Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Review of Tom Stern's "Nietzsche's Ethics" now out at...

...Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Only a few minor edits from the version posted earlier.

"How Not to Read Nietzsche's Ethics: The Case of Thomas Stern"

This review, which will appear in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, concerns a very weak volume in the Cambridge Elements series; I assume other volumes in that series are more serious and more helpful to students.  (On Stern's prior efforts, see this.)  The first paragraph, a middle paragraph, and the last paragraph of the review:

This thin book, in the new Cambridge Elements series, purports to “introduce” Nietzsche’s ethics in his “late works,” meaning from 1886 until his breakdown in early January 1889.  This period includes such major works as Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, as well as very late works that show some signs of impending insanity, like The Antichrist.  Stern never argues that the “late ethics” is discontinuous with Nietzsche’s pre-1886 writings about morality, he simply asserts it.   According to Stern, Nietzsche’s late ethics consists of a descriptive thesis (“Power seeking….is biologically essential” for “living things” [6]) and a normative command (“it is ethical to further the goals of Life and it is unethical to impede them” [11]) [the "Life Theory"].   No text is ever adduced in which Nietzsche says the latter; we return to the ambiguous evidence for the former.  Stern also claims, without any argument or evidence, that the “power-seeking force” is what Nietzsche variously calls “’Life,’ ‘nature,’ ‘will,’ ‘will to life’’ or the organic realm” (6) [footnote omitted]....

Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche

Someone actually went to the trouble to produce this funny montage (based on this lecture at Lund):

There's a lot of time to burn on the Internet!

"Two Pessimisms in Mill"

I commend this important paper in Utilitas by one of our PhD students, Joshua Fox, who is defending his splendid dissertation on pessimism in Mill, Schopenhauer and  Nietzsche next month.  The paper, which draws on dissertation material, sheds fascinating and new light on an aspects of Mill's ethics that I've not seen addressed before.  (A different part of the project, related to Nietzsche, is found in this paper, which Nietzsche scholars will want to read.)

"Nietzsche Against Marx on the Causes of Suffering"

An early and rough draft of a project I'm still thinking about.  Here's the abstract:

Marx and Nietzsche, the two lodestars of modern philosophical anthropology, differ most interestingly not in their moral outlooks--which are indeed contradictory--but in their explanatory methods. Marx has, as it were, no psychology, only an anthropology and economics, while Nietzsche relies almost exclusively on explanation in terms of individual psychology, appearing at times willfully blind to social and economic causes. This difference is most apparent in their contrasting approaches to human suffering. Marx understands suffering to be primarily a consequence of socio-economic circumstances, while Nietzsche traces it primarily to defects in individual psychology and physiology (the latter manifesting themselves at the psychological level). To put it crudely, for Nietzsche, most people are by nature “sick” and thus disposed to suffer, regardless of socio-economic circumstances, while for Marx, people’s suffering is an artifact of their socio-economic circumstances, and thus amenable to amelioration.

The instinctive striving for "herd-organization"

The photo below reminded me of this observation of Nietzsche's (On the Genealogy of Morality III:18):  "Out of a longing to shake off the dull listlessness and the feeling of weakness, all the sick, the diseased strive instinctively for herd-organization...."

 

 

"Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" should be out any day now in paperback...

...and you can preorder it now.

And from a recent review by Paul Loeb in the January 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy:

Brian Leiter’s second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter’s evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter’s scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated.

"God is dead" and with Him goes moral egalitarianism

I return to Brain in a Vat to discuss these themes in Nietzsche (related to this paper).

International Society for Nietzsche Studies meeting

What was to have been the 5th annual meeting was postponed due to the COVID disaster; it will now take place in Oxford in June 2022.   The deadline for the CFP is next January, so plenty of time to submit for those who are interested.

I discuss "Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" at Trinity College Dublin...

