On the Genealogy of Morality has become the most common point of entry into Nietzsche's thought. It offers relatively straightforward, sustained explanatory narratives addressing many of the main ideas of Nietzsche's mature thought, such as 'will to power', 'nihilism', 'perspectivism' and the 'value of truth'. It also directs its attention to what is widely taken to be Nietzsche's important philosophical contribution, the critique of morality. Yet it is challenging to understand because Nietzsche intended it as an expansion and elaboration of (...) his ideas developed elsewhere. Presupposing no prior knowledge of Nietzsche or the text, Robert Guay provides the interpretive and philosophical context to make Nietzsche's thought more accessible and shows how Nietzsche's narratives engage with philosophical issues about agency, self-knowledge, historical explanation and the critique of morality"-- Back cover. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 1 2 3 4.

Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed ‘anti-political’(EH ‘wise’ 3; cf. TI 8.4) stance is often ignored.1 Commentators, that is, often interpret Nietzsche’s texts as responding to familiar issues within political philosophy, and as furnishing a novel position therein. This could indeed be the appropriate hermeneutic response. Dismissing one of Nietzsche’s proclamations is, on a variety of different grounds, hermeneutically reasonable. In this particular case, given all that Nietzsche has to say about sociality and the roles of public institutions in modern life, dismissal might even (...) seem compelling. Here, however, I wish to recuperate Nietzsche’s anti-political stance. That is, I shall argue that Nietzsche’s self-proclamation does in fact reflect his deep commitments, and thus compels a reassessment of the political interpretations of his thought. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a basic problem in philosophical discussions of culture is what I call the “integration problem”: the need to provide an account of how distinctive considerations of culture can be integrated within practical deliberation in general. I then show how the failure to resolve this problem generates three paradoxes, which I call the “cosmopolitan paradox,” the “inclusion paradox,” and the “representation paradox.” I argue that these paradoxes arise from a common source, the attempt to separate (...) out determinations of worth from demands of recognition, and both from socially contested deliberative practices. I conclude by suggesting that resolving these paradoxes probably requires not a theoretical solution but the achievement of a fully inclusive, cosmopolitan culture. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that consequentialism does not work as a comprehensive theory of right action. This paper does not offer a typical refutation, in that I do not claim that consequentialism is self-contradictory. One can with perfect consistency claim that the good is prior to the right and that the right consists in maximizing the good. What I claim, however, is that it is senseless to make such a claim. In particular, I attempt to show that the (...) notion of what course of action maximizes the good has no content within a consequentialist framework. Since the problem that I identify rests with maximization, this refutation does not cut across the act/rule distinction. If rule consequentialism holds that there are occasions on which one should follow a rule rather than violate the rule in an optimific way, then it is not maximizing and my arguments do not apply; if not, then it collapses into act consequentialism. I have nothing to say about nonmaximizing forms of consequentialism.1 This refutation does, however, cut across the direct/indirect distinction.2 It makes no difference whether we take consequentialism as offering a principle of decision, or a standard of right. Presumably the former would be parasitic upon the latter for its legitimacy. (shrink)

I. Introduction This paper aims to explain Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy, and in particular his self-characterization as the “tragic philosopher.” What I shall claim is that, according to Nietzsche, to recognize the self-determining or self-creating character of our agency is to reveal it as tragic. Tragedy accordingly illuminates the most fundamental issue in Nietzsche’s mature philosophy: the possibility of affirmation.

The accounts of social freedom offered by G. W. F. Hegel and Axel Honneth identify the normative demands on social institutions and explain how individual freedom is realized through rational participation in such institutions. While both offer normative reconstructions of the market economy, public sphere and family, they both derive the norms of educational institutions from education’s role in preparing people for participation in other institutions. We argue that this represents a significant defect in their accounts of social freedom because (...) they both fail to account for the distinctive aims and norms of education. Only educational institutions bring individuals into a both shared and autonomous standpoint necessary for participation in social life. We thus argue both that Hegel’s and Honneth’s accounts are empirically inadequate and that they neglect the normative demands on schools to contribute to individual moral and intellectual development. (shrink)

