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33Nietzsche as panpsychistBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 1 (forthcoming): 1-23. 2024.This paper argues that Nietzsche is a panpsychist. Panpsychism holds that mental features are ubiquitous and fundamental in reality. I first argue that Nietzsche’s rejection of Cartesian dualism leads him to substance monism. To better understand his monism, I examine Nietzsche’s rejection of Newtonian atomism. Nietzsche holds that bundles of forces, or will to power, are more fundamental than hard, extended atoms. So, will to power is fundamental. I then investigate Nietzsche’s remarks on organ…Read more
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236Review of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Adrian Del Caro, trans. The Joyful Science / Idylls from Messina / Unpublished Fragments from the Period of The Joyful Science (Spring 1881– Summer 1882): Volume 6.H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences. forthcoming.This is a review of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Adrian Del Caro, trans. The Joyful Science / Idylls from Messina / Unpublished Fragments from the Period of The Joyful Science (Spring 1881– Summer 1882): Volume 6 (The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. x + 772 pp. $28.00, paper, ISBN 978-1-5036-3232-5.
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472Naturalism, Causality, and Nietzsche’s Conception of ScienceJournal of Nietzsche Studies 46 (1): 110-119. 2015.ABSTRACT There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche's view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche's understanding of natu…Read more
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516Nietzsche's IntuitionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (7): 732-753. 2021.ABSTRACT This essay examines a particular rhetorical strategy Nietzsche uses to supply prima facie epistemic justification: appeals to intuition. I first investigate what Nietzsche thinks intuitions are, given that he never uses the term ‘intuition’ as we do in contemporary philosophy. I then examine how Nietzsche can simultaneously endorse naturalism and intuitive appeals. I finish by looking at why and how Nietzsche uses appeals to intuition to further his philosophical agenda. Answering these…Read more
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601A Priori Justification in NietzscheHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (3): 261-276. 2021.This paper argues there are crucial points in Nietzsche’s texts where he offers a priori epistemic justification for views he believes are correct. My reading contrasts with the dominant view that Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism is incompatible with a priori justification. My aim is to develop Nietzsche’s brand of a priori justification, show that he employs this account of justification in the texts, and suggest how it might be compatible with naturalism.
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56Nietzsche's Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy, vol. 1: Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics ed. by Marco Brusotti and Herman SiemensJournal of Nietzsche Studies 52 (1): 177-184. 2021.Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics is the first of three volumes meant to address Nietzsche's relation to Kant and Kantian philosophy. This volume addresses how Nietzsche rejects, adopts, and reformulates Kantian epistemology and metaphysics. In what follows I go through the book chapter by chapter, providing a brief summary before a brief commentary.In their helpful introduction, Brusotti and Siemens do an impressive job of elucidating the young Nietzsche's acquaintances with Kant.…Read more
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52Nietzsche as MetaphysicianRoutledge. 2022.This book defends the controversial view that Nietzsche is a metaphysician against a tendency to sever Nietzsche from metaphysical philosophy. It shows that for Nietzsche the questions, answers, methods, and subject matters of metaphysics are not only perfectly legitimate, but also crucial for understanding the world and our place within it.
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362Marco Brusotti & Herman Siemens (eds.), Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy, Volume I: Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. xix + 298 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4742-7477-7. Hardcover, $114.00 (volume); $256.00 (collection). (review)Journal of Nietzsche Studies 52 (1): 177-184. 2021.Review of Marco Brusotti & Herman Siemens (eds.), Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant and the Kantian Legacy, Volume I: Nietzsche, Kant, and the Problem of Metaphysics. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. xix + 298 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4742-7477-7. Hardcover, $114.00 (volume); $256.00 (collection).
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372Symposium on Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche’s Constructivism: a Metaphysics of Material ObjectsPhilosophia 49 (2): 571-583. 2020.Symposium on Nietzsche's Constructivism (Routledge, 2018), replies to Adler, Cabrera, Doyle, Migotti, Sinhababu, Pedersen.
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430Précis of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material ObjectsPhilosophia 49 (2): 513-516. 2020.This is a précis of Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects (Routledge, 2017), for a forthcoming symposium on the book.
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1989Nietzsche: MetaphysicianJournal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (1): 117-132. 2021.Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement concerning Nietzsche's view of metaphysics is that some commentators believe Nietzsche has a positive, systematic metaphysical project, and others deny this. Those who deny it hold that Nietzsche believes metaphysics has a special problem, that is, a distinctively problematic feature that distinguishes metaphysics from other areas of philosophy. In this paper, I investigate important features of Nietzsche's metametaphysics in order to argue that Nietzsch…Read more
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457Nietzsche's IntuitionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.This essay examines a particular rhetorical strategy Nietzsche uses to supply prima facie epistemic justification: appeals to intuition. I first investigate what Nietzsche thinks intuitions are, given that he never uses the term ‘intuition’ as we do in contemporary philosophy. I then examine how Nietzsche can simultaneously endorse naturalism and intuitive appeals. I finish by looking at why and how Nietzsche uses appeals to intuition to further his philosophical agenda. Answering these question…Read more
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564Nietzsche and James on the Value of Constructing ObjectsOpen Philosophy 1 (1): 392-400. 2018.In this paper, I first suggest that Nietzsche and James, two otherwise very different thinkers, both endorse the controversial constructivist view that human representational practices bring all material objects into existence. I then explore their views concerning why and how constructivism can play a vital role in helping us find reality and our lives valuable.
