Paradigmatically active

Why Nietzschean drives are not dispositions

Bibliographic Data

ID21335611
AuthorsJames A Mollison (0000-0002-2962-6504, Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), James Mollison (Purdue University)
Year2025
Volume68
Issue5
Pages1326-1352
Publication date2025-05-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2025.2449674
OpenAlexW4406145680
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited30

In this article, I argue against the scholarly consensus that Nietzsche understands drives as dispositions toward characteristic modes of behavior. After showing that Nietzsche’s texts do not support construing drives as dispositions, I draw out three consequences of this view: it undermines Nietzsche’s analysis of how drives take up objects, risks rendering drives causally otiose, and makes drives’ relations with affects needlessly complex. These consequences, I argue, impede drives’ abilities to assist Nietzsche’s philosophical ambitions. To avoid these textual and philosophical difficulties, I propose that Nietzschean drives are better construed as paradigmatically active, such that they do not require stimulus conditions to incite their characteristic modes of behavior

Aesthetics · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Rendering (computer graphics) · Stimulus (psychology) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

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