This book first published in the year 2021 June. Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Kuhn von Verden Verlag. Includes bibliographical references. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 19th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. 6). Nihilism (Philosophy). 7). Eternal return. I. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. II. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-.[Translation from German into English of Friedrich Nietzsche’s notes of 1881]. New Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Many of the notes have never been (...) translated into English before. Go inside the workshop of a great philosopher's mind and read these notes. Table of Contents Introduction and Preface (Pages: 1-11 ) Notebook: 11 = M III 1. Spring - Autumn 1881 11 [1 to 348] (Pages: 12-167 ) Nietzsche’s Notebooks in English: a Translator’s Introduction and Afterward (Pages: 168-183 ) The thought of the eternal return of the same (Pages: 184-197 ) Later Recapitulation note of 1888 14 [188] (Pages: 198-204 ) Rejection of the idea of eternal (Pages: 205 ) Translation of 4 notes by Nietzsche on Perspectivism (Pages: 206-210 ) Nietzsche gets some final few words (Pages: 211-216 ) Bibliographies (Pages: 217-236 ) Project started in summer of 2012. No one else has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. If you want to get in to more philological details you must learn German (see Nietzschechannel plus many published books on the topics). Translation notes. I have not tried to fix, polish-up, or clarify Nietzsche’s unpublished writings. Some of the translator have really refined Nietzsche’s ideas and positions. I have not “fixed” Nietzsche. I have not dropped or added words or changed the wording to make Nietzsche’s position clearer or stronger (others have done enough damage). Learn German and read the texts in German – my best recommendation and advice to you the reader. There are groups on the internet that work on all the details of translating Nietzsche’s remarks. There are many nuances and shades of the meaning in attempting to translate anyone’s language. Some words I could not translate from German and French; and I left those few words in German, but more words in French. I think most of the French texts are quotes that Nietzsche wrote down from French authors that he was reading at the time he wrote these notes. Reader beware. There are many historical and philosophical allusions as in all of Nietzsche’s philosophical writings and these notebooks are similar. Remember these are “notebooks” and include lots of notes or jottings -- and these are neither fragments nor polished drafts for publication. Nietzsche may have written these notebooks from back to front and re-used various notebooks at a later time. In the German text there are missing punctuations marks, missing quotation marks, missing words, abbreviation of words, miss numbered section, working table of contents for project books he wanted to publish, projects outlined, quotes without quote marks. Enjoy reading and thinking with Nietzsche in his unpublished notes. (shrink)

Is suffering really bad? The late Derek Parfit argued that we all have reasons to want to avoid future agony and that suffering is in itself bad both for the one who suffers and impersonally. Nietzsche denied that suffering was intrinsically bad and that its value could even be impersonal. This paper has two aims. It argues against what I call ‘Realism about the Value of Suffering’ by drawing from a broadly Nietzschean debunking of our evaluative attitudes, showing that a (...) recently influential response to the debunking challenge (the appeal to phenomenal introspection) fails. It also argues that a Nietzschean approach is well suited to support the challenge and is bolstered by the empirical literature. As strangers to ourselves, we cannot know whether suffering is really intrinsically bad for us. (shrink)

My dissertation brings into conversation two thinkers who are seldom considered together and highlights previously unnoticed similarities in their critical responses to scientism, which was just as prevalent in the late nineteenth century as it is today. I analyze this attitude as consisting of two linked propositions. The first, which Nietzsche calls “the unconditional will to truth,” is that the aims of science, discovering truth and avoiding error, are the most important human aims; and the second is that no practice (...) other than science can achieve them. Both Nietzsche and James criticize the unconditional will to truth for privileging a transcendent ideal over the demands of human life. This unconditional will regards truth as valuable in itself and demands that we pursue it under all circumstances—even if that demand comes into conflict with other values. I lay out the ways in which Nietzsche and James view the value of truth and the imperative to pursue it as conditional on its promotion of human flourishing. In response to the second proposition of scientism, both philosophers argue that science can neither tell us what we should value, nor fully account for the value we in fact find in certain objects, activities, and experiences. And crucially, science cannot tell us whether or why its own goal of attaining truth is valuable. Nietzsche and James reach different conclusions about what is ultimately valuable, and whether traditional religious belief is defensible in light of the discoveries of science. Nonetheless, the hitherto unappreciated similarities I have uncovered in their arguments show that principled opposition to scientism need not be associated with any particular moral or religious viewpoint. This analysis is not only of historical interest: those who consider scientism to be ill-founded and intellectually confining can take some cues from our nineteenth-century predecessors’ strategies for combating it. (shrink)

