Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T15:45:19.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nietzsche: Metaphysician

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2021

JUSTIN REMHOF*
Affiliation:
OLD DOMINION [email protected]

Abstract

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.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

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.

References

Ansell-Pearson, Keith. (2018) Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . (2016) Metaphysics. Translated by Reeve, C. D. C.. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.Google Scholar
Barnes, Elizabeth. (2014) ‘Going Beyond the Fundamental: Feminism in Contemporary Metaphysics’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 114, 335351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Karen. (2016) ‘There is No Special Problem with Metaphysics’. Philosophical Studies, 173, 2137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Jessica. (2005) ‘Perspectivism as “Ephexis” in Interpretation’. Philosophical Topics, 33: 2, 1944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Jessica. (2011) Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Maudemarie. (2009) ‘Anti-metaphysics I: Nietzsche’. In Poidevin, Robin Le, Simmons, Peter, McGonigal, Andrew, and Cameron, Ross P. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (London: Routledge), 161–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Maudemarie, and Dudrick, David. (2012) The Soul of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comesaña, Juan. (2008) ‘Could There Be Exactly Two Things?’. Synthese, 162, 3135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Christoph. (1999) Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, Thomas. (2016) ‘On Naturalistic Metaphysics’. In Clark, Kelly James (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Naturalism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), 6174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. (1978) Writing and Difference. Translated by Bass, Alan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Doyle, Tsarnia. (2018) Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emden, Christian. (2014) Nietzsche's Naturalism: Philosophy and Life Sciences in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haar, Michael. (1996) Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Translated and edited by Gendre, Michael. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hales, Steven D., and Welshon, Rex. (2000) Nietzsche's Perspectivism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. (1987) Nietzsche Vol. III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Translated by Krell, David. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers.Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Beatrix. (2019) ‘Metaphilosophy and Metapolitics in Nietzsche and Heidegger’. In Loeb, Paul S. and Meyer, Matthew (eds.), Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 207–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Eli. (2002) ‘Against Revisionary Ontology’. Philosophical Topics, 30, 103–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houlgate, Steven. (1986) Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Criticism of Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Scott. (2019) ‘Nietzsche's Psychology of Metaphysics (Or, Metaphysics as Revenge)’. In Loeb, Paul S. and Meyer, Matthew (eds.), Nietzsche's Metaphilosophy: The Nature, Method, and Aims of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 227–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, Walter. (1974) Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon, and Sosa, Ernest, eds. (1999) Metaphysics: An Anthology. 1st ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Korman, Daniel Z. (2010) ‘Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness’. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 5, 199–44.Google Scholar
Ladyman, James, and Ross, Don. (2007) Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysical Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Poidevine, Robin. (2009) ‘General Introduction: What is Metaphysics?’. In Poidevine, Robin Le, Simons, Peter, McGonigal, Andrew, and Cameron, Ross P. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (London: Routledge), xviiixxii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loux, Michael, and Crisp, Thomas. (2017) Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manley, David. (2009) ‘Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics’. In Chalmers, David J., Manley, David, and Wasserman, Ryan (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 137.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert. (2010) Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Poellner, Peter. (1995) Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poellner, Peter. (2009) ‘Nietzschean Freedom’. In Gemes, Ken and May, Simon (eds.), Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 151–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poellner, Peter. (2013) ‘Nietzsche's Metaphysical Sketches: Causality and the Will to Power’. In Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 675700.Google Scholar
Remhof, Justin. (2018) Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Richardson, John. (1996) Nietzsche's System. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schacht, Richard. (1983) Nietzsche. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2009) ‘On What Grounds What’. In Chalmers, David, Manley, David, and Wasserman, Ryan (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 347–83.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2008) ‘Introduction’. In Sider, Theodore, Hawthorne, John, and Zimmerman, David (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell), 17.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2011) Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Tom. (2019) ‘Nietzsche's Ethics of Affirmation’. In Stern, Tom (ed.), The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 351–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter. (1998) ‘The Nature of Metaphysics’. In Laurence, Steven and MacDonald, Cynthia (eds.), Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell), 1121.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter. (2007) ‘Metaphysics’. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 ed.)Google Scholar
Welshon, Rex. (2004) The Philosophy of Nietzsche. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar