Maudemarie Clark

Nietzsche is commonly thought to endorse a version of naturalism that debunks the traditional conception of the will; he is thought to deny that willing brings about or causes actions. BGE 19 is interpreted as supporting this understanding of Nietzsche, and Brian Leiter has so interpreted it. This chapter offers an alternative to Leiter's reading of BGE 19, which shows that while it sets out to debunk _something_ about the traditional notion of the will, it is not the causality of the will that is debunked. It is argued that Nietzsche's discussion of the will in BGE 19 should be understood in connection with his discussion of the soul in BGE 12. These are intended to rehabilitate the traditional notions of the soul and the will in the face of the challenge posed by naturalism. Nietzsche argues for a conception of the soul and the will that is completely naturalistic, and rejects the naturalistic tendency to dismiss or debunk them. BGE 19 offers a conception of the will according to which a person's willing is constituted by the workings (the commanding and obeying) of the normative order of the drives, the order which Nietzsche calls ‘the soul’ in BGE 12. In accord with the traditional conception, Nietzsche takes the will to be the soul, insofar as the soul is involved in bringing about action. For Nietzsche, however, the will, like the soul, exists only in what Sellars calls ‘the space of reasons’. The chapter argues against two aspects of Leiter's interpretation of BGE 19: first, against his account of what belongs to that section's phenomenology of willing; and then, against his understanding of the function of that phenomenology. In the chapter's view, BGE 19 offers this phenomenology not to show that it misleads us about the causality of our actions, as Leiter thinks, but to provide a basis for its theory of what _actually constitutes willing_. Once this is recognized, it becomes implausible that the passage aims to show that willing is epiphenomenal. The chapter's account is also implausible, however, unless it accounts for what it is about the traditional conception of the will that Nietzsche is attempting to debunk in BGE 19. This is done in Section 3, in a way which leaves the causality of the will intact. Finally, in Section 4, the chapter defends the claim that Nietzsche believes in the causality of the will, against considerations Leiter brings forward from sources other than BGE 19 in favor of interpreting him as an epiphenomenalist.

Nietzsche is commonly thought to endorse a version of naturalism that debunks the traditional conception of the will; he is thought to deny that willing brings about or causes actions. BGE 19 is interpreted as supporting this understanding of Nietzsche, and Brian Leiter has so interpreted it. This chapter offers an alternative to Leiter's reading of BGE 19, which shows that while it sets out to debunk _something_ about the traditional notion of the will, it is not the causality of the will that is debunked. It is argued that Nietzsche's discussion of the will in BGE 19 should be understood in connection with his discussion of the soul in BGE 12. These are intended to rehabilitate the traditional notions of the soul and the will in the face of the challenge posed by naturalism. Nietzsche argues for a conception of the soul and the will that is completely naturalistic, and rejects the naturalistic tendency to dismiss or debunk them. BGE 19 offers a conception of the will according to which a person's willing is constituted by the workings (the commanding and obeying) of the normative order of the drives, the order which Nietzsche calls ‘the soul’ in BGE 12. In accord with the traditional conception, Nietzsche takes the will to be the soul, insofar as the soul is involved in bringing about action. For Nietzsche, however, the will, like the soul, exists only in what Sellars calls ‘the space of reasons’. The chapter argues against two aspects of Leiter's interpretation of BGE 19: first, against his account of what belongs to that section's phenomenology of willing; and then, against his understanding of the function of that phenomenology. In the chapter's view, BGE 19 offers this phenomenology not to show that it misleads us about the causality of our actions, as Leiter thinks, but to provide a basis for its theory of what _actually constitutes willing_. Once this is recognized, it becomes implausible that the passage aims to show that willing is epiphenomenal. The chapter's account is also implausible, however, unless it accounts for what it is about the traditional conception of the will that Nietzsche is attempting to debunk in BGE 19. This is done in Section 3, in a way which leaves the causality of the will intact. Finally, in Section 4, the chapter defends the claim that Nietzsche believes in the causality of the will, against considerations Leiter brings forward from sources other than BGE 19 in favor of interpreting him as an epiphenomenalist.

Beyond Good and Evil is considered Nietzsche’s most important and comprehensive philosophical work. This article explores two problems involving the book’s form and content, faced by those who acknowledge the book’s importance. The solution to these problems is recognizing the distinction between an exoteric and an esoteric reading of Nietzsche’s words. An exoteric reading articulates a crude naturalism, but an esoteric reading shows his normative aspirations that leave behind the methods of science.

It's surprising that contemporary moral philosophers have not thought more about food. The rapidly expanding industrialized landscape of modern western agribusiness raises moral concerns about large-scale livestock production, the increased usage of genetically modified crops, and the effects these now common practices may have on long-term environmental and human health. Here Pence argues that biotechnology is more helpful than harmful, on the ground that it will abate world hunger. Positioning himself as an "impartialbioethicist" he sets about the task of sorting through the extremism he thinks drives all environ- mental movements' opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops. His argu- ment is simple: the claim that GM foods are unsafe is the product of alarmism, not sound reason. Discarding what environmentalists have called the Precau- tionary Principle, he argues that GM foods are safe because they have not been proven unsafe. And GM foods have been tested more than many food products now on the market.

