Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to locate Nietzsche’s thoughts on epistemology within the Kantian tradition of Transcendental Idealism. Through a critical involvement with both Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, the Study will draw attention to the level of Nietzsche’s involvement with key issues in Kantian epistemology. In doing so it will put forward a reading of Nietzsche’s early ‘error theory’, Which rejects the idea that Nietzsche endorses a metaphysical correspondence theory of truth. It will instead be argued that in the early error theory Nietzsche is critiquing the discursivity of our understanding. The study will finish with a consideration of Nietzsche’s attempted rejection of the concept of the thing-in-itself through an epistemology of perspectivism. It will be argued that this rejection, much like Schopenhauer’s rejection of Kant’s inference to the thing-in-itself, ultimately fails and that Nietzsche’s perspectivism itself presupposes the ability to refer to, and make use of, the concept of reality in itself.