In recent years, Nietzsche’s views on (natural) science attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Overall, his attitude towards science tends to be one of suspicion, or ambivalence at least. My article addresses the “Nietzsche and science” theme from a slightly different perspective, raising a somewhat different type of question, more pragmatic if you like, namely: how to be a Nietzschean philosopher of science today? What would the methodological contours of a Nietzschean approach to present-day research areas (such as neuroscience, (...) astrophysics, synthetic biology or climate studies) amount to? In other words, my paper reflects a shift of focus from author studies to extrapolation. The design of my article is as follows. I will start with the question (already widely discussed in the expert literature) to what extent Friedrich Nietzsche (a classical philologist by training) managed to familiarise himself with the natural sciences of his epoch. Subsequently, I will outline some basic methodological and conceptual ingredients of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science, focussing on core issues such as “genealogy”, “interpretation”, “enhancement” and “truth”. Next, I will elucidate Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology with the help of three case studies (three representative samples if you will) taken from Nietzsche’s writings and dealing with physiology, astronomy and neuro-psychology respectively. Finally, I will present the methodological contours of a Nietzschean understanding of contemporary technoscience. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka has argued that Nietzsche’s positive ethical views can be formulated as a version of perfectionism that posits an objective conception of the good as the maximization of power and assigns to all agents the same goal of maximizing the perfection of the best. I show that Hurka’s case for both parts of this interpretation fails on textual grounds and that the kind of theory he proposes is in conflict with Nietzsche’s general approach to morality. The alternative reading for (...) which I argue defends a form of perfectionism as the value perspective of a ‘noble type’ that may emerge in the wake of a revaluation of all values. The basis of this perfectionism is an individual’s projection of an ideal of life to which she ascribes intrinsic value and in terms of which the value of other things is assessed. Justifying this reading requires drawing a distinction between life-denying ideals – forms of the ‘ascetic ideal’ – and life-affirming ‘counterideals’. It also requires recognizing that the perfection of the noble type is expressed in an individual ideal that cannot be shared with others, as opposed to a common ideal of human perfection. (shrink)

This article concerns whether Nietzsche is sympathetic to monism about concrete objects, the heterodox metaphysical view that there is exactly one concrete object. I first dispel prominent reasons for thinking that Nietzsche rejects monism. I then develop the most compelling arguments for monism in Nietzsche’s writings and check for soundness. The arguments seem to be supported by the texts, but they have not been developed in the literature. Despite such arguments, I suggest that Nietzsche is actually not sympathetic to monism (...) about objects—but his reasons for siding against monism are not at all obvious. The result should be a new understanding of some of Nietzsche’s fundamental ontological commitments. (shrink)

This paper argues that Nietzsche is a critic of just the kind of genealogical debunking he is popularly associated with. We begin by showing that interpretations of Nietzsche which see him as engaging in genealogical debunking turn him into an advocate of nihilism, for on his own premises, any truthful genealogical inquiry into our values is going to uncover what most of his contemporaries deem objectionable origins and thus license global genealogical debunking. To escape nihilism and make room for naturalism (...) without indiscriminate subversion, we then argue, Nietzsche targets the way of thinking about values that permits genealogical debunking: far from trying to subvert values simply by uncovering their origins, Nietzsche is actively criticising genealogical debunking thus understood. Finally, we draw out the consequences of our reading for Nietzsche’s positive vision. (shrink)

The paper explores the issue of moral relativism in Nietzsche, and tries to argue that Nietzsche's attitude towards moral values does not support a radical relativism according to which since (i) every moral interpretation is relative to a judging perspective, and (ii) an absolute viewpoint is lacking, then (iii) every moral interpretation seems to be as true, valid or justified as the others. On the contrary, Nietzsche's perspectivism leaves space for a rank order among values, whose establishment is considered by (...) Nietzsche as the future task of the philosopher. (shrink)