It is seldom in dispute that genealogy, or genealogical accounts are central to Nietzsche’s philosophic enterprise. The role that genealogy plays in Nietzsche’s thought is little understood, however, as is Nietzsche’s argumentation in general, and, for that matter, what Nietzsche might be arguing for. In this paper I attempt to summarize Nietzsche’s genealogical account of modern ethical practices and offer an explanation of the philosophical import of genealogy. The difficulties in coming to understand the philosophical function of genealogy are obvious. (...) Genealogy, whatever else we say about it, offers a story of the genesis of contemporary ethical beliefs and practices. The story that Nietzsche gave is obviously a revisionist one, and Nietzsche seldom cites specific historical evidence; although it contains many historical allusions, the presentation is thematic or even mythical. At the same time, Nietzsche’s interests were primarily ethical: he seems to be attempting, in some novel way, either to solve or to eliminate1 philosophical problems about norms and values. In particular, he offered his genealogy as part of a critique of specifically “modern” values and the advancement of an “immoralism” that would take their place. So the difficulties are: it is unclear what status we should accord Nietzsche’s stories in particular, and it is unclear what role any story about the emergence of modern values can play in an assessment of those values. We seem to need a reason to take Nietzsche’s account as particularly authoritative, and then an explanation of how his account does in fact bear upon the normative status of “modern values.”. (shrink)

One of the very few matters of nearly universal agreement with respect to Nietzsche interpretation, one that bridges the great analytic/continental divide, is that Nietzsche was offering some sort of account of freedom, in contradistinction to the ‘ascetic’ or ‘slavish’ ways of the past. What remains in dispute is the character of this account. In this paper I present Nietzsche’s account of freedom and his arguments for the superior cogency of that account relative to other accounts of freedom, including irony (...) about the possibility of freedom. (shrink)

Of the distinctive terminology of nineteenth-century thought, perhaps no word has been more widely adopted than ‘genealogy’.1 ‘Genealogy’, of course, had a long history before Nietzsche put it in the title of a book, but the original sense of pedigree or family tree is not the one that has become so prominent in contemporary academic discourse.2 Nietzsche initiated a new sense of ‘genealogy’ that, oddly, has become popular despite a lack of clarity about what it is.3 My aim here is (...) to clarify this sense of genealogy by situating it in the context of nineteenth-century narrative argument and identifying its general features. I contend that the famous Nietzschean.. (shrink)

