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 However, whereas he repeatedly entertains that claim in his unpublished notes, it is far from clear that he ever meant to endorse it in his published work.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)

Nietzsche offers us an account of how different drives interact with one another; it is rich but also appears to risk the homunculus fallacy. Competing attempts to deflect this charge on his behalf share an implicit consensus about the ‘epistemic ends’ of the account: they assume Nietzsche is trying to provide true explanations of psychological phenomena. I argue against this consensus. I claim that Nietzsche's characterisations of drive interaction are to be taken as fictive and are not intended to have (...) explanatory value. They nevertheless facilitate genuine epistemic achievement. Drawing on Catherine Elgin's account of the epistemic role of idealised models in science, I argue that Nietzsche's account of drive interaction is a ‘model of the mind’ that, despite relying on falsehoods, can exemplify features of our psychology that aid us in making novel predictions. We then see that Nietzsche neatly sidesteps the homunculus fallacy; we can further understand more fully what Nietzsche hopes his drive psychology will teach us. We can now resolve, for example, outstanding interpretative puzzles about the relationship between psychic integration and Nietzsche’s distinctive notion of spiritual health. (shrink)

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

Nietzsche claims that weakness of will is a pervasive feature of modernity: ‘Nothing is as timely [zeitgemass] as weakness of will’ (BGE 212). In this paper I explore a textual puzzle regarding the phenomenon traditionally identified with weakness of will, akrasia. Specifically, I draw attention to an apparent inconsistency between Nietzsche’s views regarding the origins of action and evaluative judgment, on the one hand, and his commitment to the possibility of akratic action, on the other. Nietzsche appears to account for (...) both action and ‘conscience’ – which functions like what philosophers today would call ‘better judgment’—by appealing to the strength of the drives. Thus, it is not immediately clear how action could ever diverge from conscience in the manner required for akratic action. As I argue, however, Nietzsche’s theoretical commitments regarding action and conscience are ultimately consistent with the possibility of akratic action. After motivating the interpretive tension, I offer a closer examination of Nietzsche’s remarks regarding the sources of action and conscience, respectively. I then demonstrate, drawing on his description of the relations between drives and his distinction between conscious and unconscious thought, that Nietzsche conceives of akratic action as a kind of ‘willing and not being able.’. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche shares the aim of contemporary Sellarsian efforts to reconcile the natural and the normative. However, as Joseph Rouse notes, the Sellarsian strategy collapses into dualism by virtue of its treatment of natural causality and normativity as different in kind and of the normative as operating parallel to the causal (Rouse 2002). The paper argues that Nietzsche avoids this dualism by offering a constitutively causal account of the normative. He does this by identifying the normative with (...) dominant drives of the self. It is argued that these dominant drives, like natural causes in the world, are modally dispositional and differ from natural causes in degree rather than dualistically in kind. However, the identification of the normative status of our values with dominant drives has been subject to strenuous criticism. Specifically, it is argued that the normative cannot be identified with dominant drives for fear of eliminating the normative. The paper responds to these criticisms in detail and argues that the constitutively causal account of normativity that stems from Nietzsche’s identification of the normative with dominant drives can be defended. (shrink)