Nietzsche's Values

567 Pages·2020·5.504 MB·English

by  John Richardson

Nietzsche’s Values

Nietzsche’s Values
JOHN RICHARDSON
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Richardson, John, 1951– author.
Title: Nietzsche’s values / John Richardson.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Publication, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019059652 | ISBN 9780190098230 (hb) | ISBN 9780190098254 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190098261
Subjects: LCSH: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. | Values.
Classification: LCC B3317 .R465 2020 | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059652
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Citations xix
1. Value: Introducing the Problems 1
1.1 Studying values— and valuing 3
1.2 The value of values 6
1.3 Twelve principles from the study of values 13
1.4 Incorporating the truth about values 26
1.5 Metaethical multiplicity 30
PART I BODY VALUES
2. Life: As Valuer and Valued 39
2.1 Life: an introduction 41
2.2 Life as valuing 46
2.3 Life values power 53
2.4 Justifying power 61
2.5 Lessons from life’s value 71
3. Drives: Psychology of Drives Not Agents 81
3.1 Knowing the drives 83
3.2 Drives valuing 92
3.3 Conflict and synthesis of drives 101
3.4 New relation to the drives 108
4. Affects: Memory and Suffering 115
4.1 Affects 117
4.1.1 Analyzing affects 118
4.1.2 Affects and drives 121
4.1.3 Lessons for the affects 124
4.2 The problem of the past 127
4.2.1 The past’s importance 130
4.2.2 Problems with retrospection 134
4.3 Suffering and pessimism 139
4.3.1 Defining suffering 140
4.3.2 Reply to Schopenhauer 143
4.3.3 Suffering’s genealogy and types 147
4.3.4 Sick and healthy suffering 153
vi Contents
PART II HUMAN VALUES
5. Human: Agency as Our Life-C ondition 161
5.1 Doubts against the subject/a gent 164
5.2 Do life- conditions justify? 172
5.2.1 Transcendental argument in Kant 173
5.2.2 Against transcendental argument 175
5.2.3 Necessary perspectives 180
5.3 Genealogy of agency 188
5.4 Human means values as true 196
6. Words: Language and Community 204
6.1 Community and the common 206
6.2 Who speaks? 211
6.3 Language’s risks 217
6.4 Commons and individuals 224
6.5 New language, new community 233
7. Nihilism: Against Morality—a nd Truth? 240
7.1 Nihilism 242
7.1.1 No- to- life nihilism 246
7.1.2 No- values nihilism 251
7.2 Morality 255
7.2.1 What it is 255
7.2.2 Why it’s bad 258
7.3 Critiques of moral values 266
7.3.1 Against pity 268
7.3.2 Against equality 277
7.4 Genealogy of the will to truth 283
7.5 Assessing the will to truth 290
8. Freedom: Science, History, Psychology 304
8.1 Doubts about science 306
8.2 Freedom 315
8.2.1 Animal freedom as drive-u nity 318
8.2.2 Human freedom as agency 319
8.2.3 Nietzschean freedom by genealogy 322
8.3 History 327
8.3.1 Nietzsche’s path from UM.ii 328
8.3.2 The new science of history 334
8.3.3 The historical sense 339
8.4 Psychology 342
8.5 What’s next 348
Contents vii
PART III NIETZSCHE VALUES
9. The Yes: Value Monism 353
9.1 Monisms and dualisms 356
9.2 Against opposite values 363
9.3 Saying Yes and saying yes-a nd- no 374
9.3.1 The Yes and everyday values 378
9.3.2 Dualism redux 383
9.4 How to say Yes 387
9.5 The value of the Yes 394
10. Self: To Become Who One Is 398
10.1 Selfhood as reflexivity 400
10.2 Genealogy of the self 405
10.3 A Nietzschean self 412
10.4 How to become a self 417
10.4.1 Self out of multiple parts 418
10.4.2 Self out of enveloping other 424
10.5 Being one’s own 429
10.5.1 One’s own perspective 429
10.5.2 Selfishness 432
11. Creating: Founding New Social Norms 439
11.1 Herds and individuals 442
11.2 Creating values, founding norms 449
11.2.1 Creating 451
11.2.2 Founding 453
11.3 De- moralizing norms 455
11.4 Recognizing rank- order 461
11.4.1 The ladder of human types 464
11.4.2 Social classes: noble and herd 467
12. Dionysus: New Gods and Eternal Return 475
12.1 Superhuman 478
12.2 Religions and gods 482
12.2.1 Diagnosing religion 485
12.2.2 New religion 494
12.3 Eternal return 507
12.4 In lieu of a conclusion 525
Bibliography 527
Name Index 537
Subject Index 541

Preface
Nietzsche has, more and more clearly, the importance for us that he expected to
have. Or so at least I have to hope, now as I’m adding to the enormous supply of
pages and books written about him—a nd adding, it may seem, an absurdly ex-
cessive amount.
The very breadth of Nietzsche’s appeal shows that he is amenable to many
kinds of approach. There’s room for lots of different ways of writing about him;
he himself undermines confidence that there is one right way. So let me try to
specify the kind of understanding this book aims to find and convey.
It clearly belongs, to begin with, to the “analytic” genre of writing about
Nietzsche. If “analysis” is taking concepts and claims apart into parts and exam-
ining these in close detail, then the book does try to do this across the range
of Nietzsche’s philosophical topics. It tries to determine Nietzsche’s thinking on
twelve main topics— named in the chapter titles— by specifying what he “means”
by his words and statements addressing them. It looks to sharpen these meanings
by noticing ambiguities and the ever-fi ner options he might mean. It tries to
choose among these options which his principal point must be. There is huge
work to do in giving adequate analyses of even these central terms, not to men-
tion the host of subsidiary ones.
But the book makes a second main effort in the opposite direction, by locating
these concepts and claims within the web of Nietzsche’s other concerns and
trying to show how his “local” meanings are affected by that whole network of
others. These relations to his other views tend to be discounted when one’s aim
is to locate or place Nietzsche’s position amid our current alternatives. This book
practices “synthesis” as well as analysis— and in ways and to a degree that may go
against the grain of much recent analytic treatment of Nietzsche. It tries to con-
sider the full range of his topics and show how his views on each is interwoven
with his views on others. These two aims of analytic detail and synthetic unity
combine to explain the length of this study.
Thus this book aims to give an overall picture (or map) of Nietzsche’s thought
that is strongly detailed but also strongly unified. That thought amounts to
Nietzsche’s own picture of the world and of us (humans) in our relation to it. So
the aim is to give a picture of this picture.
But we must bear in mind a couple of things about Nietzsche’s “picture.” First,
it is strongly valuative: in describing the world, it mixes in assessments of things’
worth, nobility, strength, and health— to mention a few of his most frequent