This paper identifies recent attributions to Nietzsche of skeptical arguments about the subject in its theoretical and practical capacities and argues that they are wrong. Although Nietzsche does criticize the picture of the subject as a unity that exerts influence in the world from outside it, he does so in order to replace it with a richer, more complex model of subjectivity. The skeptical arguments attributed to Nietzsche attempt to assimilate features of subjectivity to some alternative, purportedly more familiar explanatory (...) account, and then move from this assimilation to the denial of subjectivity altogether. There are three main strategies for making this latter move, which are referred to in this paper as appeal to ontology, appeal to justification, and appeal to explanation. Each fails for different reasons, but all misconstrue Nietzsche's explanatory interests regarding subjectivity. Those interests, this paper argues, are what lead Nietzsche to argue that a single person comprises a multiplicity of subjectivities, and that all explanation is ultimately telic in form. This paper then discusses some of the appeals that Nietzsche makes to account for the possibility of single, unitary subjectivity within this framework, including: his account of the relationship between constituent and corporate units within fully self-relating subjectivity, his account of the relation between "inner" and "outer", his account of pluralist individualism, and his account of unconscious "depth". This paper concludes by arguing that Nietzsche's distinctive approach suggests a way to relate theoretical questions about the mental to practical questions about the self and ethical commitment. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of the seventh chapter of Beyond Good and Evil, and in particular, a solution to its puzzle.1 Nietzsche titled that chapter “Our Virtues,” and this immediately generates a puzzle because the opening words of the chapter comprise the question, “Our virtues?”2 The puzzle, then, is that there might not be any subject matter for this chapter—unlike, say, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers,” but possibly more like “What Is Noble”—leaving us to wonder what to do with (...) all those words if they are not about anything. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Tragic as an Ethical CategoryRobert GuayTragedy is at the center of Nietzsche's conception of his mature philosophical project as the only alternative to the ascetic ideal, and thus as the only avenue for affirmation. It is not merely an aesthetic category, but one that encompasses the very character of self-determining (or "self-creating") agency. The tragic character of self-determining agency, I shall claim, stems from the conflict between the (...) local, practice-dependent character of our normative commitments and their transcendent purport. My argument will run as such. Becoming what one is, according to Nietzsche, is a matter of taking a particular place in a narrative of self-creation. Such narratives are teleological: they are structured by a kind of directionality (or, more broadly, by "ideals") that cannot, practically, be taken as arbitrary. But these narratives are inevitably incomplete, and so therefore are the norms and selves that depend on them.The very project of a genealogy of morals supports my first claim, that becoming what one is involves a matter of taking a particular place in a narrative of self-creation. 1 The Genealogy of Morals begins with the declaration that we are unknown to ourselves, and the explanation it provides of this shortcoming, that we have never sought ourselves, is expanded by means of a temporal metaphor: the bell-strokes of our life that we do not think to reckon until after they have passed. What we have failed to accomplish, and what the genealogy attempts to recover, is a diachronic account of who we are. This missing story covers the singular as well as the collective "we." The end of the story, Nietzsche [End Page 555] claims, is the "sovereign individual," 2 and this notion is presumably governed by his general claim: "all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically drawn together elude definition; only that which has no history is definable" (GM, 2.13). Of course it does not follow from this that everything indefinable has a history, but the special elusiveness of modern individuality seems due to the complexity of its narrative source. And not only individuality in general, but also the particular individual, seems to have a narrative basis. In the book subtitled "How one becomes what one is," in the section that promises the "real answer to the question, how one becomes what one is" (EH "clever," 9), Nietzsche offers this account of personal development:One must keep the entire surface of consciousness—consciousness is a surface—clean of any great imperatives. Beware even of every great word, every great posture! Sheer danger, that the instinct comes to "understand itself" too soon—meanwhile the organizing "idea" with a calling to rule grows and grows deep down—it begins to command, it slowly heads back from detours and wrong ways, it prepares single qualities and competencies that will one day prove to be indispensable as means to a whole—it in turn trains all subservient faculties before giving any hint of the dominating task, "goal," "end," "meaning."The individual, Nietzsche suggests, cannot be understood in terms of anything available to her consciousness, and not even in terms of any "great imperative" or "great word." Instead Nietzsche accounts for individuality, and in fact his own individuality, in terms of a meaningfulness available in terms of the familiar tropes of journeys and roads, and growing and commanding.This passage from Ecce Homo suggests not merely a narrative, but one with a teleology, even if only a retrospectively apparent one. Narratives of self cannot be random or arbitrary; their meaningfulness depends on the structure provided by some kind of directionality: in Nietzsche's words, a dominant "task" or "goal." This directionality is invoked by Nietzsche, for example, with the "teachers of the purpose of existence" of The Gay Science's opening section and with the famous "formula of our happiness" of The Antichrist's opening section: "a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal." The Genealogy of Morals provides a general account of this directionality in terms of a "progressus."I would like to say that even partial becoming useless, atrophying and degenerating, loss of meaning and purposiveness, in short... (shrink)

Mr. Meyer’s paper is worthy of our esteem for three reminders that it brings us: that tragedy endures as a significant category in Nietzsche’s thought; that the category of the tragic transcends the merely literary, and engages with Nietzsche’s fundamental philosophical interests; and that Nietzsche’s self-situation in the history of philosophy follows up on perhaps different thinkers than the standard historiography of philosophy would suggest. But there is also much here to disagree with, and I shall focus on four topics (...) on which my disagreement with Matt is systematic and deep: what the “unity of opposites”(UO) might mean, what normative implications UO has, whether UO is significant in Nietzsche’s later work, and, finally, the relation of UO to the tragic. (shrink)

This volume brings together philosophers and literary scholars to explore the ways that Crime and Punishment engages with philosophical reflection. The seven essays treat a diversity of topics, including: self-knowledge and the nature of mind, emotions, agency, freedom, the family, the authority of law and morality, and the self.