...here, with Professors Donna Lyons (TCD), Brian O'Connor (University College Dublin), and Alexander Prescott-Couch (Oxford).   If you haven't read the book (which will be out in paperback in Spring 2021), my essay for the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology will give you a pretty good overview of the main themes.

(As an aside, Professor Lyons has been running a delightful workshop series discussing recent books with authors, mostly by law professors, but some others too.

Where to go to study Nietzsche as a graduate student (mostly Anglophone world), 2020

I updated my annual recommendations here.

On the will to truth and the will to meaning in Nietzsche

Philosopher Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) comments.

Notre Dame faculty (but none from the law school) call on Judge Barrett to step aside until after the election...

...for the good of the country.  She won't, of course.  First, she knows that if she were to withdraw, the Republicans would push through someone else.  Second, she believes that her approach to judicial decision-making is the correct one and ought to be on the Supreme Court.   Or, as a German philospher once remarked, life itself is the will to power.

Best books on Nietzsche, an addendum...

...over at the Five Books website, and with thanks to Nigel Warburton for suggesting it.

A young person gets the good news that "God is dead"

(Via Neil Sinhababu on Facebook.)

 

Plato and Nietzsche in conversation

This is amusing (not philosophically deep, however, or at least not the bit I watched) (it's also in German).

(Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)

"Nietzsche on Morality" to appear in Japanese

I'm really happy to have learned a couple of weeks ago that the second edition of my Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge 2015; 1st ed., 2002) will be published in Japanese by Shunjusha Co., Ltd. in Tokyo.  I owe this to the efforts of Nietzsche scholar Yuma Oto of Keio University (who has also studied at the University of Southampton), whom I had the good fortune to meet at the Lund conference last June.  In the past, my work has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Greek, Slovak, Russian, Italian, and French, but this is a first for Japanese, so it's very exciting to be able to reach Japanese Nietzsche students and scholars!

International Society for Nietzsche Studies has cancelled its annual meeting, slated for Oxford in late June 2020

Announcement here.  ISNS will meet again next year in Oxford, on dates still to be determined.  We decided to act early because (a) the writing is on the wall, and (b) we don't want folks buying plane tickets.

"Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy," revised at SEP

This is the third revision I've done since the entry first appeared in 2004.   This revision was more substantial than the last one, with a lot of new bibliographical entries and refinements of discussions in several sections, especially sections 1.2, 2, 3 and 4.

Jonathan Mitchell did not like Tom Stern's "New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche"

From the review's conclusion:

Overall this volume is idiosyncratic and mixed. Instead of a state-of-the-art snapshot of Nietzsche-studies married with perspicuous introductions and overviews of central texts, many of the contributions lacked philosophical depth. Those that were of a more philosophical bent flirted with obscurity and verbosity, not infrequently straw-manning the so-called analytic [i.e., philosophical] interpretations. That being said, [Sebastian] Gardner's and [Michael] Forster's contributions are worth reading, the latter being a fine example of the required form and standard of content for a contribution to a companion. It was a shame that many of the other contributions fell short of this standard.

(For those interested in Nietzsche scholarship, I say a bit more at my Nietzsche blog.)

Call for papers for the 5th annual meeting of the International Society for Nietzsche Studies

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 21, 2019:   PAPERS ARE DUE BY THE END OF THE MONTH

This will take place in Oxford on June 30 and July 1, 2020; the CFP is here.   Those who have participated in ISNS in the past have often remarked that these are the highest quality discussions of Nietzsche they have ever experienced at any conference.  Graduate students have done very well in the CFPs in the past, getting the majority of the slots.  (Please note that this year, those successful in the CFP will need to secure their own funding for travel expenses.)

Papers posted on-line in 2019

For those interested, here are links to the new and revised papers I posted on-line in 2019:

"The History of Philosophy Reveals that 'Great' Philosophy is Disguised Moral Advocacy:  A Nietzschean Case Against the Socratic Canon in Philosophy"

"Culture and Value in Nietzsche"

"Nietzsche's Naturalism:  Neither Liberal Nor Illiberal"

"Bernard Williams' Debt to Nietzsche: Real or Illusory?"

