idealism, from Kant through to Fichte, Schelling, and (...) Hegel. During the autumn of 1914, and at the cusp between the two controversies, Moritz Schlick was to deliver a lecture series on Nietzsche’s life and work at the University of Rostock. Responding to both debates, Schlick penned an introduction in which he sought to defend philosophy against all those who would embroil it in warfare. Schlick offers a series of arguments defending Nietzsche against his accusers. He also argues that, though their contributions to the History of Philosophy often amounted to no more than ‘beautiful nonsense’, the German Idealists’ philosophical views cannot be held responsible for the rise of German nationalism. Finally, Schlick mounts a general defense of the search for truth, both in philosophy and in Wissenschaft, as a type of activity which presupposes peace. Though Schlick’s metaphilosophical views change, as this paper shows, he remains constant both in his favourable appraisal of Nietzsche, as well as his separation between politics on the one hand, and both philosophy and Wissenschaft on the other hand. (shrink)

The primary explanatory items of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology are the drives. Such drives, he holds, are arranged hierarchically in virtue of their entering dominance-obedience relations analogous to those obtaining in human societies. This view is puzzling for two reasons. First, Nietzsche’s idea of a hierarchical order among the drives is far from clear. Second, as it postulates relations among subpersonal items that mimic those among persons, Nietzsche’s view seems to trade on the homunculus fallacy. In this paper, I argue that (...) a Hume-inspired dispositional reading of the drives’ order successfully addresses these two problematic issues. Moreover, I argue that my reading is superior to the two main competing interpretations, which I call the vitalistic reading and the normative reading, for these ascribe to Nietzsche a view committed to the homunculus fallacy. (shrink)

In this paper, the author aims to show that transhumanists are confused about their own conception of the posthuman: transhumanists anticipate radical transformation of the human through technology and at the same time assume that the criteria to determine what is “normal” and what is “enhanced” are univocal, both in our present time and in the future. Inspired by Nietzsche’s notion of the Overhuman, the author argues that the slightest “historical and phenomenological sense” discloses copious variations of criteria, both diachronic (...) and synchronic, for what can be considered “normal” and “enhanced.” Radical transformation through technology does not simply enable us to become “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier,” but it can and often will also change the very standard or yardstick with which we measure what counts as “stronger,” “smarter,” or “healthier.” Put yet differently: new and emerging technologies are not neutral means but often bring about different and, from our current perspective, foreign standards for determining what are “normal” and “enhanced” capacities. Since the qualitative meanings of these terms are themselves not fixed, it is unintelligible and too reassuring to simply predict that new technologies will enhance human beings. (shrink)

As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)

This paper addresses the remarkable longevity of the idea of vitalism in the biological sciences and beyond. If there is to be a renewed vitalism today, however, we need to ask – on what kind of original conception of life should it be based? This paper argues that recent invocations of a generalized, processual variety of vitalism in the social sciences and humanities above all, however exciting in their scope, miss much of the basic originality – and interest – of (...) the vitalist perspective itself. The paper argues that any renewed spirit of vitalism in the contemporary era would have to base itself on the normativity of the living organism rather than on any generalized conceptions of process or becoming. In the terms of the paper, such a vitalism would have to be concrete and ‘disciplinary’ rather than processual or generalized. Such a vitalism would also need to accommodate, crucially, the pathic aspects of life – pathology, sickness, error; in short everything that makes us, as living beings, potentially weak, without power, at a loss. Sources for such a pathic vitalism might be found above all in the work of Georges Canguilhem – and Friedrich Nietzsche – rather than primarily in Bergson, Whitehead or Deleuze. (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)

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)

This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure (...) because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

Difference and Repetition might be said to have brought about a Deleuzian Revolution in philosophy comparable to Kant’s Copernican Revolution. Kant had denounced the three great terminal points of traditional metaphysics – self, world and God – as transcendent illusions, and Deleuze pushes Kant’s revolution to its limit by positing a transcendental field that excludes the coherence of the self, world and God in favour of an immanent and differential plane of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities. In the process, he (...) introduces numerous conceptual innovations into philosophy: the becoming of concepts; a transformation of the form of the question; an insistence that philosophy must start in the middle; an attempt to think in terms of multiplicities; the development of a new logic and a new metaphysics based on a concept of difference; a new conception of space as intensive rather than extensive; a conception of time as a pure and empty form; and an understanding of philosophy as a system in heterogenesis – that is, a system that entails a perpetual genesis of the heterogeneous, an incessant production of the new. -/- Keywords: concepts, becoming, multiplicity, singularity, the middle [au milieu], difference, intensity, time, system, the new. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...) of the everyday and (b) its philosophical–rational groundlessness. The Pyrrhonian illumination of the everyday is therapeutic in that it aims to purify our metadoxastic attitudes of dogmatism. (shrink)