There is a common understanding of Nietzsche’s views on ethics according to which he believes that one ought to or should act on the appropriate criteria, and that the appropriate criteria are relative to one’s status. Everyone’s actions should be governed by some normatively compelling consideration, but there are different considerations for different persons. One set of rules, perhaps, obtains for the weak, sickly masses; another set of rules applies for the strong, creative types. The superior types cannot be bound (...) by the same consideration that apply to others because their flourishing or their projects are too important, or more simply their natural superiority entitles them to greater prerogatives.... (shrink)

In consequentialist theories, the good is usually defined in non-moral terms (i.e., as that which persons in fact like, desire, seek out, enjoy), and the right is characterized in terms of maximizing the good. The good is usually defined “impartially,” that is, as the good for everyone rather than for an individual. But this need not be the case: as we see with Bentham, the good that the individual (as opposed to the legislator) is concerned with is his or her (...) own. And exceptions are sometimes made to the non-moral character of the good: the pleasure of the sadist or the pain of the justly punished is discounted from calculations. (Bentham, notice, explicitly avoids doing this: any pleasure is a good and any punishment is bad. But he thinks that the pleasure of the sadist will always, as a matter of fact, be immensely outweighed by the victims, and punishment is legitimated by a positive net effect.). (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that Nietzsche's use of irony in On the Genealogy of Morals is so pervasive that it cannot be relied upon to report Nietzsche's views, even at the moment of writing, on a historical sequence of events or the causal sources of the phenomena that Nietzsche identifies. I argue, primarily on the basis of textual evidence, that Nietzsche's procedure is neither to reliably report his own views nor to assert the reality of what might be (...) called the theoretical terms of the account. I offer as an explanatory hypothesis that Nietzsche adopted this procedure as a response to a problem of epistemic authority that he confronted in assessing morality. I also provide some historical context for Nietzsche's method and discuss some implications of my view for the interpretation of Nietzsche's project. (shrink)

This paper identifies and explains three of the philosophically substantial senses in which Nietzsche writes of the historical character of things and argues that, according to Nietzsche, recognizing these three distinct senses is necessary to understand subjectivity. I refer to these three senses as “general historicity,” “special historicity,” and “narrativity.” According to general historicity, history is the continuity of powerful transindividual processes that shape or determine present conditions or events. According to special historicity, certain things are constituted by meanings only (...) available through historical appeals; the human abilities to interpret, organize, remember, and forget allow for a continuation of the past into the present and a protention of the future such that diachronic patterns take on significance and constitute the character of things. These two forms of historicity, according to Nietzsche, provoke a “self-contradiction in the form of time” that can be resolved by satisfying three constraints: “active forgetting,” “retroactive force,” and the absence of “revenge against time.” Narrativity, which offers a metahistorical account of the self-relation that emerges in relation to general and special historicity, satisfies these constraints. History in the sense of narrativity comprises the actualizing of historical agency by integrating historical contributions in a way that itself takes the form of stories. Narrativity, that is, is the historical form of the active mediation of historical contributions; it thus clarifies the ways in which human subjectivity is both determined and determining, and how these two elements are inextricable from one another. (shrink)

Nietzsche occasionally referred to his substantive ethical position as “immoralism,”1 but gave only a vague impression of just what this position amounts to. The strategy of this paper will be to determine how to be an immoralist by identifying what is affirmed in Nietzsche’s negation of morality. That is, I wish to consider aspects of the critique of morality not to show that morality is wrong – that is not my goal here – but to identify what Nietzsche’s substantive ethical (...) position is. I hope to show two things: that Nietzsche characterizes his immoralist position as an extension of rather than as an antithesis to a moralist one, and that Nietzsche offers a teleological position different from any of the familiar ones. (shrink)

The idea of deliberative democracy, together with its associated norm of public reason, forms a model of the legitimacy of constitutional regimes in pluralist societies. Where there are great and fundamental differences in value commitments, and coercive institutions are called upon to regulate the basic forms of social life, democratic deliberation both respects the diversity of commitment and produces policies that can command the assent of free persons. This in turn supports a shared political culture based on equality and respect.

