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Paul Katsafanas
Boston University
  1. Constitutivism about Practical Reasons.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 367-394.
    This paper introduces constitutivism about practical reason, which is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims simply in virtue of acting. According to this view, action has a certain structural feature – a constitutive aim, principle, or standard – that both constitutes events as actions and generates a standard of assessment for action. We can use this standard of assessment to derive normative claims. In short, the authority of certain (...)
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  2. Group fanaticism and narratives of ressentiment.Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - In Leo Townsend, Hans Bernard Schmid, Michael Staudigl & Ruth Tietjen (eds.), The Philosophy of Fanaticism: Epistemic, Affective, and Political Dimensions. Routledge.
    The current political climate is awash with groups that we might be tempted to label irrational, extremist, hyper-partisan; it is full of echo-chambers, radicalization, and epistemic bubbles. Philosophers have profitably analyzed some of these phenomena. In this essay, I draw attention to a crucial but neglected aspect of our time: the way in which certain groups are fanatical. I distinguish fanatical groups from other types of problematic groups, such as extremist and cultish groups. I argue that a group qualifies as (...)
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  3. Fanaticism and Sacred Values.Paul Katsafanas - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19:1-20.
    What, if anything, is fanaticism? Philosophers including Locke, Hume, Shaftesbury, and Kant offered an account of fanaticism, analyzing it as (1) unwavering commitment to an ideal, together with (2) unwillingness to subject the ideal (or its premises) to rational critique and (3) the presumption of a non-rational sanction for the ideal. In the first part of the paper, I explain this account and argue that it does not succeed: among other things, it entails that a paradigmatically peaceful and tolerant individual (...)
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  4. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Fanaticism.Paul Katsafanas - forthcoming - In Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
    What is fanaticism and why is it an important philosophical topic? In this introductory chapter, I discuss the way in which fanaticism arose as a central philosophical concern in the early modern period. Philosophical discussions of fanaticism focus on psychological, epistemic, and behavioral dimensions of fanatics. The fanatic displays psychological peculiarities; epistemic defects; and potentially problematic behavioral tendencies. I discuss the ways in which different philosophers have offered different accounts of these three features; offer a brief defense of my own (...)
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  5. Review of Kaitlyn Creasy, The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche. [REVIEW]Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 202208.
    NDPR review of Kaitlyn Creasy's 'The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche'.
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  6. The Fanatic and the Last Man.Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 53 (2):137-162.
    Suppose we accept Nietzsche’s claim that critical reflection undermines our evaluative commitments. Then it seems that we are left with a pair of unappealing options: either we engage in critical reflection and find our evaluative commitments becoming etiolated; or we somehow immunize certain evaluative commitments from the effects of critical reflection. Nietzsche considers both of these paths, labeling the person who results from the first path “the last man” and the person who results from the second “the fanatic.” I consider (...)
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  7. "The Antichrist" as a Guide to Nietzsche's Mature Ethical Theory.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - In The Nietzschean Mind. Routledge.
    I argue that the rarely discussed Antichrist can serve as perhaps the best guide to Nietzsche’s mature ethical theory. Commentators often argue or assume that while Nietzsche makes many critical points about traditional morality, he cannot be offering a positive ethical theory of his own. This, I argue, is a mistake. The Antichrist offers a substantive ethical theory. It explicitly articulates Nietzsche’s positive ethical principles, shows why these principles are justified, and uses them to condemn traditional Christian morality. The chapter (...)
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  8. Nietzsche and Murdoch on the Moral Significance of Perceptual Experience.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):525-545.
    : This paper examines a claim defended by an unlikely pair: Friedrich Nietzsche and Iris Murdoch. The claim is that perceptual experience itself—as distinct from perceptually based judgments and beliefs—can be morally significant. In particular, Nietzsche and Murdoch hold that two agents in the same circumstances attending to the same objects can have experiences with different contents, depending on the concepts that they possess and employ. Moreover, they maintain that this renders perception an object of moral concern. This paper explicates (...)
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  9. What makes the affirmation of life difficult?Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - In Keith Ansell-Pearson & Paul S. Loeb (eds.), Nietzsche's ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra' A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Nietzsche suggests that even individuals who take themselves to bear an affirmative attitude toward life would be horrified by the thought of eternal recurrence (roughly, the idea that our lives will repeat endlessly in exactly the same fashion). But why? Why is it supposed to be more difficult to affirm recurring lives than to affirm a non-recurring, singular life? I argue that standard interpretations of eternal recurrence are unable to answer this question. I offer a new interpretation of eternal recurrence, (...)
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  10. On Homuncular Drives and the Structure of the Nietzschean Self.Paul Katsafanas - 2014 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 45 (1):1-11.