This essay is an interpretation of Nietzsche’s enigmatic idea of the Eternal Return of the Same in the context of his life rather than of his philosophy. Nietzsche never explained his ‘abysmal thought’ and referred to it directly only in a few passages of his published writings, but numerous interpretations have been made in secondary literature. None of these, however, has examined the significance of this thought for Nietzsche, the man. The idea belongs to a moment of ecstasy which Nietzsche (...) experienced during the summer of 1881 in Sils-Maria, in the Swiss Alps. Like Dante, in ‘the middle of life’, he walked down the wooded Alpine slope and entered his own Inferno. On the anniversary of long-buried loss and pain, his psyche was temporarily flooded by archetypal imagery. This event is interpreted in the light of Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion, the uncanny, and the oedipal confrontation with the unconscious. From the turbulent and frightful experience, a symbol of transfiguration emerged in the shape of Eternal Return. Its likeness to Mandala, a Jungian archetype of wholeness and the self, is striking. In the years that followed, Nietzsche produced his greatest works that assured him an unassailable place in Western philosophy. And yet, there was something disturbing about this dream-thought, and Nietzsche shuddered at any mention of the thought. Linking it with the head of Medusa in his unpublished notes, he hinted at its petrifying quality. The beguiling beauty of Medusa makes her an ambiguous symbol of exhilaration, as well as terror. Under her captivating gaze, a hero’s journey towards selfhood becomes a journey into the night of madness. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche develops a novel and compelling account of the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states: he argues that conscious mental states are those with conceptual content, whereas unconscious mental states are those with nonconceptual content. I show that Nietzsche’s puzzling claim that consciousness is ‘superficial’ and ‘falsifying’ can be given a straightforward explanation if we accept this understanding of the conscious/unconscious distinction. I originally defended this view in my ‘Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization’ (...) ; since then, the view has come under criticism on several fronts. Brian Leiter and others suggest that there is not enough textual evidence for the view. In addition, Leiter, Mattia Riccardi and Tsarina Doyle argue that, rather than aligning the conscious/unconscious distinction with the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, Nietzsche endorses a higher-order tho.. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this paper is to outline the conceptual means by which it is possible to be optimistic about education. To provide this outline I turn to Ian Hunter and David Blacker, after a brief introduction to Nietzsche’s conceptions of optimism and pessimism, to show why certain forms of optimism in education are either intellectually unhelpful or dispositionally helpless in the face of current educational issues. The alternative form of optimism—which I argue is both intellectually and practically helpful—is (...) drawn from a reading of Friedrich Nietzsche. This reading of Nietzsche is not a simple exercise representing his views. As Nietzsche never explicitly advocated for any form of optimism—and frequently advocated against many of its manifestations—drawing what I call ‘a new version of optimism’ from his writings is no straightforward task, and certainly not without risk. As such, I have extended my readings of Nietzsche across his entire oeuvre, including his writings unintended for publication from his Nachlass. At the core of my argument is the claim that when Nietzsche was sketching out what he called ‘a new version of pessimism’, it was actually quite close to what we might now call ‘a new version of optimism.’ This first claim precipitates a second, which is that this new version of optimism is not only especially suited to contemporary educational thought and practice but is itself a description of an educational experience and disposition. (shrink)