My dissertation concerns Nietzsche's ethical thought. At the center of Nietzsche's philosophical ethics was the attempt to provide some reassurance about the status of norms and values. On his diagnosis, intensifying self-scrutiny with regard to ethical commitments has led to a contemporary situation in which no way of life seems particularly authoritative or worthwhile. Nietzsche therefore sought some means to extend and satisfy critical scrutiny, so as to find norms and values that sustain their "force." ;In the first chapter I (...) trace the early development of Nietzsche's project, especially how his philosophical concerns about reassurance and the authority of norms arose out of his philological interest in the meaning of cultural phenomena. I argue that Nietzsche's philosophical concerns were "existential" in character, and that he eventually settled on a "rationalist" approach to addressing them. ;The second chapter concerns Nietzsche's argument for the inadequacy of appeals to truth or nature to resolve questions of an existential scope. Nietzsche argued that appeals to truth depend on prior normative commitments and thus cannot be decisive against critical doubt. ;Chapter III concerns the critical aspect of Nietzsche's project, namely genealogy. Genealogy recounts the history of ethical "ideals" in terms of their purposiveness, and assesses them in terms of their success or failure. Nietzsche argued that even ethical ideals are in some way functional, and one can thus assess whether or not they 'work.' This provides the critical leverage with which Nietzsche scrutinizes and finds fault with defective ideals: his account of their necessary failure. ;The final chapter concerns Nietzsche's constructive, or "affirmative" project. Nietzsche argued that an assessment of norms and values in terms of their ability to sustain "affirmation" is critically adequate. That is, for a norm or value to survive scrutiny, it has to serve to guide or structure a life that inspires an allegiance to that life that Nietzsche described as "erotic" in character. Nietzsche argued that some such commitment is necessary for one to be able to give meaning to one's life, and that this is a precondition for any determination of freedom. (shrink)

This paper argues for a specific interpretation of Nietzsche’s “critique of morality” by examining the passages in which Nietzsche uses versions of that phrase, and extracting from them six criteria that any plausible candidate for critique must meet. On this basis, I reject several alternative interpretations in favor of one in which Nietzsche is criticizing morality, considered as a set of practices, by showing the meaning of these practices and their failures in functioning.

1. We are unknown to ourselves, we knowing ones, we to our own selves, and for a good reason. We have never sought ourselves – so how could it happen, that one day we would find ourselves? Someone once correctly said: “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”;1 our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are always on the way to finding it; as winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit, we truly care (...) for only one thing from the heart: to “bring something home.” Whatever else concerns life, the so-called “experiences” – who among us has enough seriousness for them? Or enough time? In these matters we have been, I fear, somewhat distracted: our hearts have not quite been in it, and not even our ears! More often, like some divine scatter-brain absorbed-in-himself into whose ear the bell has tolled the twelve strikes of noon at full power, who then suddenly wakes up and asks himself, “What was really just struck?”, just like that we rub our ears afterwards and ask, completely amazed, completely embarrassed, “what did we really experience?” and further, “who are we really?” and afterwards, as said, count the twelve trembling bell-strikes of our experience, our life, our being – ugh! and miscount them . . . We necessarily remain strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must get ourselves wrong, for us the saying “Each is furthest from himself” holds for all eternity – we are not “knowing ones” with respect to ourselves. (shrink)

“The genealogy of morals” is, most famously, a pair of genealogies: that of the good/evil dichotomy in the First Treatise, and that of the bad conscience in the Second Treatise. But the straightforward presentation of these two narratives is subverted even before it begins. Nietzsche classifies the book not as a treatise or inquiry but as a “polemic”; voices interrupt the narrative to insist that much is left unsaid; the narratives are framed by, of all things, reflections on the scientific (...) conscience; Nietzsche declares the entire enterprise to be a contribution to the critique of “the value of values”; the two genealogies of the first two Treatises overlap and various points and ultimately converge in a discussion of the “meaning” of the “ascetic ideal.” Whatever one makes of these complications, two tentative conclusions can be drawn. Nietzsche is profoundly concerned with the status of his genealogy. And genealogy does not function as reportage, primarily concerned with the accurate depiction of events; rather, it aims to reveal something about the status of “moral values” and the possibility of an alternative to them. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a basic problem in philosophical discussions of culture is what I call the “integration problem”: the need to provide an account of how distinctive considerations of culture can be integrated within practical deliberation in general. I then show how the failure to resolve this problem generates three paradoxes, which I call the “cosmopolitan paradox,” the “inclusion paradox,” and the “representation paradox.” I argue that these paradoxes arise from a common source, the attempt to separate (...) out determinations of worth from demands of recognition, and both from socially contested deliberative practices. I conclude by suggesting that resolving these paradoxes probably requires not a theoretical solution but the achievement of a fully inclusive, cosmopolitan culture. (shrink)