This chapter provides summaries of the chapter of this book and introduces the major themes and debates addressed in the volume. Discussed are Nietzsche’s metaphysics; his philosophy of mind in light of contemporary views; the question of panpsychism of Beyond Good and Evil 36; the rejection of dualism in favour of monism, in particular a monism of value; Nietzsche’s positions on consciousness and embodied cognition in light of recent cognitive science; a conception of freedom and agency based on an intrinsically (...) motivating; embodied sense of self-efficacy; a Nietzschean account of valuing understood as drive-induced affective orientations of which an agent approves; the idea of ressentiment conceived as a process of intentional, not reflectively strategic, self-deception about one’s own conscious mental states; and a defence of a Nietzschean naturalism. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis will be to give an elucidation of Nietzsche’s ideal of the post-moral autonomous individual: to give a picture of what Nietzsche takes such an individual to look like, and to show how this picture relates to some of Nietzsche’s most fundamental philosophical concerns. Overall, my argument will be that autonomy, or rather the degree of autonomy that a person possesses, is a function of the power of that person in relation to the other people and (...) forces, and of their ability to extend their will over long periods of time. Moreover, the achievement of the highest degrees of autonomy, and by extension the achievement of the greatest levels of power, requires imposing an ethic upon one’s actions and one’s self. There are several features that this ethic must have if it is adequately to perform its function: it must be self-chosen rather than simply picked up from one’s surroundings, it must act to give unity to the most diverse collection of collection of drives and affects possible for the person who holds it, and it must be well tailored to fit their specific natural constitution. In order to establish this I will focus on four main issues: the significance of the sovereign individual of GM II: 2, the role of ethics/values in Nietzsche’s ideal of autonomy, the relation between Nietzsche’s deflationary account of consciousness and his views of freedom, and the notion of unity at play in Nietzsche’s writings. I will also offer some thoughts on the coherence of Nietzsche’s ideal of autonomy with his thoughts on life-affirmation. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s favourable comments about science and the senses have recently been taken as evidence of naturalism. Others focus on his falsification thesis: our beliefs are falsifying interpretations of reality. Clark argues that Nietzsche eventually rejects this thesis. This article utilizes the multiple ways of being science friendly in Nietzsche’s context by focussing on Mach’s neutral monism. Mach’s positivism is a natural development of neo-Kantian positions Nietzsche was reacting to. Section 15 of Beyond Good and Evil is crucial to Clark’s interpretation. (...) The presented interpretation makes better sense of this passage and shows that Nietzsche can accept both falsification and empiricism. (shrink)

This article argues that Nietzsche’s meta-ethics is basically a form of sentimentalism, but a form of sentimentalism that includes cognitive components in the sentiments that are involved. The article also ascribes to Nietzsche the more original position that the moral sentiments in question vary dramatically between historical periods, cultures, and even individuals, sometimes indeed to the point of becoming inverted between one case and another. Finally, the article also attributes to Nietzsche a hermeneutic insight into certain problems that this situation (...) causes for the accurate interpretation of other people’s viewpoints. Along the way, the article in addition argues that Nietzsche’s positions on all these issues were molded not only by such well-known influences as Paul Rée and Hume, but also, and indeed more strongly, by Herder, and it develops some grounds for thinking that the positions in question are highly plausible ones. (shrink)

In this dissertation I defend the claim that Nietzsche’s middle period can be read as presenting a theory of cultural flourishing that has as its foundation the project of incorporating truth. The consciously experienced world is the product of a number of interpretive processes operating below the level of consciousness. The intentional structure of experience is universal to human beings, but the content of the resulting world is determined by inherited norms and inculcated associations. Culture in one sense refers to (...) these inherited rules, but in another to the specific worlds that individuals are presented with as a result of them. The experienced world is relative to the interpretation employing in producing it, but experience is structured such that the world is presented as mind-independent. That is, the world is perspectivally constituted, even if each perspective presents its own world as the only one. This claim is what Nietzsche means by ‘truth’ in the project of incorporating truth. To incorporate this amounts to a refusal to commit to any one perspective dogmatically, which translates into the activity of continually altering one’s experienced world. This is achieved by reordering the framework that forms culture. But this is not done because truth has absolute value that demands that it be incorporated. Rather, it is done in the name of health, which for Nietzsche amounts to realising to the greatest extent possible the inherent forces that govern all living things. Continually changing perspectives introduces diversity into one’s existence; being able to maintain an identity in the face of this diversity is a demonstration of the strength of one’s vitality. This balance of stable identity and maximum diversity is constitutive of great health at the individual level and at the cultural level. Since incorporation at the individual level employs the cultural framework, the activity involved automatically has the capacity to affect culture at large. Certain great individuals, who themselves exhibit great health, are conscious of this relation to culture and they use it both to maintain cultural diversity and to unite the community around and ideal that helps engender cultural health. That ideal is science. (shrink)

