Paul Katsafanas

Kant and Hegel share a common foundational idea: they believe that the authority of normative claims can be justified only by showing that these norms are self-imposed or autonomous. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant argues that we can derive specific normative claims from the formal idea of autonomy, whereas Hegel contends that we use the idea of freedom not to derive, but to assess, the specific normative claims ensconced in our social institutions and practices. Exploring these claims, I argue that each approach encounters certain difficulties. I then argue that Nietzsche develops a theory of normative authority that avoids these potential difficulties. Nietzsche’s theory proceeds, in part, by reconciling the most compelling aspects of the Kantian and Hegelian accounts—aspects that have seemed, to many interpreters, to be incompatible. The resultant theory generates a unique and fruitful account of normative authority.

Many philosophers maintain that there is a distinction between acts that the agent plays an active role in producing, and acts that issue from the agent in a more passive fashion. According to the standard account, we can make sense of this distinction by maintaining that reflective or deliberative acts are paradigmatic cases of an agent’s playing an active role in the production of action. This chapter argues that this standard account is mistaken. Reflective or deliberative actions will seem to be active only if we conflate three claims: that choice causes action, that motives do not determine choice, and that reflection suspends the effects of motives. The chapter argues that while and are true, is false. Further, is needed to support the claim that reflective acts are active. Given the falsity of, the chapter shows that reflective acts are not necessarily more active than unreflective ones. The chapter closes by suggesting a new model of agential activity.

This paper argues that Nietzsche develops a novel and compelling account of the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states: he argues that conscious mental states are those with conceptual content, whereas unconscious mental states are those with nonconceptual content. I show that Nietzsche’s puzzling claim that consciousness is ‘superficial’ and ‘falsifying’ can be given a straightforward explanation if we accept this understanding of the conscious/unconscious distinction. I originally defended this view in my ‘Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization’ ; since then, the view has come under criticism on several fronts. Brian Leiter and others suggest that there is not enough textual evidence for the view. In addition, Leiter, Mattia Riccardi and Tsarina Doyle argue that, rather than aligning the conscious/unconscious distinction with the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, Nietzsche endorses a higher-order tho..

Near the beginning of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes that “psychology is once again the path to the fundamental problems” (BGE 23). This raises a number of questions. What are these “fundamental problems” that psychology helps us to answer? How exactly does psychology bear on philosophy? In this conference paper, I provide a partial answer to these questions by focusing upon the way in which psychology informs Nietzsche’s account of value. I argue that Nietzsche’s ethical theory is based upon the idea that power has a privileged normative status: power is the one value in terms of which all others values are to be assessed. If this is the correct interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethical theory, though, it raises a question: how could power have a privileged status, given that Nietzsche denies that there are any objective facts about what is valuable? I argue that Nietzsche’s account of psychology provides the answer: he grounds power’s privileged status in facts about the nature of human motivation. In particular, Nietzsche’s account of drives entails that human beings are ineluctably committed to valuing power. So Nietzsche’s ethical theory follows from his philosophical psychology.

Nietzsche associates values with affects and drives: he not only claims that values are explained by drives and affects, but sometimes appears to identify values with drives and affects. This is decidedly odd: the agent's reflectively endorsed ends, principles, commitments--what we would think of as the agent's values--seem not only distinct from, but often in conflict with, the agent's drives. Consequently, it is unclear how we should understand Nietzsche's concept of value. This essay attempts to dispel these puzzles by reconstructing Nietzsche's account of value. According to the view that I defend, an agent values X iff (i) the agent has a drive-induced affective orientation toward X and (ii) the agent does not disapprove of this affective orientation. Additionally, I argue that drives generate thoughts about justification, thereby inclining the agent to regard pursuit of the drive's aim as valuable. I contend that this interpretation makes sense of Nietzsche’s remarks about value and overcomes the difficulties inherent in competing interpretations. I conclude by investigating the recalcitrance of drive-induced affective orientations.

