Transcendental aspects, ontological commitments and naturalistic elements in Nietzsche's thought

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (2):179 – 214 (2009)
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Abstract

Nietzsche's views on knowledge have been interpreted in at least three incompatible ways - as transcendental, naturalistic or proto-deconstructionist. While the first two share a commitment to the possibility of objective truth, the third reading denies this by highlighting Nietzsche's claims about the necessarily falsifying character of human knowledge (his so-called error theory). This paper examines the ways in which his work can be construed as seeking ways of overcoming the strict opposition between naturalism and transcendental philosophy whilst fully taking into account the error theory (interpreted non-literally, as a hyperbolic warning against uncritical forms of realism). In doing so, it clarifies the nature of Nietzsche's ontological commitments, both in the early and the later work, and shows that his relation to transcendental idealism is more subtle than is allowed by naturalistic interpreters while conversely accounting for the impossibility of conceiving the conditions of the possibility of knowledge as genuinely a priori.

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Beatrice Han-Pile
University of Essex

Citations of this work

Freedom, Resistance, Agency.Manuel Dries - 2015 - In Manuel Dries & P. J. E. Kail, Nietzsche on Mind and Nature. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 142–162.
‘Pain Always Asks for a Cause’: Nietzsche and Explanation.Matthew Bennett - 2017 - European Journal of Philosophy 25 (4):1550-1568.
Nietzsche, Value and Objectivity.Tsarina Doyle - 2013 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (1):41 - 63.

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References found in this work

Kant's Transcendental Idealism.Henry E. Allison - 1988 - Yale University Press.
The Bounds of Sense.P. F. Strawson - 1966 - Philosophy 42 (162):379-382.
The bounds of sense: an essay on Kant's Critique of pure reason.Peter F. Strawson - 1975 - [New York]: Harper & Row, Barnes & Noble Import Division. Edited by Lucy Allais.
Nietzsche on Morality.Brian Leiter - 2002/2014 - New York: Routledge.
Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy.Maudemarie Clark - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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