"Foucault as a Kind of Realist:  Genealogical Critique and the Debunking of the Human Sciences"

"Marx and Marxism" (with Lawrence Dallman)

"Legal Positivism as a Realist Theory of Law"

More evidence for the relativity of moral judgments, this time in the form of cross-cultural responses to variations on the Trolley Problem

Of course, moral realists will have their usual question-begging accounts that explain away these divergent responses, but putting the parochialism of Anglophone moral philosophers to one side, here are the results:

The researchers found that countries’ preferences differ widely, but they also correlate highly with culture and economics. For example, participants from collectivist cultures like China and Japan are less likely to spare the young over the old—perhaps, the researchers hypothesized, because of a greater emphasis on respecting the elderly.

Similarly, participants from poorer countries with weaker institutions are more tolerant of jaywalkers versus pedestrians who cross legally. And participants from countries with a high level of economic inequality show greater gaps between the treatment of individuals with high and low social status.

 

"Nietzsche, Trump, and Brexit"

You probably weren't expecting to find those three items together, but they are put there by my friend the philosopher Ken Gemes (Birkbeck/London) in this interesting talk.   Note that the introduction is in German, but Gemes delivers the lecture in English.   I think he gets one thing wrong about Nietzsche:  the fundamental problem for human beings is to find a meaning for inevitable suffering, not to find a meaning simpliciter, as Gemes claims.

"The History of Philosophy Reveals that 'Great' Philosophy is Disguised Moral Advocacy: A Nietzschean Case Against the Socratic Canon in Philosophy"

This paper appeared last year in Marcel van Ackern (ed.), Proceedings of the British Academy 214:  Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 185-199; the British Academy would not permit it to be posted until a year after publication, which time period has now elapsed.  Here is the abstract:

Instrumentalists think the history of philosophy is as relevant to philosophy as the history of physics is to physics: if past philosophical or physical theories are true, or help us get to the truth, then we should know about them, otherwise not. Skeptical instrumentalists think history fails on these counts, optimistic instrumentalists think it does not. By contrast “anti-philosophical” instrumentalists—like Marx, Nietszche, and Wittgenstein—are not simply skeptics, because the skeptics still believe there is something for philosophy to do, some knowledge it can produce, some truths it can reveal. The anti-philosophical philosophers think we should give up philosophy as traditionally conceived: the real lesson from the history of philosophy is that philosophy is “garbage,” or, as Nietzsche thought, disguised moral advocacy. For Nietzsche, this is the real lesson of the history of philosophy.

The discussion of Carnap's admiration for Nietzsche (in the course of his famous polemic against Heidegger) may interest a number of readers.

"Culture and Value in Nietzsche"

I've posted my review essay on Andrew Huddleston's instructive recent book on Nietzsche and culture; here's the abstract for those who might be interested:

This review essay discusses a recent book by Andrew Huddleston that examines Nietzsche's views on culture, in particular, culture understood as “the collective life of a people, understood as akin to a great work of art." Huddelston argues against “individualist” readers of Nietzsche (including this author) who hold that after the early 1870s, Nietzsche changes his view and “[i]nstead of reposing his hopes in culture…comes to occupy himself with the fate of a few great individuals” like Beethoven and Goethe. I argue that Huddleston's own evidence shows the individualist readings to be correct, although in the process Huddleston usefully illuminates the influence of Romanticism on Nietzsche's early work. I also discuss the relationship between culture and slavery, the idea of "decadence," and the objectivity of value in Nietzsche's work.

The last sentence of the essay:  "I learned a lot from this volume and I commend it to other Nietzsche scholars, especially those thinking about the role of 'culture' in his thought."