Nietzsche, I once read, used to have nightmares about not being able to speak. My son has nightmares about tornadoes. I have nightmares about issues that can only be resolved by appeal to Hegel’s speculative logic. Stephen Snyder might indeed present us with several such issues, but fortunately his presentation is complex enough that I should be able to distract you by focusing on other things. First, let me review what I take to me the structure of Snyder’s argument. Snyder’s (...) argument, as I understand it, is (1) Danto offers an (essentialist) “definition” of art, where “definition” of course means something like “ontological account.” (2) That definition is borrowed (“directly”) from Hegel. (3) Because it is borrowed from Hegel, Danto’s definition is inherently problematic. (3a) The problem with the definition is that it is the same as Hegel’s. (3b) The problem with the definition is that it is different from Hegel’s. This diagnosis is no dialectical kettle logic, however. Snyder’s claim, rather, is that Hegel’s account comes with difficulties that could only be resolved through some grand “metaphysical” gesture. So Danto, in effect, offers us the cream cheese without the bagel. It’s not clear where Snyder thinks that this leaves us: we could metaphysicalize Danto or get rid of embodied meaning or do something else entirely. The distinctive part of Snyder’s account is accordingly the diagnosis: Danto’s definition of art is troubled because he adopts elements of Hegel’s account without the systematic context, leaving him without the resources to solve its inherent problems. I can therefore grant myself leave to skip over some Hegel and Danto, and focus on the problematic. As far as I can tell, Snyder identifies two problems – alternately called “oppositions”(5) or “contradictions”(1) or “dualisms”(4) or possibly “antinomies”(8) – within the Hegel/Danto complex of art theory. The first is that of Particular and Universal. According to Snyder, the Hegel-Danto theory requires the artwork to be a weird kind of thing, namely: “a particular universal, an impossible object”(1).. (shrink)

Nietzsche called his sister “llama,” a nickname which, according to her, derived from a description in a children’s biology book. Such a book in the Nietzsche-Archiv declares that “the llama, as a means of defense, squirts its spittle and half-digested fodder at its opponent.”1 Thus we see Nietzsche, as he does frequently in his writings, drawing on the semantic resources made available by the investigation of animal nature and using them to illuminate human character. The editors of A Nietzschean Bestiary (...) had the superlative idea to advance the progression from zoology to anthropology one step further: starting from Nietzsche’s myriad trope of animality, to construct a philosophical bestiary that illuminates not only the status of human animality but also that of our metaphorical resources in general. The result comprises twenty-five essays from twentythree contributors, most of which are organized around a single creature (albeit no llama). These essays’ execution of the original idea is, on the whole, excellent. I do not think that they establish the two main conceits of the volume. But the volume nevertheless provides a vivid and diverse display of Nietzsche’s animal tropes that engages with broader philosophical concerns. Although it needs no defense, the volume presents a twofold apology. One declared aim of the volume is to show that Nietzsche’s pervasive use of animal imagery.. (shrink)

One project of philosophical research which would likely prove of little profit is a history of philosophy the epochs of which are the greatest philosophical jokes. Although philosophers have always said innumerable funny things, notable sources of humor have been few and far between: Socrates, though not Plato, Nietzsche, though not Zarathustra, and more recently perhaps Bernard Williams or Jacques Derrida. The most a scholar can usually hope for is a clever barb punctuating pages of deathly earnestness. Such is the (...) case with Hegel: although occasionally possessed of a biting wit, his sense of humor was hardly world-historical. Modernity, although many other things, simply isn't very funny. Schelling, however, had the good fortune to be the victim of Hegel's greatest jest. An "Absolute" such as Schelling's, Hegel says, would be the night in which all cows are black.". (shrink)

