The concept of unified agency in Nietzsche, Plato, and Schiller

Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (1):87-113 (2011)
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Abstract

This paper examines Nietzsche’s concept of unified agency. A widespread consensus has emerged in the secondary literature on three points: (1) Nietzsche’s notion of unity is meant to be an analysis of freedom; (2) unity refers to a relation between the agent’s drives or motivational states; and (3) unity obtains when one drive predominates and imposes order on the other drives. I argue that these claims are philosophically and textually indefensible. In contrast, I argue that (1′) Nietzschean unity is an account of the distinction between genuine actions and mere behaviors, rather than between free and unfree actions; (2′) unity refers to a relation between drives and conscious thought; and (3′) unity obtains when the agent’s attitude toward her own action is stable under the revelation of further information about the action’s etiology. I show that Nietzsche develops this notion of unity by drawing on Plato’s and Schiller’s accounts of unified agency.

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Paul Katsafanas
Boston University

Citations of this work

Nietzsche on the health of the soul.Andrew Huddleston - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (1-2):135-164.
Freedom as a Philosophical Ideal: Nietzsche and His Antecedents.Donald Rutherford - 2011 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54 (5):512 - 540.
Zarathustra’s metaethics.Neil Sinhababu - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (3):278-299.

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