Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever ...

The paper examines Nietzsche's claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls "ressentiment" are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche's reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is "corrupt." Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

The paper examines Nietzsche’s claim that valuations born out of a psychological condition he calls “ressentiment” are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, rather than at those values themselves. After presenting an analysis of ressentiment, the paper examines its impact on valuation and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche’s reasons for claiming that ressentiment valuation is “corrupt.” Specifically, (...) the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review of the problems and prospects of this interpretation. (shrink)

In the early nineteenth century, a group of German biologists led by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer initiated a search for laws of biological organization that would explain the phenomena of form and function and establish foundations for a unified theory of life. The tradition spawned by these efforts found its most important spokesman in Karl Ernst von Baer. Timothy Lenoir chronicles the hitherto unexplored achievements of the practitioners of this research tradition as they aimed to place functional (...) morphology at the heart of a new science, which they called "biology." Strongly influenced by Immanuel Kant, the biologists’ approach combined a sophisticated teleology with mechanistic theories and sparked bitter controversies with the rival programs, mechanistic reductionism and Darwinism. Although temporarily eclipsed by these two approaches, the morphological tradition, Lenoir argues, was not vanquished in the field of scientific debate. It contributed to pathbreaking research in areas such as comparative anatomy, embryology, paleontology, and biogeography. Preface Introduction 1. Vital Materialism 2. The Concrete Formulation of the Program: From Vital Materialism to Developmental Morphology 3. Teleomechanism and the Cell Theory 4. The Functional Morphologists 5. Worlds in Collision 6. Teleomechanism and Darwin’s Theory Epilogue Notes Name Index Index. (shrink)

Nietzsche's perspectivism claims that every view is only one view. This claim raises serious self-referential difficulties: if Nietzsche's view is not to refute itself, then any argument offered on its behalf must be merely perspectival, but no such reasons would be convincing to Nietzsche's dogmatic opponents. This dissertation takes a historical approach, arguing that Nietzsche's perspectivism is a development and transformation of Kant's transcendental idealism. Our perspectival notions, like the Kantian categories, are conceptual resources that we bring to experience to (...) organize it. Nietzsche does not accept Kant's transcendental interpretation of our conceptual scheme, however. He offers arguments against the claims to necessary knowledge on which Kant's transcendental approach is based, and also against the coherence of the notion of the thing in itself, which Kant shares with traditional metaphysical realism. These arguments have the force of "internal reasons" against Kant and the realist; they are given from within Nietzsche's own perspective, but they appeal to cognitive standards which Nietzsche shares in common with his dogmatic opponents. They therefore count as reasons in favor of perspectivism, even within the terms of the alternative perspectives, despite the fact that they make no claim to universal, aperspectival validity. Nietzsche can thereby avoid the self-referential difficulties facing his argument. This interpretation also allows Nietzsche to develop "theory-internal" conceptions of truth and objectivity. These conceptions are found to provide a better account of our cognitive practices than the traditional, externalist alternatives. (shrink)

The present dissertation attempts to elucidate the meaning of Nietzsche's claim that a new, psychological critique of metaphysics is necessary. Nietzsche regards 'metaphysics' as the quest for an "absolute" or "aperspectival" representation of the world and of the good life. His attack on metaphysics develops in two successive stages. In the first stage, Nietzsche argues that the metaphysical ideal of absolute knowledge is incoherent. He accepts, and sometimes develops, the thoroughgoing scepticism of his late modern predecessors toward metaphysics but goes (...) on to argue that such a scepticism tells more against the intelligibility of the metaphysical ideal that underlies it than against the capacity of the human mind to achieve knowledge. ;In the second stage, Nietzsche investigates the origin of the metaphysical ideal of absolute knowledge and discovers that its pursuit is motivated by a particular psychological condition which he identifies as "ressentiment against life" and which is left unaffected by the denunciation of the incoherence of the ideal it motivates. A psychological critique capable of addressing the hidden motivation of the metaphysical quest is therefore necessary. The aim of Nietzsche's psychological critique is not, as might be assumed, the removal of non-epistemic obstacles to epistemic coherence, but the restoration of psychological health. Ressentiment is an inherently pathological condition: it breeds self-deception and thus corrupts the unity of the self in terms of which Nietzsche characterizes his ideal of psychological health. Epistemic coherence and truthfulness are not ends in themselves, but means to ensure psychological health. (shrink)