As a singular witness and actor of the tumultuous 20th century, Ernst Jünger remains a controversial and enigmatic figure known above all for his vivid autobiographical accounts of experience in the trenches of the First World War. This article will argue that throughout his entire oeuvre, from personal diaries to novels and essays, he never ceased to grapple with what he viewed as the central question of the age, namely that of the problem of nihilism and the means to overcome (...) it. Inherited from Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Western civilization in the late 19th century, to which he added an acute observation of the particular role of technology within it, Jünger would employ this lens to make sense of the seemingly absurd industrial slaughter of modern war and herald the advent of a new voluntarist and bellicist order that was to imminently sweep away timorous and decadent bourgeois societies obsessed with security and self-preservation. Jünger would ultimately see his expectations dashed, including by the forms of rule that National Socialism would take, and eventually retreated into a reclusive quietism. Yet he never abandoned his central problematique of nihilism, developing it further in exchanges with Martin Heidegger after the Second World War. And for all the ways in which he may have erred, his life-long struggle with meaning in the age of technique and its implications for war and security continues to make Jünger a valuable interlocutor of the present. (shrink)

The paper defends the idea that Jamesian pragmatism, Nietzschean perspectivism, and philosophical anthropology represent a consistent triad, for the similarities and connections between the first two positions rest in their engagement with the anthropological question. As will be argued, a) pragmatism is concerned with anthropology and that it deals with a fundamental issue of Nietzsche’s late thought; b) the problem of the type of man (der Typus Mensch) is involved in Nietzsche’s questioning the value of truth, and perspectivism is an (...) alternative view to Platonic and Christian metaphysics which arises from the same phenomenalist conception of knowledge defended by James ; c) Nietzsche’s interest in developing a philosophy that affirms the perspectival character of existence is primarily anthropological, and this is in fact the pragmatic criterion of validity that one can attribute to Nietzschean perspectivism. (shrink)

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of the (...) process of the production of art, inspired especially by the views of Antonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature. (shrink)

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)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-60.

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)

We develop a new understanding of the historical horizon of event ontology. Within the general area of the philosophy of nature, event ontology is a still emerging field of investigation in search for the ultimate materialist ontology of the world. While event ontology itself will not be explicated in full mathematical details here, our focus is on its conceptual interrelation with the dominant current of Idealism in Western thought approached by us as a problem in the history of ideas. Our (...) presentation is designed to be accessible to a wider audience. We especially highlight the deep connection between event ontology and postmodernism in general, and the post-war French philosophers Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari in particular, who are viewed as main sources for current and future programs of abstract materialism. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to re-think the question of the world of persons with schizophrenia from the perspective of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler and that of the Japanese psychiatrist Bin Kimura. So far, no comparison between these two authors has been made, even though there are several convergences and evidence of Scheler’s indirect influence on Bin Kimura through Viktor von Weizsäcker. In recent years, Dan Zahavi, Louis Sass, and Josef Parnas have interpreted the modus vivendi of schizophrenic patients (...) in relation to a disturbance on the level of the “minimal self”. Subsequently, the discussion has highlighted the importance of disorders on the level of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity (Thomas Fuchs) and on the level of “existential feelings” (Matthew Ratcliffe). This paper argues that Max Scheler and Bin Kimura allow us to focus on an aspect which has been neglected so far: that of a “relational self” that relates to the very foundation of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality and that can thus be reborn in the encounter with the other and may position itself differently in the world. In Scheler’s perspective, the world of persons with schizophrenia is the result of an axiological disorder (valueception) that impairs contact with the primordial life impulse (Lebensdrang). As a consequence, they are incapable of attuning emotionally and socially with others: this prevents the singularity from being reborn in the encounter with the other and forces them to position themselves in their own solipsistic universe. Moving in a similar direction, Bin Kimura interprets the world of persons with schizophrenia as the result of a disorder of aida (one of the central concepts of Japanese culture that indicates the space of being in between). The disorder of aida compromises the basic relationship (Grundverhältnis in the sense of Viktor von Weizsäcker) and hinders what Bin Kimura calls festum, i.e. the birth of subjectivity, so that it is experienced by persons with schizophrenia only as ante festum. Starting from these two perspectives, I argue the existence of an axiological and anthropogenetic dimension of psychopathology. I begin with a discussion of Zahavi’s concept of minimal self and the thesis that reveals the disorders on this level of subjectivity as the origin of the world of persons with schizophrenia. I, then, analyze Max Scheler’s position and its historic importance for the emergence of phenomenological psychopathology. Thereafter, I introduce the concepts of “disorder of aida” (Bin Kimura) and “disorder of ordo amoris” (Max Scheler). Finally, I develop the concept of a “psychopathology of ordo amoris” by also comparing it with Ratcliffe’s thesis of “existential feelings”. (shrink)

