Abstract

Argues that Nietzsche's pronouncements on psychology advert to basic facts about the constitution of inner experience and are thus incompatible with his anti‐essentialism. Nietzsche's analysis of non‐egoistic behaviour, his proto‐Freudian presentation of mental life as driven by processes inaccessible to self‐consciousness, and his analysis of the ascetic ideal, ressentiment, and self‐deception amount to a picture of human agency in which all significant aspects of inner experience are ‘in reality’ desires for the experience of power.