Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2021
Perhaps the most fundamental disagreement concerning Nietzsche's view of metaphysics is that some commentators believe Nietzsche has a positive, systematic metaphysical project, and others deny this. Those who deny it hold that Nietzsche believes metaphysics has a special problem, that is, a distinctively problematic feature that distinguishes metaphysics from other areas of philosophy. In this paper, I investigate important features of Nietzsche's metametaphysics in order to argue that Nietzsche does not, in fact, think metaphysics has a special problem. The result is that, against a long-standing view held in the literature, we should be reading Nietzsche as a metaphysician.
My thanks to Scott Jenkins, Andrew Kissel, Teresa Kouri Kissel, Joseph Swensen, Matthew Meyer, Brian Leiter, Daniel Z. Korman, and two anonymous reviewers at the Journal of the American Philosophical Association for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and ideas developed in this paper.