In a note to G.R.S. Mead’s "Quests Old and New", where he found a section devoted to Hans Vaihinger’s main ideas, Fernando Pessoa reflects on the consequences of the fictionalist approach to both our perception of the I and the value of consciousness. These questions correspond to some statements that we find in Nietzsche’s writings, which in particular Vaihinger refers to in his Die Philosophie des Als-ob. Our aim is thus to compare Nietzsche’s and Pessoa’s view of the I and (...) consciousness, and to deal with their psychology by making reference to Vaihinger’s fictionalism. (shrink)

Heidegger argues that for being x to count as ‘alive’ it must satisfy three metaphysical conditions. It must be capable of engaging in active behaviour with a form of intentional directedness that offers to us a “sphere of transposition” into which we can intelligibly “transpose ourselves.” Heidegger’s discussion of these conditions, as they apply to the being of animals, is well-known. But, if his argument is sound, they ought also to apply to the being of plants. Heidegger, unfortunately, does not (...) supply this part of his ontology of life in any systematic detail. However, my thesis is that it is possible to interpret the nature and activities of plants, along the lines of –, and thus to make good on Heidegger’s omission. The key to this reconstruction is a reconceptualization of plant movements as constituted by a form of representationally blind, motor-intentionality. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Nietzsche should be understood as a “thorough-going nihilist”. Rather than broaching two general projects of destroying current values and constructing new ones, I argue that Nietzsche should be understood only as a destroyer of values. I do this by looking at Nietzsche’s views on nihilism and the role played by Nietzsche’s cyclical view of time, or his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. I provide a typology of nihilisms, as they are found (...) in Nietzsche—negative, reactive and radical—through a close reading of an unpublished fragment in his later notebooks, remnants of which are scattered throughout his published work. I show how the progression between the different stages of nihilism are a “necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto” , with the eternal recurrence of the same playing a vital role in this progression. The last stage of nihilism—radical nihilism—is ambiguous between a life-denying, or passive, nihilism and a life-affirming, or active, one; but, I argue, both kinds of nihilism preclude a construction of new values. But there is an inherent tension within Nietzsche’s account of nihilism insofar as it relies on the eternal recurrence of the same. This tension is brought out nicely by Löwith and partially resolved by Klossowski. There are at least two meanings of the eternal recurrence of the same. In one sense, the cosmological reading, it is intended to make sense of the idea that time is infinite and matter is finite by claiming that every possible combination of matter will recur infinite times. In the other sense, the anthropological reading, it is a kind of thought experiment, analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative: “live in every moment so that you could will that moment back again over and over” . There is a tension between these readings insofar as one must will to live in such a way that they will do it again, over and over , but also that what they do will make no difference, for what one decides to do has been done innumerable times. I argue that this tension can only be resolved by considering Nietzsche as aiming at “goal-lessness as such” and placing him as an active nihilist. (shrink)

The project behind this and the following1 special issue of Angelaki first assumed concrete form in the shape of a three-day international conference, “Continental Philosophy and the Sciences,” hel...

This essay explores the nihilistic nature of the idea of postmodern aesthetics in the Western world by highlighting its historical and cultural specificity in contrast with non-Western postmodernities, in particular in East Asia, and this in spite of their formal similarities. We then have to question the nature, possibility and implication of Western postmodern aesthetics overcoming itself within the context of globalisation.

Causal knowledge unquestionably provides useful means to describe, explain and predict both natural and daily phenomena. This article addresses whether causality as such may not be ontologically primary and looks for an alternative fundamental mechanism encapsulating the information load of the causal framework. A probabilistic process view of reality asserting the struggle of natural forces is considered along with lines quoted from Nietzsche’s posthumously published notebooks and published work. Examples from scientific discoveries, in particular neurosciences, echoing his ontology are provided. (...) Furthermore, I propose a basic number game algorithm to illustrate and model the struggle of forces leading to causal inferences for an external observer. Nietzschean dynamic ontology involving the ceaseless struggle of will-to-power units accords with the emergentist approach to causation, which has been principally employed by the scientists working under the fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and complex dynamical systems. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence is an essential part of his mature philosophy, but the theory’s metaphysical commitments and practical implications are both obscure. In this essay I consider only the metaphysical elements of the theory, with the aim of determining whether it is possible that we live our lives infinitely many times, as the theory maintains. I argue that the possibility of eternal recurrence turns on issues in personal identity and the metaphysics of time. As I proceed, I (...) also consider the relation between Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence and theories of recurrence found in the work of Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and the Stoics. (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)

