Manuel Dries

Nietzsche on time and history

In 1885 Nietzsche insisted that from now on philosophy was only acceptable ‘as the most general form of history, as an attempt somehow to describe Heraclitean becoming and to abbreviate it into signs.’ Taking this remark as a starting point, the aim of this volume is to examine the intricate relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophy of time and his philosophy of history. The questions that arise include: What are the new conceptions of time that Nietzsche has to offer? What kind of historian was Nietzsche himself? What kinds of temporalized histories and historicized philosophies did he write or fail to write? This collection of essays, written by fourteen academics including eminent figures such as John Richardson, Raymond Geuss, Lawrence J. Hatab, and Andrea Orsucci, constitute essential reading for specialists of Nietzsche, and will also appeal to a larger audience of intellectual historians, philosophers and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.

The Feeling of Doing – Nietzsche on Agent Causation

This article examines Nietzsche’s analysis of the phenomenology of agent causation. Sense of agent causation, our sense of self-efficacy, is tenacious because it originates, according to Nietzsche’s hypothesis, in the embodied and situated experience of effort in overcoming resistances. It arises at the level of the organism and is sustained by higher-order cognitive functions. Based on this hypothesis, Nietzsche regards the sense of self as emerging from a homeostatic system of drives and affects that unify such as to maintain self-efficacy levels. He relies on the same hypothesis to explain the emergence of an ascetic moral system and its specific, interpretive-affective ‘mechanism of willing’. The article aligns Nietzsche’s account of agent causation with Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy studies and Antonio Damasio’s recent account of self-systems as homeostatic systems.

Friedrich Schiller's Adualistic Conception of Unity

Abstract This paper considers three general dilemmas that tend to undermine successful configurations of unity: the either/or dilemma, the synthesis dilemma and the relativism dilemma. It further argues that, in his aesthetic writings, Schillers critique of Kantian dualisms leads him to an adualistic conception of unity that operates with a different, more inclusive approach to opposition and unification. In order to clarify Schillers innovative and often misunderstood position, the paper draws on the disjunctive logic recently developed by Friedrich Kümmel.

2.3 What is it like to recognize values? (The hard problem of value 2)

Abstract This article responds to three concerns regarding the viability of Nietzsche’s conception of value creation. Section I examines the claim that philosophy is unlikely to contribute to the creation of value. Section II argues that some puzzles regarding Nietzsche’s allegedly highest value of life-affirmation may require for a solution two different conceptions of life-affirmation: basic life-affirmationb and Life-affirmatione par excellence, which is both qualitatively different and based on a theoretically more demanding conception of life. Section three proposes that Nietzsche’s perspectivist method, which distinguishes between perspectival “knowing” and perspectival “objective” knowledge in GM III 12, may usefully be applied to the knowledge and recognition of differences in value perspectives and help improve our value practices. Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag behandelt drei Bedenken bezüglich der Realisierbarkeit von Nietzsches Konzeption des Werteschaffens. Teil I behandelt die Annahme, dass ein Beitrag der Philosophie das Werteschaffen betreffend unwahrscheinlich ist. Teil II argumentiert, dass es zur Lösung einiger Probleme mit Nietzsches angeblich höchstem Wert der Lebensbejahung der Einführung zweier unterschiedlicher Konzeptionen von Lebensbejahung bedarf: einfacher Lebensbejahungb und Lebensbejahunge par excellence, die qualitativ verschieden ist und einen theoretisch komplexeren Lebensbegriff zur Voraussetzung hat. Teil III schlägt vor, Nietzsches perspektivistische Methode, die in GM III 12 perspektivisches ,Erkennen‘ von perspektivischer ,objektiver‘ Erkenntnis unterscheidet, auf die Erkenntnis und Anerkennung unterschiedlicher Werteperspektiven anzuwenden, mit dem Ziel, unsere Werte-Praxis zu verfeinern.

1.3 How hard is it to create values

Abstract This article examines what Nietzsche might mean by the proposition that “values are created”. It further raises the issue whether there is a “hard problem of value” analogous to the “hard problem” in the philosophy of mind. Nietzsche could be seen as a philosopher who tried to shift people’s views about values away from any realist-objectivist intuitions. He was optimistic that these views could be eliminated, and that eventually most or all would come to conceive of values as perspectival and created. It is shown first that Nietzsche rejects value realism in favour of a compelling anti realist conception of value, which he takes to be superior due to one specific property of values, their “aliveness”. If there is a “hard problem of value”, however, i.e. that for the realist any created value simply does not count as a value, it is unclear if Nietzsche’s conception is constructive. Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag überprüft, was Nietzsche mit der Behauptung meinen könnte, „Werte seien geschaffen“. Er wirft ferner die Frage auf, ob es ein „hartes Wertproblem“ des Werteschaffens analog zum „harten Problem“ in der Philosophie des Geistes gibt. Nietzsche könnte als Philosoph betrachtet werden, der versuchte, das Denken über Werte von allen realistisch-objektivistischen Intuitionen abzuwenden. Er war zuversichtlich, dass dieses Denken überwunden werden könnte und die meisten, wenn nicht alle dazu kommen würden, Werte perspektivisch als geschaffene zu verstehen. Es wird zuerst gezeigt, dass Nietzsche den Werterealismus zugunsten einer einleuchtenden antirealistischen Wertkonzeption verwirft, die er insbesondere aufgrund einer einzigen spezifischen Eigenschaft von Werten für überlegen hält, ihrer „Lebendigkeit“. Wenn es jedoch ein „hartes Wertproblem“ gibt und für den Realisten jeder geschaffene Wert schlicht nicht als Wert zählt, bleibt unklar, ob Nietzsches Konzeption weiterführt.

3.3 What Mary didn’t know about values (The hard problem of value 3)

Abstract This article answers some criticisms raised against How hard is it to create values? and offers a further formulation of the hard problem of value. Section 1 addresses the objection that Nietzsche’s criterion of life is too vague to serve as a useful value standard. Section 2 expands on the important idea of appreciating the difference among value perspectives. Sections 3 and 4 present the “hard problem of value” as a challenge for Nietzschean value agonism and value nihilism respectively. Section 5 offers a further formulation of the “hard problem of value”: a thought experiment about Mary, an expert, anti-realist value creator, whose values may or may not lack some qualities, analogous to Mary, the colour scientist of the “knowledge argument”. Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag nimmt Stellung zur Kritik an How hard is it to create values? und bietet eine weitere Formulierung des harten Werteproblems. Abschnitt 1 behandelt den Einwand, dass Nietzsches Kriterium ,Leben‘ zu vage und als Wertmaßstab untauglich sei. Abschnitt 2 vertieft den Gedanken der Wertschätzung des Unterschieds zwischen Wertperspektiven. In den Abschnitten 3 und 4 wird das harte Werteproblem als Herausforderung respektive für Werte-Agonismus und Nihilismus präsentiert. Abschnitt 5 strebt eine weitere Formulierung des ,harten Werteproblems‘ an: ein Gedankenexperiment über Mary, anti-realistische Expertin im Werteschaffen, deren Werten, analog zur Farbwahrnehmungsexpertin des ,Wissensarguments‘, etwas zu fehlen scheint.