Rebecca Bamford

In this paper, I aim to clarify the development of Nietzsche’s account of objectivity in his published and authorized works. In the available scholarship, it has been noted that Nietzsche explicitly differentiates between two types of objectivity. What I shall here call type 1 objectivity is the type that Nietzsche often criticizes, namely objectivity as pure disinterested. Type 2 objectivity is the type that Nietzsche refers to in On the Genealogy of Morality as “future ‘objectivity’”. Having clarified what Nietzsche’s objections to type 1 objectivity are, I will explain his view of type 2 objectivity, showing how type 2 or “future ‘objectivity’” is indebted in its conception to Nietzsche’s free spirit project.

My particular focus in this article is on getting clearer about what Nietzsche’s experimentalism entails. Some immediate resistance may form in response to this proposal, based on my use of the term experimentalism. As Walter Kaufmann has pointed out in a discussion of experimentalism, Nietzsche himself does not discuss his work using this concept; in the original German, Nietzsche uses the terms “Experiment” and “Versuch.”1 In light of this, two main concerns may be raised about my proposal that experimentalism is worth some of our time and attention: whether it is necessary or helpful to focus discussion on yet another “ism” within Nietzsche scholarship and given that experimentalism is not Nietzsche’s..

ABSTRACT This article, invited for presentation to the North American Nietzsche Society at the 2020 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, is a commentary on Mark Alfano's 2019 monograph, Nietzsche's Moral Psychology. It critically discusses Alfano's synoptic digital humanities approach and examines the efficacy of two aspects of his argument about Nietzsche's philosophy developed using this methodology: the connection between life and will to power, and the role of speech acts.

Bernard Reginster has argued that in "Nietzsche's terminology, 'experimentation [Versuch]' is a paradigmatic exercise of curiosity."1 According to Reginster, the kind of curiosity in question, as far as Nietzsche's concept of the free spirit is concerned, is not the state of knowing or of being certain of the truth of some proposition, but is rather a matter of the activity or process of truth seeking and of inquiry.2 My own view is very similar: I have argued that experimentalism is a form of virtue for Nietzsche.3 Specifically, as I have suggested, Nietzsche employs experimentalism in two main ways: as a strategy for philosophical engagement, for example through his use of diverse writing styles and authorial...

We present a two-pronged criticism of Ramos's argument. Our main contention is that the logic of the author’s argument is flawed. As we demonstrate, the author conflates probability with necessity, in addition to conflating free will having causal efficacy with the merely illusory conscious experience of free will; such conflations undermine the claim that individual free will should be both exhibited on a social scale and necessarily cause a particular organized pattern to emerge. In addition, we will show that the author makes a series of inadequately supported assertions concerning the relationship between, and degree of scholarly consensus upon, causally effective free will and mind-body interactionist dualism, which further undermine his argument.

Jessica Berry provides the first detailed analysis of whether, and in what sense, Nietzsche was a skeptic (5). Exploring the affinity between Nietzsche’s work and Pyrrhonism in six main chapters, Berry differentiates between modern skepticism, understood as epistemological pessimism or nihilism (33), and Pyrrhonian skepticism as a commitment to continuing inquiry, based on the equipollence of arguments, “roughly equal persuasive weight for and against just about any claim,” and epochē, suspension of judgment (36–37). Berry shows that Nietzsche appreciated this distinction (29–32) and proceeds to read Nietzsche’s remarks on truth skeptically. She argues that—like the ancient Skeptic’s response to the..

Here I argue that aspects of Nietzsche's thought may be productively compared with the role played by the concept of ubuntu in talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I show that Nietzsche respects and writes for humanity conceived of in a vital sense, thereby imagining a sense of authenticity that may prove significant to talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I question the view that Nietzsche is an individualist, drawing on debate between Conway (1990) and Gooding-Williams (2001), concerning the interpretation of ‘The Dance-Song' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as on the notion of reciprocity intrinsic to the concept of ubuntu (Shutte, 1993). South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 85-97.