ABSTRACT This study bears upon the ‘Heidegger case,’ that is, the relation of Heidegger’s philosophizing to his political involvements as Rector of the University of Freiburg 1933-4, and his subsequent silences on the subject of the Holocaust. I use the phrase ‘bears upon’ for Heidegger’s political involvement will serve as the ‘horizon’ for the study, my concern being the genesis of Heidegger’s position. Grounded in a musical ‘intuition’ and attunement, I take up the Nietzschean cipher for understanding proposed by Heidegger (...) himself for the self-understanding of the German people: the Apollonian-Dionysian duality, which I apply to the ‘being’ of Heidegger’s own philosophizing. Through this approach I hope to make an original contribution to Heidegger scholarship by showing that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is overdetermined, evolving out of both the phenomenological demand for a rigorous method in establishing fundamental structures of existence and - at the same time – out of an Apollonian attempt to ‘tame’ Dionysian existence, including Heidegger’s own. Inextricably interlinked will be the argument that Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung, his ‘confrontation,’ with Nietzsche precedes the overt engagement of his ‘Nietzsche’ lectures of the 1930s, and, further, that this more pervasive concern with Nietzsche figures in the Apollonian-Dionysian strife within Heidegger’s thinking and within his ‘being.’ Heidegger’s silences in the face of the Dionysian - as well as the Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche - will be seen to precede his ‘silence’ in the face of the actuality and history of the Third Reich. What I am proposing one might characterize as Heidegger’s Auseinandersetzung - through Nietzsche - with v Heidegger, in a disclosure of the ontic roots of Heidegger’s ontology, an exercise in his own hermeneutics of facticity. I will pursue the trace of the Apollonian-Dionysian duality: in the Western philosophical tradition which Heidegger confronts, using Husserl and Nietzsche as exemplars; in Heidegger interpretation; in the relation between his texts and his letters; and in the suppressions and intensifications within Being and Time. And I will propose that the fugue and the mutually generative duality of suppression and intensification within Heidegger’s academic thinking were conditions of the possibility of Heidegger’s ‘way’ towards political involvement. (shrink)

This thesis aims to explore Nietzsche's concept of individuality. Nietzsche, a radical and innovative thinker who attacks Christian morality and proclaims the death of God, provides us with a self-interpreting way to understand humanity and affirm life through self-overcoming and self-experimentation. Nietzsche's concept of individuality is his main philosophical concern. I first compare his perspective on human nature in Human, All Too Human, Daybreak and Beyond Good and Evil with Charles Darwin's, Sigmund Freud's and St Augustine's in order to examine (...) how his thinking differs from theirs with regard to the concept of human nature. Second, I turn to his On the Genealogy of Morals, in comparison with the thought of John Stuart Mill, analysing their criticism of Christian morality and discussing their different conceptions of individuality and the development of the self. The last chapter compares Nietzsche's The Anti-Christ, Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo with Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of self-development, using this comparison to highlight the way in which Nietzsche expounds his concept of individuality and sets himself as a living example of an individual with autonomy and responsibility. Nietzsche attacks Christianity and argues that humanity can potentially be developed not through Christian morality but reflective self-interpretation. We shall not forget that being a self-developing individual is Nietzsche's chief aim although his arguments are too circuitous and controversial to be easily comprehended. His aim is not to offer some final, authoritative solution to these issues of the self and morality. In contrast, he offers us a new, uneven and perhaps dangerous way to understand humanity and modern culture. In order to achieve this, we need to interpret what he says from our own standpoints and also to interpret ourselves through self-reflection. Nietzsche's radical but insightful perspective is a means for guiding us to open our minds and affirm our lives through interpretation and experimentation. Then we might potentially overcome nihilism and become what we are: self-reflective individuals with free spirits. (shrink)