A music critic for a magazine writes about Nietzsche

As these things go, it's not awful, even though the author admits being brought up on "the French Nietzsche," one of the more appallingly confused fabrications to have attached itself to the philosopher.  (Later, the author describes Deleuze as key to "the French Nietzsche," which is unfair to Deleuze!)  The essay is partly a review of Sue Prideaux's book, but the author is sufficiently ignorant to not recognize the problems in her biography.  Perhaps tellingly, towards the end, the music critic writes:

Whenever I feel bewildered by endless interpretive skirmishes over the philosophical Antichrist, I return to Alexander Nehamas’s “Nietzsche: Life as Literature,” which appeared in 1985 and retains a commanding place on the near-infinite Nietzsche bookshelf. Nehamas, a Greek-American thinker steeped in classical studies, essentially made a virtue of Bertrand Russell’s dismissal of Nietzsche. The contradictions in Nietzsche’s writings cohere, Nehamas writes, if we look at him as a literary figure who worked within a philosophical context, and who crafted a persona that functions as a literary character of novelistic complexity.

This is actually a somewhat unfair gloss on Nehamas's book (which does not make "a virtue of Bertrand Russell's dismissal of Nietzsche"), but it is true, as I wrote long ago, that Nehamas's book (which, recall, appeared in 1985),

"Nietzsche's Naturalism: Neither Liberal Nor Illiberal"

This is a penultimate version of my contribution to the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism, being edited by Mario Del Caro and David Macarthur.

"Bernard Williams's Debt to Nietzsche: Real or Illusory?"

This is a revised version of the paper I gave in Lund last month at the excellent conference on Williams organized by Paul Russell (British Columbia/Lund).  There were some predictably first-rate papers by Stephen Darwall (Yale), Miranda Fricker (CUNY), Gideon Rosen (Princeton), and Russell, among others, but readers interested in moral philosophy and Williams will want to keep an eye out for work by Geraldine Ng (Reading) and Matthieu Queloz (Oxford), who also gave excellent talks.  My paper is very much a work in progress, so feedback from philosophers interested in Nietzsche and Bernard Williams is welcome.

Thus spake Nietzsche

Wenn die Unterdrückten, Niedergetretenen, Vergewaltigten aus der rachsüchtigen List der Ohnmacht heraus sich zureden: „lasst uns anders sein als die Bösen, nämlich gut! Und gut ist Jeder, der nicht vergewaltigt, der Niemanden verletzt, der nicht angreift, der nicht vergilt, der die Rache Gott übergiebt, der sich wie wir im Verborgenen hält, der allem Bösen aus dem Wege geht und wenig überhaupt vom Leben verlangt, gleich uns den Geduldigen, Demüthigen, Gerechten“ — so heisst das, kalt und ohne Voreingenommenheit angehört, eigentlich nichts weiter als: „wir Schwachen sind nun einmal schwach; es ist gut, wenn wir nichts thun, wozu wir nicht stark genug sind“ — aber dieser herbe Thatbestand, diese Klugheit niedrigsten Ranges, welche selbst Insekten haben (die sich wohl todt stellen, um nicht „zu viel“ zu thun, bei grosser Gefahr), hat sich Dank jener Falschmünzerei und Selbstverlogenheit der Ohnmacht in den Prunk der entsagenden stillen abwartenden Tugend gekleidet, gleich als ob die Schwäche des Schwachen selbst — das heisst doch sein Wesen, sein Wirken, seine ganze einzige unvermeidliche, unablösbare Wirklichkeit — eine freiwillige Leistung, etwas Gewolltes, Gewähltes, eine That, ein Verdienst sei.