    If Clark and Dudrick have their way, gone will be the days of breezy writings on Nietzsche that recruit a phrase from here, a paragraph from there, and construct an interpretation from the resultant mélange. Clark and Dudrick advocate a meticulous, line-by-line study of Nietzsche’s text, with painstaking attention not only to the broader context of his claims, but even to the precise intent of the images and metaphors that he employs. Here, we find a level of textual scrutiny and (...)
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  11. Routledge Philosophical Minds: The Nietzschean Mind.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - Routledge.
    28 essays on all aspects of Nietzsche's thought. The attached file contains the introduction and table of contents.
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  12. Autonomy, Character, and Self-Understanding.Paul Katsafanas - 2016 - In Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character. Oxford University Press.
    Autonomy, traditionally conceived, is the capacity to direct one’s actions in light of self-given principles or values. Character, traditionally conceived, is the set of unchosen, relatively rigid traits and proclivities that influence, constrain, or determine one’s actions. It’s natural to think that autonomy and character will be in tension with one another. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: while character influences and constrains choice, this poses no problem for autonomy. However, in particular cases character can affect (...)
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  13. Recent Work on Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology and Ethics.Paul Katsafanas - 2021 - Nietzsche Studien 50 (1):361-381.
    A review of the following for books, plus some reflections on Nietzsche's moral psychology and ethics: Alfano: Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (Cambridge University Press 2019). Leiter: Moral Psychology with Nietzsche (Oxford University Press 2019) Ridley: The Deed is Everything: Nietzsche on Will and Action (Oxford University Press 2018) Stern: Nietzsche’s Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2020) These four books are broadly on Nietzsche’s moral psychology and ethics. The books differ widely in their aspirations: Ridley’s is focused solely on Nietzsche’s notion of action, (...)
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  14. Review of Agnes Callard, Aspiration. [REVIEW]Paul Katsafanas - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2):464-469.
    Review of Agnes Callard's Aspiration. Forthcoming in a symposium on the book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
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  15. Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy.Paul Katsafanas (ed.) - forthcoming - London: Routledge.
    24 original essays on the philosophy of fanaticism. These essays explore the epistemology, moral psychology, and ethics of fanaticism. The attached file contains a brief introduction and table of contents. -/- .
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  16. Nietzsche's Account of Self-Conscious Agency.Paul Katsafanas - 2019 - In Constantine Sandis (ed.), Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe. Oxford University Press.
    An overview of Nietzsche's philosophy of action.
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  17. Nietzschean approaches to hermeneutics.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - In Michael Förster & Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Hermeneutics. Cambridge University Press.
    This essay charts several key points of contact between Nietzsche and the hermeneutical tradition. It begins by arguing that the familiar claim that Nietzsche offers a hermeneutics of suspicion is potentially misleading. Seeking a more accurate representation of Nietzsche’s views, the essay argues that Nietzsche’s interpretive stance has several key features: he rejects immediate givens, endorses holism and perspectivism, and sees conscious experience as structured by concepts and language. Methodologically, Nietzsche inaugurates a genealogical approach to studying objects of philosophical concern, (...)
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  18. Naturalism, Minimalism, and the Scope of Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology.Paul Katsafanas - 2016 - In Kristin Gjesdal (ed.), Debates in Nineteenth Century Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses. Routledge. pp. 326-338.
    Bernard Williams’ “Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology”, replete with provocative and insightful claims, has been extremely influential in Nietzsche scholarship. In the two decades since its publication, much of the most interesting and philosophically sophisticated work on Nietzsche has focused on exactly the topics that Williams addresses: Nietzsche’s moral psychology, his account of action, his naturalistic commitments, and the way in which these topics interact with his critique of traditional morality. While Williams’ pronouncements on these topics are brief and at times (...)
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  19. The Emergence of the Drive Concept and the Collapse of the Animal/Human Divide.Paul Katsafanas - 2018 - In Peter Adamson & G. Fay Edwards (eds.), Animals: A History (Oxford Philosophical Concepts).
    In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, philosophers including Kant and Hegel draw a sharp distinction between the human and the animal. The human is self-conscious, the animal is not; the human has moral worth, the animal does not. By the mid to late nineteenth century, these claims are widely rejected. As scientific and philosophical work on the cognitive and motivational capacities of animals increases in sophistication, many philosophers become suspicious of the idea that there is any divide between (...)
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  20. Constitutivism.Paul Katsafanas - 2019 - In Iain Thomson & Kelly Becker (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015. Cambridge University Press.
    A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism.
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  21. Philosophy of Devotion: The Longing for Invulnerable Ideals.Paul Katsafanas - 2022 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, this book argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goals, or relationships. To sacralize a value is to treat it as inviolable (trade-offs with (...)
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