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Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols

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Abstract

This review essay of Nietzsche’s “Twilight of the Idols” (1888) is part of the journal TOPOI’s “Untimely Reviews” series of classic works of philosophy. Themes dealt with are Nietzsche’s attacks on morality, on free will, on mental causation, on Socrates, and on Kant. Connections are drawn with contemporary work by Mark Johnston, David Rosenthal, and Daniel Wegner, among others.

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Notes

  1. There is a striking echo here of McDowell’s Wittgenstein-inspired critique of the Platonic model of rule-following. Cf. also Johnston (1993) on “pragmatism” correctly understood.

  2. Sometimes sensuality (Sinnlichkeit) is subject to “spiritualization” (Vergeistigung), or what Freudians would call sublimination: it becomes “love” (Liebe) (TI IV:3), though that need not concern us here.

  3. On epiphenomenalism in Nietzsche, see esp. Riccardi (2013), who also brings out nicely the overlap with recent work in philosophy and cognitive science: cf. Rosenthal (2005).

  4. See the illuminating discussion in Rutherford (2011).

References

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  • Riccardi M (2013) Nietzsche on the superficiality of consciousness. In: Dries M (ed) Nietzsche on consciousness and the embodied mind. de Gruyter, Berlin

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  • Rosenthal D (2005) Consciousness and mind. Clarendon Press, Oxford

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  • Rutherford D (2011) Freedom as a philosophical ideal: nietzsche and his antecedents. Inquiry 54:512–540

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  • Wegner D (2002) The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

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  1. Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values, University of Chicago, 1111 E. 60th St., Room 425, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Brian Leiter

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  1. Brian Leiter
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Correspondence to Brian Leiter.

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Leiter, B. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols . Topoi 33, 549–555 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9222-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9222-7

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