26 found
Order:
Disambiguations
Donovan Miyasaki [29]Donovan Tateshi Miyasaki [1]
  1. Marxism Against Utilitarianism in Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity appears to defend a distinctly existentialist, deontologically-constrained version of consequentialism. On that interpretation, her belief that freedom consists in the real possibilities provided by our concrete situation leads her to reject Kantian autonomy to allow for some consequentialist decisions, while her belief that our situation derives its meaning from freely-chosen projects leads her to limit such choices to their consequences for situated freedom rather than general happiness. However, I will argue that Beauvoir’s view is better understood (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. A Ground for Ethics in Heidegger's Being and Time.Donovan Miyasaki - 2007 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 38 (3):261-79.
    In this essay I suggest that Heidegger’s Being and Time provides a ground for ethics in the notion of Dasein’s ‘Being-guilty.’ Being-guilty is not a ground for ethics in the sense of a demonstration of the moral ‘ought’ or a refutation of moral skepticism. Rather, Being-guilty serves as a foundation for ethical life in a way uniquely suited to a phenomenological form of ethics, a way that clarifies, from a phenomenological point of view, why the traditional approach to ethics is (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  3. The Equivocal Use of Power in Nietzsche’s Failed Anti-Egalitarianism.Donovan Miyasaki - 2014 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (1):1-32.
    In this paper I argue that Nietzsche’s rejection of egalitarianism depends on equivocation between distinct conceptions of power and equality. When these distinct views are disentangled, Nietzsche’s arguments succeed only against a narrow sense of equality as qualitative similarity (die Gleichheit as die Ähnlichkeit), and not against quantitative forms that promote equality not as similarity but as multiple, proportional resistances (die Gleichheit as die Veilheit and der Widerstand). I begin by distinguishing the two conceptions of power at play in Nietzsche’s (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  4. A Monism of the Death Drive: Freud's Failed Retroactive Theory of Eros.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Freud introduces his dualistic theory of the life and death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Much of that essay is devoted to the justification of the death drive, while little is said in defense of the introduction of “life drives” and “Eros,” which he claims are simply an extension of his libido theory from the psychological into the biological realm. In this essay, I argue that Eros is, on the contrary, fundamentally incompatible with Freud’s metapsychology. I first show that (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. The Dissolution of the Ego in Freud's Resolution of the Uncanny.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Freud’s discussion of uncanny [unheimlich] experiences focuses on their peculiar ambivalence. On his view, the uncanny is a paradoxical feeling of both familiarity and alienation. While Freud’s analysis of this paradoxical feeling does succeed in explaining it away, it does little to explain it. One might expect a psychoanalytical demystification of the real experience that is hidden behind the superstitious overtones of uncanny experiences. Instead, the uncanny is attributed rather anti- climactically to the combination of a previous superstition (maintained unconsciously) (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6.  78
    Nietzsche and the Myth of Free Will: What Your Belief About Free Will Says About You.Donovan Miyasaki - 2023 - Iai News, Institute for Art and Ideas.
    The idea that free will is an illusion is rife. Everyone from neuroscientists to philosophers, podcasters to mystics, is arguing that the idea we are truly in control of our decisions and actions is nothing more than a persistent illusion. Others are not so sure, the feeling we control our lives cannot be outdone by argument alone – experience is a source of knowledge too. Donovan Miyasaki argues that more important than whether we have free will or not, is why (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Feeling, Not Freedom: Nietzsche Against Agency.Donovan Miyasaki - 2016 - Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47 (2):256-274.
    Despite his rejection of the metaphysical conception of freedom of the will, Nietzsche frequently makes positive use of the language of freedom, autonomy, self-mastery, self-overcoming, and creativity when describing his normative project of enhancing humanity through the promotion of its highest types. A number of interpreters have been misled by such language to conclude that Nietzsche accepts some version of compatibilism, holding a theory of natural causality that excludes metaphysical or “libertarian” freedom of the will, while endorsing morally substantial alternative (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8.  76
    Nietzsche's Unwitting Case for Equality: The Manifold Soul as an Ideal of Social Harmony.Donovan Miyasaki - 2023 - Iai News, Institute of Art and Ideas.
    In this paper, I’d like to contrast Plato’s picture of the self or soul to Nietzsche’s account of what he calls a “manifold” soul. While Plato’s moral ideal is a rigidly hierarchical soul subordinated to reason, Nietzsche’s manifold soul is a dynamic balance of powers, a contentious unity of diverse personas. And although Plato’s just soul serves as the model of his authoritarian, aristocratic politics, I’ll argue Nietzsche’s manifold soul is deeply incompatible with his own aristocratic politics and provides us, (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. (1 other version)A Nietzschean Critique of Liberal Eugenics.Donovan Miyasaki - 2021 - Journal of Medical Ethics 1.