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947Nietzsche on Monism about ObjectsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 56 (4): 469-487. 2018.This article concerns whether Nietzsche is sympathetic to monism about concrete objects, the heterodox metaphysical view that there is exactly one concrete object. I first dispel prominent reasons for thinking that Nietzsche rejects monism. I then develop the most compelling arguments for monism in Nietzsche’s writings and check for soundness. The arguments seem to be supported by the texts, but they have not been developed in the literature. Despite such arguments, I suggest that Nietzsche is a…Read more
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7897Nietzsche on Loneliness, Self-Transformation, and the Eternal RecurrenceJournal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 194-213. 2018.Nietzsche’s presentation of the eternal recurrence in Gay Science 341 is often viewed as a practical thought experiment meant to radically transform us. But exactly why and how we are supposed to be transformed is not clear. I contend that addressing these issues requires taking a close look at the psychological setting of the passage. The eternal recurrence is presented in our “loneliest loneliness.” I argue that facing the eternal recurrence from a state of profound loneliness both motivates s…Read more
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472Nietzsche's Conception of Truth: Correspondence, Coherence, or Pragmatist?Journal of Nietzsche Studies 46 (2): 239-248. 2015.Nearly every common theory of truth has been attributed to Nietzsche, while some commentators have argued that he simply has no theory of truth. This essay argues that Nietzsche's remarks on truth are best situated within either the coherence or pragmatist theories of truth rather than the correspondence theory. Nietzsche's thoughts on truth conflict with the correspondence framework because he believes that the truth conditions of propositions are constitutively dependent on our actions.
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335Review of Tsarina Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 5. 2018.Review of Tsarnia Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value
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1445Nietzsche and the Death of God1000-Word Philosophy. 2018.This introductory essay addresses Nietzsche's famous claim that God is dead, develops his arguments for it, and examines its potential implications for contemporary religious and ethical thought.
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1157A New Peircean Response to Radical SkepticismContemporary Pragmatism 15 (1): 15-22. 2018.The radical skeptic argues that I have no knowledge of things I ordinarily claim to know because I have no evidence for or against the possibility of being systematically fed illusions. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in pragmatic responses to skepticism inspired by C. S. Peirce. This essay challenges one such influential response and presents a better Peircean way to refute the skeptic. The account I develop holds that although I do not know whether the skeptical hypothesis is true, …Read more
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445A World Without a Past: New Challenges to Kant's Refutation of IdealismSouthwest Philosophy Review 34 (1): 171-180. 2018.In the Refutation of Idealism, Kant aims to defeat the Cartesian radical skeptical hypothesis that empirical reality might not exist and we cannot have knowledge of it. Kant intends to demonstrate that conscious experience presupposes direct experience of empirical reality. This paper presents new challenges to the conclusions Kant reaches in the Refutation. Kant’s argument turns on the claim that the past must exist, and my challenges concern the possibility that there is no past.
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24I argue that Nietzsche embraces a conception of science that falls between the two dominant interpretations in the literature. Many thinkers in the continental tradition claim that Nietzsche believes science should be either reconceived or overcome altogether by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. They maintain that Nietzsche regards science as nihilistic because it either presumes that the world is some way it is not or functions on the erroneous assumption that truth rath…Read more
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896Object Constructivism and Unconstructed ObjectsSouthwest Philosophy Review 30 (1): 177-185. 2014.The paper responds to a common charge against constructivism about objects, the view that all objects are essentially socially constructed. The objection is that constructivism is false because there must exist unconstructed objects for there to be constructed objects. I contend that the worry is unsound because whatever exists fully independently of our activities cannot be an object.
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353Overcoming the Conflict of Evolutionary and Naturalized Epistemology in NietzscheHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 32 (2): 181-194. 2015.There is a difficulty in understanding Nietzsche’s epistemology. It is generally accepted that he endorses the naturalized epistemological view that knowledge should be closely connected to the sciences. He also holds the evolutionary epistemological position that knowledge has developed exclusively to benefit human survival. Nietzsche’s evolutionary epistemology, however, appears to imply a debunking argument about the truth of our beliefs that seems to undermine his commitment to a naturalized…Read more
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301Nietzsche on ObjectsNietzsche Studien 44 (1). 2015.Nietzsche was persistently concerned with what an object is and how different views of objects lead to different views of facts, causality, personhood, substance, truth, mathematics and logic, and even nihilism. Yet his treatment of objects is incredibly puzzling. In many passages he assumes that objects such as trees and leaves, tables and chairs, and dogs and cats are just ordinary entities of experience. In other places he reports that objects do not exist. Elsewhere he claims that objects ex…Read more
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1044Scientific Fictionalism and the Problem of Inconsistency in NietzscheJournal of Nietzsche Studies 47 (2): 238-246. 2016.Fictionalism plays a significant role in philosophy today, with defenses spanning mathematics, morality, ordinary objects, truth, modality, and more.1 Fictionalism in the philosophy of science is also gaining attention, due in particular to the revival of Hans Vaihinger’s work from the early twentieth century and to heightened interest in idealization in scientific practice.2 Vaihinger maintains that there is a ubiquity of fictions in science and, among other things, argues that Nietzsche suppor…Read more
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71Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material ObjectsRoutledge. 2018.Like Kant, the German Idealists, and many neo-Kantian philosophers before him, Nietzsche was persistently concerned with metaphysical questions about the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects significantly impact various commitments in many areas of philosophy—not just metaphysics, but also semantics, epistemology, science, logic and mathematics, and ev…Read more
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997Defending Nietzsche's Constructivism about ObjectsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 1132-1158. 2017.Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche's argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche.
Norfolk, Virginia, United States of America