Nietzsche and Metaphysics
Authors: Poellner Peter 
Published: October 2003

A reconstruction of Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics aimed at isolating and assessing dominant lines of argument concerning truth, knowledge, and reality in Nietzsche's mature and late period. The book initially focuses on Nietzsche's sceptical remarks, directed at specific metaphysical theories (causation, self, Newtonian force) and more generally at the concepts of knowledge as justified true belief and rational justification. The discussion proceeds to Nietzsche's own historically unprecedented strain of scepticism. This is the argument from utility—maintaining that the pragmatic utility of belief renders it unlikely to be true. Nietzsche's naturalized epistemology is discussed in the context of modern evolutionary epistemology. It is argued that the two kinds of scepticism are not compatible. In addition, Nietzsche's sceptical stance presupposes the intelligibility of a metaphysically realist conception of absolute truth. Yet, he simultaneously doubts the very notion of truth underpinning his sceptical arguments. It is proposed that Nietzsche is not committed to scepticism but employs sceptical considerations in his attempt to discredit the ascetic ideal. He is strategically qualifying his deductions to the extent that even if the notion of metaphysical truth were allowed to pass muster, metaphysical theories about the world would still be demonstrably otiose. The book emphasizes the centrality of his attack on the notion of metaphysical truth, which purports to describe the objective existence and intrinsic properties of a subject‐independent reality as it is ‘in itself’ and from no ‘point of view’, referred to as Nietzsche's anti‐essentialist or anti‐metaphysical thinking. The affinity of Nietzsche's outlook to anti‐realism, idealism, and classic conceivability objections to metaphysical realism is developed along with emphasis on the original form it takes in Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, the perspectival, subject‐implying character of representational content cannot be discounted without rendering the representation meaningless. As the concept of reality refers to recalcitrant patterns of representational contents that affect empirical subjects by ‘resisting’ them, gaining purchase on it involves anthropocentric notions such as interest, concern, and experience. It is only as beings with interests and capable of intentional and volitional agency that we have the concepts of objective reality and the external world. Having thus laid out Nietzsche's anti‐essentialism, it is argued that a difficult problem arises over the incompatibility of anti‐essentialism with Nietzsche's theory of the mind, in particular his concern with psychology and human agency. His analysis of the concepts of self‐deception, ressentiment, and the Christian ideal, and more generally, of the ascetic ideal or ‘will to truth’, imply that there is a realm of metaphysical fact described, at the very least, by his own theoretical pronouncements. This problem is compounded by his views of the nature of inner experience as the domain of ‘ruling drives’ privileged by being the sole causally efficacious movers. Anticipating Freud's theory of the unconscious, Nietzsche argues that the processes of the mind are not necessarily accessible to self‐consciousness. The book concludes with an analysis of the ‘metaphysics of the will to power’ offered by Nietzsche as an explanatory ontology of relational entities. The final chapter illustrates the recurrent problem of reconciling Nietzsche's overt metaphysical assertions with his sceptical and anti‐essentialist objections to metaphysical truth.