    Ethical debates about liberal eugenics frequently focus on the supposed unnaturalness of its means and possible harm to autonomy. I present a Nietzsche-inspired critique focusing on intention rather than means and harm to abilities rather than to autonomy. I first critique subjective eugenics, the selection of extrinsically valuable traits, drawing on Nietzsche’s notion of ‘slavish’ values reducible to the negation of another’s good. Subjective eugenics slavishly evaluates traits relative to a negatively evaluated norm (eg, above-average intelligence), disguising a harmful intention (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Can Nietzsche's Noble be Moral?Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Nietzsche implicitly endorses a positive value system grounded in his concept of the will to power, a “noble” alternative to the “slavish” and life-denying values that he believes characterize modern European morality. His own power-affirming value system is usually presented amorally: as an alternative to morality, rather than as a competing morality. Most commentators believe this is necessarily so: because Nietzsche founds his values in the affirmation of power, they are incompatible with the concern for the well-being of others that (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. (1 other version)Nietzsche's Naturalist Morality of Breeding: A Critique of Eugenics as Taming.Donovan Miyasaki - 2014 - In Nietzsche’s Naturalist Morality of Breeding: A Critique of Eugenics as Taming. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. 194-213.
    In this paper, I directly oppose Nietzsche ’s endorsement of a morality of breeding to all forms of comparative, positive eugenics: the use of genetic selection to introduce positive improvement in individuals or the species, based on negatively or comparatively defined traits. I begin by explaining Nietzsche ’s contrast between two broad categories of morality: breeding and taming. I argue that the ethical dangers of positive eugenics are grounded in their status as forms of taming, which preserves positively evaluated character (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  12. (1 other version)Nietzsche's Will to Power as Naturalist Critical Ontology.Donovan Miyasaki - 2013 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 30 (3):251-69.
    In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s published works contain a substantial, although implicit, argument for the will to power as ontology—a critical and descriptive, rather than positive and explanatory, theory of reality. Further, I suggest this ontology is entirely consistent with a naturalist methodology. The will to power ontology follows directly from Nietzsche’s naturalist rejection of three metaphysical presuppositions: substance, efficient causality, and final causality. I show that a number of interpretations, including those of Clark, Schacht, Reginster, and Richardson, (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13. Nietzsche contra Freud on Bad Conscience.Donovan Miyasaki - 2010 - Nietzsche Studien 39 (1):434-454.
    While much has been made of the similarities between the work of Nietzsche and Freud, insufficient attention has been paid to their differences. Even where they have been noted, the degree of these differences, which sometimes approaches direct opposition, has often been underestimated. In the following essay, I will suggest that on the topic of conscience Nietzsche and Freud have radically opposed views, with profoundly different moral consequences. Despite superficial similarities, Nietzsche’s conception of conscience is opposed to that of Freud (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Political Violence as Bad Faith in Beauvoir's The Blood of Others - English Version.Donovan Miyasaki - 2008 - In Julia Kristeva (ed.), (Re) découvrir l’œuvre de Simone de Beauvoir – Du Deuxième Sexe à La Cérémonie des adieux. Éditions Le Bord de l’Eau. pp. 367-73.
    The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On this progressive reading, although (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. The evasion of gender in Freudian fetishism.Donovan Miyasaki - 2003 - Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society 8 (2):289-98.
    In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud rejects the notion of a biologically determined connection of instinct to object, a position which helps him avoid the designation of all variations from heterosexuality as either “degenerate” or “pathological.” However, the gender roles and relations commonly attributed to heterosexuality are already implicit in his understanding of sexual instinct and aim. Consequently, even variations from the normal sexual object and aim exemplify, on his interpretation, the clichéd hierarchical opposition of femininity and (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Against the Moral Appraisal of Interrogative Artworks: Wayne Booth and the case of Huck Finn.Donovan Miyasaki - 2007 - Philosophy and Literature 31 (1):125-132.
    In the following essay, I argue that in the case of some works of art, moral evaluation should not play a role in artistic appraisal. While I reject the strong ethicist’s view—the view that moral evaluation may inform the artistic evaluation of any artwork—I will not do so in favor of the aestheticist’s position. The aestheticist argues for a rigid distinction between the moral and aesthetic evaluation of an artwork. On this view, the moral status of the work is independent (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. La violence politique comme mauvaise foi dans Le sang des autres (French Version).Donovan Miyasaki - 2008 - In Julia Kristeva (ed.), (Re) découvrir l’œuvre de Simone de Beauvoir – Du Deuxième Sexe à La Cérémonie des adieux. Éditions Le Bord de l’Eau.