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s published works contain a substantial, although implicit, argument for the will to power as ontology—a critical and descriptive, rather than positive and explanatory, theory of reality. Further, I suggest this ontology is entirely consistent with a naturalist methodology. The will to power ontology follows directly from Nietzsche’s naturalist rejection of three metaphysical presuppositions: substance, efficient causality, and final causality. I show that a number of interpretations, including those of Clark, Schacht, Reginster, and Richardson, (...) are inconsistent with Nietzsche’s naturalism, because they presuppose efficient or final causality. In contrast, I argue that the will to power is not an explanatory theory, but a description of the basic, necessary character of reality, designed to critically reveal and minimize metaphysical presuppositions—to reject false explanations of reality and human behavior. It avoids substance-metaphysics by describing reality as will, a causal process without discrete efficient causes or agents. It eliminates efficient causality by describing events as maximal manifestations of power, rather than as agent-actualized potentialities. Finally, it opposes teleology by describing life as tending toward the activity of resistance as such, rather than toward explanatory end-states, such as the accumulation of power or overcoming of resistances. (shrink)

Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a biologist, Nevertheless his philosophical thought was deeply influenced by ideas emerging from the evolutionary biology of the nineteenth century. His relationship to the Darwinism of his time is difficult to disentangle. It is argued that he was in a sense an unwitting Darwinist. It follows that his philosophical thought is of considerable interest to those concerned to develop an evolutionary biology of mankind. His approach can be likened to that of an extraterrestrial sociobiologist studying (...) clever beasts... in some out of the way corner of the universe ... It is shown how be uses this viewpoint to account for the origin of the central psychobiology of humankind: for dualistic philosophies, such as that of Descartes (which Ryle famously called the official doctrine), for human notions of truth and falsehood, being and becoming, and for other fundamental concepts of Western philosophy and science. All these, he argues, are no more and no less than the necessary adaptations of a zoological species, Homo sapiens, in its struggle for life in a Darwinian world. It is concluded that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to accept and use in their full depth the philosophical implications of nineteeth-century evolutionism, implications which are still resisted to this day. It is also argued that this interpretation of Nietzsche's aphoristic writings provides them with an organic consistency. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the argument that Bernard Williams advances in ‘The Makropolus Case’ for the meaninglessness of immortality. I also consider various counter-arguments. I suggest that the more clearly these counter-arguments are targeted at the spirit of Williams's argument, rather than at its letter, the less clearly they pose a threat to it. I then turn to Nietzsche, whose views about the eternal recurrence might appear to make him an opponent of Williams. I argue that, properly interpreted, these (...) views in fact make him an ally. (shrink)

I investigate the consequences of Nietzsche's perspectivism for notions of truth and objectivity, and show how the metaphor of visual perspective motivates an epistemology that avoids self-referential difficulties. Perspectivism's claim that every view is only one view, applied to itself, is often supposed to preclude the perspectivist's ability to offer reasons for her epistemology. Nietzsche's arguments for perspectivism depend on “internal reasons”, which have force not only in their own perspective, but also within the standards of alternative perspectives. Internal reasons (...) allow a perspectivist argument against dogmatism without presupposing aperspectival criteria for theory choice. Nietzsche also offers “internal” conceptions of truth and objectivity which reduce them to a matter of meeting our epistemic standards. This view has pluralistic implications, which conflict with common sense, but it is nevertheless consistent and plausible. Nietzsche's position is similar to Putnam's recent internalism, and this is due to their common Kantian heritage. (shrink)

In this study, it will be my concern to examine the argument for a discontinuity between Nietzsche’s early and ‘middle’ period writings. Specifically, I will address the notion that these earlier works represent something that had, by 1878, become intolerable for Nietzsche: life-denial. The typical reading of The Birth of Tragedy presents it as a work of Schopenhauerian pessimism, which offers the art of beautifying illusion as the only possible means to escape the relentless horror of existence. Scholarship in the (...) last 20 years has worked against this interpretation, and yet no scholar – perhaps with the exception of Michele Haar5 - has been able to fully endorse the claim made by Nietzsche in his 1886 preface to the work, “An Attempt at Self Criticism”: that Birth offered aesthetics as a remedy to life-denial. It was in the name of opposing this ethos – which Nietzsche most famously aligned with Christian and Buddhist asceticism – that the Free Spirit works were to wage their war against metaphysics and to denounce the ‘afterworldsmen’ who turn their back on life and seek for meaning in the Beyond. Through a reading of Birth, as well as its draft texts – “The Dionysian Worldview” and “The Greek Music Drama”-, the works’ proposed follow up Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, and the lectures series this latter was based on I will argue for an alternative interpretation. From a Naturalist reading of these early texts and their ‘Aesthetic interpretation of Life’, I seek to trace a line of continuity that extends into the Free Spirit works. (shrink)

GS 341 is one of the most familiar of Nietzsche’s writings. This article proposes a new reading that stands in contrast with most English-language Nietzsche scholarship. The text presents a communication and its reception. A ‘demon’ makes an announcement, and a hearer responds in one way or another. But there is also another narrative altogether, whose conceptual vocabulary comes from a dynamic world-view. In this an interaction of forces leads to a new situation. If the hearer is not crushed by (...) the ‘greatest weight’, there must be an inner force that counteracts its impact. I argue that what Nietzsche calls amor fati is a state that allows our drives to achieve full expression, and so makes possible a collective strength able to withstand the greatest impact. The final sentence refers to a “confirmation and sealing”. What happens is that the demon’s message makes an impression on the receptive hearer. For Nietzsche this is a working metaphor, not a turn of phrase. In a draft from this period he writes: “Let us stamp the image of eternity on our life!” That sudden and forceful act, embodying an evaluative judgement, is the event that GS 341 is all about. (shrink)

This article revisits the author’s influential account of Nietzche as a philosophical naturalist. It identifies the sources of Nietzsche’s position in the German naturalism of the mid-nineteenth century, in particular the work of Friedrich Lange. His naturalism is, however, “speculative” in that he postulates causal mechanisms not confirmed by science. Nietzsche’s ambition to explain morality naturalistically coexists with a “therapeutic” ambition to induce some readers to escape from morality. The article also addresses doubts that might arise against reading Nietzsche as (...) a naturalist. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science is ambivalent: he remarks approvingly on its rigorous methodology and adventurous spirit, but also points out its limitations and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto philosophers’ territory. What does Nietzsche think is science’s proper role and relationship with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy should set goals for science. Philosophers’ distinctive task is to ‘create values’, which involves two steps: (1) envisaging ideals for human life, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behaviour and (...) societal organization. To accomplish step (2), philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements have best advanced this ideal in the past or might in the future. (shrink)

Nietzsche characterises some influential individuals – such as Socrates and Wagner – as “decadents” because they promote life-inhibiting values that potentially undermine the flourishing of humanity. A clearly stated but less prominent example of such a decadent is Herbert Spencer. While Nietzsche’s observations concerning Spencer are far fewer than those on Socrates and Wagner, they still have considerably significance for understanding Nietzsche’s philosophy – particularly his views on morality and science – and consequently their role in his conception of decadence. (...) This article argues that Nietzsche considers Spencer to be a decadent not just because of the latter’s advocating of a morality based on altruism, but also the projection of the decadent values of this morality as inevitable, as part of his belief in objective, scientific and sociological truths. (shrink)

My dissertation has two main parts. In the first half, I draw out an underlying presupposition of Descartes' philosophy: what I term "atomism of thought." Descartes employs a radical procedure of doubt in order to show that the first principle of his philosophy, the cogito, is an unshakeable foundation of knowledge. In the dialogue that follows his dissemination of the Meditations, Descartes reveals that a whole set of concepts and rational principles innate in our minds are never doubted. These fundamental (...) units of thought are indivisible, distinct, and isolated, and enable the possibility of any rational demonstration. Atoms of thought are perfectly individuated because God has created them as such. Likewise, our minds have been fashioned such that we necessarily have a clear and distinct perception every time we alight upon these simple notions. In the second part of the dissertation, I take up critiques of Descartes' view given by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the chapter on Nietzsche, I attempt to fill a lacuna in scholarship about Nietzsche's commentary on Descartes. More specifically, I argue that once the foundation of God is displaced, the basis for accepting atomism of thought dissolves. In the final chapter, I analyze Heidegger's critique of Cartesian atomism. I first look at Heidegger's critique of classical truth as correspondence from Being and Time, and show how it is relevant to a critique of atomism. Then I show how the early Heidegger's holistic philosophical framework can provide an alternative that avoids the pitfalls of atomism. While I limit the scope of my analysis to Descartes' particular formulation, atomism of thought was an influential doctrine throughout modern philosophy. This aspect of Cartesianism has persisted and continues to be a significant theoretical underpinning of many contemporary views. It is my contention that Nietzsche and Heidegger have important contributions to make to this area of thought, and the relative neglect of their work in recent scholarship is a detrimental oversight. (shrink)

The problem of history in Nietzsche’s second Unfashionable Observation is best approached through that which it is supposed to serve: life, more specifically human life. I argue that Nietzsche presents an oblique but nevertheless complete articulation of the nature of the human soul as consisting of two basic parts, of desiring (the unhistorical) and memory (the historical): of a multiplicity of desires that struggle for domination over the others, and which express themselves in more complex ways through memory-based structures such (...) as conscience. I then discuss some implications of this conception. First, I interpret the significance of the useful kinds of history: rather than being different modes of historical science, they are much more basic modes of practical relating to the matters of our world (especially to other humans and their ways of life) that are external to us both temporally and spatially. Second, I discuss the particular kinds of desires which underpin the three useful kinds of history. Third, I interpret the problem of scientific history as arising from a turning of the normal human structures of meaningfulness against themselves, and as resulting in two specific kinds of psychic damage: to our capacity for growth and self-cultivation, and to our will to do so at all. Finally, I show the importance of the erotic-historic soul for the questions of right and wrong methods of self-knowledge and for the meaning of the imperative “sei du selbst!” that we find in Schopenhauer as Educator. (shrink)

This article addresses whether Nietzsche’s naturalism is best understood as exemplifying the principles of scientific method and the spirit of Enlightenment. It does so from a standpoint inspired by Eugen Fink’s contention that Nietzsche’s endorsements of “naturalism” are best read as hyperbole. The discussion engages with Enlightenment-orientated readings (by Walter Kaufmann, Maudemarie Clark, and Brian Leiter), which hold Nietzsche’s naturalism to endorse of the spirit of empirical science, and an alternative view (provided by Richard Schacht and Wolfgang Müller-Lauter), which holds (...) Nietzsche’s “extended naturalism” to be an informing ethos of historically aware thought rather than a mere “method.” The ensuing discussion endorses the latter approach in terms that seek to take more seriously the implications of Fink’s point about the hyperbolic and figural aspects of Nietzsche’s naturalism. I argue that Nietzsche’s naturalism is indeed often hyperbolic and figural but that this exaggerated form of naturalizing thought allows insights that invite explicit theorization. Turning to an approach suggested by Adorno and Horkheimer, I argue that Nietzsche’s exaggeratedly “naturalistic” take on morality is best appreciated as a form of disturbing and disruptive political intervention in the dominant discourse of modernity in which it overtly situates itself, namely, the instrumentalizing, methodologically fixated liberal discourse of scientific Enlightenment. If we approach his thinking in this way, Nietzsche’s naturalism serves as a valuable resource for critical reflection on the hegemony of contemporary scientific culture. The context for such critical reflection is provided by Giorgio Agamben’s work on sovereign power and modernity. Nietzsche’s naturalism, I argue, is foremost biopolitical in its implications. These implications invite critical reflection on aspects of Agamben’s work; they also, following Agamben’s lead, suggest that we must step beyond the fundamental concepts of liberalism. (shrink)

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his “revaluation (...) of all values”, and lays out three “design-requirements” that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III–IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values. (shrink)