This paper concerns Marx’s case, especially in the German Ideology, for the relative privilege of his own conception of history. I argue, against what I call the standard interpretation, that Marx’s case does not rest on an inversion of Young Hegelian “idealism”; against the “revisionist interpretation,” I argue that Marx nevertheless sustains a concern with the justificatory adequacy of his position. Marx’s argument, on my interpretation, is that an account of productive agency is a necessary constituent of any understanding of (...) history, and in turn requires a reflexive component. The reflexive character of agency can only be adequately realized under conditions in which historical processes and the causal effectiveness of individual agency are aligned. Marx’s justification, then, relies on an account of the internal character of historical agency rather than on metaphysical claims about the real. Marx, I suggest, was attempting to offer a distinctively “practical” justification. (147 words). (shrink)

The poetry of Sappho is the only example of lyric poetry that we shall examine this semester. Lyric poetry repays close attention: do not skim over the verses looking for the main characters and events. You will finish reading quickly, and get nothing out of it at all. Instead, listen to it carefully and repeatedly, until its music becomes apparent to you, and you can assume the perspective (imaginatively, of course) of its speaker.

Kant, having identified the formulas of the supreme principle of morality, offers a succinct explanation of their interrelation. What Kant says is, “The above three ways of representing the principle of morality are at bottom only so many formulae of the very same law, and any one of them of itself unites the other two in it.”1 This claim – hereafter the “Unity Claim” – plays the role of the eccentric cousin in the family of Kant’s ethics: although glaringly present, (...) it is little spoken of, but seldom disowned. Most commentators, at any rate, focus their attention on more important matters, such as the content of the individual formulas, the moral psychology, or the deduction of freedom. Such matters are sufficiently absorbing to leave the Unity Claim often passed over without remark. But the Unity Claim should not be ignored. Kant does assert it, which compels us to attempt to find a place for it in his moral theory. It would seem to constrain the interpretation of the other, more momentous issues. How one interprets the content of the categorical imperative, in particular, would seem to be significantly restricted by the Unity Claim; one could not, given the Unity Claim, offer a complete interpretation of any single formula without also at least referring to the other formulas. And, as I shall argue in Part III below, the Unity Claim is no accident. Kant is committed to the Unity Claim by virtue of some basic features of his moral theory. This paper will thus offer what amounts to an extended commentary on the Unity Claim. I shall review the various suggestions of what it might mean, and how it might, or might not, be accommodated within Kant’s moral theory. The structure of this paper will be as such. Part II will examine the two main strategies for including the Unity Claim within Kant’s moral theory, and explain why they are both inadequate. Part III will examine the other main approach to the 2 Unity Claim: giving up on it.. (shrink)

One can reasonably ask whether or not there is any distinct domain of the ethical. That is, one might wonder whether ethical issues are distinct from, for example, prudential or aesthetic ones, perhaps by invoking duty or obligation or a specific kind of value. But that question, at least for now, is outside the scope of our discussion. For now, we’ll assume that there are such things as ethical questions and that you recognize them when you see them.

As I preliminary to treating the topic of this paper, I offer two observations about the practice of interpreting Nietzsche. My first observation is that this practice is sometimes carried out at an unusually high level of generality. I think that much of what we concern ourselves with, both in our private musings and in our disputes with others, is not merely the analysis of positions or the reconstruction of arguments, but what kind of philosopher Nietzsche was, and thus what (...) sort of a philosophical enterprise we might attribute to him at all. What I have claimed so far, that different philosophers – never mind the nonphilosophers for a moment – read Nietzsche in radically different ways, will probably not shock anyone. Nevertheless, here are three examples of different ways of reading Nietzsche. To produce these examples I have culled details from more comprehensive readings. I cannot do justice to those readings or their authors here, but what should remain are a few genuine points of difference. On Gianni Vattimo’s reading, Nietzsche gradually develops from an Enlightenment cultural critic to an antihumanist. In the process that Vattimo describes, Nietzsche begins his philosophical career as a moralist who sheds light on the “spiritual tradition of humanity”1 by revealing its hidden origins, its basis in lies, and its groundlessness. Nietzsche breaks with Enlightenment, however, in dismissing the very availability of truth behind the “masks” of culture. Vattimo writes that Nietzsche’s project is only accomplished “… when you understand that even the notion of truth, belief in its value in preference to error, the very idea that there may.. (shrink)

