Charles Boddicker

Nietzsche's writing style is designed to elicit affective responses in his readers. Humour is one of the most common means by which he attempts to engage his readers' affects. In this article, I explain how and why Nietzsche uses humour to achieve his philosophical ends. The article has three parts. In part 1, I reject interpretations of Nietzsche's humour on which he engages in self‐parody in order to mitigate the charge of decadence or dogmatism by undermining his own philosophical authority. In part 2, I look at how Nietzsche uses humour and laughter as a critical tool in his polemic against traditional morality. I argue that one important way in which Nietzsche uses humour is as a vehicle for enhancing the effectiveness of his ad hominem arguments. In part 3, I show how Nietzsche exploits humour's social dimension in order to find and cultivate what he sees as the right kinds of readers for his works.

Nietzsche’s “perspectivism” has often invited the charge of relativism. I give a reading of GM III 12 in order to show, on the contrary, that perspectivism is in part a claim about how best to seek knowledge. I argue that perspectivism consists of two claims, one descriptive and one prescriptive. The first claim describes the nature of enquiry; it is that enquiry is guided and shaped by the affects. The second is a prescriptive claim about how we ought to enquire given that the descriptive claim is true. It is that we can enquire better if we approach a subject-matter in a way that is affectively-engaged, rather than affectively-detached. I argue that affective-engagement can benefit enquiry in two ways. First, Nietzsche thinks that affective states cause us to adopt moral and philosophical views. By attending to our affects, we can gain knowledge of the states that give rise to those views. Second, we can gain knowledge of why we hold a given moral/philosophical view when, instead of ignoring our affects, or letting them guide us unconsciously, we attend to them directly. Thus, perspectivism involves an injunction to probe our intuitions about a given subject-matter for the sake of knowledge.

I give an account of Nietzsche's conception of valuing that builds on Paul Katsafanas's account. Katsafanas argues that an agent values x iff the agent (1) has a drive-induced positive affective orientation toward x, and (2) does not disapprove of this affective orientation. I object to condition (2), showing that Nietzsche thinks we can disapprove of our values and still count as holding them. On my view, an agent values the aim of one of their drives when the drive is strong enough to generate an abiding positive affective orientation toward its aim. I argue that my view can address the four objections Katsafanas levels against Richardson's, Poellner's, and Clark and Dudrick's accounts, without neglecting the Nietzschean thought that we can feel intensely conflicted and uneasy about our values.