    --On the Genealogy of Morality, I:13

Thus spake Nietzsche

Was ist vornehm? Was bedeutet uns heute noch das Wort »vornehm«? Woran verräth sich, woran erkennt man, unter diesem schweren verhängten Himmel der beginnenden Pöbelherrschaft, durch den Alles undurchsichtig und bleiern wird, den vornehmen Menschen? – Es sind nicht die Handlungen, die ihn beweisen, – Handlungen sind immer vieldeutig, immer unergründlich –; es sind auch die »Werke« nicht. Man findet heute unter Künstlern und Gelehrten genug von Solchen, welche durch ihre Werke verrathen, wie eine tiefe Begierde nach dem Vornehmen hin sie treibt: aber gerade dies Bedürfniss nach dem Vornehmen ist von Grund aus verschieden von den Bedürfnissen der vornehmen Seele selbst, und geradezu das beredte und gefährliche Merkmal ihres Mangels. Es sind nicht die Werke, es ist der Glaube, der hier entscheidet, der hier die Rangordnung feststellt, um eine alte religiöse Formel in einem neuen und tieferen Verstande wieder aufzunehmen: irgend eine Grundgewissheit, welche eine vornehme Seele über sich selbst hat, Etwas, das sich nicht suchen, nicht finden und vielleicht auch nicht verlieren lässt. Die vornehme Seele hat Ehrfurcht vor sich.

    --Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 287.

"The Death of God and the Death of Morality"

The final version is now on-line at The Monist, for those who might be interested.  (This is part of a special issue of The Monist devoted to Nietzsche.)

Moral psychology with Nietzsche, at the LARB

Yesterday Plato's moral psychology, today it's my turn to talk to Andy Fitch at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Exhibit on Nietzsche's influence on art...

...at the National Gallery of Canada.

(Thanks to Andrew Sneddon for the pointer.)

Sue Prideaux's biography of Nietzsche

I review it in the current Times Literary Supplement, although most of it is behind their paywall.  Short version:  she's a good, lively and entertaining writer, but doesn't understand much about his philosophical work.  As I write at the end: 

I have studied Nietzsche for more than three decades, and I very much enjoyed this biography, but it is not for those wanting to learn something about the philosophy. Prideaux’s discussions of his ideas are, at best, superficial, at worst, wrong.  Readers who know a lot about Nietzsche, or simply enjoy the juicy soap opera of the lives of great thinkers, will find this book appealing. The former can draw sounder connections between the life and the ideas than Prideaux, while the latter can perhaps take solace in the “human, all-too-human” (as Nietzsche would say) character of genius.

Robert Holub on Nietzsche

Strictly for those interested in Nietzsche.

"The Death of God and the Death of Morality"

The final manuscript version is here, for those who are interested.  It will appear in a special issue of The Monist later this year devoted to Nietzsche and being edited by Ken Gemes and Andrew Huddleston.

Conference on the work of Bernard Williams at Lund this June

I'll be talking about Williams and Nietzsche, at what is shaping up to be a very interesting conference:  further program information is here (including about how to register, for free).

International Society for Nietzsche Studies at Brown May 31-June 1: less than a week to submit a paper!

Details on the CFP here.

"The Truth is Terrible," my on-line essay on Nietzsche, was the most-read article...

...at the TLS on-line for 2018.  A pleasant surprise--thanks to many here who no doubt were among those who read it.

(Thanks to Bill Edmundson for the pointer.)

Philosophy and cognitive science catch up with Nietzsche, part 242

Philosopher Peter Carruthers explains that "conscious thought is an illusion," as that German fellow knew.

"The Truth is Terrible" (Nietzsche on the aesthetic "justification" of existence)

This paper, which has been making the rounds for quite awhile is finally out in the fall issue of Journal of Nietzsche Studies, for those interested. 

BU's Paul Katsafanas interviewed...

...at 3AM.  An interesting interview; I agree with some things he says, disagree pretty strongly with some others.

'Moral Psychology with Nietzsche'

Coming this March!