Iris Murdoch claims that “clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort.” Our experience of the world can be blurred by egoism, inattentiveness, and other failings. I ask how we distinguish clear vision from distorted vision. Murdoch’s texts appeal to four factors: (A) attention; (B) unselfing; (C) a form of conceptual articulacy; and (D) love. I ask three questions about these standards: - Are these standards directed at the same goal? (For example, are they all geared toward securing purely epistemic goals?) - Are these standards criterial for improvements in vision? (That is, does the presence of some combination of (A)-(D) constitute or guarantee better vision?) - Does Murdoch think that there’s a single best form of vision? (Such as the one attained by the person who manifests (A)-(D)?) In the secondary literature, the typical answers to these questions are: yes, yes, yes. But I give different answers: no, no, no.

At the close of the eighteenth century, Kant attempts to anchor morality in freedom. A series of nineteenth-century thinkers, though impressed with the claim that there is an essential connection between morality and freedom, argue that Kant has misunderstood the nature of the self, agency, freedom, the individual, the social, the natural sciences, and philosophical psychology. I trace the way in which a series of central figures rethink the connection between morality and freedom by complicating the analyses of the aforementioned notions. In particular, I discuss Schiller's demand for a unified self; Hegel's attention to the socially and historically situated agent; Feuerbach's and Büchner's turn to natural science; Marx's materialism; Schopenhauer's philosophical psychology; and Nietzsche's attempt to anchor normative demands in will to power.

This essay is an overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy of action. I discuss the central features of Nietzsche’s account and the ways in which it departs from standard accounts. Section 1 discusses Nietzsche’s view of the opacity of human action. I focus on the way in which the agent’s experience of the world is shaped by unnoticed and unconscious factors. Section 2 asks what role self-consciousness has in the production of action. Section 3 turns to the way in which Nietzsche understands the action/behavior distinction. Finally, Section 4 analyzes Nietzsche’s account of freedom. What emerges is a view that is not just one more entry into the standard debates, but an attempt at rethinking the terms in which the debate is cast.

I want to begin by thanking Bernard Reginster, Jorah Dannenberg, and Andrew Huddleston for their exceptionally rich and insightful critiques of my book. It is rare to find commentators who have engaged so deeply and so thoughtfully. Reginster, Dannenberg, and Huddleston have not focused on subsidiary or inessential themes: their discussions target the book’s central topics and pivotal moves in the argument. I am very grateful to them for taking the time to write such challenging and thoughtful responses to my book.In my response, I will address the main points raised in these critiques. In section 1, I address Dannenberg’s concerns about whether I have adequately characterized nihilism. In section 2, I turn to...

This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2, in which authors were invited to address the following questions: What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The editorship hopes this collection will provide a starting point for discussions about the most fruitful directions for Nietzsche scholarship to take and the most promising avenues for building on the best recent work.

Paul Katsafanas presents a clear, systematic study of Nietzsche's moral psychology. He analyzes Nietzsche's distinction between conscious and unconscious mental events, explains the nature of a type of motivational state that Nietzsche calls the 'drive', and examines the connection between drives, desires, affects, and values. He explores Nietzsche's account of willing unity of the self, freedom, and the relation of the self to its social and historical context. And he argues that Nietzsche's account enjoys a number of advantages over the currently dominant models of moral psychology--especially those indebted to the work of Aristotle, Hume, and Kant--and considers the ways in which Nietzsche's arguments can reconfigure and improve upon debates in the contemporary literature on moral psychology and philosophy of action.

The North American Nietzsche Society held the first of its stand-alone conferences at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House in New York City on October 14–17, 2016. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Bernard Reginster, Christopher Janaway, and Beatrix Himmelmann. In addition, the program committee selected seven blind-reviewed abstracts from a pool of over sixty submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy, featuring invited presentations by Paul Loeb, Jacqueline Scott, and Daniel Conway....

The North American Nietzsche Society held its second biannual conference at Stanford University on October 5–7, 2018. The three-day event featured invited keynotes by Jessica Berry and John Richardson. In addition, the program committee selected seven papers from a pool of over seventy submissions. The conference concluded with a group discussion on Nietzsche's attitude toward empirical science, featuring invited presentations by Maudemarie Clark and Tsarina Doyle.Lanier Anderson deserves special thanks for organizing the conference at Stanford. I would also like to thank Lanier Anderson, Robert Guay, Tom Bailey, Allison Merrick, Andrew Huddleston, Béatrice...