Nietzsche's Naturalized Aestheticism

Bibliographic Data

ID5819212
AuthorsMatthew Meyer (0000-0002-1790-8117, University of Scranton, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume23
Issue1
Pages138-160
Publication date2014-11-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2014.981743
OpenAlexW2092331886
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited19

This essay seeks to overcome the divide that has emerged in recent scholarship between Alexander Nehamas's reading of Nietzsche as an aestheticist who eschews the dogmatism implicit in the scientific project and Brian Leiter's reading of Nietzsche as a hard-nosed naturalist whose project is continuous with the natural sciences. It is argued that Nietzsche turns to the natural sciences to justify a relationalist ontology that not only eliminates metaphysical concepts such as 'being' and 'things-in-themselves', but also can be linked to key components of the aestheticist reading. As a result, Nietzsche's naturalism should not be understood as opposing important features of his aestheticism. Instead, Nietzsche's project should be understood in terms of a naturalized aestheticism that rejects the metaphysical-moral interpretation of existence espoused by philosophers such as Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer.Keywords: NietzschenaturalismaestheticismHeraclitusperspectivismwill to power Notes1As I explain below, these 'most fundamental entities' never actually exist independently of other entities and so do not actually exist in a state of indeterminacy. So although we can consider what these entities would be like in themselves, that is, indeterminate, if they were to exist independently of their relations to other things, they never actually exist as things-in-themselves and so never actually exist in a state of indeterminacy.2My reading of Nietzsche conflicts with the developmental interpretation proposed by Clark (Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy) in three respects: (1) In contrast to Clark's attempt to read Nietzsche's later philosophy through the neo-Kantian framework of 'On Truth and Lying', which assumes the existence of a thing-in-itself, I read Nietzsche's later philosophy through the alternative, Heraclitean framework presented in Philosophy in the Tragic Age, which denies the existence of a thing-in-itself; (2) In contrast to Clark, who holds that Nietzsche eventually overcomes the idea that most of our beliefs falsify reality with his later rejection of the thing-in-itself, I hold that Nietzsche continues to think that most of our beliefs falsify reality because he rejects the thing-in-itself in favour of a relational ontology as early as 1873; (3) In contrast to Clark, who reads Nietzsche as rejecting metaphysics but remaining committed to a common-sense-cum-scientific account of reality, I present a Nietzsche who appeals to science to reject both metaphysical and common-sense things as falsifications of reality.3As a point of clarification, I understand ontology to be an account of what there fundamentally is, and I understand the term broadly so that there can be an ontology that eliminates 'beings'. I follow Nietzsche in using the term metaphysics in the classical sense as the study of entities that transcend the physical or natural world.4By 'intrinsic properties', I simply mean the properties a thing has in virtue of itself, and by 'in virtue of itself', I mean those properties an object has independently of its relations to other things.5The worry is that Nietzsche is violating logical consistency, and because science is committed to logical consistency, Nietzsche cannot appeal to science to reject it. As I argue elsewhere, Nietzsche is not violating logical consistency even though he is rejecting Aristotle's formulation of the principle of non-contradiction. This is because Aristotle formulates the principle in ontological terms, and so Aristotle is defending the view that logical principles govern the structure of the world. On my view, Nietzsche can reject the rationalist assumption that logical principles govern the structure of the world and do so in a way that is logically consistent. For more on this, see Meyer (Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients, chap. 2).6See Nietzsche's letter to von Gersdorff from 5 April 1873, in which he links his writings on the pre-Socratics to his interest in studying contemporary research in maths, chemistry, and mechanics (KSB 4, 301). For a list of books on the natural sciences that Nietzsche borrowed from the library in Basel from 1870 to 1874, see Mittasch (Friedrich Nietzsche als Naturphilosoph, 35).7My translation.8See Lange (The History of Materialism, Vol. II, 364) for the reference to Boscovich in the 1877 edition. Boscovich's name does not appear in the 1866 edition of Lange's work. Nietzsche, however, came to Boscovich prior to reading subsequent editions of Lange's work via his reading of Gustav T. Fechner (Schlechta and Anders, Friedrich Nietzsche, 128).9For more on Nietzsche's early engagement with Boscovich, see Ansell-Pearson, 'Nietzsche's Brave New World of Force'.10See KSA 11, 26[420] for an explicit association of Boscovich with a dynamic worldview.11See Gemes, 'Life's Perspectives' on the various interpretations of Nietzsche's perspectivism in Anglo-American scholarship. The best textual support for the truth-relativist reading (see Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher) is Nietzsche's claim that there are no facts, only interpretations (WP 481; KSA 12, 7[60]). The best textual support for the point-of-view reading (see Leiter, 'Perspectivism in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals'), is GM III 12. In contrast to the former view, I read WP 481 not as a claim about truth relativism, but as further support for Nietzsche's view that things are what they are only in relation to other things. In contrast to Leiter's reading, I note that, even in GM III 12, Nietzsche says that 'interpreting forces' are necessary for a seeing to become a 'seeing something', and so the passage does not provide unambiguous evidence for Nietzsche's commitment to common-sense things, which Leiter's reading of perspectivism presupposes.12Nietzsche borrows the term 'perspective' from Gustav Teichmüller, and Teichmüller (Die wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt, 335-341) argues that knowing subjects create common-sense things by projecting such categories onto sensations.13Although Nietzsche speaks of essential properties, that is, those properties that define what a thing is, the discussion should be about intrinsic properties, that is, those properties a thing has independently of its relation to other things.14However, it should be noted that the will to power is clearly part of Nietzsche's naturalistic program insofar as his naturalism is simply opposed to metaphysical explanations. Indeed, one could argue that Nietzsche interprets the world as will to power so as to eliminate the need for metaphysical principles in explaining natural phenomena.15I hold this view for both the ontological and psychological versions of the doctrine. See Clark, 'Nietzsche's Doctrines of the Will to Power' for an account of this distinction and the claim that the ontological version is a self-conscious myth. Although I am sympathetic with the thrust of Clark's claim, Nietzsche nevertheless believes that we can have what might be called perspectival knowledge of what we create (BGE 211) and so this reading of the ontological version of the will to power does not render it epistemically vacuous, at least not for Nietzsche.16See GS 112 for Nietzsche's distinction between description and explanation.17My translation. Also see KSA 12, 1[121] and 2[82].18Nevertheless, the explanatory program of Beyond Good and Evil is still naturalistic in the sense that Nietzsche seeks to explain various phenomena without recourse to non-natural or metaphysical entities. This, I take it, is the naturalism expressed in BGE 230.19Richardson (Nietzsche's System, 3) presents Nietzsche as engaged in the very traditional project of providing systematic explanations from essences, and the will to power plays a key role in his account.20I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy whose feedback has helped make this a better paper as well as Daniel Conway, Robert Guay, Randall Havas, Paul Loeb, and Gabriel Zamosc for their comments on earlier versions of this paper

Aestheticism · Aesthetics · Epistemology · Indeterminacy · Indeterminacy (philosophy) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Metaphysics · Naturalism · Reading (process) · Will to power · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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