Call for Papers for the 4th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Nietzsche Studies at Brown University in 2019

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 3

The CFP for the next meeting of ISNS is now on-line.  We will be able to cover travel and lodging for speakers whose papers are accepted for presentation (accepted papers will presumptively appear in the annual issue of Inquiry devoted to ISNS papers).  Please note the word limits!  (We'll review papers a bit longer, but they may need to be cut for publication purposes.)  The majority of papers selected during the CFP process have been written by PhD students.

The 4th annual meeting of ISNS will be hosted by Brown University on May 31 and June 1, 2019, thanks to the good efforts of Professor Bernard Reginster.  Confirmed invited speakers are  Taylor Carman (Barnard/Columbia), Beatrice Han-Pile (Essex), and Scott Jenkins (Kansas).  We expect to select two or three additional speakers based on the CFP.

Where to go to study Nietzsche, 2018 edition

Here.

Straussians are incapable of reading Nietzsche...

...and this review by philosopher and classical scholar Joel Mann (St. Norbert) of a recent Straussian book makes the point quite effectively.

'The Innocence of Becoming: Nietzsche Against Guilt' now published on-line...

...here, as part of the annual  ISNS issue of Inquiry.

'The Innocence of Becoming: Nietzsche Against Guilt'

The final version of this paper that has evolved over the last five years or so, for those who might be interested.  The abstract:

I offer an interpretation of Nietzsche’s striking idea of “the innocence of becoming” (die Unschuld des Werdens), and a partial defense of its import, namely, that no one is ever morally responsible or guilty for what they do and that many of the so-called “reactive attitudes” are misplaced. I focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the arguments as set out in Twilight of the Idols. First, there is Nietzsche’s hypothesis, partly psychological and partly historical or anthropological, that the ideas of “free” action or free will, and of responsibility for actions freely chosen or willed, were introduced primarily in order to justify punishment (“[m]en were considered ‘free’ so that they might be judged and punished”). Call this the Genetic Thesis about Free Will. Second, there is Nietzsche’s claim that the moral psychology, or “psychology of the will” as he calls it, that underlies this picture is, in fact, false — that, in fact, it is not true that every action is willed or that it reflects a purpose or that it originates in consciousness. Call these, in aggregate, the Descriptive Thesis about the Will. (Here I draw on earlier work.) Finally, there is articulation of a programmatic agenda, namely, to restore the “innocence of becoming” by getting rid of guilt and punishment based on guilt — not primarily because ascriptions of guilt and responsibility are false (though they are), but because a world understood as “innocent,” one understood in terms of “natural” cause and effect, is a better world in which to live. I focus in particular on a reactive attitude often ignored by philosophers, but of crucial importance for Nietzsche, namely, revenge. I aim to explain and defend Zarathustra’s recommendation: “Enemy’ you shall say, but not villain; sick you shall say, but not scoundrel; fool you shall say, but not sinner.” Nietzsche’s views are contrasted with those of important modern writers on these topics, especially P.F. Strawson and Derk Pereboom.

'Disagreement, Anti-Realism about Reasons, Inference to the Best Explanation'

A new draft paper on-line at SSRN; the abstract:

I revisit, refine and defend an inference to the best explanation (IBE) argument for anti-realism about reasons for acting based on the history of intractable disagreement in moral philosophy. The four key premises of the argument are: 1. If there were objective reasons for action, epistemically-well-situated observers would eventually converge upon them after two thousand years; 2. Contemporary philosophers, as the beneficiaries of two thousand years of philosophy, are epistemically well-situated observers; 3. Contemporary philosophers have not converged upon reasons for action; 4. Conclusion: there are no objective reasons for action (IBE from the first three premises). The key premises of the IBE are (1) sentimentalism; (2) non-cognitivism about basic affects; and (3) philosophical arguments for what our reasons for action are always involve a premise that depends on a basic intuitive moral judgment (that can be explained in terms of a basic non-cognitive affect). All these premises are explored in detail, and various objections addressed.

 Comments welcome from those who work on these issues; this version will be presented at a conference in Rome in September, and I won't undertake revisions until after that.