What does Nietzsche mean by consciousness, and does he really consider it unimportant? And if he doesn’t, why does he make so many disparaging remarks about it? In this article the author considers and rejects Mattia Riccardi’s recent claim that Gay Science (GS) 354, Nietzsche’s most important passage on consciousness, is concerned only with reflective or Rconsciousness. The article shows that GS 354 attempts to explain why mental states ever became conscious, not Rconscious. Nietzsche accepts “Sartre’s thesis” that a conscious mental state is always prereflectively self-conscious, hence brings with it the potential to activate the “mirror effect” emphasized in GS 354 but missing from the consciousness of one absorbed in an activity. A conscious mental state is one its possessor “knows” from “the inside,” hence can report to self or others without further observation or inference. The resulting communication is essential to culture, hence to what is of value in human life.

This chapter argues against the standard view that Nietzsche is an enemy of democracy. I argue that early Nietzsche rejects democracy as inimical to culture, most clearly in the unpublished essay “The Greek State”, but that his so-called ‘middle period’ works reveal a more positive assessment of democratic ideals and institutions, which he now considers, notably in Human, All Too Human, a foundation for and protection of culture. I conclude by arguing that, contrary to appearances, Nietzsche does not revert to his initial anti-democratic stance in his late works, but continues to favour democratic institutions until the end. He rejects only the egalitarian ‘spirit’ of democracy, not democratic institutions.

This chapter argues against a new and perhaps more benign way of classifying Nietzsche as a political conservative. It also adds to the argument that even though Nietzsche is seen as more leftist than he appears, he is not an egalitarian. It does so by making an extended and detailed case against Julian Young’s claim that the flourishing of the community is Nietzsche’s highest value. The final section suggests that Nietzsche’s view might nevertheless be able to accommodate richer notions of community value than is commonly supposed—one that, in important respects, is similar to the value that he attributes to the exceptional individual.

I remember well my initial reaction when Nietzsche: Life as Literature appeared in 1985.1 I was busy working on my own book on Nietzsche and I was worried that Nehamas had already said everything I wanted to say in it. We were dealing with the same problem: the apparently problematic, even paradoxical nature of Nietzsche's perspectivism and his position on truth. And our aim was the same: to show that this position was plausible, perhaps even reasonable, and at least worthy of serious consideration. So I had to consider whether Nehamas's interpretation of Nietzsche's position on truth secured it against the various problems about which we were both concerned. I ultimately decided that it did not, that his book had...

ABSTRACT In this article, written for a panel presentation celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Schacht's Nietzsche, I examine the perspective from which Schacht wrote his 1983 book. That perspective, I argue, accounts for many virtues of the book, including Schacht's convincing treatment of Nietzsche as a philosopher who deserved to be taken seriously and, in its amazing thoroughness, his demonstration that Nietzsche's thought could be organized using the sort of framework one would use for other great philosophers. But it also accounts for certain commitments that differ substantially from mine; in particular, in its extensive reliance on Nietzsche's unpublished material, and in its neglect of the genealogy of Nietzsche's views and questions of his style, which I take to be more central.

We thank our four reviewers for their careful attention to our book on Beyond Good and Evil and for the high praise they bestow on it.1 We welcome especially Helmut Heit’s claim that our book “truly represents the erotic spirit of philosophical agōn”. Heit says of our book what we said of BGE, that it “challenges the readers to ‘fight back’”. We appreciate our critics’ participation in the agōn—even if we sometimes wished they were a little more erotic about it!2 It is now our turn to respond to their criticisms, at least to those for which we have the space. We begin with some methodological matters raised by Helmut Heit. We offer an esoteric reading of BGE, as BGE 30 invites us to do when..

I am going to begin by quoting something Nietzsche said about nihilism in The Will to Power, which is not a book that Nietzsche wrote. It is a set of notes, selected and arranged by his sister and her chosen editors, from the notebooks he carried with him in which to jot down his thoughts as he walked in the woods and around the lakes of the Swiss Alps. I mention this because I normally eschew use of Nietzsche’s notebook for interpreting his philosophy. But in the case of nihilism, I find this impossible, or at least very difficult. The twenty-nine references to nihilism in his published work are just too sketchy and disconnected to provide an adequate basis for understanding Nietzsche’s take on nihilism by themselves.1 1 On the other hand, his notebooks contain a wealth of connected material on nihilism, material that he was clearly planning to use in something called “On the History of European Nihilism,” as he announced in GM. I therefore use this material as the starting point for my account of nihilism, but it is still Nietzsche’s claims about nihilism in the published work that I am ultimately attempting to understand.

This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2 (Autumn 2018), 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.