Even popular caricatures of philosophers serve important philosophical functions. By coordinating personae with ideas, they facilitate conversations involving matters that we would otherwise neglect. But one function they do not serve is generating consistency. And indeed, Nietzsche serves for us as both the transgressor of all boundaries and unmasker of all pretensions, and at the same time as the ultimate elitist who is available to us in modern culture. There are, of course, ways to reconcile these: perhaps anti-elitism is the (...) last boundary that needs to be transgressed? I shall suggest here, however, that we would do better to efface this caricature somewhat, in order to get closer to a position that is both Nietzsche’s and more interesting than the caricature. (shrink)

With Matthew we have an unusual opportunity. The text is in a sense very welcoming. Even among those who have no experience of it as a liturgical text, names and phrases are familiar; no one stumbles over the pronunciation of “Pharisee,” etc. – at least not with the frequency that “Agamemnon” and “Thucydides” are passed over. Even the parables, which as parables should be mysterious, do not alienate the students: it is already acknowledged that the text is one that demands (...) more than a superficial reading. It demands interpretation. (shrink)

One of the many virtues of Martin Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing is that it lays its cards on the table at the very outset. The final three chapters consist in a series of complex digressions from the main discussion: one on the aesthetic significance of ‘resonating’(p. 139), one organized around the metaphysics of pictures, and one charged with defending the implausible claim that the artistic representation of violence is uniquely capable of revealing ‘what is violent about violence’ (p. 191). But (...) the thesis of the book and its main arguments are stated in the preface, preceding even the acknowledgements. Seel writes, ‘[t]his book makes the proposal of having aesthetics begin not with concepts of being‐so or semblance but with a concept of appearing’ (p. xi). This might initially seem opaque, as though reducing aesthetics to a subtlety involving the meaning of the Greek word phainomai, but Seel immediately clarifies the stance that he wishes to advance. Seel’s position is that aesthetics is distinguished by attention to the indeterminable particularity of sensory experience; aesthetics so considered comprises the philosophy of art as well as non‐art experience; aesthetic experience is a legitimate mode of world‐encounter by virtue of its immediacy or ‘presence’ (p. xi)(Gegenwart – i.e., a contrary of ‘past’, rather than of ‘absence’); and because the presence of our experience reveals the presence of our lives, aesthetic experience constitutes an important form of self‐knowledge. The subsequent chapters are devoted to explicating this position in extraordinary detail. Seel’s position depends on a somewhat implicit account of subjectivity. In this account, what we fundamentally perceive, conditioned by conceptual activity but transcending any possible determinate content, is a ‘play’ of sensuous qualities (p. 47). Since it is ‘unfettered’ (p. 51) by theoretical interest, this form of perception is far qualitatively richer than our more structured experiences: here one is ‘able to perceive.... (shrink)

means of defense, squirts its spittle and half-digested fodder at its opponent.”1 Thus we see Nietzsche, as he does frequently in his writings, drawing on the semantic resources made available by the investigation of animal nature and using them to illuminate human character. The editors of . Nietzschean Bestiary had the superlative idea to advance the progression from zoology to anthropology one step further: starting from Nietzsche’s myriad trope of animality, to construct a philosophical bestiary that illuminates not only the (...) status of human animality but also that of our metaphorical resources in general. The result comprises twenty-five essays from twenty-three contributors, most of which are organized around a single creature (albeit no llama). These essays’ execution of the original idea is, on the whole, excellent. I do not think that they establish the two main conceits of the volume. But the volume nevertheless provides a vivid and diverse display of Nietzsche’s animal tropes that engages with broader philosophical concerns. (shrink)