    [English version also available] The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Nietzsche's Answer to the Naturalistic Fallacy: Life as Condition, not Criterion, of Morality.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Nietzsche’s late writings present a value opposition of health and decadence based in his conception of organic life. While this appears to be a moral ideal that risks the naturalistic fallacy of directly deriving norms from facts, it instead describes a meta-ethical ideal: the necessary conditions for any kind of moral agency. Nietzsche’s ideal of health not only evades but also dissolves the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting that the specific content of morality is irrelevant. If health is measured by power (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Capitalism and its Contentments: A Nietzschean Critique of Ideology Critique.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Nietzsche’s psychological theory of the drives calls into question two common assumptions of ideology critique: 1) that ideology is fetishistic, substituting false satisfactions for true ones, and 2) that ideology is falsification; it conceals exploitation. In contrast, a Nietzschean approach begins from the truth of ideology: that capitalism produces an authentic contentment that makes the concealment of exploitation unnecessary. And it critiques ideology from the same standpoint: capitalism produces pleasures too efficiently, an overproduction of desire that is impossible to sustain (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. (1 other version)A Nietzschean Case for Illiberal Egalitarianism.Donovan Miyasaki - 2014 - In Manuel Knoll & Barry Stocker (eds.), Nietzsche as Political Philosopher. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 155-170.
    This paper draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s work to defend the (admittedly non-Nietzschean) conclusion that a non-liberal egalitarian society is superior in two ways: first, as a moral ideal, it does not rest on questionable claims about essential human equality and, second, such a society would provide the optimal psychological and political conditions for individual wellbeing, social stability, and cultural achievement. I first explain Nietzsche’s distinction between forms of egalitarianism: noble and slavish. The slavish form promotes equality, defined negatively as the (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. Nietzsche's Incompatibilism.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
  22. Art as Self-Origination in Winckelmann and Hegel.Donovan Miyasaki - 2006 - Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 27 (1):129-150.
    Eighteenth-century art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) shared with Hegel a profound admiration for the art and culture of ancient Greece. Both viewed ancient Greece as, in some sense, an ideal to which the modern world might aspire—a pinnacle of spiritual perfection and originality that contemporary civilization might, through an understanding of ancient Greek culture, one day equal or surpass. This rather competitive form of nostalgia suggests a paradoxical demand to produce an original and higher state of culture through the (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23.  32
    Breeding as Critique of Taming and Eugenics: Nietzsche’s Naturalist Morality of Cultivation.Donovan Miyasaki - manuscript
    Nietzsche’s endorsement of a “morality of breeding” or “cultivation” (Züchtung), which he opposes to the morality of “taming” or “domestication” (Zähmen), invites worry that his philosophy may be compatible with ethically dangerous forms of eugenics and, consequently, with the historically associated, abhorrent practices of discrimination, racism, and genocide (TI, “Improvers” 5). While there is a general, if not absolute, consensus that Nietzsche does not actively endorse discrimination or violence, the failure to clearly exclude such egregious views would be sufficient reason (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Freud or Nietzsche: the Drives, Pleasure, and Social Happiness.Donovan Miyasaki - 2004 - Dissertation, University of Toronto
    Many commentators have remarked upon the striking points of correspondence that can be found in the works of Freud and Nietzsche. However, this essay argues that on the subject of desire their work presents us with a radical choice: Freud or Nietzsche. I first argue that Freud’s theory of desire is grounded in the principle of inertia, a principle that is incompatible with his later theory of Eros and the life drive. Furthermore, the principle of inertia is not essentially distinct (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy (Vol 1/2, paperback edition scheduled for 11/23).Donovan Miyasaki - 2022 - Palgrave Macmillan.
    Nietzsche’s Immoralism begins a two-volume critical reconstruction of a socialist, democratic, and non-liberal Nietzschean politics. Nietzsche’s ideal of amor fati (love of fate) cannot be individually adopted because it is incompatible with deep freedom of agency. However, we can create its social conditions thanks to an under-appreciated aspect of his will-to-power psychology. We are driven not toward domination and conquest but toward resistance, contest, and play―a heightened feeling of power provoked by equal challenges that enables the non-instrumental affirmation of suffering. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. Politics After Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left (Vol 2/2, paperback edition scheduled for 11/23).Donovan Miyasaki - 2022 - Palgrave Macmillan.
    This book completes the project, begun in Nietzsche’s Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy, of critically reconstructing a Nietzschean left politics. Nietzsche's incompatibilist ideal of amor fati requires reconceiving legitimacy as the breeding of a people whose material conditions enable it to affirm its social order. Justice is founded in a future, higher type’s right to exist against present individuals who internalize the contradictions of past societies. In opposition to Nietzsche’s self-undermining aristocratism, this right can only be realized through a universal (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark